Livia Records The rebirth of an Irish jazz label

UK Jazz News: Can you briefly describe how Livia Records began?

Dermot Rogers: Livia Records began in 1997. An artist called Gerald Davis was also a Joycean scholar and jazz fan, and had produced Louis Stewart’s first album as a leader. He thought that Louis was such a talent that he should be recording in Ireland. At the time, record labels were interested in vanilla showbands and probably not commercially interested in modern jazz guitar. Gerald died in 2005, then the label was dormant until I got curious about where Out on His Own was. I was doing a radio show, and I was dipping into this record and was amazed you couldn’t buy it in Ireland. It was like being unable to buy a Van Morrison record or a James Joyce novel, in the land of their birth. We reactivated the label in 2022 when we found the remasters and tested the tapes, and realized they were really good.

UKJN: Why did the label go defunct, and how did you get involved in relaunching it?

DR: The label went defunct because Gerald died. The relaunch is one of those “I never set out to do this” stories. During lockdown, walking on the beach with a friend, I was telling him about not being able to buy Out on His Own. So he said, “Why don’t you find out where the masters are?’ I was working from home and had some had time to spare. I found out that Louis’s widow was still alive, and she got in touch with his son. He said that he and his two sisters had always wanted to release the archive but life got in the way.

UKJN: How did you discover the trove of Louis Stewart recordings?

DR: Louis’s son lives on almost the opposite side of the planet but his two sisters live in Dublin. One of the sisters said the archive was in a lockup. Fortunately, it was a modern lockup with a raised mezzanine, so the tapes were in good condition. To my delight, not only did we find the tapes we expected but also others we didn’t, like the Jim Hall and Noel Kelehan recordings, and Louis the First, which was originally released on a showband label. We didn’t ever expect to find his first album.

UKJN: What’s been the process of cleaning up and remastering these recordings?

DR: I didn’t know about analogue recordings, but I know people who did. The advice I got was “Don’t play them. Digitising is probably the first time they should be played.” These recordings were fifty years old, the crown jewels, so I had to be very careful with them. I discovered a company that could digitise quarter-inch tapes, for Out on His Own and the material that became Some Other Blues [duos with Noel Kelehan]. Even quite hardcore jazz fans didn’t know about the Louis/Kelehan recording. We got those tapes digitised and the files were absolutely fine. As the other tapes had been stored in much the same way, they were probably OK too.

The only thing that was missing was the money. I said to the family I’d do as much as possible pro bono, but I didn’t want to lose money. I spoke to the jazz reviewer for the Irish Times. If we got the money together, would the Irish Times review it? He was incredibly enthusiastic and offered to write a feature for it.

The brothers and sisters put up €500 each. Also, I’d written to the minister for culture and asked how I could get some money – I actually got a considered response from the arts officer for Dublin city. I’d written a business plan that said what the archive contained and different scenarios as to where and how these albums could be released, from minimum to releasing everything.

I tried touting the business plan around some rich people interested in music. I got a response from an arts council guy, saying if you can come up with 50 per cent I’ll give you 50 per cent. So that was €3000. Then I was having a drink with a friend and I said, “Can I send you the document?” She came back saying, “Do you need €10,000?” She’d inherited money from an aunt and wanted to give to a worthy cause. Then we had the wind in our sails.

UKJN: What’s the response been like and who’s the audience?

DR: That was the big question: does anyone care? The response has been fantastic. There’s two tribes: people new to Louis and existing fans, who are by and large older guys north of fifty. In Ireland, he’s like Bird or Miles, referred to just by his first name. He was viewed as a master but mainstream, a sense that he wasn’t progressive enough, for example that he didn’t play non-standard tunes.

But when the recordings came out, the response was very positive, both in Ireland and the UK. Rob [Adams] often supplied me with new releases for my radio show. I asked him how we can get attention, and he’s amazingly well connected. We got fantastic reviews in Ireland and the UK, but also in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, and Northern Europe – even in Taiwan, India and South America. Interestingly, people who didn’t know who Louis Stewart was were astounded: how come we didn’t know about him? They associated Ireland with folk and rock, and didn’t know about the jazz scene. In Ireland, as is probably the case in the UK, there are rifts and factions. But the response has been positive across the board. For me, it’s been a very rewarding experience.

Louis is a great story of a kid who grew up working class, goes to an audition as a teenager and is identified as a really good musician. He was playing for an Irish showband that was touring in the US and was in Birdland or somewhere when he decided he wanted to become a jazz musician. (In extremely Catholic, 1960s Ireland, the showband venues were closed during Lent, so each year many of the bands went overseas until Lent was over.) He was sitting in with visiting jazz musicians, and got picked up by Benny Goodman and ended up sitting in Charlie Christian’s old seat. It’s like being a footballer in a small club and being discovered by a premier league club.

UKJN: What other recordings have you discovered?

DR: Lots of things are coming. Louis recorded an album with an octet in 1986 with Jim Doherty, the person who discovered Louis. They recorded it in LA. It will come out some time late this year or early next year. Louis also recorded with Sam Jones, Billy Higgins and John Taylor and there’s a funny story to that album. It’s really good, but Louis wasn’t happy with his solos, so he came back to Dublin and re-recorded some of them. We’ll be releasing the original London sessions as the Dublin overdubs used for the original version were of poor audio quality but the original London tapes are very good.

After that we’ll be releasing live recordings, for example with the flautist Brian Dunning. In 1979 Livia released what could fit on an LP, but there’s about twice as much material. Then there’s Joyce Notes. The only recording of this that’s been released so far is one made in Norway, with spoken word in Norwegian. Livia has the original premiere concert from the Cork Jazz Festival 1982, with a renowned Irish actor delivering the spoken word in English and with a far better eight-piece band of Irish and American musicians.

We also have about 15 club dates from Dublin in the 70s and 80s that we’ll filter for the best material. We’ll also be releasing some contemporary artists next year.

One thing I hold very strongly is the value of a recording, which is generally a loss leader in jazz. But if it becomes part of your legacy or a calling card, you should do it. Otherwise a performance is just a memory in the minds of the fifty or sixty people who were in that club. Overall, I’m very pleased. The albums are successful on a jazz scale. They’re covering their costs and living musicians are interested in us getting involved, so I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing.

from https://ukjazznews.com