Eight hours of audio, each part is two hours long. Features rare audio interview with Albert Ayler and Bernard Stollman. via ESPDisk.com

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Legendary indie label ESP (http://www.espdisk.com) is getting ready to reissue and release some music.

ESP is now manufacturing its own cds and dvds, for the first time since 1968. In recent years, a succession of licensees made and sold our cds and vinyl. The most recent such arrangement , with Abraxas, ended on June 30, 2004. We have now digitally remastered our catalog to improve the audio quality, and introduced artist interviews on some cds, added more selections to others, (initially Marion Brown, Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker), and combined several cds by artists into double cds, enabling us to lower the retail price. Liner notes have been expanded as well. Our early albums by Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Patty Waters, Pearls Before Swine, Frank Wright, Sonny Simmons, Marion Brown and others will now appear in this new packaging.

On January 23 through January 26, I attended the international music industry convention, the MIDEM, in Cannes, France. Record companies in Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Spain, Brazil, Japan, Korea and India will import ESP. Pending are agreements for Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Russa, Bulgaria, South Africa, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria

Ellis Marsalis, father of the Marsalis brothers, recorded a solo album in June 2003, in Sonature 5.l surround sound. It is now being released by ESP as a cd and a dvd audio disk. For more information about our proprietary surround sound recording process, go to http://www.sonature.com

We are preparing box sets for Chet Baker (Live in the 50s), Miles Davis (Live in the 50s) and Albert Ayler, for release later in 2005. Other projects are pending.

With kind regards

Bernard Stollman

—– ESP is about to be distributed in the United States by Allegro Nail, North Country, Carrot Top, Revolver and Forced Exposure. The above was stolen without permission from here.

It seems like Bernard Stollman has decided to try digital distro. If you’re not familiar with the logo, ESP-DISK is responsible for dozens upon dozens of highly sought-after records from the 60s and 70s including lps from jazz legends like Sun-Ra and Albert Ayler and even work from the Fugs before they became pop stars. Stollman has made the entire catalogue availabe online which might be a surprise to some people since Stollman is a passionate advocate of high quality sound recordings like DVD-audio and ESP’s own proprietary techonology, sonature. I wonder if the Charles Manson/Beach Boys record he tried to reissue will be available (see excerpt below)? I doubt it, but maybe we’ll put up some streaming audio later…..

“Charles Manson had been convicted of complicity in the massacre in Beverly Hills. I believed that the media treatment of the case was intended by our government to discredit the hippie movement and in that manner counteract the growing antiwar climate in the United States. I came across an LP on Awareness Records by Manson, produced by one of the Beach Boys, and I was impressed by his songs and delivery. Phil Kaufman, road manager for Etta James and Emmylou Harris, is the author of an autobiography, Road Mangler Deluxe, in which he describes how he met Manson while both were in prison. Manson asked him to put the record out. Kaufman released it, and then freaked because his house had been surrounded by Manson followers with knives. So he brought it to me at my invitation, and ESP reissued it. Our distributors and dealers then refused to handle it. ESP folded in 1974, paid off its creditors, and the record masters were placed in safe deposit boxes, where they remained for 17 years. I got married and moved to the Catskills. In 1980, I became an assistant attorney general of the state of New York, where I stayed for the next 10 years…”