40Th Anniversary Issue

now in our 40th year March / April 2014 Issue 353 jazz &blues report March 1974 – March 2014 40th Anniversary Issue March • April 2014 • Issue 353 jazz &blues report Editor & Founder Celebrating 40 Years Bill Wahl Layout & Design Bill Wahl Operations Jim Martin Pilar Martin Contributors Michael Braxton, Mark Cole, Dewey Forward, Nancy Ann Lee, Peanuts, Wanda Simpson, Mark Smith, Duane Verh, Emily Wahl and Ron Wein- stock. Check out our constantly updated website. Now you can search for CD Reviews by artists, titles, record labels, keyword or JBR Writers. 15 A spread featuring some of our early issues years of reviews are up and we’ll be scanned by The University at Buffalo going all the way back to 1974. once again I felt honored. Last year I was contacted by some Comments...billwahl@ jazz-blues.com folks at the University at Buffalo (the larg- Ern Teck did such a good job on this Web www.jazz-blues.com est campus in the State University of New interview, that I decided to run it in our 40th York System) about scanning all 58 of our anniversary issue rather than for me to run Copyright © 2013 Jazz & Blues Report earliest issues of the Buffalo Jazz Report down the same information. I’m not much and posting the digital files on their website. for blowing my own horn, so this works out No portion of this publication may be re- Someone in Buffalo happened to have all great! I contacted Ern Teck, who is now produced without written permission from the publisher. All rights Reserved. those issues and made them available to back in Malaysia, to let him know and he the University. When they contacted me, thought it was a great idea. He said he Founded in Buffalo New York in March of 1974; began in Cleveland edition in April they asked if I would give them permission went back home in July of 2013, so I let of 1978. Now this global e-zine edition is to post them, which of course I did. In fact, him know that he got out well before one posted online monthlyat www.jazz-blues. I was honored. It did not even hit me at the of the worst winters the US has seen in com time that we were just a year shy of the 40th many years. anniversary of the magazine. Set up like a story rather than an Shortly thereafter I was contacted by interview format, he does a great job of Chua Ern Teck, who was from Malaysia capturing the magazine’s beginnings back and majoring in English at the university. in Buffalo, NY in 1974. I’ll see you again at He had an assignment to interview me for the end to fill in a few things that happened a story to accompany the BJR digital files after we moved from Buffalo to Cleveland, www.jazz-blues.com on the website. Once again I said yes, and and then on to San Diego. ~Bill Wahl “Buffalonious” Buffalo Jazz Report, which chronicled the Queen City’s jazz scene in the ’70s, is available via the University at Buffalo Libraries Our original By Chua Ern Teck mascot from the very early BUFFALO, N.Y. – The University Thirty-five years after its last issue Buffalo Jazz Report at Buffalo Libraries has digitized the was published, the magazine survives days – mid ‘70s. complete 58-issue run of Buffalo Jazz online and is accessible through the He is older now, Report, the personal project of a pas- Digital Collections’ website at http:// but global & sionate jazz fan and musician whose digital.lib.buffalo.edu/cdm/landing- still very cool! publication documents the history of page/collection/BuffJazz. Individual jazz in Buffalo. issues are catalogued and available for Page Two March • April 2014 • Issue 353 personal use or educational purposes at no charge. pages and stapling the magazines. My wife Paula helped me The online archive, which chronicles Buffalo’s rich jazz a great deal as well.” history, gives jazz fans an up-close-and-personal ticket to the What started out as a bootstrapping operation quickly parade of jazz greats who passed through the city. started to flourish. Founded by Bill Wahl, Buffalo Jazz Report was a free “We started getting advertising rather quickly, as well magazine published monthly from March 1974 to Decem- as complimentary copies of record albums to review,” Wahl ber 1978. The first issue declared, “Jazz is not dead” and says. “After a few years we were getting so much advertising set out on a solitary mission to chronicle the Queen City’s from record companies, stereo dealers and the like that I had jazz scene. to have it printed at an outside printing company.” Wahl and his team of writers reviewed jazz concerts and More magazines were printed due to increasing