One side-effect of my week at Prestige Records was that I helped get a lot of Boston folksingers signed by Prestige! I was replaced at Prestige by Paul Rothchild. You’re fired!” During that one week gig I did produce an album by The Gardners, which is still available today. ![]() My boss said, “You’re supposed to be working for me, not them. In those days, promoting a folk record meant an ad in Sing Out Magazine. I said there was just one small problem I had promised them all that we would promote their records. I got an A&R job at Prestige Records, The first week I came in with audition tapes of Buffy Sainte-Marie, the Tim Hardin Trio with Karen Dalton, Fred Neil, The Greenbriar Boys and Tom Paxton. ![]() And, as Harold said, “They were so good that in spite of my mistakes they were successful and here I am.” Of course Len Rosenfeld befriended me and eventually shared my office space and the rent.Īfter I set up Alix Dobkin and Bill Cosby for the summer, I needed a job. One contribution stood out: Harold Leventhal, who managed The Weavers, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins and Alan Arkin, told me that he had had some friends in college called The Weavers who were getting so many bookings that they asked Harold to take care of the business end of things. Since I was doing so well, most of them thought I was pulling their leg. I visited all the major folk managers to ask for advice. HG I was so inexperienced that I didn’t even know how to fill out a booking contract. I am going to embed performance links to all of them at the end of this installment. So I was a ‘successful’ manager who still had no money and lived part of the time in the Gaslight Cafe.ĭW Those names are a litany of some of the most popular and influential names of that time and place. By the end of the summer I looked from the outside like a successful manager however, Bill Cosby was only making $10 a night and Buffy was only making $200 a week and the same applied to almost everyone except John Hurt. Within a few months I had signed Buffy Sainte-Marie, Mississippi John Hurt, Patrick Sky, The Greenbriar Boys, Jim and Jean and Tim Hardin. The place was alive with great talent - a true Renaissance of folk music and comedy. HG There could not have been a better moment to move into the Village. HG I lived there through part of the summer, living some of the time in the Gaslight Cafe kitchen.ĭW You must have been having a lot of fun to hang on through the rough spots. I was in New York to stay.ĭW How long did you keep your room at the Earle? If I ever had any thoughts of giving up, it was then. I watched my tape recorder go up in smoke. That’s when I learned that the Earle Hotel was one of the few buildings in Manhattan still wired for DC current. I moved into the Earle Hotel on Waverly, unpacked my stuff and plugged my Wollensak into the wall. ![]() What happened within one hour of my moving to New York should have been a warning. They took a portable Wollensak tape recorder, replaced the recording heads with Ampex heads and replaced the tubes with industrial strength professional tubes so what looked like an ordinary Wollensak was a supercharged tape recorder. My friends at the Wireless Technical Institute made me a going away gift. Herb Gart Summer came and I moved to New York permanently. He also finds himself going head to head with some of the most powerful people in the industry.ĭavid Wilson So what happened after the Little Sister’s fiasco? Were you ever tempted to give up? Of course he is not alone in the struggle and it is not long before he finds others depending on him. With the decision to move his base of operations permanently to NYC, Herb finds his path beset with unexpected pitfalls from the very start.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |