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johnsoedercma-blog · 5 years

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For me, it doesn’t get any better than telling stories about people with a passion for the arts. I wrote this profile of record producer extraordinaire and philanthropist Tommy LiPuma for The Plain Dealer, on the occasion of a Tri-C JazzFest salute to him that coincided with the "Modern American Masters: Highlights From the Gill and Tommy LiPuma Collection" exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

The Art of Tommy LiPuma

By John Soeder published April 11, 2004, in The Plain Dealer

NEW YORK – Yes, he produced a chart-topping album for Barbra Streisand.

And yes, he also had a hand in Grammy-winning recordings by George Benson, Natalie Cole and Diana Krall.

Running down the mile-long list of his accomplishments as a record producer and music industry executive, however, it’s easy to overlook one of Tommy LiPuma’s most truly remarkable achievements:

He made a Wham! fan out of Miles Davis.

The late, great jazz trumpeter visited LiPuma at home in the 1980s to discuss working together. LiPuma popped a cassette by the George Michael-fronted pop group of "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" fame into the stereo.

Davis "freaked out," LiPuma says. "He loved it."

Who knew?

LiPuma recounts the story over lunch at Sistina, his favorite Italian restaurant. It’s not open for lunch, mind you – unless you’re Tommy LiPuma, in which case you and a guest have the dining room all to yourselves on a snowy March afternoon.

Such are the perks when you’re chairman of the world’s largest jazz record company, Verve Music Group. LiPuma, a former Clevelander, has held the title since 1998.

He’ll be back in his hometown this week for the 25th annual Tri-C JazzFest. Benson, Krall, Dr. John, Joe Lovano, Jimmy Scott and others perform Saturday at Playhouse Square’s Allen Theatre in a salute to LiPuma, 67.

"I’m honored," he says. "On the other hand, it makes you wonder: Are you coming toward the twilight of your career? Frankly, I feel I’m at the top of my game."

LiPuma co-produced three albums for Davis, starting with 1986’s "Tutu." It included a cover of "Perfect Way," originally done by Scritti Politti, another 1980s pop act that LiPuma brought to the attention of Davis.

"He wasn’t what I call a jazz cop," LiPuma says. "He loved all kinds of music."

Ditto LiPuma. He wholeheartedly buys into the old Duke Ellington maxim: There are only two kinds of music – the good kind and the other kind.

LiPuma’s latest productions are albums by Al Jarreau and Krall.

Veteran vocalist Jarreau’s "Accentuate the Positive" is due in stores Tuesday, Aug. 3. LiPuma was behind the mixing board for two previous Jarreau releases, "Glow" (1976) and the live double album "Look to the Rainbow" (1977).

"He’s a brilliant producer," says Jarreau, who performs Friday at the Allen Theatre as part of the JazzFest’s "Silver on Silver" salute to another LiPuma client, hard-bop pianist Horace Silver.

LiPuma has a knack for "knowing artists, knowing what they do, allowing them to do it and then pushing them where he thinks their strengths are — and beyond those strengths," Jarreau says.

While working on his new album, Jarreau found himself scatting the melody of "Groovin’ High," a Charlie Parker-Dizzy Gillespie chestnut: "Duh-dut, duh-dut-dut, bah-doo-bee-ooh-bee-ooh-duh-dut’ll-doo-day. . . ."

LiPuma’s ears pricked up. "Is there a lyric, Al?" he asked.

"Well, I’ve thought about doing a lyric for it," Jarreau replied.

LiPuma encouraged him to go for it.

Jarreau did. The finished track turned out to be "one of my best efforts," he says.

Krall’s new album, "The Girl in the Other Room," comes out Tuesday, April 27. It features six songs co-written by the singer-pianist and her husband, rocker Elvis Costello.

LiPuma co-produced "The Girl in the Other Room" with Krall, whom he refers to as "my baby." He has overseen seven of her eight albums.

