Die Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Band 1966 (Raymond Ross Archive)
1968 hat Keiko Okuya (aka Keiko Jones) für die Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big Band eine „Tour“ in Japan „organisiert“. Leider wird über die katastrophale Episode im Smithsonian-Inteview (klick) geschwiegen – Elvin Jones war, zumindest musikalisch gesehen, auch nicht involviert, abgesehen davon, dass es seine Frau war, die es kapital verbockte und Thad ihn am ersten Tag vom Flughafen aus anrief („Elvin … it’s Thad. Do you know any good spirituals?“ – Jerry Dodgion stand in der Telefonkabine direkt daneben und überhörte das: „It was so serious and so funny at the same time. I was just beside myself. I imagined Elvin on the other end, starting to sweat.“). Die Band flog dann am Tag drauf, die Flugtickets hatten Jones/Lewis aus der eigenen Tasche bezahlt … als sie ankamen, merkten sie, dass es keine Buchungen und keine Verträge gab, dass Keiko ihnen nur „bullshit“ (Lewis im Gespräch, über 20 Jahre später, immer noch erzürnt über den Vorfall) gezeigt habe:
They talked us into coming over there with the band; we thought we had a contract; we saw papers; those papers were not contracts; they were bullshit. And they got us over there; they took us over, the whole band. Thad and I, it ended up costing us $30,000. We had to pay Northwest Airlines. These guys (the band members) didn’t get paid, but they got their expenses paid, we covered their hotel bills, we covered their wives‘ tickets, you know. They had a few days in Japan; they had a good time. There was no work; they know we got burned terrible. It was poor judgment on our part, but we were all so eager at the time. And we thought we were dealing with honest people; turned out we were dealing with dishonest people.“
(Das kommt aus dem Cadence-Interview in drei Teilen, Jan/Feb/Mar 1990, Bob Rusch/Beth Jenne – ich tippe es aus dem Buch von Dave Lisik/Eric Allen ab, „50 Years at the Village Vanguard: Thad Jones, Mel Lewis and the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra“, Chicago/Wellington: SkyDeck, 2017, dort Seiten 168 und 170, auf S. 186 folgt dann noch eine Abbildung des angeblichen „Schedule“ mit Adresse von Keiko Okuya, Elvin Promotion Co. in Nagasaki)
Eine längere Passage dazu gibt es aus einem Interview, das die Autoren des Buches 2016 mit Jerry Dodgion führten (von dort kommt auch das Zitat zum Anruf bei Elvin). Nach dem ersten Tag am Flughafen (grosser Bahnhof mit Familien, Kindern und Hunden) und dem Anruf des Anwalts von Jones/Lewis bei Keiko hiess es, die Flugtickets kämen am nächsten Tag. Doch sie kamen nicht und Jones/Lewis kauften sie selbst.
Keiko always said there would never be any problem with money because her father was a wealthy shoe manufacturer in Yokohama. „There’s backup with money here; you don’t have to worry about that.“ It turns out she was fairly brash and she also wore skirts that were a little too short for the traditional Japanese businessmen who were financing the tour. The way the story came down to us was that, when you do a tour like this, there are local promoters in every little area. These promoters rented the venues on speculation and when a group wanted to come to Japan on a tour, they would have to deal with them and provide a little financial kickback. A band’s tour manager needed to know how to deal with all of this and know how to pay off the right people.
Apparently, Keiko was a little too westernized for these guys. She was talking to the first promoter who says that she has to pay him for the venue. She says, „Fuck you. I don’t have to do that.“ He takes her seriously, doesn’t appreciate her tone and immediately calls all of the other promoters, effectively cancelling the whole tour.
So now we’re in Japan with a two-week itinerary, all canceled except for one gig. We’re staying in smaller hotels then we had planned on and, pretty soon, we can’t even afford to pay for those. We can’t do much of anything and we’re picking up gigs here and there.
Concerts are early in Japan – sometimes 5:30 in the afternoon. People get off work, go to a concert, eat dinner and go home. It works out well for a lot of reasons. But we’re trying to pick up gigs and, at noon, we still don’t know where we’re playing that day. By two o’clock, we have a venue, we get on a bus to go someplace and do the concert. We were all rolling with the punches.
DownBeat berichtete berichtete damals auch, im Buch auf S. 168 abgedruckt, welche Ausgabe steht nicht dazu, die Überschrift lautet „Jones-Lewis in Japan: Acclaim but no bread“ (der Name von Keiko wird fälschlich als Okutani statt Okuya wiedergegeben):
„We were robbed,“ cracked Thad Jones upon his return from a hectic 10-day Japanese visit with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Band. „It was a big hoax.“
The band arrived in Tokyo July 11, expecting to give concerts in major halls there and in other Japanese cities. But the tour’s promoter, Keiko Okutani, had failed to made proper arrangements.
On their first two nights in Tokyo, the band played at the Pit Inn, a jazz theater with a capacity of only 75 persons. The third night found them at Kunikiniya Hall, seating 500, but due to lack of publicity, only 400 attended.
Unable to leave Tokyo, the band managed to do three nights at a club, the Golden Getsusekai, tape a television show, and make an appearance at a U.S. military base. A joint concert with a local big band, The Sharps & Flats, filled a 2,000-seat hall to capacity, and on their final night in Japan, they again played Kunikiniya Hall, turning away more than 1500.
Critical acclaim for the band was unprecedented, according to local observers, but the co-leaders had to pay all expenses out of their own pockets. „It may have been a financial disaster,“ he said, „but good things are already startign to happen from it. So I’m not as unhappy as I might be. Several Japanese promoters want to bring the band back in December.“
Jones and Lewis have filed suit against Miss Okutani.
Jones-Lewis kehrten erst 1974 für zwei zweiwöchige (inkl. Live-Album auf Denon) und 1975 für eine vierwöchige Tour nach Japan zurück. Ende September 1989 spielte dann das Mel Lewis Orchestra in Japan – die letzte Tour von Lewis mit der Band. Danach dauerte es zwanzig Jahre, bevor das Vanguard Jazz Orchestra wieder in Japan auftrat. Danach folgten wohl mehrere Besuche inkl. Workshops.
Das beste und sicherlich ältere Foto, das ich finden kann, ist das hier, undatiert – Elvin und Keiko Jones:
Hier ein Artikel aus Billboard vom 19. Dezember 1970, der einen Einblick erlaubt, wie das um die Zeit herum in Japan lief:
https://books.google.ch/books?id=mSkEAAAAMBAJ&pg=RA1-PA34&lpg=RA1-PA34&dq=Golden+Getsusekai&source=bl&ots=vM3gOn4XO2&sig=ACfU3U3gLKbKB0IHYkdkCWK6oUZ94Yi97w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjdz5vhj8buAhXzwAIHHQC2Bs0Q6AEwB3oECAgQAg#v=onepage&q=Golden%20Getsusekai&f=false
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #162: Neuentdeckungen aus dem Katalog von CTI Records, 8.4., 22:00; # 163: 13.5., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba