While listening to WBGO the other day,
I got the news that Bruce Lundvall had died. Bruce felt like a close
friend to me, despite our infrequent contact over the sixty-five
years that I've known him. I suspect that everyone who ever met
Bruce thought they were one of his close friends. That's just the
way he was.
We both grew up in Glen Rock, NJ.
Across the street from me lived Don Dewar, my good friend but, being
a year older, Don had his own circle of friends, most prominently Wes
Adams and Bruce Lundvall. They all shared a zany, full-blown sense
of humor, much in tune with entertainers of the day such as Ernie
Kovacs and Bob and Ray. Bruce was a tall, skinny, likable kid. I
didn't know then that in his early teens, he was already a completely
fanatical jazz nut. After he went off to college, he apparently took
up weight lifting or at least serious workouts. The skinny kid came
back the imposing figure we all got to know later in those bespoke
suits. When I went off to college I became almost as much of a jazz
nut as Bruce had been in junior high school.
We bumped into each other several times
at jazz clubs in New York in the 50's and 60's but the most
surprising chance encounter was in Stuttgart in the spring of 1959.
I was traveling around Europe between my brief stint in the military
and grad school. Bruce was in the Army and stationed in Stuttgart.
Coming out of a JATP concert in the big modern concert hall, who do I
bump into but Bruce Lundvall. We went off to a local club together
to hear more of Roy Eldridge sitting in with some local German
musicians.
After moving to Italy in the early
70's, on my infrequent visits to the US, I was filled in by Don Dewar
about Bruce's remarkable career at Columbia Records. He had worked
his way up to become the president of the company, where he reigned
until leaving to start Elektra Musician in 1982. While working in
Saudi Arabia about that time, I noted a qualitative upturn in the
pirated cassettes flooding the music shops. They were copying really
good records from Bruce's new label, works by Red Rodney and Ira
Sullivan, Echoes of an Era, and Steps Ahead. I managed to hear a
number of those musicians play at Umbria Jazz in 1984. That was also
the year that Bruce left Elektra to take over as president of the
resurrected Blue Note label, and the rest is history, folks.
In 1997, I made a career move of my
own, returning to New York to work in a large architectural office.
One thing I was determined to do in New York was to look up Bruce.
It was easier than I could have imagined. By miraculous coincidence,
the office I was going to work in and the offices of Blue Note were
in the same building, on the corner of Park Avenue South and 23rd
Street. I didn't contact Bruce immediately. We all feel elevated by
seeing people we've known for a long time turn into important
figures, as if a little of their success rubs off on us. Imagine
being a childhood friend of a person who grows up to be a senator or
even a president of the US. Wow. But then again, such people mostly
work with other politicians or lobbyists, not exactly the stuff of
dreams, pride or envy. Bruce was way bigger than that; he worked
every day for decades with people I worshipped. Miles Davis, Bill
Evans and Dexter Gordon would have been enough to keep me permanently
in awe but the list of musicians that Bruce signed at the three
record companies he headed is amazingly long and includes a high
percentage of those whose records are ensconced in my house and whose
music has been the sound track of my life.
When I did eventually call, I was
welcomed into Bruce's vast two-story high office as an old friend.
He showed me around, introduced me to colleagues and loaded me up
with promotional CDs. Bruce could and did go on all day with
anecdotes about working with musicians he revered as much as I did.
His affection for jazz musicians seemed boundless but he worked with
other genres as well. Dealing with the inflated egos of opera
singers and the weaponry of the rappers were not among his
enthusiasms but he could turn some of those experiences into amusing
anecdotes.
Subsequent visits sometimes involved
lunches at unimaginably good restaurants. Always in immaculate
suits, Bruce was welcomed by the owners as their very favorite
client, which I have no doubt he was. My visits were curtailed by
our office moving downtown next to the WTC. Blue Note also moved out
of the building, relocating to lower Fifth Avenue. In the aftermath
of 9/11, my office got restarted on W 13th St, close
enough to visit Bruce for lunch. One time, Don Dewar was up from
Florida and we had a sort of mini-reunion there. Bruce was in very
high spirits since the first record of Norah Jones had been an
enormous success and the second was about to come out.
During my New York years, I usually got
to come home in July, around the time of Umbria Jazz, and in 2001 I
saw Bruce there as he was accompanying Diane Reeves and some other
Blue Note artists. Unfortunately, that kept him too busy to come to
visit us in Acqualoreto. Two years later I returned to Italy for
good. I got into the routine of writing to Bruce with a summary of
the jazz festivals in Umbria. On a few occasions he would send me a
package of new CDs for my impressions. I always hoped he'd be able
to come over for a real visit but with time, his health problems
began to limit his travels so it never happened.
In this blog I've written about seeing
Bruce in early 2014 when I visited the US. He was not in great shape
then and shortly after that I heard that he had moved to an assisted
living place not far from his home. Parkinson's Disease had limited
his ability to move and his ability to speak but his spirit remained
intact. It was increasingly difficult for him to get out to hear
live music so he organized a jazz festival right there in the
assisted living place with many of his Blue Note artists performing
in a benefit for the Parkinson's Disease Fund.
Bruce endured more health problems than
most people ever have to face in their lives but I don't recall
hearing him complain. Mostly, he was just grateful for having had a
wonderful life. Working at what you most enjoy with people you
admire and being well paid for it would fit my description of the
good life. I've known no one who lived it better. I shared Bruce's love of
jazz, of cigars, of good (mostly Italian) food and drink, and of a
certain type of humor. I've alluded to the
fact that in our celebrity culture, we hope to somehow bask in the
reflected glory of our important friends. I can only hope that some of his love of
life, his kindness, his generosity and his optimism will have rubbed
off on me.
Thank you Bruce. If you ever meet
Miles again, maybe you can introduce me some day.
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