"Tommy is my ears — he can hear things I can’t hear," Krall said in a 2001 interview with The Plain Dealer. "He loves music, art, beauty and all the meaningful things in life, including really good wine."

At Sistina, LiPuma orders a bowl of pasta. It arrives perfectly al dente and prepared, per his specifications, with cherry tomatoes. A seafood dish follows in short order.

"This is the branzino," LiPuma says, digging into the Italian-style sea bass. "Delicious!"

Between sips of espresso in the afterglow of the meal, he’ll gladly tell you about working with ultradiva Streisand on "The Way We Were," her 1974 No. 1 album: "She knows exactly what she wants."

Or the truth behind "Weekend in L.A.," singer-guitarist Benson’s 1977 live album: "It wasn’t really as live as it sounded. . . . We had to redo the vocals."

Or the emotional experience of recording the title track of Cole’s 1991 "Unforgettable" album, a virtual duet between the singer and her late father, Nat "King" Cole: "When we did it, it stopped all of us in our tracks."

Lawyers, accountants running the show

LiPuma lights up when he talks about music. But his mood turns somber when the conversation turns to the music business.

"The sooner corporate America gets out of it, the happier I’m going to be," he says.

Verve Music Group is the parent company of four record labels: Verve, Impulse!, GRP (which LiPuma ran in the 1990s) and Blue Thumb (where LiPuma worked in the late ’60s and early ’70s with such acts as Dan Hicks and Dave Mason).

In addition to a catalog rich with jazz greats (Ellington, Count Basie, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, among others), the company’s current artist roster includes the likes of Krall, Jarreau, Benson, violinist Regina Carter and keyboardist Herbie Hancock.

Verve Music Group is a subsidiary of the world’s leading music company, Universal Music Group, which had revenues of $6 billion in 2003. Universal (itself a division of multinational media conglomerate Vivendi Universal) does not release specific financial data for its subsidiaries.

"The record business used to be basically a group of entrepreneurs . . . who made gut decisions and ran their own ships," LiPuma says. "They didn’t have to worry about making their quarter or if Wall Street was going to give them its blessing. They were music people.

"Today, with a few exceptions, you have lawyers and accountants running the show. It’s very unfortunate."

LiPuma has delegated the day-to-day responsibilities (read: headaches) of running Verve Music Group to his second-in-command, President and CEO Ron Goldstein.

"I handle the creative aspects," LiPuma says. "When you make records, all you want is the right performance. . . . As a producer, everything is about waiting for the moment when the artist drops a magic take. One of the most important parts of my job is knowing when the moment happens."

Magic has struck in the studio time and again for LiPuma, who has made more than 20 gold, platinum or multiplatinum records. He also has won three Grammy Awards: Record of the Year in 1976 for Benson’s smash "This Masquerade," Album of the Year in 1991 for Cole’s "Unforgettable" and Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2002 for Krall’s "Live in Paris."

The way he was: Cleveland roots

Born in Cleveland to Italian immigrants, LiPuma was the youngest of five children. His brothers, Joe and Henry, and sister Therese still live in the area; another sister, Josephine, died in 1984.

LiPuma’s family moved often when he was young, from Cleveland’s Kinsman neighborhood to University Heights to Warrensville Heights to Beachwood.

"The radio was always on in our house," LiPuma says. "In those days, it was Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters, Jo Stafford.

"Some way or another, I ended up where I ended up. But I’m a pop junkie. I love great pop music.

"By the time I was 18, I loved bebop — Charlie Parker, Horace Silver, all those guys. But it didn’t take away from my love for pop music."

When he was 9, LiPuma developed osteomyelitis, a debilitating bone infection. He spent nearly three years laid up in bed.

"The radio became my friend," he says. "I discovered the R&B station in those days, WJMO, and I started hearing Charles Brown, Louis Jordan, Nat Cole and Ruth Brown. I was a complete R&B nut by the time I was 12.

"Then I started playing saxophone. . . . I’ll never forget: The music teacher at Shaker Heights Junior High School gave me an F in music because I didn’t show up for a concert."

