Jazz:West Records

A history of the Jazz:West label established by Herb Kimmel in 1954. Jazz artists recorded by Kimmel include: Jack Sheldon, Walter Norris, Zoot Sims, Jane Fielding, Red Mitchell, Lou Levy, Kenny Drew, Joe Maini, Paul Chambers, John Coltrane, Lawrence Marable, James Clay, Julius Wechter, and Art Pepper. Additional chapters examine Art Pepper's recording activity from July 1956 through April 1957 including Pepper's recordings on Capitol, RCA Victor, Playboy, Kapp, Tampa, Pacific Jazz, Contemporary, Vanguard, Intro, and Omegatape. The book includes a previously unpublished forty page interview with Art and Laurie Pepper by Will Thornbury where Pepper discusses his recordings from this period.

Herb Kimmel's greatest fame was achieved as an experimental psychologist. He received numerous awards, honors, and recognition for his pioneering work.  Herb Kimmel was the first to demonstrate instrumental condi­tioning of autonomically mediated behavior, a discovery that led psychology to biofeedback therapies. Prior to completing his doctoral degree at USC he worked as a deputy sheriff at the Wayside Honor Rancho where he encountered inmates including Gene Roland, Gerry Mulligan, and Will MacFarland. These encounters would play a significant role in his decision to establish Jazz:West Records and Outpost Productions. Kimmel was also a published writer and composer. A complete discography covers all releases on Jazz:West, Intro, and Score. Brief biographies are included of all of the jazz artists who recorded for Jazz:West and Intro. 197 photographs and illustrations, many in color and previously unpublished, are included. A bibliography, names & places index, and endnotes complete the book.

The ten Jazz:West albums produced by Herb Kimmel from 1954 to 1956 have become jazz classics. Sixty years later these albums are highly sought after by collectors who are willing to pay top dollar, especially for mint copies that fetch hundreds of dollars at auction.

The Jazz:West albums reissued on the Score label also command extremely high prices for collectors who wish to have these secondary releases of Art Pepper's The Return of Art Pepper and Paul Chambers's Chambers' Music: A Jazz Delegation from the East. The continuing jazz program on the Intro label produced two additional albums that have also become jazz classics, Art Pepper's Modern Art and Collections. The Score reissues of these albums have likewise become highly collectible and sought after by collectors wishing to pay top dollar. This history of the labels provides an essential guide to these recordings.

Over the years, jazz discographies have attributed incorrect dates for the recording sessions that produced these albums. The final discography chapter supplies the accurate dates, times, and locations of these landmark jazz recordings.

The forty page interview with Art Pepper has never been published previously and provides an intimate portrait of Art Pepper's recollections of this period in his career.

James Harrod grew up in northern Wyoming and first began listening to jazz while in high school in the 1950s. After graduating from Portland State College in 1965, he moved to southern California where he was a bookseller until his retirement in 2002.

His publishing credits include liner notes for four compact disc reissues of Pacific Jazz artists: Bill Perkins, Bud Shank, and Chet Baker. He has written numerous articles for the Dutch discography journal, Names & Numbers, http://www.names-and-numbers.nl/Frameset.html. He conceived the World Wide Web exhibition, the Jazz Photography of Ray Avery, in 1994. His jazz research website, http:jazzresearch.com, was registered and established in March of 2000.

Mr. Harrod is a member of the Jazz Journalists Association, http://news.jazzjournalists.org/about/, the International Association of Jazz Record Collectors, http://www.iajrc.org/, the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, http://www.arsc-audio.org/index.php, and the Los Angeles Jazz Institute, http://www.lajazzinstitute.org/.      

He lives with Margo, his wife of 57 years, in Laguna Beach, California.