Guy Kopelowicz In the Summer of 1965, French journalist Guy Kopelowicz travelled to New York City to write about the exciting new jazz being released on American labels such as ESP-Disk’ and Impulse! Records. The resulting article, “Autumn in New York” (Jazz Hot, no. 215, December 1965, available at ayler.co.uk/html/article1.html#autumn), chronicled his experience attending Albert Ayler’s Spirits Rejoice session at Judson Hall. (Images from the recording date can be viewed at ayler.co.uk/html/judsonhall.html). More articles would follow, covering both the New York and Paris scenes. Guy would eventually become chief photo editor of the Associated Press’s Paris bureau, a role he would occupy for twenty-one years. I came to know Guy through the online forums of the early 2000s one used to resolve things like discographical queries. Over time, the information he casually offered – uncredited appearances on records, the personnel of short-lived combos that never recorded, etc. – betrayed his characteristic modesty. It was clear he knew a lot and much of it seemed to come from first-hand experience. As I pieced together Guy’s identity and later the career he had amassed – both his music coverage and his photo work with the AP – I questioned why I’d never read an interview with him before. We eventually spoke in June of 2005 by telephone: Guy from his Paris home and me during a lunch break as an archivist in California. And while the impetus of the call was to ask him about mid-60’s New York and the scene around the 1969 BYG Actuel recordings, I’m humbled and thankful that he offered as much as he did about his family’s experience fleeing Nazi-occupied France during WWII. It was a direction I didn’t foresee right out of the gate but I can’t imagine his story without it now. I’m pleased to make that portion of the interview available here for the first time. With that said, a shorter edit of this interview was published in 2006 as “The New Music: Photographer Guy Kopelowicz and the Jazz Avant-Garde in New York and Paris” in Issue #15 of Wax Poetics. The reader is encouraged to hunt down a physical copy of that issue for themselves in order to see otherwise unavailable photographs Guy shared to supplement his interview. They are fantastic.
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Guy Kopelowicz: I am the son of French-naturalized Jewish parents and was born in Paris in October 1939, a few weeks after the start of WWII. My father came from a part of Poland that is now in Belarus. My mother was born in Berlin. They met in Paris after they settled in France in the ‘30s. At the start of the war, my father enlisted in a Polish volunteer unit of the French army that found itself in eastern France when the German troops invaded France. He and some other soldiers managed to get to Switzerland. My mother was in Paris with two sons. My brother was born two years before me and managed to take care of us. Then in July 1942, the French collaborationist government decided to follow Nazi orders and rounded up the Jews. One of our neighbors, who was a parent of a Paris policeman, told us of the roundup a few hours before it actually happened. The roundup was scheduled on July 14, 1942 until several officials decided it would be a bad idea to have this happen on Bastille Day. The roundup finally occurred on July 16. My mother had taken refuge with my brother and I with non-Jew neighbors. We all fled Paris and managed to reach southern France where we stayed for several weeks until we were taken into Switzerland, a very difficult adventure in those days. Two asides: When my parents returned to Paris after the liberation of the city, they found that several pieces of furniture were missing. It turned out that the neighbor who had given my mother warning about the roundup had looted our apartment of various valuables. I was too young to remember any of those travels through occupied France and into Switzerland but my mother still was shaking years later when she recalled how I – I was a two-year-old at the time – I went into a crying fit when we started to cross into Switzerland in the middle of the night. My parents could not reunite in Switzerland since my mother and my brother and I were taken to various refugee camps. I have bad memories of those camps and still hold a grudge against several of the camp guards who were not happy to see all these refugees invade their neutral country. After the liberation of France, my parents were reunited and made the voyage home, leaving my brother and I with Swiss volunteer families who helped us get a much better conception of Swiss friendliness. We all were reunited back in Paris in October 1945 and I have been a Parisian ever since. I started getting interested in jazz in 1952. Heard it first, mostly Sidney Bechet who was a big star in France at the time. Also Louis Armstrong. My elder brother also caught the jazz bug, started attending jazz concerts and took me along. One of the first jazz events I attended was a concert given by the Lionel Hampton Big Band in October 1953, the great unrecorded band that had Clifford Brown, Art Farmer, Quincy Jones, Anthony Ortega, Gigi Gryce. I still remember how thrilled I was with Hampton’s solos and antics. I also started reading jazz reviews: mostly Jazz Hot, later DownBeat. It turned out that on my way to the Lycée Buffon, where I was a high schooler, I was going past a small record shop which happened to have copies of DownBeat in its window. By the time I was 14, I was an avid reader of DB. By the time I was 18 I was spending a lot of time in jazz clubs. Through various friendships, I