LiPuma dropped out of school when he was 18, although he only made it through 10th grade. His illness had left him two grades behind his friends. "I felt out of place," he says.

By then, he was earning $25 a night playing sax in local clubs.

His father, a barber, sent LiPuma to barber college and gave him a loan to buy a barbershop in the Keith Building on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland. Among his customers were various radio disc jockeys, including future "American Top 40" host Casey Kasem, who used to work at the old WJW AM/850.

But LiPuma’s heart wasn’t into cutting hair. He leased the shop, packed his sax and hit the road for a year with a jazz combo.

Upon his return to Cleveland in 1960, LiPuma got a job as a record promoter with M.S. Distributors.

The following year, he was hired to do promotion for Liberty Records. He later transferred to the company’s music publishing division. LiPuma primarily was based in Los Angeles, although he briefly lived in New York in 1962 and relocated there permanently in 1984.

The first album he produced was "Comin’ Through," the 1965 debut by an R&B group from Canton — the O’Jays.

Making hits, taking hits

He scored his first gold record one year later with the Sandpipers. The easy-listening trio’s Top 10 single "Guantanamera" was produced by LiPuma, who also recited the spoken-word bit in the middle of the tune: "I am a truthful man from the land of the palm trees. . . ."

He went on to work as a producer and A&R (artists and repertoire) executive for several other record companies, including A&M, Warner Bros. and Elektra. Along the way, LiPuma collaborated with a range of artists, from Dr. John to Michael Franks to Joe Sample.

Somebody once asked LiPuma how it felt to be the father of smooth jazz. He was mortified.

"I detest — de-test! — smooth jazz," he says. "Shall I call it the height of mediocrity? Everything has become so predictable.

"The jazz community can blame itself for what ultimately ended up happening with jazz. Basically, it has gone nowhere."

Some jazz purists blame LiPuma for his pop-savvy meddling — at least to hear him tell it.

"Critics like Gary Giddins hate my [expletive] guts," LiPuma says. "They think I’m the Antichrist. [Giddins] referred to me as a hack."

Giddins, former jazz critic for The Village Voice and the author of biographies of Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby and Charlie Parker, is widely regarded as a top jazz authority. (Even LiPuma says Giddins is "erudite.")

Giddins gave his side of the story via e-mail last week.

"I don’t hate Tommy LiPuma’s ‘[expletive] guts,’ " he wrote. "It is possible that I once referred to him as a hack, but I can’t recall the occasion and a global search of everything on my hard drive, dating back 20 years, turns up only one mention of his name."

In a review of the 1997 JVC Jazz Festival, Giddins made a passing reference to LiPuma as "the record industry menace who specializes in convincing good musicians to play bad music."

‘A rare breed’ and ‘a beautiful cat’

Tommy LiPuma — a "menace"? Jarreau scoffs at the notion.

LiPuma is "a rare breed," Jarreau says. "Maybe a guy like Tommy is too nice for this industry."

Sax player David Sanborn, on the bill for the JazzFest’s Silver tribute, has cut a couple of albums with LiPuma.

"You can always tell a Tommy LiPuma production," Sanborn says. "He makes high-class, high-quality records. . . . He has the ability to make records with broad appeal, too.

"I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with a lot of people liking your music. If you’re doing something you don’t believe in, that’s another story. But I don’t think Tommy has ever done that. . . . He has a real passion for the music."

LiPuma is "a beautiful cat," says another music legend from Cleveland, jazz singer Jimmy Scott. His 1992 comeback album, "All the Way," was produced by LiPuma.

"He knows his stuff," Scott says. "If you have an idea and you talk it over with him, he’ll make it happen. He doesn’t limit his thoughts about the music."

LiPuma doesn’t limit his interests to music, either.

Paintings by American Modernists usually fill his Park Avenue apartment, although for the time being, the walls are dotted with empty hooks. "Modern American Masters: Highlights From the Gill and Tommy LiPuma Collection" is on view through Sunday, July 18, at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The exhibition features works by some of LiPuma’s favorite artists (not of the recording variety), including Alfred Maurer, Marsden Hartley and Arnold Friedman.

