The Label Head: Nils Winther

Talk to anyone from around the jazz business and they'll all tell you the same thing, there is no shortage of it. There is plenty of great music being made by plenty of great musicians. In fact, the supply is probably outpacing the demand. And yet independent jazz labels are having a tough time. Do they just have the same woes plaguing labels of all genres; streaming, low royalty rates, and downloads? Yes and no.

I got an insight by speaking with Nils Winther, owner of Steeplechase Records which is a family run business that has been around for over half a century. Nils began his career recording the early giants of jazz and has weathered all of the changes within the industry since that time. He's seen the ups and the downs, and the many formats of distribution come and go. He explained to me the difficulty of surviving in the age of streaming and social media.

About Nils Winther

Nils Winther was born in Denmark into a family of schoolteachers during the last phase of World War II in 1944 . His parents' aspiration was to bring Nils up to be a teacher as well, but young Nils had other interests and started to spend considerable time listening to jazz and going to clubs including the famed Jazzhus Montmartre to hear live jazz. While still a literature student at Copenhagen University's Graduate School Nils founded his jazz label SteepleChase in 1972. Since then, his life has been closely involved in the world jazz scene. Today at the age of 80 Nils is far from slowing down recording and is still releasing thirty to forty albums a year.

All About Jazz: How did you first discover jazz?

Nils Winther: Ooh. My first jazz record I bought was in 1955 I think it was. I thought it was Louis Armstrong because I really liked him but it was not. It was Lil Hardin Armstrong, Louis' second wife playing a Jelly Roll Morton tune. It was a great record. I still have it. It was a 78 of course in those days. That was my very first record.

When I grew up in middle school, Dixieland jazz was very popular, the revival of New Orleans jazz, people like George Lewis and Bunk Johnson. There were a couple great Danish bands. That was some of the first jazz I listened to.

My parents were schoolteachers and in order to become a teacher they had to play an instrument. They were both taught to play the violin, which I never liked. I thought it was so terrible when I heard them play. But then, one day I heard something on the radio that sounded really great. I liked it and my father said, "Do you realize that's a violin?" I said, "No."

That was Svend Asmussen, the Danish violin player. He passed away about two years ago. He was very big in Denmark before and during the war. I knew him personally later. His son had a great studio where I did a lot of recordings. That was my introduction to jazz

AAJ: I read that you grew up with several instruments.   Did you ever aspire to be a musician yourself or did you always want to work on the business side?

NW: No, to both questions. I really liked to play jazz. I was playing New Orleans jazz. I actually found some photographs from a long time ago of me playing with in a band with banjo, piano, and myself on trumpet.

I was never very good. My parents gave me a trumpet on the condition that I should take lessons from a Danish trumpet player who was a soloist with the symphony orchestra. He was a fantastic musician, but it was so boring. He had me playing all these rehearsals for trumpet from Arban's trumpet book—all the scales and all that stuff. I'd rather play along the Louis Armstrong records.

AAJ: So, how did you end up on the business side?

NW: It's a mistake [laughs]. It's a long story in fact. After graduating from high school I was in the army for two years (playing the bugle horn) and after that I studied Danish literature and French language at the University of Copenhagen. But, then I was studying jazz every night at Montmartre Jazz Club.

I went there the first time while I was in high school in the fall of 1962. I was so lucky, I saw Bud Powell. That was amazing. He made a huge impression on me. He was playing trio with Danish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen who was fifteen at that time I believe. Years later, I found some recordings from Copenhagen and from Stockholm from 1962, maybe fifty hours or more from The Golden Circle club in Stockholm. We have released a number of CDs on SteepleChase.

I was spending a lot of time during the 1960s and early 1970s at the Montmartre Club and I got involved with the club booking musicians and taking care of their sound system. They were having a difficult time and we were helping them out doing unpaid work. Then I got a room upstairs with cables to the band stand. I had a tape recorder and a small portable mixer. Whenever I got the permission from the musicians I recorded the performances.

The American musicians who lived in Copenhagen at the time became good friends—people like Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew, Sahib Shihab, and Ben Webster. Whenever some soloist came around, especially Kenny Drew was very helpful and would say, "Oh, this guy is ok. Just let him record."

I have tons of unreleased tapes on the shelves in my office: like jam sessions with musicians passing through town, and not least with Dexter. Whenever a band came through town there would be a jam session and I would record it.