had free access to the Club Saint-Germain where I heard Miles Davis, Bud Powell, J.J. Johnson, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Sonny Rollins, Horace Silver, Kenny Dorham, Allen Eager, who were playing there. I even caught sight of Lester Young when he walked inside the Club Saint-Germain one evening. Unfortunately, he did not play that night. I also managed to get US jazz releases; they were not being distributed in France around that time. One of the musicians that caught my interest was John Coltrane. That was well before he started to record for Atlantic. I submitted the idea to Jazz Hot but was told the time was not right. I decided to go to the rival publication Jazz Magazine [France]. They were interested. My article was published in the summer of 1958. It was the first study of Coltrane to be published anywhere. Am I going too fast? Brandon Burke: No no. Go right ahead. GK: Okay, I’ll keep on then. So I also did interviews for Jazz Magazine and I interviewed Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. There was Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Bobby Timmons at the time. Horace Silver was part of that. The interviews were published. I did a couple of interviews with people like Sonny Rollins, J.J. Johnson. They were all playing at the Club Saint-Germain and they were all staying at the hotel opposite the club. So in the afternoon I was going there with a very heavy tape recorder. I was dragging this thing to the hotel and then in the evening I went to hear them at the Club Saint-Germain, which was a really fantastic experience. And I’m very lucky to have been able to see all of these people when they were alive. Miles Davis was playing there a couple of times with Barney Wilen. Bud Powell also. One thing I should mention. Before, when I was still with Jazz Hot, we were sharing articles with Francois Postif and he helped me get into the jazz scene. Of course he did the interview with Lester Young that’s widely published but, for instance, we spent an evening with Billie Holiday. I was eighteen at the time. I knew of her and it was really something incredible. When I look back at those times [laughs], I was lucky to do that. Anyway, I was also very much interested in films. I started going to the cinematheque a lot. So I was spending most of my life going to clubs, going to the cinematheque, the film house, reading books. I did not do much, really, for high school. I was not really interested with what was going on. There were so many more interesting things going on that I was not a very good pupil. And when I was nineteen it was time to get a job, and what I really wanted to do was to be a journalist. I was very much interested in the news business; I was reading newspapers at the time. So I managed to get into journalism school with a very difficult examination, which I passed. Unfortunately, that was at the time of the Algerian War and students usually got reprieve, which was, they would finish their studies and then they had to go into the army. But journalism studies did not enable you to get a reprieve, so I had to go into the army. And by March 1960, I was in the army. I missed Miles Davis’ concert with John Coltrane at the time. That’s one of my bad memories. And I was shipped to Algeria in 1961 and stayed there until the end of the War. I returned from Algeria in June 1962, at the time when the War ended. There was no jazz then, in Algeria. When I came back, my main ... I still tried to get in touch with jazz but I really had to find a job. So I did all kinds of odd things. Well, I lost a lot of time, did various jobs until I found a job with the photo industry. That was in 1963. A few months after that, I found a job with AP in Paris. That was in the summer of 1964. And that was ... [Laughs.] I’ve been with AP for over 40 years. I retired at the start of this year. At the start of my period with AP, I still was able to do things for jazz. I was interested in what was going on with the new scene at the time. In 1963, there was not really much happening. There was Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman. It was pretty hard to get these records in France at the time. But I knew there were things going on. In 1965, I had a steady job. I decided to have my first summer holiday, take advantage of the few weeks I had, and travel to New York to write a series of articles for Jazz Hot on what was going on in New York at the time. And that’s when I wrote the articles that were published in Jazz Hot – late ‘65/early ‘66 – titled “Autumn in New York”. Did you manage to find them? BB: I was not able to find them yet, no. GK: Okay. I made photocopies of those. I could send them to you if you want them. BB: Wonderful. Thank you very much. GK: Okay. Oh, I forgot to mention also that, when I joined AP, I had been interested in photos for several years. News photos. But I didn’t take many photos. To have photos to accompany the article I wrote for Jazz Hot I brought along a camera and I took my first photos during that trip. And so the articles were published with photos I took, and I was pretty lucky with that trip. I was in New York, September 1965. There was not much really happening but I looked around. I knew several of the musicians beforehand and I managed to get ... um ... should I tell the story as it’s written in the first article? I went to the Village Vanguard one of the first evenings I was in New York. One of the first musicians I met was Prince Lasha, who was outside the Village Vanguard. I asked him what was going on with the new scene and he said, “Oh, it’s too bad you