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      I recently retrieved two masters for him: Sonny’s Time Now from the Japanese licensee and Big Chief from BYG. They are being reissued under his direction.

      I saw him in Paris a few years ago. At the apartment of a mutual friend, we had dinner together. Over the years, from time to time, we’ve always reconnected.

       Pharoah Sanders

      We met at his original recording session for ESP, which was his debut as a leader [Pharoah Sanders Quintet, September 20, 1964]. He was extremely shy. Unless you knew him well, he was not garrulous. The session was in the loft of the late Jerry Newman, a highly regarded audio engineer. Pharoah didn’t greet me; he just approached the engineer regarding the placement of the microphones. When it was over, I paid the group.

      I met him again three years ago, backstage at the Iridium. A beautiful set—he was singing through his horn—it was quite arresting. In his dressing room I sat next to him, identified myself, and complimented him on his performance. He seemed pleased, but I can’t be certain, because he didn’t say anything.

       Paul Bley

      Following the October Revolution festival, I visited Paul at his downtown apartment and met Carla. She looked at me quizzically. Paul and I discussed the pending album, Barrage [October 20, 1964]. It was recorded at a midtown studio, with Alfy Wade as engineer. As usual, I provided no input. He was satisfied, I believed, because he quickly decided he wanted to do a trio album [Closer, December 12, 1965]. I didn’t attend that session. I visited him again a few years ago at the Blue Note, performing with a trio. I hadn’t seen him in over thirty years.

       Giuseppi Logan

      When Giuseppi made his first album for ESP, I stood with Richard L. Alderson, the engineer, in the control room. I thought the piece they were playing was stunningly beautiful. It sounded totally spontaneous, as if they were engaging in an engrossing conversation. Suddenly, I heard a “thwuuunk,” and I realized that the tape had run out. The engineer and I were so absorbed, we hadn’t been paying attention. I thought, “Oh God, this remarkable thing is lost. It was interrupted in the middle, and it’s gone.” Richard got on the intercom and said, “Giuseppi, the tape ran out.” Without a pause, Giuseppi said, “Take it back to before where it stopped and we’ll take it from there.” So, Richard wound it back and played some bars of it and hit the record button, and they resumed exactly what they were doing—there was no way of telling where the break had occurred. It was unreal. [Stollman’s note to the 2008 reissue of The Giuseppi Logan Quartet, 1964]

      I hadn’t seen him in ten years; he had vanished. Then, one early spring day in 1979, I made a rare visit to the Manufacturers Hanover bank at the corner of 57th Street and Ninth Avenue, where the ESP master tapes were stored. As I approached the corner, I saw a street musician playing a battered clarinet held together by wires and recognized him as Giuseppi Logan. Of all the places to play on the streets of Manhattan, he had picked a spot directly above the vault in which the tapes of his recorded performances were stored, about which he could not have known. When I stopped to speak with him, he gave no sign of recognition but leaned over and whispered in my ear: “Nixon has exploded a bomb off Amchitka.” Some years earlier [in 1971], Nixon had authorized an atom bomb test under the waters of Alaska. I gave him a small sum, and he brightened and said, “Now I can go home and practice.” Efforts were made, over the years, to put him in contact with people with whom he could play and record his music, but his mental faculties were impaired and he was unable to perform. He had last been seen in Seattle some years ago, and I looked for him there during a visit in the late 1990s, but no one in the music scene recalled seeing him.

      In the summer of 2008, he showed up at the Vision Festival in lower Manhattan. He has since acquired an alto sax, a bass clarinet, and a flute. He’s been practicing, trying to get his strength back together. ESP has provided some support, and he has expressed a fierce desire to perform his new works.

      Marzette Watts had recorded the Judson Hall concert in 1966 that ESP produced, of Giuseppi [playing thirteen instruments] with a small chamber ensemble. It was exquisite, but Marzette told me afterwards that the recording had failed. I was devastated! When I reached him on the phone in 1997, he confessed that he had lied to me and claimed he had done this to protect Giuseppi. We agreed that he would turn the tape over to me, and I volunteered to pay him for his services. He died before we could conclude the transaction. Giuseppi is presently being cared for by the Jazz Foundation of America and has returned to recording.

       Roswell Rudd

      Roswell Rudd had a large loft on Chambers Street in Manhattan and several young children. I remember visiting him there, and this was probably the origin of our agreement to record the New York Art Quartet [November 1964]. Roswell and I maintained contact over the years. I saw him in Woodstock in the ’80s and recently at the Rubin Museum in 2006, where I caught him during the reunion of his Dixieland band at Yale, Eli’s Chosen Six. It was spectacular!

       Sun Ra

      He had made over seventy-five records for his El Saturn label in the ’50s and ’60s. When he signed with ESP, he had never had general distribution—El Saturn was sold only at their gigs. His first two studio albums with ESP, Heliocentric Worlds, volumes 1 and 2, in 1965, brought him wider public recognition. During that same period, ESP sent him and his Arkestra on the college tour [Nothing Is…, 1966]. He was generous in response to ESP requests for his time and his music. Later, ESP produced the Town Hall concert [Concert for the Comet Kohoutek, 1973], and he was given a large advance to bring back recordings from his pending Mexican tour, but the Town Hall appearance was our last project together.

      Following Sun Ra’s first visit to Egypt in 1971, he and his Arkestra were stranded at Kennedy airport, broke, on their return. He called me at 11:00 p.m., and I drove to the airport in my old station wagon, paid for cabs, and he came with me back to Manhattan. My parents had an apartment at 5 Riverside Drive. They were in Florida, and I was staying there. Ra stopped by for tea—by then it was one in the morning, and he wanted to talk.

      He told me how he was stopped at the Egyptian border by a guard, who examined his passport and was affronted—Sun Ra, in the Ptolemaic religion, is the term for a deity! He wasn’t going to admit Ra and his musicians into the country. Sun Ra asked the guard to call the director of the Egyptian museum, who rushed out to the airport and engaged Sun Ra in conversation. They talked Egyptology, including hieroglyphics. Ra had studied the Rosicrucians; he was knowledgeable about Egyptian lore. The director said to the guard, “He is who he says he is. Let him in.” He invited Ra to appear on Egyptian television. The group also went out to the pyramids. While they were there, a German documentary film crew was filming and saw Ra and his musicians, so they filmed them. When they finished, Ra sent someone over to confiscate the film.

      The day after the Kohoutek concert, Ra came to my apartment. I had moved to West End Avenue. The label had been shut down—what was I doing staging a concert at Town Hall? He came by with a small group of his followers to show me a film, Space Is the Place. It was shot partly in the Rosicrucian Garden in California, and it showed Ra stepping out of his spaceship. There were shots of young women in scanty attire, introduced gratuitously. I said, “The film is fine, but take that material out. There’s no point to it.” Then they left. The master tapes of the Kohoutek concert were stored openly in the office, and they vanished during his visit. I never saw him again. The engineer had done a monaural reference tape for the concert, and this was used by ESP many years later for the record.

       Frank Wright

      John Coltrane was playing with his quartet at the Village Gate during the Christmas holiday. I was greatly impressed by the playing of a guest artist, a saxophonist. When the set ended, I approached and complimented him on his playing. I asked who he was. He said, “I’m Frank Wright, from Cleveland.” “Do you have a record label?” “Oh no, I’m not on any record label.” I said, “Well, you are now.” He’d been pressing pants in a dry cleaning shop in Cleveland before he came to New York. Shortly afterwards,

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