Not Missing a Beat

FEBRUARY SHOULD HAVE marked the start of a fantastic year for Jazzology, the nation's oldest extant independent jazz label. The 56-year-old company had just published its first catalog in four years, a 160-page monster so heavy it couldn't be used as a prospecting tool. (It's included in customers' orders.) Jazzbeat, the company's quarterly magazine, was well into its 15th year of publication. And the preliminaries to the New Orleans Mardi Gras and Jazzfest celebrations had heightened interest in the traditional jazz recordings that are the firm's bread and butter.

In late August, all the momentum the company had built came to a halt.

“The hurricane put a stop to us,” says founder George H. Buck Jr. “We were about ready to do a new [issue of Jazzbeat] and that was when the storm hit. So we didn't get it out until sometime in October, which delayed everything. Our anniversary issue, due in the middle of October, won't be out until mid-March. Our printing company was flooded.”

Unlike other New Orleans direct marketers, Jazzology has continued to rely on the U.S. Postal Service, even though the main postal processing office in the city hasn't reopened. Before Katrina, the USPS picked up the company's packages from its office two or three times a week. Now, twice a week, office manager Houcine Harrabi brings 40 to 50 orders, including sales both to individuals as well as distributors, to a post office in Metairie, LA, nearly 10 miles from Jazzology's French Quarter location.

Fortunately, Jazzology's customers live throughout the United States, which means a good chunk of what the company sends out can ultimately reach its intended recipients. Of the magazine's 9,000 subscribers, only 159 live in the ZIP codes to which the USPS has been flat-out refusing to send periodicals. But those customers who were able to receive the new issue and realize that Jazzology was still functioning responded with orders.

When a new issue of Jazzbeat comes out, the number of packages the firm mails typically spikes to between 150 and 200 packages two or three times a week.

“Right now it's very slow because the last issue was out in October,” Buck says. It's supposed to be every three months. It'll be about six months before the next issue comes out. Right now we're at the low point.”

The sporadic incoming mail service hasn't helped, either. The company does have a Web site (www.jazzology.com), but still, 60% of the orders generated by a new issue of Jazzology come via traditional mail. But this may be shifting since Mardi Gras gave a boost to the site. According to Harrabi, media coverage before and during Mardi Gras that featured local jazz generated “tons” of orders in a two-day period.

“First class mail has been very, very poor,” says Buck. “We get one delivery today, and the next three or four days, no deliveries. But that's improved a little, because in the beginning we weren't getting anything by mail. We were lucky to get one delivery every two weeks. And, of course, they aren't delivering magazines. So although our magazine has been received by people in California and so forth, it has not been received by people here in New Orleans.”