missed Sonny Murray was here.” Sonny Murray knew him. I had heard the Albert Ayler record. Anyway, Prince Lasha told me to go to Slug’s, which was a club in the East Village, because many of the new musicians were playing there. So I went there and one of the first people I ran into was Sonny Murray who was ... how do you say ... he was not playing there. He was taking care that there was no trouble inside. BB: He was performing security? GK: He was a bouncer. BB: Okay. Yeah. GK: And I made friends with Sonny Murray and he mentioned that – well I asked him – what’s happening? Where can I find Archie Shepp? Where can I find Sun Ra? Where can I find Cecil Taylor? Where can I find Albert Ayler? He mentioned that Albert Ayler was going to record a session in the next few days and I took good note of it. And also I ran into Archie Shepp. I told him I was interested in what was going on. He invited me to his home and he was rehearsing with people like Rashied Ali. And I took photos, wrote about it. Also, when there was that Spirits Rejoice session with Albert Ayler, I went there and that was the first time I heard Albert Ayler live. It was really so incredible, what happened that day. All those musicians were really incredible. BB: It seems to me that you were in New York at a very important time and then back in Paris during another important time. And I wonder what kind of breeding ground these different cultural environments created for each scene. Can you maybe describe the differences between New York in 1965 and Paris in 1969? GK: Okay. Things were happening – as far as jazz was concerned – things were happening in New York. There was not that much going on in Paris at the time. But there were racial riots at the time and they made headlines all over the world, including France. We knew about what was going on in the States. There was attention. When I arrived in New York, I was not sure how I was going to be received but these were just smaller worries because, when I arrived in New York, it was absolutely no problem. Everybody was as nice as could be. I don’t think there was that much of a difference of culture. People in France who wanted to know, knew what was going on in the States. And well, reading people like Archie Shepp, LeRoi Jones ... They were politically active and I didn’t see much difference with the people I met in Paris at the time. BB: How had things changed by 1969? GK; 1969? Oh. All this was kind of underground but, in Paris for instance, all this worked out in 1968. France – this was 1960’s – was a very formalized living. Charles de Gaulle was the President of France and there was a very stiff moral overcoat running all over the country. There was not a kind of repression but nothing was really in the open. There were things that you could not do and the 1968 riots just ... There was an explosion. Some called it “revolution,” which it was not, but it was really an explosion. Things changed dramatically in France after the ‘68 events. Nothing was ever the same after that. It affected the way children were educated, the way people behaved, the way people dressed. There was really an opening after that. I’m not sure everything was very good but so many interesting things happened at the time. [Laughs.] I’m not sure I answered your question, very sorry. BB: Well, to ask you something else from 1969, you told me briefly some time ago about the change of venue for the Festival Actuel and I was hoping that you could elaborate on the change of venue, the reasons for it, and then your general experience at the festival. GK: Of Actuel? BB: Yes GK: Well, frankly Actuel was not that big a thing, that much. Actuel was really a small label but they were run by people who wanted to do things. They did all kinds of things, and they ... There were all those musicians arriving in Paris because people were writing about them. I wrote articles in Jazz Hot, there were people writing articles in Jazz Magazine. There was pretty vivid interest in what was going on with this, so a number of musicians started to come to Paris. Cecil Taylor had arrived with his musicians in 1966. Marion Brown came at the same time. Albert Ayler played in Paris. It was not such a ... There were some problems that come with part of the audience. They were so surprised with what they heard that they didn’t like it but I remember that in the audience there were people like Catherine Deneuve, the actress. She was there because she wanted to hear what was going on, she was with her then-husband, photographer David Bailey. Cecil Taylor was in Paris, was also at the concert. This was part of the scene. There were a lot of things happening there. And shortly after that, the musicians from Chicago arrived in Paris. That was at the start of 1969, just after the ... Sonny Murray was in Paris, he arrived in Paris in 1967. And a lot of free jazz musicians came to the city from all over the world. There were people from South Africa, people from England, people from Scandinavia were all ... A lot of things were happening around the time. So the people from Actuel made use of all these people who were around town and offered to record them, and most of the musicians accepted. So there were all those record sessions which ... Practically every week there was another album being made. And they were all around the same musicians: Archie Shepp, Dave Burrell, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, Burton Greene, Jimmy Lyons. All these people were in town and they were offered to make records and, since it was an opportunity for them, they all took advantage of it. The only one who