AAJ: So how did you take the next step and start a record label?

NW: Well, the great Jackie McLean was in Denmark in the Summer of 1972. He was teaching at a jazz clinic and playing at the Montmartre. Kenny Drew who grew up with Jackie introduced me to him and I got permission to record him. I recorded five or six nights with Jackie and various people—Kenny Drew, Horace Parlan, Red Mitchell, etc. About a week later I was upstairs recording Dexter, and Jackie came and said, "You should put out a record." I said, "Why should I do that? How do I do that?" I didn't know anything about the music business [laughs]. I thought about it and I ended up making a contract with Jackie. That became the first release on SteepleChase.

At the time, I had just received a grant to continue my studies at the University. There was enough money to press 500 LPs and that's what I did. It's amazing when I think back at it. It was 52 years ago. It was in 1972.

AAJ: Right. You've been in business for over fifty years and have seen so many changes in the music business.  Can you tell me about the changes both good and bad from your perspective?

NW: Well, the best thing that ever happened to my business was when CDs came along. It was difficult to get CDs manufactured because there were so few factories. Then in 1985-1986 we and 4 other guys from the Danish music business invested in a building a CD pressing plant in Denmark. That proves to be a very good financial move, and in second part of the 1990s we got on the Danish stock exchange. That venture gave me financial freedom to work with the music and musicians I like to work with.

We had a company in Chicago in the first half of the 1980s. We were exporting LPs from Denmark, and also manufacturing some in Phoenix Arizona. When CDs came we could sell all we could manufacture, but as you may know, at the time LPs we distributed with full return rights, so in 1985 we were drowning in returns. It was terrible so we closed that distribution company.

AAJ: Besides formats, the rise of the internet and social media has changed everything.

NW: Yes, I think it is very bad. It is killing the music business. We're getting some income from digital sales, but although we have good distribution we're not getting enough money to do what we want to do. At the same time CD sales are down. Especially the last three to four years.

Vinyl is coming back for some reason. I don't understand it. Maybe I've lost my hearing but they don't sound nearly as good as CDs [laughs]. They never did. Now we are releasing some vinyl, but they are so expensive to do that we hardly make any money.

However, what happened in the 1980s really gave us the opportunity to do what we want to. I've basically been able to record the musicians I like to record. Some I can't afford and that's a shame. Some I would have liked to record. There were projects that never happened for one reason or another, projects I really wanted to do.

AAJ: Well, that leads into my next question.  You've been doing this so long, is there anything you feel that's still left to do or anyone you still want to record?

NW: Here are a lot of great music and great musicians out there that I like to record. I just spent six days in a New Jersey studio recording music for new releases. The musicians are so good, and the music is great.

Nothing is wrong with jazz. There's a lot of it around. I'm currently looking ahead to five to eight sessions in February. We're releasing two or more new sessions and one vinyl per month (from our back catalog). You know, we have more than 1,200 titles in our catalog and it has always been my policy to have them all available. I don't know if we can continue doing that because we have so many CDs in stock in our warehouse in Denmark.

AAJ: Given the hard time labels are having, should musicians seek out a label or are they better off doing it themselves?

NW: I don't think they are better off doing it themselves. They are not getting the good distribution. SteepleChase is, basically, distributed worldwide. Some countries aren't really selling much, but we are here. We ship to about twenty countries when we have a new release, and we make the music available for press and radio. The music gets out there. That is what we can do that a New York musician cannot do by only selling at their gigs.

AAJ: What would be your advice then to musicians trying to get noticed by a label?

NW: Ha. I don't know. I can't tell you. I'm in South Carolina right now and since I came down here I've received eight or nine emails from musicians that have recorded their own product that want me to put it out. When I listen, I find that most of it is really good but what can I do?

We've created a label for musicians like that whose recordings are offered to us. We call it SteepleChase LookOut. This gives the new musicians a chance to get their music available for a larger audience. It's not a very great deal for the musicians but they get their music out. Many of them come back with more recordings, and I have offered to record some of them for the main label.

AAJ: I'm curious what you have to say about the jazz scene in Denmark.  Is there a good scene there?  Do they play differently than American musicians?