demand, albums, profiled local and visiting jazz musicians and pro- and Buffalo Jazz Report grew from a being a four-page spread moted live music through the magazine’s calendar listings to a 24-page publication to accommodate the increased of performances throughout the region. The sixth issue, for advertising, music reviews and news content. example, reviewed a Miles Davis performance at the newly At the height of the magazine’s popularity, it co-spon- opened Artpark in Lewiston, which 1,000 people attended. sored a popular Jazz Report Concert Series with the Tralfa- madore Café, inviting national acts to come and perform in “We felt it was a good, community- Buffalo. It was even able to expand and publish a spin-off based digital project.” edition in Cleveland, where a bigger jazz market drew more ~ Scott Hollander, UB Libraries web manager advertising dollars. In the meantime, Wahl, who went from being a printer- The effort to digitize it came about following a request musician to being a publisher-writer-editor-turned-club- from Craig Steger, who was coordinating the opening of the promoter-booking-agent, also managed to add radio to his Colored Musicians Club’s museum in Buffalo. Steger con- multi-hyphenated career, hosting the weekly “Jazz Contours” tacted UB’s music library last May about the project. program on WBFO-FM 88.7. “Craig was going to ask the publisher for copies of the Buffalo Jazz Report that could be digitized for inclusion in the museum,” says Scott Hollander, web manager of UB Libraries and interim coordinator of Digital Collections. “But since we already have the entire run of the Buffalo Jazz Report, the UB libraries offered to scan it instead.” “We felt it was a good, community-based digital project,” Hollander says. Born and raised in Buffalo, Wahl did not grow up listening to jazz. He caught the bug on a serendipitous encounter The good times did not last long. The manufacturing in- one night at a club in Toronto, watching and listening to a dustry in Buffalo, which was already hurting, suffered another performance by the Elvin Jones quintet. blow as more steel mills began shutting down, triggering a “My wife and I sat there absorbing the powerful music all population exodus in search of other economic opportunities, night long. On one break, for a reason still unknown to me, devastating the previously vibrant jazz scene, Wahl said. I introduced myself to Elvin and told him I was a drummer,” “The jazz scene in Buffalo, as far as advertising for the says Wahl, who was in a rock band at the time. “I told him I magazine and live jazz at clubs, was beginning to decline,” wanted to start a free jazz magazine.” Wahl says. “The Cleveland issue was doing quite well, so When Jones said that a magazine would be perfect for rather than losing money to try to keep the Buffalo edition the jazz community, it inspired Wahl, who was then working going, I had no choice but to move to Cleveland.” at his father’s printing company on Main Street, to start the The decline was so swift that even Wahl did not an- Buffalo Jazz Report using the machines and facilities avail- ticipate the writing on the wall, which explains why the last able to him. issue quietly went out of print, without any mentions of its “The first issue in March 1974 was just one legal size demise. However, Wahl is not convinced that issue 58 was sheet folded in half. The mission was to increase awareness the last one, and is appealing to anyone who has knowledge of jazz, as well as have a publication for the existing jazz or copies of issues beyond the 58th volume to contact UB community in Buffalo – wherever they were hiding,” Wahl Libraries’ Digital Collections. says. “The idea was to be able to get enough advertising to Meanwhile, the Cleveland edition was rechristened as the be able to keep producing it on a monthly basis and perhaps Jazz & Blues Report in 1987 and the magazine went online even make a little money as well.” in 2003. After the economy went into recession in 2007, Publishing the magazine was a one-man operation dur- when the print version in Cleveland was no longer sustain- ing the early days. able, Wahl moved to San Diego and worked on expanding “I printed it and then folded it on the folding machine the online issue to give it a broader, global appeal. The online and it was ready to go,” Wahl says. “When it started needing edition now runs previews of jazz and blues festivals around more pages, I bought a case or two of beer and invited some the world.

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