Free Written in Dead Wax by Andrew Cartmel

going to require some concerted effort on my part.
    So I’ll be taking a few days off work to stay at home and go through it until it’s finished. I’ve already started and I’ll get the chaps to bring the van around tomorrow to convey the first batch to the shop. (Don’t worry, I’ll see that you get first sniff at the jazz!)
    But I know you’re eager to hear the story on Hathor Records. So here we go. I’ve had a good look through my library and I’ve been able to piece together the following.
    It was a highly regarded but very short-lived West Coast jazz label that was born and died in the same year, 1955, in Los Angeles. In the space of a few months Hathor released a total of fourteen LPs (catalogue numbers Hathor HL-001 to 014) by the following artists, in order of release: Easy Geary (first of two albums), Marty Paich, Richie Kamuca, Johnny Richards, Jerry Fielding, Russ Garcia, Cy Coleman, Howard Roberts, Rita Mae Pollini (two consecutive albums, 009 and 010), Manny Albam, Pepper Adams, Conte Candoli and of course Easy Geary, second of two albums, with
Easy Come, Easy Go
(HL-014).
    You’ll know better than I that there is some top-shelf West Coast jazz in this list (and some from the top drawer of the East, viz New York).
    Rita Mae also sings on one track, as you know, on
Easy Come, Easy Go
, and there are other crossovers in terms of personnel too numerous to mention. I’ll photocopy you a complete session discography if you’re interested.
    I felt my eyes sting. For a moment the words were too blurred to make out. Jerry wouldn’t be photocopying anything for me, or anyone else. I wiped my eyes and continued to read.
    As you can see, Easy Geary bookends Hathor’s history. Which is appropriate, since he determined their fate.
    Because, despite their impressive list of talent and strong early sales, Hathor was plagued with bad luck.
    Bobby Schoolcraft, the label owner, died a few days after recording HL-013, ominously enough.
    And Easy Geary vanished shortly after recording Hathor 14.
    As you no doubt know, his disappearance is shrouded in mystery. Some maintain Easy was shot dead in an altercation over a woman, rather in the manner of that famous jazz trumpeter. A genius cut short. Others insist that he didn’t really die at all. Like Elvis.
    He meant Lee Morgan. The jazz trumpeter genius whose life was cut short. Fanny was nudging my elbow, so I moved over and allowed her to sit in my lap. She seemed quite content for me to rest the letter on her head, so I did that and went on reading.
    Bobby Schoolcraft, as we discussed, was nominally a suicide. But all my sources are in agreement that he was actually hounded to death by a man called Ox.
    This is a nickname for a Los Angeles cop called Oliver Xavier. A murderous knucklehead of Irish extraction, Ox was notorious for preying on those elements of society who didn’t abide by his rigid moral criteria, which is to say just about everyone except other Irish-American cops.
    He was in the pay of the music companies, who used him as their “hammer man”, or enforcer. If one of their recording artists got out of line or tried to free themselves from an onerous contract, Ox was used to put the fear of god into them.
    There was a sudden unearthly screeching outside in the night. Fanny jumped off my lap, alarmed, and stood tensely on the floor. The ghoulish, tortured shrieking came again. It was unmistakably the barking of a fox. This is what we’d have to make do with in London until someone managed to successfully import the jackal.
    While Fanny paced nervously back and forth, I went back to the letter.
    Easy Geary had the misfortune of awakening the wrath of these people, and of Ox, when he put out his first album for Hathor. Fatefully, it was entitled
Easy Geary Plays Burns Hobartt
.
    Jerry then went off on a tangent about the Davenport cousins. “Nasty pieces of work”, he called them. It was a virtual tirade. It was touching to see how angry they made