[Dixielandjazz] Ozzie Cadena

[Don Mopsick]

Stan wrote:

<<If you have any Savoy recordings from the 50s, check the producer's name.
It's quite possible that the producer was Ozzie Cadena. Jazz fans seldom
note the producers of their CDs and LPs, yet they are the men and women who
originate, guide and, in many instances, assure the quality of recording
sessions. Ozzie was one of them. Ozzie was a regular caller to my radio. He
would tell me of jazz events in the local area which got little publicity
other than his phone calls. He died a few days ago on Wednesday. His
obituary in today's Los Angeles Times is below.>>

I knew Ozzie Cadena. He had an impact on my life as a musician.

As a student at Rutgers University in the early 1970s, I came to know Ozzie
as the owner of the Grab Bag record store on Albany St. in New Brunswick,
NJ. He sold mint condition shrink-wrapped copies of old Savoy bop LPs of
which I bought many. He held jam sessions in the back of the store at night
in which I participated. I was an aspiring trumpet player back then. 

One day Ozzie hired me to overdub some tracks of the organist Charles
Earland that he had produced some years earlier. He wanted horn backgrounds
for the tracks and I was also to write the arrangements. The other horn on
the date was tenorist Dave Schnitter. It was my first recording session. I
was 21 years old. 

You can hear me on the finished session to this day, the versions released
are the ones I played on with Schnitter. I was never credited for playing or
writing the charts. I didn't care, I was paid. 

It was after that session that I started to play the tuba and found work in
the NY area with Dixieland bands like the Smith St. Society. I told Ozzie of
my new interest and he asked me, derisively, "Why?" Bop pioneers like Ozzie
had no use for anything having to do with old jazz. 

It was shortly after that that Ozzie and his family moved out to LA. I never
saw him again, but my former college roommate Rich Seidel, who also knew
Ozzie from those days and went on to become the President of Verve Records,
told me that Ozzie had made the trip back to NY several times to pitch him
on several projects. I don't know whether they were produced. 

mopo