Notes on Notes
by Eli Zeger
David Himmelstein’s 1966 liner notes for jazz saxophonist Booker Ervin’s Setting the Pace are like nothing you’ve ever seen on the back of a record. It’s a gonzo diary entry from the Cold War era, documenting the author’s journey as he tagged along with a trio of players and a record producer to meet up with Ervin in Munich.
Like traveling players in a comedy of the Absurd, our arrival, by mistake, at the Friedrichstrasse station (East, not West, Berlin) pitched us headlong, center stage: an entire garrison of soldiers poured into the corridor of our coach, yelling (‘Hauptman, Hauptman’), with small arms at the ready (submachine guns, baby!), to arrest us (Yipes, we're on the wrong side of the Wall!) and trundle us onto Kafka's version of the Toonerville Trolley.
They finally arrive in Munich, where the plan is to play an evening show and record two full albums (including Setting the Pace), all before catching a flight back to Berlin the next morning. Reggie Workman goes searching around the city for an upright bass to borrow. Dexter Gordon was supposed to meet them all at the venue hours ago. “Sonny Rollins, a grey eminence, arrives collar up brim down, with wife and a hundred suitcases.”
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