Mo’ Wax — Where Are They Now: David Axelrod (2001)
Mo’ Wax was a record label started by James Lavelle in 1992, which closed about ten years later. Initially they released 12" singles and licensed a compilation from Japan of Japanese Hip Hop, until 1994 when they began releasing albums of their artists original work. While some of these artists such as DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, and Money Mark continued releasing music after Mo’ Wax closed, others have seemingly disappeared from the music scene. In this series I will look at each artist on Mo’ Wax and try to find out where are they now…
David Axelrod was born April 17, 1931 and his career spanned from the late 1950’s until his death on February 5, 2017. In 2001 he released his final solo album on Mo’ Wax.
In 1950, aged 19, David Axelrod met the Jazz pianist Gerald Wiggins and the pair became friends, with Wiggins teaching Axelrod how to read music, and introducing him to people such as Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson. Following several jobs working for record labels in their promotions and sales departments, Axelrod was hired as the sales manager at Motif Records, a record label which had been set up in 1956 by the oil millionaire Milton W. Vetter.
When the producer at Motif was fired, Axelrod was promoted to their position and he brought in his friend Gerald Wiggins, which led to the release of Reminiscin’ With Wig in 1957, David Axelrod’s earliest credit is as producer. Motif Records existed as a tax write off so Axelrod was given freedom to do whatever he wanted, and he also allowed to work for other labels at the same time, as long as he produced four records at Motif each year “to keep it legal”. After landing a job with Speciality Records, Axelrod brought in The Gerald Wiggins Trio and produced their 1958 album Music From Around The World In 80 Days In Modern Jazz, before Axelrod moved to HiFi Records where he produced Jerry Wiggins Wiggin’ Out and Harold Land’s The Fox, with both released in 1960.
The Fox gave David Axelrod a reputation for the way it merged the “sound of New York hard bop with the cooler vibe of West Coast jazz”, and when he was introduced to the Jazz saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, Adderley recognised Axelrod’s name, exclaiming “Ah ha! The Fox! I knew our paths would cross some day!” Adderley soon signed to Capitol Records and when he was asked who he wanted to work with he told them David Axelrod, leading to Axelrod signing to Capitol as a producer, which was a dream come true for him.
In 1966 Cannonball and Axelrod had a hit with Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, recorded for Cannonball’s album Mercy, Mercy, Mercy! Live at “The Club”, released that same year. While the title suggests otherwise, the album was recorded in a studio by Axelrod, with an audience enjoying an open bar. The single reached #11 in the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart, while the album went #1 on Billboard R&B Charts, #13 on the Billboard Top 200, and won Cannonball the Best Instrumental Jazz Performance for the 1967 Grammy awards.
David Axelrod had produced the theme for The Man From U.N.C.L.E., a television series starring David McCallum which ran for four seasons between 1964–1968, and Axelrod brought McCallum to Capitol, and produced his debut album Music — A Part Of Me in 1966, as well as his next three albums which were all released in 1967. While many of the songs were instrumental renditions of current hits, such as I Can’t Get No Satisfaction, or the Batman Theme, there were originals as well, such as Axelrod’s The Edge, an instrumental which appeared on McCallum’s second album Music: A Bit More Of Me. Regarding The Edge and his work with McCallum, Axelrod explained:
…we could give McCallum anything we wanted, ’cause we knew he was going to sell records…[The Edge was about] Third-world countries. There are these areas of ramshackle houses that stretch for miles. People actually live in the containers used to ship Coca Cola bottles. It’s terrible. I saw it in San Juan. I thought that it couldn’t get much poorer than South Central, L.A. Well, guess what — dirt streets and these “Coca Cola shacks” for miles. That was “The Edge” — the edge of the world. Where else can you go?
In 1968 two albums were released by The Electric Prunes which were composed by David Axelrod. The first, Mass In F Minor, peaked at #197 in Billboards Top 200, and while Axelrod was asked to return, The Electric Prunes had since disbanded. But as their record label owned the bands name The Electric Prunes continued to release albums and Release Of An Oath arrived at the end of 1968, again composed by Axelrod. Both of these albums were released by Reprise Records, and after the success of Mass In F Minor Alan Livingston, the head of Capitol, demanded a solo album from David Axelrod.
