Russell posed the following questions to magazine editor Chris Wells:
Q: If our
[Bebop Spoken Here] memory serves, Echoes started out as a tabloid-sized
newspaper with the reader ending up with messy fingers from the news print!
Tell me about
it! I bought the very first copy as a spotty teenager [and soul fan] up in
York, and have had filthy fingers ever since. Actually, I’ve been up in the
loft this past month… er, I mean, sifting through the extensive Echoes archive,
and the memories [of grubby finger-ends] came flooding back. But we’ve been a
glossy monthly since 2000 and, of course, we have a lovely website: echoesmagazine.co.uk,
now. Very modern.
Q: What was
your initial motivation forty years ago?
Money. Well,
it was for the guys who started it – two magazine publishers who spotted a hole
in the market for a kind of ‘NME of black music’. They were not fans of the
music, even though the writers were. Soul, funk and reggae were all over the
pop charts back then and they thought a weekly paper would be more instant than
any of the competitors, which were then fortnightly and monthly.
That’s not
why I got involved back in ’84 however – I gave up a career in the law to have
some fun and let my hobby become my job. Haven’t worked a day since.
Q: Then, the
paper had an underground street feel to it. When it changed to a glossier,
‘professional’ publication did the readership demographic change?
Not much,
no. We still have a load of readers from the eighties and nineties – they
write us letters about how it used to be green fields round here, all the time.
The difference between then and now as a publication is that, then it was
instant, newsy and a fish & chip wrapper within days, whereas, since it’s
been a mag, I’ve gone for us being a more grown-up, intelligent [I hope] take
on black music across a wider spread [we were here when hip-hop was born, for
example]. It’s actually loosely based on the old Black Music magazine that IPC
used to put out in the mid-seventies, which was by far my favourite mag as a
young ‘un.
Q: Echoes has
always promoted soul music and other related genres. Jazz and its various
hyphenated offshoots – jazz-funk, acid-jazz etc – feature regularly. In
editorial meetings does it (jazz) have to fight for space in each issue?
Everything
has to fight for its space. We only have a limited number of pages and we split
the coverage roughly equally between soul, R&B, reggae, hip-hop and jazz
[with news at the front, reviews at the back, plus a bit of Northern soul]. I’m
actually a massive jazz fan myself [old and new], although I let our main jazz
guy [and Dep Ed] Kevin Le Gendre do most of the big features, simply because I
can’t do everything, and, of course, he’s a great writer on the subject.
Q: A cursory
glance at recent front covers shows that, from time to time. major jazz artists
take pride of place – Cécile McLorin Salvant (Aug 2015), David Sanborn (Apr
2015), Gregory Porter (Sep 2013). Do circulation figures hold up when the great
jazz names appear on the front cover? Is it a risk?
Doesn’t seem
to make any difference, really. Our readership is incredibly loyal – never goes
down, hardly ever goes up. We need to change that last bit. Must make a note.
Q: Forty
years! Michael Jackson, the stellar name. Any names – jazz or otherwise – Bebop
Spoken Here should be checking out in future?
Well, bearing
in mind who’s asking, we currently love Jarrod Lawson, Kamasi Washington
and Laura Perrudin. Oh, and over in sort-of souly world, a trio called King.
But there are new, mostly indie artists popping the whole time. It keeps us
very happy.
Q: Talking of
the future – Print or Online or both?
Both. Our
print model still works – just us and Private Eye, then! But we do plan to
expand the website and do a lot more there this year. Being old farts – old
farts with a mag that still pays its bills, mind – we weren’t the quickest or
the most enthusiastic to embrace social media, but we’re getting there. So
we’ll be doing that too. Honestly.
Chris
Wells.
Editor Echoes Magazine.
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