Jazz Funk Masterpiece reissued for the first time Worldwide.
For every celebrated record in jazz, soul, and related music, there are probably thousands more with all the genius for which widespread recognition never came or was delayed.
In 1976 Dana Kaproff released one of the most wanted jazz-funk albums recorded in Los Angeles.
A jazz fusion record for the discerning connoisseur. Tight drums and well-programmed synths. Excellent production and recording. Fans of 70s Herbie Hancock, George Duke, Weather Report, funky library records... heads up.

Licensed by Dana Kaproff
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Where were you born?

I was born in Los Angeles.

Your music backgrounds?

I studied piano from age 8 and asked for blank music notation paper by age 10 to start writing down ideas. In my senior year in high school, I put on a concert of my own songs featuring what would turn out to be key members of the band Toto, including David Paich, Jeff Pocaro and Steve Pocaro.
I’m a classically trained composer, conductor, arranger, and orchestrator, and studied at both the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and UC Berkeley. I also studied music composition privately with Andrew Imbrie and Paul Chihara.
I grew up in a musical family. My father was an esteemed cellist, both as a Los Angeles studio musician and a classically performing artist. He was the principal cellist for Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, and John Barry to name a few, and played on many famous records by Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, the Beach Boys, the Bee Gees, Lionel Ritchie, and many many more. Goldsmith and Bernstein were close family friends and were over at my parent's house often.
By age 20 I was working professionally in the film scoring industry, orchestrating for Stu Phillips, Elmer Bernstein, and Ernest Gold. I got my first gig composing the score for a television show, Ellery Queen, in 1975 and have continued scoring films. I’ve written the scores of over 100 films and hundreds of hours of tv and cable episodes. Please see my IMDB profile for details

How the opportunity arose to record the album in 1976 ?

I had written a collection of instrumental tunes that I knew would be the basis for an album. Once they were all completed, I began the task of finding the necessary musicians, recording studio and engineer, and financing (my parents put up the money, bless them!).
I’d become friends with the trumpet player on my album, Judd Miller, from my UCLA days, and he was instrumental (excuse the pun) in helping me find the other musicians I needed, especially Rocky Davis (keyboards) and Joel Peskin (sax) and John Goux (guitar). It was Rocky who guided me toward the bass player and recording studio (Dirk Dalton). Not sure if the drummer was a recommendation of Dirk’s or someone else.

Memories of recording sessions

We had a few rehearsals of all the material in Rocky’s garage over a couple of weeks. Then we had our few days in Dirk Dalton’s recording studio in Santa Monica, California. The recording sessions went very well, and we managed to get all the necessary various takes on everybody’s performances to finalize the album. Dirk and I then spent a week or more mixing everything.

How was it received at the time?

I started shopping the album around and got interest from Brendan Cahill, who was Vice President of Creative Affairs at Universal Television at the time. Unfortunately, my agent wanted a deal that Universal wasn’t willing to make, and they passed. Listening to my agent’s advice at the time was one of my biggest career regrets and haunted me to this day! No other label took an interest. The feedback I kept getting was that there wasn’t an obvious genre that the album fit into, so they wouldn’t have a successful marketing approach.

In that period of 1976, was the album presented live?

The album was never presented live, and the musicians all went their own ways. I did, however, continue to work extensively with Joel Peskin, Judd Miller and John Goux on many soundtracks. There’s been recent interest in my soundtrack to the television series The Amazing Spiderman from 1978 and Peskin played the lead on the theme.

Curious stories surrounding the recording sessions

When I was finalizing the album, I knew I’d need cover art, and I asked an old high school friend, writer/director Laurence Starkmann to do the design and photography. At the time, I was living in a one-bedroom house in Venice, California, and had decorated it with tons of living indoor plants of all sizes and shapes. Laurence did the photo shoot in my home, and I went with the “sexy” look. In hindsight, I could have been more circumspect, but I was young 20’s and full of myself.
I was working with a then-unknown but soon-to-be-famous television producer, Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues, LA Law etc.), and gave him an album. When he saw the cover, he grimaced. Oh well.

Other memories you want to share?

It was only well after the fact that I found out that jazz trumpeter Blue Mitchell had done a cover of the tune Sandstone.
Over the many years since its release, I’ve been surprised by the interest and the vinyl market. I’m extremely proud of what I created and produced, but I never imagined that so many years later people worldwide would be looking for the album!

Dana Kaproff