would not accept was Cecil Taylor. BB: Why? GK: Oh, it was ... [Laughs under breath.] He did not want to get involved with all this. He did not object to Jimmy Lyons and Andrew Cyrille or Alan Silva, who were part of his group then, to record for the label but he would not accept making a record for the label. Those sessions were held at the Studio Davout, which is on the eastern end of Paris. And it was very loose. I went to three or four of those sessions. BB: Which sessions did you attend? GK: Archie Shepp, Alan Silva ... I think I was ... The Jimmy Lyons I could not ... [Laughs.] I was working at the time. I was finding it was pretty difficult to mix the jazz events with my job. But in 1969 I could. I managed to get to several of those sessions. So yeah, I attended two Archie Shepp sessions, including the one with Hank Mobley. There were really a lot of incredible musicians. Philly Joe Jones was also in town. BB: How open were Hank Mobley and Joe Jones to the new music? GK: Joe Jones was pretty open about this. I don’t think Hank Mobley was very ... was that happy with ... He was trying to make a living. He had come to Europe because he had a hard time in the States. And he did not pick the right time to come to Europe because there were all of these people who were in Europe and there were not that many job opportunities available. So people like Dexter Gordon – Don Byas was still around – were taking jobs. There also were problems with the French musicians, who were upset at the number of American jazz people that were playing in Paris. The French musicians organized and had laws made which prevented some of the musicians from playing in clubs, for instance. Concerts: there were no problems, but playing in clubs could be a problem. I know that Cecil Taylor ... I know that pretty well because I was trying to help him get a gig at a club called Jazzland in the Latin Quarter. He played there for a week and then had ... He could not stay on because the French musicians’ union got into action. And the club, which was called Jazzland, was closed shortly after. I walk by the place, which is a French restaurant now, twice a week, at least. [Laughs.] I live pretty close to the area. BB: I should ask you before I forget. People often described the jazz avant garde – even today – as “angry” or “chaotic”. And certainly the Actuel records can sometimes sound angry or chaotic. How would you describe the general mood in the studio at these sessions? GK: Oh, it was not angry. It was ... I mean, the musicians were very happy to be able to make records. The mood was ... Those people worked! They had to produce some things. They played music. And it was ... It looks pretty disorganized but it was – such as I remember, the session from Alan Silva and Archie Shepp – they were taking care of things. It was absolutely not chaotic. They had ideas, they had thought about the sessions, and they knew roughly what they wanted to record and the records show that. But the mood at the studio was pretty enthusiastic. I don’t think that those people had much opportunity to be together, make records. It was quite an extraordinary thing happening at the time. One of the problems with the Actuel records: Actuel was not ... It was a small company. It was run by people who were more hustlers than anything else. Not dishonest but ... Bernard Stollman is always spoken as a crook and I can ... I know Stollman, I’ve seen him work. I can tell you he is no crook and he was ... He tried to help as much as he could. I would not say the same thing about some of the people working with Actuel. They were there to make money. People in France were talking about what was going on with the free jazz movement and they were taking advantage of it because most of the participants were in town. And I don’t think the records got very good distribution in France. They were on sale for several months and then they just ... They disappeared. BB: Okay. What situations or events that you attended but did not photograph do you most which you had photographed? GK: Oh, there was a gathering of people in New York during my first visit where ... I was so well received that, just before I left, there was a party which was given in my honor. And everybody was there from Marion Brown, Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Charles Tyler, Burton ... No, Burton Green was not at this party but I wish I had taken photos there. One thing that I ... That evening with Albert Ayler. I attended the Spirits Rejoice session. He played one of his favorite themes, which was “La Marseillaise.” That’s the opening of “Spirits Rejoice.” And I mentioned that to him and I knew that he had been in the army – in the U.S. Army – in 1959/1960 and I asked him if he remembered his days in Paris and he was elated. So many memories! And he mentioned taking part in the Bastille Day parade on the Champs-Elysee in 1960 and actually ... [laughs] ... I also took part in – which is true – I was in the French Infantry Regiment and marched down the Champs-Elysee that July 14, 1960 which is ... [laughs] ... Well, we had fun with this but I can’t remember seeing American soldiers that day. I was pretty busy on my own, but this has been confirmed that Albert Ayler marched in the Bastille Day parade that year in Paris. And later I had met people who had known Alyer when he was in Orléans. His unit was stationed there, outside of Orléans, which is south of Paris and they knew him. We all met when Ayler came back to Paris. Another occasion – I took photos but the photos are unusable – Albert Ayler and his brother were rehearsing in their hotel