I first became familiar with Dave Stapleton’s work around the time he was founding Edition Records. At that point, the label’s co-founder, journalist and photographer Tim Dickeson, was already a regular visitor to the Belgrade Jazz Festival, and we spent many wonderful evenings in jazz gatherings together—both in Serbia and at various festivals across Europe.
Phronesis, as one of the early and most significant bands on the label, performed in Belgrade with their then very current album Alive. I received various CDs from the label’s early days.
Later, Tim stepped away from the record business, while Dave continued along a path of growing success. The Edition catalogue gradually began to bring together increasingly prominent names, combining artists like Potter, Holland, and McCaslin with emerging younger voices.
In this conversation, Dave Stapleton talks about the key milestones in the life of Edition Records, his business philosophy, the challenges facing jazz publishing today, as well as his own creative work—let us not forget that Dave is first and foremost a musician, who only recently released an album titled Quiet Fire under his own name.
