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Cadence

Cadence was the long-running project of record producer and jazz critic Bob Rusch. Having published more than 43,000 pages across 35 years of publication, reviewed some 30,000 items, and interviewed hundreds of musicians, Cadence was one of the most significant and important jazz periodicals of the late twentieth century.

Robert (Bob) D. Rusch (1943-2024) studied clarinet and drums in his youth and in his early twenties taught in a private school in Brooklyn. [About this period, see articles elsewhere.] Rusch began contributing to jazz journals in the late 1960s, first in Hip and Jazz Digest, then Down Beat and the London-based Jazz Journal and Jazz Forum. Most of these early contributions were reviews – records, books, magazines – laying the foundation of a large, indexed library of jazz and blues literature from which he drew upon during his editorship of Cadence. 

Cadence’s changing subtitles provide some indication of the editorial scope of the journal. Beginning as "The American review of music" for the first four issues, Cadence’s purview initially included jazz, blues, “as well as come of the finer points of rock, country, and so-called classical music” [Cadence 1, no. 1: 1]. In the fifth issue (May 1976), this was narrowed as "The American review of jazz & blues." Later, in January 1989 this was clarified: "The review of jazz & blues: creative improvised music" before concluding as simply "The independent journal of creative improvised music"  for its final four years. These three terms – creative, improvised, music – wind their way through Rusch’s various descriptions of Cadence’s scope, which incorporates experimental and avant-garde genres.

Two primary goals can be seen in each issue. First, a review of recent jazz publications across many media formats, including recordings (new and reissues), books, video formats, and more. Rusch described this as the “documentation” aspect of Cadence – to record and comment upon recent jazz publications and recordings. These reviews were largely contributed by outside correspondents, a large and rotating group of well-known critics, writers, scholars, and collectors. Rusch did not enforce an editorial policy upon the reviewers; as noted by Michael Steinman, Rusch encouraged iconoclasm.

The second function was the oral histories. Each issue contained at least one, often two or more of these transcribed interviews, taken by Rusch and/or his colleagues. The subjects were largely jazz and blues musicians, sometimes prominent or well-known artists, but more often those less well-known to the general listening public, but who had long and interesting careers. Rusch likened his interviewing approach to the method of his subjects. “Interviews are rather similar to improvisations. A good interviewer uses just enough familiar materials (clichés, if you will) to give the listener bearings and, with these, creates strong original statements… Interviews with creative improvising artists demonstrate both the similarity of their situations and the individuality of each artist’s experiences and reactions to them.” [Bob Rusch, Jazz Talk: The Cadence Interviews (Secaucus, N.J.: Lyle Stuart, 1984): 12] Over the course of publication, Cadence published interviews with nearly a thousand musicians, beginning with Freddy Hubbard and Muddy Waters (issues 1 and 2 respectively) and spanning musicians from the entire twentieth century, around the jazz world, and across styles and genres. 

Cadence was fairly regular with its columns and departments. “News - Short Takes” provided reader-contributed information; “Cadence and You” was Rusch’s editorial column; “Book Look,” “Reviews,” and “Reissues” provided significant reviews of recent publications, along with similarly titled columns for video and audio in variously-available formats. “Hodgepodge & Shorties” was devoted to shorter, often themed reviews of jazz recordings or publications. Over time, the “Cadence Record Sale” came to comprise many pages, listing thousands of records which were available directly from Cadence. Classified advertisements were at the end of each issue. 

At the beginning of 2012, Cadence was sold to David Haney who has continued its publication as a quarterly with an annual issue.

"Frustrated with the lack of published coverage of truly creative music, Robert Rusch founded Cadence magazine in 1975 to give a voice to avant-garde artists who were working hard to advance the state of contemporary music. Its format has remained relatively steady over a quarter century. Each issue features two or three interviews with creative musicians, along with a great number of reissue and new-release reviews. The center section of each issue contains a list of thousands of recordings."

Todd S. Jenkins, Free Jazz and Free Improvisation: An Encyclopedia (2004)

Discography Traditional Jazz