Word: eicher
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...cold-water flats and smoky New York City jazz clubs. He got a break in the mid-1960s by sitting in with saxophonist Rahsaan Roland Kirk; that was followed by gigs with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis and eventually a solo career, encouraged by German record producer Manfred Eicher, who recorded the young Jarrett on the fledgling ECM label in 1971, and has produced his records ever since...
When he was still in high school, Eicher hitchhiked from his home in Lindau, on Lake Constance, into Munich to catch a Dizzy Gillespie concert, and a few years later, on scholarship to the august Berlin Academy of Music, he lived on yogurt so he would not have to skimp on his record collection. Production-assistant jobs around various Munich recording studios kept him in curds and vinyl until he met up with Karl Egger, a burly purveyor of discount audio and records. Egger suggested to Eicher that they record displaced American jazzmen who had fled the rock-dominated music...
Egger bankrolled, Eicher produced, and in 1970 the first record on ECM was pressed: Free at Last by the superb pianist Mai Waldron. Only 500 copies of the record were originally turned out, but 14,300 eventually sold. Now an initial ECM pressing averages 10,000 albums for its established acts and 6,000 for the three or four unknowns it introduces every year...
There are no long-term contracts at ECM, even for the stars. "Jarrett, like all good jazzers, values personal friendship higher than any written piece of paper," says Eicher. Indeed, it is unlikely that any contemporary jazz artist could find elsewhere the particular combination of creative congeniality, "very fair" royalty rates and marketing clout that ECM has to offer. This has led, almost inevitably, to the threat of corporate complacency, a cloud over the cachet. ECM has taken some heat for issuing smug, snug suburban jazz, and, perhaps in response, Eicher has brought some fringe groups into the fold...
...Eicher, who is divorced, still fuels up on yogurt and black coffee but does not go to many jazz clubs these days, although his Munich digs might be mistaken for the apartment of an affluent student. The place is crammed with books and records, but Eicher recently declined to spend $20,000 for a Josef Albers oil. He did not have the room for it, he said. Besides, the next time he is recording in Oslo, he can always go look at a Munch...