Miles Ahead: Prestige Records Goes Viral... 1951 - 1958

Imagine a 22 year old New Yorker in a suburban Illinois town for the first time, thumbing intently through a phone book looking for 23 year old Miles Davis, and you've got a good idea of how it was for Bob Weinstock in the fall of 1950, barely a year after he started the legendary Prestige Records. As he clearly recalled in an interview 45 years later; "Miles had vanished after he did those Capitol sides with the nonet [Birth of the Cool - 1949]; nobody knew where he was. Somebody had said that he may be at home in East St. Louis, so while I was in Chicago on business, I tracked him down. His father was a dentist, so I knew that his number would be in the phone book. I called information, got the number, called, and Miles answered ... I said that I was interested in doing a series of recordings, and that I wanted to sign him to a contract. He said alright, just get him to New York and we'd talk about it then."

By January 1951, Weinstock managed to get Davis to New York and his fledgling jazz record label into the history books. Sure, Weinstock had already recorded a breathtaking litany of artists who helped to spread the word, but more than anything it was securing Miles that sounded the clarion call of Prestige's importance within NYC's jazz community and beyond.

Davis' first Prestige sessions took place on an unseasonably warm January 17th 1951; with him were trombonist Bennie Green, Sonny Rollins, Roy Haynes, Percy Heath and John Lewis. Click here to check out Whispering, one of the 4 tunes they recorded.

Miles would record another hundred, including the groundbreaking "Walkin" sessions of 1954 and a torrential string of 28 "sides" ( as they were called back in the day) in the spring and fall of 1956, his last year with the label. Click here to check out Davis' final Prestige record date, October 26th 1956, joined by John Coltrane on If I Were A Bell. Another incomparable performance and a fitting farewell to Prestige and Weinstock, the 20-something kid who built Davis' launch pad to superstardom.

The same could be said for Coltrane, who met Weinstock when he joined Miles Davis' band in 1955. 'Trane became a bandleader for the first time while at Prestige; among his sessions was (with stablemate Sonny Rollins) Tenor Madness , now considered one of the most important jazz records of all time. Click here to listen to their 1956 masterwork; of special note is the compelling way the tenor giants compliment each other.

Prestige celebrates it's 10th anniversary and charts the course of jazz for the next decade in our next post...

Weinstock's gamble leads to gems: Celebrating Prestige Records "Diamond" Anniversary - Pt 2

It's January 11th, 1949 and the sound of music has worked it's magic on a young New Yorker named Bob Weinstock, who has been collecting jazz records with his father since the age of eight. "We carried home armfuls of records, and a new world of music opened for me." Now he's 21, in a New York City recording studio looking at his watch and waiting for the arrival of pianist Lennie Tristano and saxophonist Lee Konitz - Weinstock's first day on the job after elevating his ambitions from a relatively secure station - international music distributor - to the owner of a jazz record label aptly called New Jazz. The fact that there was really only one other successful jazz label at the time made Weinstock's gamble a risky move...or a sure bet.

Weinstock had bet on his passion for jazz before; as a teenager he opened "The Jazz Record Corner" in Manhattan - and spent much of the money he made stalking New York's jazz clubs night after night, absorbing the scene and it's inhabitants. Some of the musicians he meets eventually become customers. One of them, the seminal drummer Kenny Clarke, urged Weinstock to start his own record label; "He introduced me to musicians like Thelonious Monk," Weinstock said, "and told me that if I started a record company he would get all the jazz greats to record for me." Soon after, Weinstock's family bet on his future and loaned him the money to start New Jazz Records.



The sessions with Tristano and Konitz went well and one of the four songs recorded that day, "Subconcious Lee" (click title to hear music) , is now is a defining moment in modern jazz history. It also inspired Weinstock to no end. He changed the name of the label to Prestige (a ballsy mission statement for anything other than classical music in the late 40's especially when you consider the most successful jazz label of the day was called Blue Note) and over the course of the next 11 months, Weinstock recorded a hall of fame collection of young lions and veterans; Stan Getz in April. Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, John Lewis in May. Gerry Mulligan in August. Sonny Stitt, Bud Powell,Wardell Gray, Roy Haynes & Coleman Hawkins in October November & December.
The following year it was Dizzy Gillespie, Jimmy Heath, Milt Jackson , Percy Heath, Dexter Gordon, Clark Terry, Gene Ammons & Zoot Sims. Listen to Sims' 1950 recording of "Dancing in the Dark" here .

By the time Prestige prepared for it's second anniversary, jazz royalty populated the label's archives but there was still one name missing from the list; the name that would deliver Prestige Records' destiny.

The story continues in our next post.

Prestige Records at 60... Pt. 1

Amidst all of the justifiable, but slightly self serving hoopla surrounding the 70th Anniversary of a certain record label, it seems the jazz brain trust has missed out on another, and perhaps more significant milestone - the 60th birthday of Prestige Records, arguably the greatest jazz label of all time.

For further proof of this glaring oversight, simply do a Google search on Prestige Records 60th Anniversary.

But then again, Bob Weinstock always knew, when he created Prestige in 1949, that he would have to play second fiddle to Blue Note, unless he could come up with a different way of doing things. And of course, he did and it made him and scores of gifted improvisers famous.

One look above at the diverging arrows in the label's logo speaks volumes about the "Weinstock method", which we'll describe in greater detail... within our next post.