room in Saint-Lazare before a concert at the Salle Pleyel. And, at the time, I was trying to be a ... one of those great photographers. My idols were Henri Cartier-Bresson, W. Eugene Smith, and Walker Evans and these people did not use a flash. So I did not carry a flash with me. And the light was so bad that ... Well, I’ve got two films of the Ayler brothers – I mean still photos – rehearsing in their room but they are unusable. How ... [laughs] ... I wish I had a flash that day because the photos would have been excellent, really. Sorry I’m getting off track a lot. BB: Hey, that’s okay. These are fantastic stories. GK: You want me to talk a bit about the Actuel festival at Amougies? BB: Oh yes, please. Well, that happened after the sessions: the Actuel sessions. The Actuel people wanted to make use of all these people who were around and there were also people like Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Captain Beefheart. They were all playing, making concert appearances in Europe at the time so they tried to organize this huge festival, which was ... The original plan was to have the festival held in central Paris. It was the Les Halles food market, which was an incredibly beautiful iron structure which was going to be demolished to make way for a thing called Le Forum des Halles – which still exists – which proved to be an architectural ... Anyway, plans were set up to have the festival held at this place in central Paris, but this was a few months after the 1968 riots and the government did not want to have thousands of people attending a huge concert. This was the time of the Woodstock festival also, where there were hundreds of thousands of people, and French Authorities did not want a similar crowd in central Paris. So they did not try to have Actuel people ... to have a festival held in Paris. By that time, all those musicians had been contracted and were waiting to make their appearance, so at the last minute – the last few days before the actual concert – everything was ... It was decided to have the festival held just outside France in a place – it’s really a few kilometers from the French/Belgian border – at Amougies. And that’s ... It happened there. I was there only for the first day of the festival. I had to go back to Paris. I missed a lot of action but I saw Archie Shepp, Sonny Murray. I remember Ron Carter. I don’t know who he was playing with there but I traveled back with Ron Carter that night. Then it was back to work for me. Sorry to get personal again but after that I was not that much involved with the jazz scene. I was following what was going on but I was ... My job was really taking over. I also got married. So I had to change some lifestyles and by 1970 I was really working full-time, had more responsibilities. I was ... I became Chief Photo Editor at AP in Paris around that time. And there were all those things going on. I had no time to ... Very little time to go to concerts after that. Which is unfortunate because, when I started working for AP – that was 1964 – the AP office was in the building of the New York Herald-Tribune, just off the Champs-Elysee and it was very close to the Blue Note. And I was working the evening shifts when I started and I remember spending ... [laughs] ... a few evenings ... I was finishing around midnight and then I went straight to the Blue Note where ... That’s where I could listen to people like Bud Powell, Johnny Griffin, Martial Solal. [Laughs.] It was ... I did not go there that often but it was nice to get there whenever I knew that Bud Powell was making an appearance. BB: I think that’s understandable. Well, I have only one more. Among the groups you saw live who never recorded a record together, who would you most like to have on your record shelf at home? GK: Charles Tyler. I heard his group. I met Charles Tyler, he was in Harlem. He was playing at a place near Central Park. And I met him in ... I went back to New York to do an encore and I heard Charles Tyler. That was in 1967. He had a group. I’ve got several photos of that. He had a group, they were set up in Harlem someplace. I don’t remember exactly, but I was really amazed at the music. Charles Tyler is a focused musician but I think it’s a damn shame that there’s so little of his work that is available now. I was also very privileged to be with Cecil Taylor when he rehearsed with his Unit. When he arrived in Paris in 1966, he was ... He had no concerts set up. There was a TV show which ... That was the main idea behind his trip. It was to take part in the TV show, Le Grand Repetition, that was produced by Luc Ferrari. But that was only three or four days’ work and he was trying to get some concerts organized, but there was not much happening. But I was excited by seeing Cecil Taylor and his group: that was Jimmy Lyons, Alan Silva, and Andrew Cyrille. These people were rehearsing every day and I was excited also by ... Even when his musicians could not make a rehearsal, he was trying to find some way to get to a piano. I remember going with him to the French Radio House, where there was an open studio for him. And even when one day he could not go there, I had to find him a piano room where he could rehearse. It was incredible because it was ... That was every day. It was ... Every day he had to play. I’m pretty sure he’s still doing that. [Laughs.] Yeah so, I took photos but I wish I had a tape recorder there because this went on for a couple of weeks and everyday there was so much music and it was different every day. I wish I had tapes of those.
June 27, 2005 © Brandon Burke Special thanks to Clifford Allen. |