Gill is LiPuma’s wife of 35 years. They have two grown daughters.

"I love art. . . . You’ve got structure, form, textures — the same things you have in music," says LiPuma, recently elected a trustee of the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art.

"I’d like to be a private [art] dealer," he says. "I also still enjoy making records. I don’t want to stop. . . . At this point, the last thing I’m thinking about is retirement."

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johnsoedercma-blog · 5 years

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During my tenure as pop music critic at The Plain Dealer, it was always a pleasure interacting with the Cleveland Museum of Art. Tom Welsh and I frequently appeared alongside each other as guests on Dee Perry’s “Around Noon” show on WCPN FM | 90.3, and I enjoyed chronicling the rise of Solstice for the Friday! Magazine cover story below.

Solstice at Museum Rolls Out Eclectic Collection of Music and Partyers Under the Summer Stars

By John Soeder published June 24, 2011, in The Plain Dealer

In ancient times, the summer solstice was marked with music, dancing and huge bonfires to ward off evil spirits.

As far as the Cleveland Museum of Art's third annual Summer Solstice Party goes, two out of three ain't bad.

Music? Check. Dancing? Check. Huge bonfires to ward off evil spirits? Not so much, although the festivities Saturday night will include a video installation.

Eat your hearts out, Druids.

Solstice, as the event is known for short, is "a way for the museum to present itself in a more informal, summertime-fun kind of way," says Tom Welsh, the museum's associate director of music.

The shindig's soundtrack will skew younger and younger as the night goes on, until the celebration ultimately morphs into a full-blown dance party.

"The music is forward-thinking and fun," Welsh says. "It's a wildly eclectic mix of totally cool music from artists who are happening right now."

Chicha Libre frontman Olivier Conan, a Frenchman with a deep love for Peruvian cumbia music, aka "chicha," is looking forward to his New York City-based band's Cleveland debut at the party.

"Most people who have never heard our music seem to react positively," Conan says.

"It's happy music that's supposed to make you move. . . . Cumbia has a very universal appeal. It's trendy in Europe right now. People respond to the rhythm. It's like early rock 'n' roll.

"We also use a lot of psychedelic elements, which are totally familiar to Americans. They really latch on to that, too. It's a gateway to understanding the music and not having it feel too foreign or exotic. This is music that you can understand right away."

Musical acts will perform on a large stage on the museum's south lawn, with Auguste Rodin's famous "Thinker" sculpture looking on. A looping video installation titled "Happy Birthday Summer" by Cleveland artist Kasumi will be shown on the museum facade. The museum galleries will remain open, too, with curators on hand for "flash" art lectures.

The first Solstice celebration was held in 2009 to mark the opening of the museum's East Wing. It drew 4,000 partyers.

"It was intended to be a one-off celebration," Welsh says. "When it turned out to be more successful than anyone here had imagined, it quickly became clear to us that this should be an annual event."

A capacity crowd of 5,000 revelers packed last year's bash. Organizers anticipate another sellout this year. (At press time, a limited number of tickets were still available.)

"We've really struck a chord in Cleveland," Welsh says. "People want this. People love it. We've received an avalanche of good will and good feedback."

The party will be a homecoming for Moon Hooch drummer James Muschler, a 2007 graduate of Cleveland Heights High School.

His trio also includes two saxophone players, Wenzl McGowen and Mike Wilbur. They started playing together last year, after meeting at the New School in Moon Hooch's hometown of New York City.

"Our music is dance music," Muschler says. "We've been calling it cave music as a joke, because it's like house music, but it's more jagged and more wild."

He gives props to the Summer Solstice Party for serving a higher purpose.

"As long as I was there, Cleveland cultivated a really stimulating musical environment," Muschler says. "The trend among school systems is to cut funding for the arts. So anything that can be done to stimulate artistic growth in the community is crucial for maintaining the health of the community."

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