The JAZZ Detective

THERE IS NO GREATERmatch between a label’s name and its owner’s title than having Zev Feldman as the man behind Jazz Detective. And like a great house dick, Feldman always finds his man (and woman) and their thought-lost music.

Founded by curator and archival producer Feldman in 2022, Jazz Detective started with two works from the very recently late and always great pianist and composer Ahmad Jamal in Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse 1963-1964 and Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse 1965-1966, before going on to 2023’s Record Store Day releases such as trumpeter Chet Baker’s Blue Room: The 1979 VARA Studio Sessions in Holland , Philly organist Shirley Scott’s Queen Talk: Live at The Left Bank and hard Bop saxophonist Sonny Stitt’s Boppin’ in Baltimore. But Feldman, the producer, also has a hand in curating and knob-twiddling new vinyl from pianist Bill Evans’ 2023 RSD release Treasures: Solo, Trio & Orchestra in Denmark 1965-1969, as well as being the copresident of Resonance Records in Los Angeles, the label behind this spring’s Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions from the late saxophone colossus and flutist Eric Dolphy, and additional archival releases from Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, and the aforementioned Evans.

“Doing this is not for the faint of heart,” Feldman told Variety last year about the diligence, drive, and patience required to take on lost musical projects that could, on occasion, take up to a decade each to bring to fruition, what with tapes discovered, deals made and rights-holders paid—all for higrade audiophile releases on heavilygrammed vinyl that are extravagantly packaged and with slim profit margins. “But there’s been so much goodwill and generosity (toward Jazz Detective), and we’re having fun. I mean, we smile at the end of the day. I leap out of bed in the morning with the promise of the new day.”

One year later, days before the passing of Ahmad Jamal in April, Feldman began telling the story of how and why he began his mission in jazz detection.

“These projects start from passion and research,” said Feldman from his Los Angeles office space, his car. “I spend my days creating projects, finding tapes, vetting material— and, most importantly—always listening. Sometimes these things come to you, but more often than not, you have to dig and go after what you want. And in finding what you are looking for, you usually find things that you had no idea you needed that are equally, if not more, valuable.”

As a producer and curator of Chet Baker’s 1970s material, the hunt through the trumpeter and vocalist’s Blue Room commenced over one year ago after conversations with Feldman’s jazz colleague Frank Joachumson (CQ), the head honcho of the Netherlands Jazz Archive in Amsterdam. “We’d already put together Sonny Rollins in Holland and Bill Evans’ Behind the Dikes: The 1969 Netherlands Recordings last year when we began talking about Chet Baker.”

Feldman begins discussing Baker with reverence, Chet being a great and handsome smooth Bop trumpeter and soft-as-silk vocalist whose life and talents took a tragic turn with addiction. Down, but not out, however. Baker’s rough-edged, raw silken renaissance began in the 1970s and lasted through the documentation of his life, director Bruce Weber’s Let’s Get Lost, until Baker’s death in Amsterdam in 1988. “Chet Baker is a very important artist whose legacy matters,” said Feldman of a legacy scattered to the four winds, considering his latter-day gigs throughout Europe. “In doing some searches in the Netherlands, I found these two live ses-

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