In 1968 David Axelrod arranged and composed his debut solo album Songs of Innocence, and following its release he reportedly received a fan letter from The Beatles, with George Harrrison hoping to sign Axelrod to The Beatles’ Apple record label. Songs of Innocence is notably one of the first to be termed “Jazz Fusion”, but overall suffered from poor promotion. Reportedly Voyle Gilmore, a producer at Capitol Records, was afraid that if Songs of Innocence got too popular Axelrod wouldn’t want to produce any more records for them, and he is said to have “killed off” the record by telling Capitol staff not to promote it. Something similar would happen later in 1972 when Axelrod had moved to Decca/MCA and was releasing his fifth album The Auction. David Axelrod spoke with Wax Poetics about The Auction in a career spanning interview and explained:
That’s the greatest album I’ve ever done in my life. They had so many orders in the first week; it would have changed my life. It was gonna be a smash-hit album. Joe Sutton, who had signed me, decided he wanted to be the [next] president of the label. What a time to cheese off the president of the label. “Couldn’t you have waited, you stupid fuck?” Because every distributor got these faxes — they had these Telex machines at the distribution centers — “Do not release David Axelrod’s The Auction without my permission.” It was signed [by president] Mike Maitland. He could not let Joe Sutton have a big hit while Joe Sutton and he were duking it out to be president of MCA.
Decca produced a 34 minute filmstrip to promote the album, and advertisements appeared in Cash Box, Jet, and Billboard. The Auction was given high praise by Billboard who called it “surely one of the finest conceptual albums of recent years”, but as Axelrod tells it the album was killed, and Wax Poetics wrote that when people find copies of The Auction at record stores they “often shows up sealed — a sign of a record never getting a true release”.
These weren’t his only works to get under-promoted across his career and, following the release of his ninth album Marchin’ in 1980, there was a thirteen year gap before Axelrod released another solo album, before returning with Requiem — The Holocaust in 1993. Again, Axelrod found himself the victim of office politics, and his label is said to have only given the album a limited release. Regardless, they let him record another album, and Requiem was to be followed by The Big Country in 1995, the eleventh David Axelrod album. But outside of a promo it remained unreleased until almost ten years later.
During the 1990’s many of David Axelrod’s productions found themselves reborn as samples on Hip Hop records, perhaps most famously by Dr Dre, who used The Edge from Axelrod’s work with David McCallum, reimagining it on his 2000 hit The Next Episode. Axelrod later thanked Dre for the royalty payments, telling his audience during a concert, “I’m such a hypocrite…I hate sampling because it takes jobs away from musicians, but it allows me to have fun. It’s screw-you money.” Other groups to sample David Axelrod included De La Soul, Wu-Tang Clan, A Tribe Called Quest, and DJ Shadow.
Josh Davis, aka DJ Shadow, had found David Axelrod’s Songs Of Experience while digging for records at Rare Records in Sacramento, and he became a fan, playing it to his friends including James Lavelle. In 1993 when James Lavelle and DJ Shadow met in person for the first time, Shadow was listening to some music which caught Lavelle’s ear. It was David Axelrod.
Shadow would sample Alexrod’s The Human Abstract on his song Midnight in a Perfect World which appeared on Shadow’s debut album Endtroducing in 1996, and they would eventually meet in 1998 while Shadow produced Psyence Fiction, the debut album of James Lavelle’s UNKLE project. Lavelle and Shadow asked Axelrod to remix UNKLE’s Rabbit in Your Headlights, and they became friends, with Axelrod telling the Daily Telegraph in June 2001, “[DJ Shadow] knows more about my career than I do…he calls me up about these records that I don’t remember doing. He tells me ‘Your name’s on them’ and I say, ‘I don’t give a damn, I didn’t do that’, then he sends them to me and I remember everything”.
Following the release of his Rabbit In Your Headlights remix in October 1998, James Lavelle asked Axelrod about releasing an album on Mo’ Wax, and it was reported in October 1999 that Axelrod planned to record a new album with a full orchestra.
