An Early Adventure in Jazz and Journalism

Chick Corea, Return to Forever, 1973

In the fall of 1973, when I was 20 years old, I had the chutzpah to strut into the offices of the Syracuse New Times in Syracuse, NY, and inform them that I should be their new jazz critic. Although I was a journalism major at the Newhouse school, I had never published anything before in my life, not a word in my high school paper, not a syllable in my college newspaper. Not even an exclamation point anywhere! It was only by sheer luck that I was in the journalism school at all. My first two years in college were mostly a total waste. I didn’t get in to any of the schools to which I applied, so I had to go to Queens College, which was a couple of bus rides from my home in Bayside. I was still living with my parents for those two years, sharing a tiny room with my younger brother and sister, spending a lot more time at the race track and the poker table than in school, or anywhere else for that matter.

The luck was this: An English professor named Russ Fowler. I had him for one class in my freshman year and I liked him so much I signed up for a second class in my sophomore year. One day in year two he handed me back a paper and said this:

“You know, you’re a good writer.”

I was shocked. I looked at him as if he had just landed from Mars.

“What?” he said. “Nobody ever told you that before?”

I shook my head no.

“Well,” he said, “You are. Maybe you should do something with it.”

That was it. That was all the encouragement I needed to get out of the bad situation I was in. If Professor Fowler said I was a good writer, that was good enough for me. Within a week I had researched all of the journalism schools in the Eastern part of the U.S. and Canada and sent out a bunch of applications to transfer. Somehow, I was accepted in several schools and decided on Syracuse.

I started at Syracuse in the Fall of 1972, but my time there was interrupted because I broke an ankle slipping on some steps while cutting class in a snowstorm. Before I knew it I was back at Queens College, in a cast up to my waist, either hitchhiking to classes or taking the buses. No fun at all. In the fall of 1973 I returned to Syracuse and I pretty quickly made my fateful decision to strut into the offices of the Syracuse New Times and begin my career in journalism.

The New Times was an alternative weekly in the spirit of the Village Voice. It was pretty successful at the time and was read by most of the people on campus and just about everyone in the Newhouse school. I had no credentials at all, no clippings to look at when I approached the managing editor, Mike Greenstein. He looked me up and down. I was ready to be rejected outright. But that’s not what happened. Instead, Mike told me that they didn’t actually have anyone on staff who knew anything about jazz.

“What are you doing next weekend?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Okay,” he said. “Chick Corea is coming to play on campus with his band Return to Forever. You can cover the concert and we’ll set you up to do an interview with Chick.”

And that was it. My very first professional journalism assignment anywhere. Interview Chick Corea. Does it get any better than that?

Why am I telling you this story?

I’m clearing stuff out, as you know. I have 600 or so records on the current Carolina Soul eBay auction. I have another 3,000 or so records sitting in my living room committed to a local dealer. I’ve been poring through old files. For at least 20 years, since I started Jazz Collector, I’ve been looking for a copy of this Chick Corea profile. I had already found and posted two other articles from my early career, one on Charlie Parker and one on Charles Mingus. I have always wanted to post the Corea article, even if just to transform it in a digital format. But for all these years the article was nowhere to be found.

Until today. It was in a box with hundreds of other articles from my early career. Somehow it had gotten buried in there and I hadn’t seen it. I just finished reading it. Not too bad, especially considering it was my first article anywhere. I remember going to the club, Jabberwocky, and then meeting Corea in his room at a small motel near campus. He sat on his bed, I sat on a chair. Nothing very fancy at all. I remember taping the interview, and I can see that I used a lot of direct quotes in the article that I wrote. Do I still have a tape from the interview? It’s possible, maybe sitting somewhere in another box of memorabilia. Will it still be viable after 50 years? Who knows. If I ever find it, and it’s still viable, I’ll make sure to digitalize it and post it here  for posterity.

In the meantime, I’ll be sitting down at my computer this weekend copying the original article from 1973 and posting it on Jazz Collector. Stay tuned.