For years, Jordi Pujol Baulenas has been dedicated to the task of recovering old recordings from his label, Fresh Sound Records, specialized in North American jazz, which this year celebrated its 40th anniversary with one of the most impressive jazz catalogs nationwide. and international. With the tenacity of a bloodhound, Pujol has brought to light hundreds of forgotten concerts in private collections or dusty attics that now take their place in the history of music.
“There is no formula for finding original masters,” he says, “when it comes to unreleased recordings, they appear because you know someone, or I give vocals and someone contacts me.” The result of this work is the recovery of concerts such as the one that Louis Armstrong gave at the Hot Club in Barcelona on December 23, 1955, the first and only performance of the jazz legend in the city, discovered on seven tapes that he acquired for 500 pesetas. in the Sant Antoni market.
The search for old recordings in the public domain has pushed the producer to travel to numerous countries, with a special predilection for Los Angeles, a city that he has visited regularly since 1984 because “when I go there things happen,” he says with intrigue. Without forgetting his time in Cuba in the 90s, where he brought back thousands of songs that he published under the Tumbao records label, among them those by percussionist Chano Pozo, Compay Segundo's 'María Cristina' or a group called Buena Vista Social Club. , who from that first contact with Pujol began a profitable international career. “There are a few of us who dedicate ourselves to this, but none as insistent as me.”
His latest discovery has just gone on sale, becoming the most booked album on Amazon France in the previous weeks. This is the concert that Miles Davis performed at the Olympia theater in Paris on November 30, 1957, a memorable performance that will also be remembered for leading to the participation of the trumpeter from Illinois in the soundtrack of the film Elevator to the Scaffold. That night at the Olympia, the third time that Davis performed in the French capital, he did so accompanied by Barney Wilen on sax, René Uttreger on piano, Pierre Michelot on double bass and Kenny Clarke on drums, a quartet created specifically to accompany Davis. , who arrived without his band a few weeks after having throat surgery.
The detailed explanation that accompanies the album allows us to know that it was “one of the best jazz concerts ever held in Paris,” according to the chronicles of the time. It was to take place at the Alhambra theater at 8 p.m., although it was finally moved to the Olympia scheduled at six p.m., a time known as a matinée, and tickets were sold out with hardly any publicity. These are photographs by Jean-Pierre Leloir that, once again, appeared thanks to the patience of Pujol, who was in charge of guiding the photographer's granddaughter through the grandfather's enormous archives.
Miles Davies arrived in Paris, the city of his beloved Juliette Gréco, on November 29, after signing a contract with the promoter Marcel Romano to carry out a three-week tour that ended up reduced to three performances, adding to the Parisian one those of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Patria theater in Brussels, as well as an extraordinary participation in Stuttgart with the Erwin Lehn Orchestra. This lack of dates allowed the author of Kind of Blue to have free time to improvise at the Saint-Germain club, in addition to providing the music for Louis Malle's first film, Elevator to the Scaffold in a night session held at the La studios. Poste Parisien where Davis improvised for four hours while watching the film starring Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet.
The concert that is now coming to light remained hidden for more than 60 years until it was discovered by Laurent Guenoun, nephew and heir of Marcel Romano, who sold them to Pujol after negotiations that began in 2017. The original music was stored in three worn-out reels, one was in ruins, and the other two were relatively good,” says Pujol. A remastering job carried out in Belgium was necessary, which, despite its excellent results, failed to save a portion of the reel that was too badly damaged.
"In 'Round Midnight', when Miles' solo ends and Barney Wilen's solo begins, the tape was impossible to recover." There are three minutes and 49 seconds of music grafted from another recording so that the album can be listened to in one go, “luckily Miles's solo is complete.” “Nowadays with digital restoration you can make well-preserved old records sound better than the original,” says Pujol, recalling how for years he had carried out this work manually, cutting the coils with scissors piece by piece, with much less successful results. . “This way we were able to release albums that had never been reissued.”