In 2000 David Axelrod’s old manager Lenny Poncher mailed him an acetate of an unreleased project from 1968 which was recorded prior to the release of his debut Songs of Experience. The album had been intended for the Electric Prunes, who Axelrod had composed two albums for previously in 1968, and was based on Goethe’s Faust, with lyrics written by Steve Poncher, the son of Lenny Poncher. While the lyrics were never recorded, Lenny Poncher bought the rights to the album with plans to finish it, but Faust remained unreleased.
After hearing the acetate Axelrod had no plans to release it either, with DJ Shadow later explaining, “When it arrives, David is hard-pressed to remember much about it, and aside from being a pleasant enough encapsulation of time, he is more interested in continuing his new projects. So, the acetate sits some more”
James Lavelle had interviewed David Axelrod for the British magazine Dazed & Confused in their 50th issue, released January 1999, and Brian Cross, aka B+, was assigned to photograph Axelrod for the magazine. The two became friends, and when Axelrod called him to tell him about the acetate, he changed his mind about whether or not to release it, as he would later recall:
I called B+ and said, “Listen to this. You’re going to crack up laughing.” He didn’t laugh at all. He said, “You better make a cassette and you better do it quick because that acetate isn’t going to take but a few more plays.” So I made a cassette. The next thing I know is he flies up, plays it for Josh [Davis], who then calls me and wants to make a record. I said, “Are you joking? It’s fucking from 1968? This is 2000. You must be nuts!” Then…Terri [Axelrod’s wife] said, “You have to play this for James.” I knew James; he had been coming around for a while.
After James Lavelle heard the tape he wanted to release it on Mo’ Wax, with recording sessions booked soon after at Capitol Records’ Studio B, where Axelrod had made many of his earlier recordings. Also returning were many of the original musicians who had worked with Axelrod, including vocalist Lou Rawls for what was their first collaboration in thirty years. Other guests dropped by the studio to visit, including Eothen “Egon” Alapatt and Madlib from Stones Throw Records, who visited Axelrod’s recording sessions for a feature in The Fader magazine where Egon would write:
The session musicians start piling in. All of them are fifty-five plus — some look like they’re over seventy. All are legends, most played on all of Axe’s records. Incredible…Axe had just finished composing the piece before he arrived at the studio. The music was transcribed into its component parts as he finished the previous day’s work…Seeing the session musicians blow through that piece was incredible. These people had never seen this music before, but they record it live — in one take. All fifteen of them. And they nail it. Axe, headphones cupping his ears, stands in the room with the musicians, in the center taking it all in.
Two new compositions were recorded, including The Little Children featuring Ras Kass, an MC who had previously rapped over Axelrod samples for the Diamond D Remix of Soul On Ice. Kass would later recall the sessions fondly:
It was surreal, with a choir. Ain’t no keyboard, there’s 50 children singin’, and he’s writin’ and directin’. It was amazing. The fact that he deemed me worthy artistically…It was an honor and a blessing…A full-piece orchestra, a full-piece children’s choir, David Axelrod — and me. What the fuck. [Laughs] In the big studio in Capitol. I was just so happy that he felt I captured the essence of what he was tryin’ to say. That meant a lot to me.
Other than The Little Children, the album contained one other new song alongside the rescored originals which appeared on the lost acetate, with Lou Rawls appearing on Loved Boy, a song about Axelrod’s son who died in 1971. The reason these new songs were written was because two songs were left off the original acetate, and Axelrod has suggested there may have been a second acetate made in 1968 with more on it.
Initially James Lavelle had been afraid that Axelrod wouldn’t be able to create something to match his previous work, telling the Independent in 2014 “My greatest fear was what I call ‘the jazzmatazz scenario’…When great producers and artists from the past try to make new records, they tend to go about it the wrong way. Rather than trying to bring people ‘up to date’ you need to focus on whatever it was that person did which still makes them sound contemporary.” Likewise, David Axelrod had his own doubts, telling Wax Poetics, “I thought to myself, “This is going to be hard. I have to make it so it sounds like 2001. The twenty-first century.” And you know what? It does.”
Both Axelrod and Lavelle were happy with the record, and Mo’Wax released David Axelrod’s new self-titled album on July 16 2001, with nine songs, seven based on the acetate recorded in 1968, and the two new songs which open and closed the album. Across the nine songs the album was a mix of old and new, with new scores written for the old songs, as the acetate had only contained a rhythm track, and Axelrod’s original scores for the horns and strings were all lost.
