Yasohachi "88" Itoh was born in 1946,
in Gifu Prefecture, Japan. His first name is the Japanese
character for the number "88." While he was
a student at Waseda University in Tokyo, he was a member
of the New Orleans Jazz Club, which created the foundation
of his love for jazz. After graduating, he worked for
Nippon Phonogram (the current Universal Music) for eight
years. There he established the East Wind label, for
which he produced many jazz artists including The Great
Jazz Trio (Hank Jones), Sadao Watanabe, and Terumasa
Hino. He produced Joe Sample's album "The Three"
which employed direct cutting. That and others remain
audiophile favorites today.
In 1978, he joined CBS/SONY, where he oversaw foreign
jazz artists including Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock,
and Weather Report along with domestic artists. In 1995
he took charge of the Legacy & Jazz division and
Asian marketing. From 1999 he was additionally responsible
for managing the recording division, and oversaw development
of SACD (Super Audio CD) and the design and creation
of Sony Music Entertainment's new recording studio in
Nogizaka, Tokyo. He now oversees the Sony/Village imprint,
Eighty-Eights.
Thus far in his career, he has directly produced more
than 350 albums worldwide, and overseen the production
of over 3,000 albums while working in the popular music
division.
Here's Part One of our interview with the legendary
producer:
How
did the East Wind label get started?
The Golden era of jazz during the '60s was thought to
be over and jazz was on the wane in the U.S. during
the '70s. Starting at the beginning of the '70s, major
labels were no longer doing jazz projects and we thought
it was an opportune time to record and highlight jazz
artists that had been ignored or major jazz artists
who were no longer being recorded. We did not want to
distinguish between Japanese or U.S. artists. We just
wanted to re-discover or even discover new artists whose
artistry would be appreciated not just in Japan, but
also internationally.
There was a company called Ai Music, whose primary business
was artist management and promotion. They managed some
of the biggest Japanese jazz artists at the time. Most
of these artists were CBS Sony artists. Kiyoshi Itoh,
who was a director of jazz A&R at CBS Sony and personally
dealt with these artists, had just quit CBS Sony to
join Ai Music. He was going to continue to produce records
for these artists, this time for Ai Music. It so happens
that the records of a pianist, who was one of the artists
represented by Ai Music, were already being distributed
by Nippon Phonogram. (Nippon Phonogram was the Japanese
subsidiary of Phonogram, which was Philips record division).
With these relationships already in place, creating
a new record label came naturally with Nippon Phonogram
in charge of distribution. I was working for Nippon
Phonogram and I was assigned to work on this new record
label project. I already had a working relationship
with Mr. Itoh and Mr. Morisaki. What was happening then
is not unlike what is happening today. People were leaving
major labels to continue producing projects for independent
labels.
Was
there a unifying concept or underlying philosophy for
the line?
At the very beginning, our goal was to create a label
that was not just for the Japanese market, but a label
that would be international. One of the things we wanted
to emphasize was album cover design. We were heavily
influenced by the album covers of CTI. Their jazz covers
during the '60s were shocking to us. We wanted to create
new and innovative covers for our jazz albums in that
vein. For example, for the Live at Village Vanguard
albums, we wanted to experiment and use a baseball theme,
even though it was unrelated to jazz. The music of Hank
Jones, Ron Carter and Tony Williams was really fast-paced
and had a sense of speed and rhythm. We also wanted
an image that represented something American. The image
of Major League Baseball in the U.S. (as contrasted
with the Japanese professional league) seemed to capture
this idea and the awe and respect we had for their music.
How did you meet David Baker
and what led you to work with him?
We were introduced to David Baker, who was the
Chief Engineer at Vanguard Studios, by one of
Ai Music’s artist / pianist who knew him.
That is why we recorded often at Vanguard Studios
in New York. We also had David come to Japan to
work on a few projects and we got to know him
very well. In our recordings, we wanted the rich,
“American” sound and we learned a
lot from David. David was Yoshihiro Suzuki's (engineer
from Nippon Phonogram) mentor. David not only
taught us about recording techniques but about
American culture and thought processes. David
Baker was a very important and key member of the
East Wind team. Because of his vast experience
including producing, David actively helped us
during the record production process in helping
us realize plans and ideas that were in our producer's
heads.
How
well do you think the albums stand up after 30
years?
We recently converted all the masters to the DSD
format and I was able to attend the conversion
process. Quite frankly, I was not really pleased
with the CD sound on the previous release and
I wanted to make sure the DSD conversion accurately
reflected the original sound. The engineers at
the label were pretty stubborn and did not want
us to touch or modify the masters. For the LPs,
we worked with a really great cutting engineer,
Tohru Kotetsu, who cut all the East Wind LPs.
Yasohachi "88" Itoh and David Baker
photo by John Abbott
We remembered
the sound that we created back then because we consciously
adjusted the EQ and levels during the cutting process.
If you compared the LP to the CD, it clearly sounded
different. We had to get past the engineer’s preconceivednotion.
So we took the engineers to listen to the LPs at a well-known
jazz bar called Bassie's and A/B’ed the LP and
CD. By convincing the engineers and touching up the
masters, we were able to bring the sound closer to what
we remembered during the DSD conversion process. We
remastered all 70 titles that way. I think the recording
still sounds fresh today. The tension of the session
is there and the quality still stands up. Even though
the recording is 30 years old, it sounds like today’s
product. It is a testament to the fine engineering work
done by David Baker, Yoshihiro Suzuki and Tohru Kotetsu.
What do you think of the re-release on
Test of Time Records?
We are very happy about it and I’m sure the musicians
are happy to see these albums released in the United
States.
Listof
key East Wind personnel:
Toshinari Koinuma – President of Ai Music and
executive producer
Nobuya Itoh – President of Nippon Phonogram and
executive producer
Kiyoshi Itoh – Producer (Ai Music)
Yasohachi “88” Itoh – Producer (Nippon
Phonogram)
Yukio Morisaki – Planning and promotion (Ai Music)
David Baker – Engineer
Yoshihiro Suzuki – Engineer (Nippon Phonogram)
Tohru Kotetsu – Mastering engineer for vinyl LP
(JVC)
Part Two of the Yasohachi "88"
Interview coming soon!
