Meet Grammy Award Winning Producer Joel Dorn

This article was first published at All About Jazz in 1997.

The Song Remains The Same

If you're a serious jazz fan, even if you're any kind of jazz fan at all, there's an excellent chance that in your collection you've got at least one piece of music that was produced by Joel Dorn.

In the 1960s, Dorn parlayed his tenure as a disc jockey on WHAT-FM, a pioneer 24-hour jazz station, into a slot as an assistant to Nesuhi Ertegun, one of the founding partners of Atlantic Records. Dorn quickly rose in responsibility and stature, and between 1967 and 1974 produced albums by one of the most legendary jazz stables ever assembled on one single label: Les McCann, Eddie Harris, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Max Roach, Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Mann, Keith Jarrett, Yusef Lateef, Jimmy Scott, David "Fathead" Newman, Hank Crawford, Ray Bryant, Oscar Brown Jr., Mongo Santamaria and Gary Burton.

Dorn's work for Atlantic garnered him four Grammy Awards: Two "Records of the Year" with Roberta Flack, for "Killing Me Softly" and "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," "Jazz Album of the Year" for Keith Jarrett and Gary Burton, AND "Best Original Cast Album" for The Me Nobody Knows. In the decade which followed, Dorn freelanced as producer for a variety of artists and labels, including Lou Rawls, The Neville Brothers and Leon Redbone, and received with Asleep at the Wheel the Grammy Award for "Best Country and Western Instrumental" for "One O'Clock Jump," perhaps for a change of pace.

Dorn has overseen the re-issue of the Atlantic Jazz catalog by Rhino Records, created an all "live" jazz label (Night Music, which released albums of live tracks by Kirk, McCann, Harris and Cannonball Adderley), and is currently hard at work creating yet another jazz project, which he found the time to discuss with All About Jazz.

Let me first give you the chance to plug your current project, 32 Records.

"We bought Muse Records, which was a label that started in the early '70s and continued until November of this (past) year. There were about five hundred titles, fifty or sixty of which were unreleased. We also bought the Landmark label, which was owned by Muse Records and which was a mid-'80s to mid-'90s label run by Orrin Keepnews, who's one of the legendary jazz producers."

"So we have about six hundred records. And what I'm doing is, I'm deconstructing both labels and reconfiguring them to be something other than what they were originally intended to be. An example would be, there are some records which we are going to put out with new artwork and new liner notes, in addition to the original ones, and, you know, digitally remastering and all the things that most people do when they re-issue things."

"And then there are some artists whose work we're going to distill down to the best of what they did on the label. Suppose somebody has nine albums. Suppose there are really five great albums in the nine; then we'll take the five great ones, whether it's an existing album or taking ballads from the nine and making a great ballad record, or doing a great overview of their work on the label, or maybe doing 'two-fers' or two-CD sets. So we're going to do stuff like that, and some of the people we have is Woody Shaw, Kenny Barron, Houston Person, and Pat Martino, so we have some good people, you know. And in some instances, key work, breakthrough records."

What kind of educational background do you have? How does one become a Joel Dorn, working in the late '60s with Eddie Harris and Les McCann and all those great people?

"I always wanted to be a record producer. Since I was in my early teens. I was a disc jockey in Philly for awhile, and it was all toward getting to meet the musicians, on WHAT-FM. That used to be a jazz station, it's WWDB now, but WHAT-FM is what they called it when we were there. It was s 24-hour FM jazz station, a pioneer kind of station, and I always wanted to be a record producer, so I thought being a disc jockey would be a good way to get to know all the record companies, and get involved in the business. So I used that for awhile as like a stepping stone."

If you had to write a job description as the basis for hiring somebody for the position of "jazz record producer," what would you make certain to include?

"First of all, you have to love and understand the music. It has to really be something you're into. You have to have the ability to tell the good from the bad. You have to be able to spot talent early in the game, sometimes when it's just in the 'promise' stage and it hasn't developed yet. You've gotta be on the scene so that you know what's happening. And then you have to have certain technical skills. You have to either know how to be an engineer, or which engineer to use. You have to know things like that."

What is the most fun that you ever had recording an album in the studio?

"Well, there are a lot of them that would fall into that category. There is no 'most' or 'best' of anything, as far as my life goes."

"Some of the best times I ever had involved recording artists who were completely unknown at the time, and then just sky-rocketed into being known. It's a great feeling, you know, to put your money on a one hundred to one shot and see it come in first."

"The first time that happened with me, both of these happened close to the same time, were with Roberta Flack and Bette Midler. And another time was with Leon Redbone, and another time with Aaron Neville, so there were people like that."

How about one of the most fun live albums that you ever recorded? I just read the notes to Les McCann Live at Montreux, and what a stone riot they were to read. You can just tell that was one fun record to put together.

"It was great, you know. I wasn't even actually there—I just got the idea to put them together and got a tape in the mail, and it was a two-million seller. So that's wild. That was fun, live."

"I enjoyed recording Rahsaan (Roland Kirk) live at Newport because he had never been there, so he went nuts that night. And I enjoyed a little live record I made with Junior Mance at the top of the Village Gate with Junior Mance and "Fathead" (David Newman), a little record... I made a lot of them. A lot of the live records were fun."

Yeah, I imagine you have a pretty fun job.

"Eh, you know. It beats working for REAL."

Do you have any strong feelings one way or the other about the acid jazz stuff that's coming back into vogue now, stuff just like Houston Person for example?

"No, man, any... listen, man, this jazz is gonna be here for hundreds of years, right? However they use it is fine with me. It just means that some people listened to it and they found something they liked. So it's just another way of using a great music."

"If something's good, it has its time. It disappears, it comes back, it comes back sooner or it comes back later. Whatever it is, good is good. All of it has some kind of value, and stuff that people laugh at... you know, if you take the lounge music out in L.A., and people say, 'Hey, the '50s music is corny,' and all of that... hey, it's great. The college kids are getting into it. There's something in there that strikes a chord in them. Somebody told me that Dean Martin records are big with college kids now, because they're into this lounge thing. Yeah, so there's always something happening, you know? I dig it."

If you had the chance to help an imaginary jazz encyclopedia writer write the 'Joel Dorn' entry into an encyclopedia of jazz, what you make sure to help him say?

"I have no idea. It's difficult for me to think of myself that way. You know, it feels pretentious on one level, and too much ego-based on another. Whatever people are gonna say, they're gonna say. I'm really not one to... I'm not into writing my own epitaph, know what I mean? Somebody else wants to write something, great, and if not, that's great too. It's just ALL great!"

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