For the release, Mo’ Wax also created an enhanced CD version featuring an interview with David Axelrod, where he said “I’m not sure why I’m relevant today and what is really going on, but whatever it is, I’ll take it.” The album also included linear notes from DJ Shadow where he explained the meaning behind many of the new song titles, writing:
“Jimmy T’ stands for Jimmy Tolbert, “a very dear old friend” who helped Axelrod kick a debilitating drug habit. The president of Fantasy Records, Ralph Kaffei is the namesake for track four and “another dear old friend.” Since sampling has done much to reintroduce David’s vision, he feels it only appropriate to name check two of his favourite beat heads, “The Doctor & the Diamond,” as in east coast producer Diamond and celebrated pioneer Dr. Dre. Brian Cross, photographer to the stars and Axelrod’s personal valet, gets the name drop on “Big B+”. “For Land’s Sake” is a nod to one of the great tenor players, Harold Land. Lastly, “The Shadow Knows” goes out to this writer, who has been known to adopt an alias or two.
The Guinness World Records awarded the album the record for the longest time it took to record, thirty two years, but it was surpassed in 2004 when Brian Wilson finished his Smile album, which had been started in 1966. Regardless of its status as a World Record holder, the album was reviewed very well, and entered the UK Charts, peaking at #2 in the Independent Albums Chart Top 50, and #148 in the Top 200 Albums, outside of the Official Top 100. In the press Muzik gave it 5/5, All Music 4/5, Pitchfork 7.9/10, Spin 9/10, NME 3.5/5, and 8/10 by Drowned In Sound who wrote:
It may have taken him three decades, but perhaps David Axelrod has finally found his spiritual home on Lavelle’s label, surrounded by those who appreciate his music and have the ability to take it to new and exciting places.
Following his album for Mo’ Wax, 2003 saw the release of David Axelrod’s 1995 album The Big Country, which followed a series of reissues and anthologies of his work during the early 2000’s, and in 2005 when Billboard asked Axelrod if there were anymore unreleased gems hidden away, he replied, “I really don’t know. But there’s more than I thought. I know Universal has a lot, because I did a lot of writing for them.” Axelrod had previously mentioned an unreleased album recorded in 1981, and his website listed three unreleased solo albums from 1981–1987, but little else is known about them.
Regarding new music, in 2001 while promoting his album on Mo’ Wax David Axelrod revealed he would be working on at least one song for DJ Shadow’s next album, and that Ralph Kaffei, president of Fantasy Records, had recently called him to offer a new project to work on. Shadow released The Private Press in 2002 with no appearance from David Axelrod, but Axelrod continued to work on his other project, telling a reporter that there would be an album released by him in 2005 featuring arrangements of other people’s music, which fits the description of the project with Ralph Kaffei. This project remains unreleased, though Axelrod did confirm that he was still writing in 2005, creating recordings of himself humming notes for future work, but it’s unclear at this point if anything was intended for release, as he explained in 2011, “It doesn’t need to be anything that’s gonna be concrete or done…It’s just writing. It’s just to keep your mind active physically. You’ve got to stay in shape.”
In February 2017 David Axelrod passed away, aged 83, with tributes soon appearing online from friends, fans and people who had worked with him, including DJ Shadow, Madlib, Pete Rock, Biz Markie, and Gilles Peterson, among others.
For his part James Lavelle joined Giles Peterson to play a tribute mix on Worldwide FM, and in September of that year, James Lavelle hosted a series of shows under his Daydreaming banner which included a String Ensemble Tribute to David Axelrod. Lavelle explained at the time, “I put out David Axelrod’s last record. He was a very big inspiration in my musical career. He made some of the most sampled records in hip hop history…so it seemed fitting to do this.”
With contributions to seminal releases from David McCallum, Lou Rawls, Cannonball Adderley, and The Electric Prunes during the 1960’s alone, David Axelrod has left an incredible legacy of work, contributing writing or production to over 200 releases according to Discogs, not to mention all of his work which has been sampled.
But outside of further reissues of his classic works, and a live album recorded in 2004, nothing new has arrived since his 2001 album on Mo’ Wax, and it’s unclear if, following his death in 2017, anything new will appear at all.