NW: There are a lot of great musicians in Denmark. They studied and some developed into very original players. Of course, you know Niels-Henning Ørsted Pederson, the Danish bassist who passed away a long time ago now. I did his first records in his own name before he joined Oscar Peterson and Norman Granz. He was unique.

Then there's the guitarist Pierre Dorge. He came from avant-garde jazz playing with people like John Tchicai and Johnny Dyani. He has a very original small big band, Pierre Dorge & New Jungle Orchestra, which we have been recording since the late 1970s. Their new recording, a live recording from Jazzhus Montmartre will be released early 2025.

AAJ: You've recorded so many giants of jazz.  Is there a particular recording in your catalog that you're most proud of?

NW: I think the recording with Chet Baker and Paul Bley is unique. It's called Diane and it's just piano and trumpet. That was a very special recording. Paul was in Denmark recording a trio the day before. I found out that Chet was in Gothenburg Sweden which is a half an hour flight from Copenhagen. I asked Paul, "Are you available tomorrow?" He said, "No, I have to get home." I said, "I was thinking maybe I could get Chet to come down." He said, "Then I'm available" [laughs].

I found Chet at a hotel in Gothenburg and flew him to Copenhagen. He missed his flight and then the next flight. Finally, I called the airport and said, "I'm looking for someone." The woman said, "I can't give you any names." I said, "It's a jazz musician I'm waiting for." She asked me, "Dexter?" She seemed to be one of Dexter's old girlfriends. "No, it's Chet Baker." She said, "I'm not allowed to give you any information but he just arrived." Then she gave him the message to take a taxi to the studio. Chet walked into the studio and was in a great mood and we did the record in about two and a half hours. It's outstanding music. That's one of my favorites.

There's also long list of Dexter Gordon recordings live from the Montmartre from the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s and recordings from Archie Shepp, Rich Perry, Lee Konitz, George Cables, Eddie Henderson, and many others.

AAJ: I'm a guitarist and one of my teachers and early heroes was the great Vic Juris who put out a number of recordings on your label.  I was wondering what you can tell me about your experience with Vic.

NW: Well, I got to work with Vic Juris because of Ron McClure who brought him in on one of his sessions. That was maybe in 1995. About fifteen years ago I signed Vic to an exclusive contract which lasted until he passed. We did a lot of recordings. We basically did one recording a year. He was such a nice person to work with. He was a sweet and very positive person. There were never any problems whatsoever. Did you study with Vic?

AAJ: Yes, I did.  Besides being such a great guy he was one of the best guitar players I've ever heard.

NW: Right. Yeah. I did a series of jam sessions in the studio and I had Andy LaVerne hire most of the musicians.  We would do like two jam sessions in a day in New York City and then maybe even one more.  Those were the days when I was young.   We would have three soloists of the same instrument and a rhythm section.   I think the second one I did was Vic Juris, Dave Stryker, and Tony Purrone.  They were great and it was a fun day.  Vic plays great on it.

AAJ: I'm not surprised. This is my last question.  What do you think about the future of the jazz business?

NW: I don't know. What happens is that the big companies buy the small companies and they just sit on the material. I mean Blue Note is different but only slightly. They're somewhat active but mostly put out this edition or that edition of old recordings. I don't know what's going to happen. There are not that many independent companies left. Most of the ones doing good business are digging out old recordings instead of making new ones.

I'm sorry, Bill Evans is great. I love Bill Evans but who wants to hear what he played every day for a month on a European tour? It's probably the same tunes every night. Now they're putting out Sonny Rollins in bunches. That is not helping the jazz environment at all. It might even be hurting because people are spending money on Bill Evans' old recordings instead of buying one of my new recordings with new artists.

I like to give new artists the opportunity to record. A lot of musicians did their first recording in their own name for me. I can mention people like Michael Carvin, Hilton Ruiz, Billy Gault, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Gary Versace, Rich Perry, Larry Willis, Allegra Levy, Andy LaVerne, Idrees Sulieman, Anthony Ferrara, Kevin Hays, and many others. New musicians need a chance to get their music out. I'm very happy that most of the people I start working with stay with us. Rich Perry, tenor saxophonist, just recorded his 29th album for me. We like to build a relationship with the musicians with whom we collaborate musically and personally on constant bases. New people come in, and some leave, of course, but many stay and I'm happy for that because it means they're not that unhappy.

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