The Revolution Will Be Recorded: The Flying Dutchman Story

By David Johnson

Posted March 3, 2025

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From 1969 to 1975 producer Bob Thiele released landmark recordings by a wide array of jazz artists such as Gil Scott-Heron, Louis Armstrong, Oliver Nelson, Duke Ellington and others on his own record label.

Oliver Nelson leading a big band in performance of his composition “Self-Help Is Needed,” featuring Frank Strozier on alto saxophone, from Nelson’s 1970 album Black, Brown and Beautiful, recorded for Bob Thiele’s Flying Dutchman label. We also heard an excerpt from a spoken-word album by scholar and activist Angela Davis, released by Flying Dutchman in 1971--both recordings reflecting some of the Black pride content that is now associated with the label’s legacy.

As the 1960s came to a close, producer Bob Thiele was ready to head in a new but familiar direction. Thiele had started his own record label while he was still a teenager, recording artists such as Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins in the early 1940s. He’d gone on to work for Decca and its Coral label in the 1950s, producing pop artists such as the McGuire Sisters and helping to catapult the young rock ‘n roller Buddy Holly to his brief-lived fame.

Thiele made his biggest impact in the 1960s helming a series of landmark albums by John Coltrane, as well as notable recordings by Oliver Nelson, Archie Shepp, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler,and other jazz greats. But Thiele did not see eye-to-eye with the president of Impulse’s parent company ABC Records Larry Newton, who infamously tried to abort the session in which Louis Armstrong was waxing “What a Wonderful World”—a song co-written by Thiele—on the grounds that it was sure to be a flop. Thiele won that battle, but soon afterwards resigned and started up his own label, Flying Dutchman, which continued to document some of the artists Thiele had recorded for Impulse, and also showcased music and spoken-word albums that reflected the anti-war and civil-rights movements of the time.

We’ll start off with an album that Thiele had already released once before in 1965, and which he chose to reissue in 1969 on his new imprint. Duke Ellington’s My People was a stage show that Ellington and Billy Strayhorn had written for a 1963 celebration of Black history, and put out in 1965 for the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation. The record included some of Ellington’s most overt civil-rights statements, and we’ll hear two of them—a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., and the title oration from Ellington himself:

Duke Ellington’s tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., “King Fit the Battle of Alabam,” sung by the Irving Bunton Singers, and Ellington before that with the oration and title track of the album on which both pieces appeared, My People, released in 1965 on Bob Thiele’s Contact label and reissued in 1969 on Flying Dutchman.

One of the most famous artists associated with Flying Dutchman actually got his musical start on the label. In 1970 Gil Scott-Heron was a little-known Black writer and poet who had just published a novel at the age of 20. After learning that his publisher had a business relationship with Flying Dutchman, Scott-Heron, who was writing songs as well, lobbied Bob Thiele for a chance to record. The resulting album of spoken-word performances, Small Talk at 125^th and Lenox, addressed various racial and social issues of the day through the prism of everyday Black life in Harlem and was successful enough that Thiele brought Scott-Heron back for a more song-based sequel.

Pieces of a Man included a musical recasting of a poem Scott-Heron had recorded with backing percussion for his debut LP, and which in its new setting became a cultural touchstone for decades to come—“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” Scott-Heron called his early Flying Dutchman records “survival kits on wax” and said that “the whole idea was to put some information in front of people that they couldn’t get any other way. We were still pretty much left out of the national media…our only opportunity to speak to people was through personal appearances or underground stations. And Bob Thiele was doing a lot of those things. He did Angela Davis, he did Bobby Seale, he did H. Rap Brown… the albums he put out, no other record company was doing.”

Despite the enduring prominence of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” in popular culture, its message has often been misunderstood. As writer Dean Rudland notes, “Scott-Heron wasn’t talking about how a revolution would be reported, he was telling people that a revolution wouldn’t happen unless people got up and did something about it.”

Gil Scott-Heron performing his tribute to Billie Holiday and John Coltrane, “Lady Day and John Coltrane,” as well as his signature anthem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” both from his 1971 Flying Dutchman album Pieces of a Man.

While Gil Scott-Heron was a newcomer to the music scene, singer Leon Thomas had already made his mark in 1968 as the lead vocalist on saxophonist Pharoah Sander’s hit recording for Impulse, ”The Creator Has a Master Plan.” That recording was credited to Flying Dutchman Productions, which Thiele soon afterwards turned into the Flying Dutchman label, for which he eventually recruited Thomas as well as other musicians Thiele had worked with at Impulse. Making records under his own name and appearing on others led by Johnny Hodges, Louis Armstrong, and others, Thomas enjoyed a successful run at Flying Dutchman throughout the early 1970s, showcasing his vocal approach that writer Dean Rudland describes as “a powerful bluesy voice combined with a style of yodeling that harked back to the chants of West Africa”. We’ll hear Thomas joining Louis Armstrong for a new version of “The Creator Has a Masterplan,” as well as this 1973 cover of Santana’s “Just To See the Sun,” on Night Lights.

Louis Armstrong and Leon Thomas teaming up for a new rendition of Thomas and saxophonist Pharoah Sanders’ 1969 hit “The Creator Has a Masterplan,” recorded in 1970 for Armstrong’s next-to-last album, Louis Armstrong and His Friends, which came out on Flying Dutchman’s subsidiary label Amsterdam. Thomas before that doing a cover of Santana’s “Just to See the Sun” for his 1973 Flying Dutchman album Full Circle.

I’m featuring music from the Flying Dutchman label on this edition of Night Lights. Flying Dutchman was started by veteran producer Bob Thiele in 1969, following an impressive run of albums he’d overseen by John Coltrane and others throughout the 1960s. Coltrane’s work sparked Thiele’s interest in what he referred to in a 1971 interview as “the New Black Music,” and the revolutionary spirit of that music featured prominently in the Flying Dutchman catalogue, especially in the spoken-word albums that Gil Scott-Heron and others recorded. In this next set we’ll hear pieces by Oliver Nelson with Carl B. Stokes, the first Black may of Cleveland, as well as this short excerpt from a speech by Black activist H. Rap Brown—“Do Your Own Thing,” on Night Lights:

Carl B. Stokes, the first Black mayor of a large American city, reading Langston Hughes’ poem “Sit Down,” with band accompaniment by Oliver Nelson. We also heard Stokes reading Gil Scott-Heron’s “Paint It Black”—the first time any of Heron’s works were ever recorded—and started off the set with an excerpt from a speech by activist H. Rap Brown, “Do Your Own Thing.”

Oliver Nelson was perhaps the closest thing Flying Dutchman had to an in-house music director, leading, co-leading, or contributing to numerous albums, including vocal outings by Leon Thomas and a collaboration with Count Basie’s big band. Known best for his landmark 1961 Impulse album The Blues and the Abstract Truth, Nelson produced what some writers regard as his other masterpiece, the 1970 Flying Dutchman release Black, Brown and Beautiful. In this next set we’ll hear music from Nelson’s encounter with Basie, as well as a posthumous tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. from Black, Brown and Beautiful—“Martin Was a Man, a Real Man,” on Night Lights:

The Count Basie orchestra performing Oliver Nelson’s composition and the title track from their 1971 Flying Dutchman album Afrique. Nelson before that leading an orchestra in performance of his tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., “Martin Was a Man, a Real Man,” featuring Nelson on alto sax, from Nelson’s 1970 Flying Dutchman album Black, Brown and Beautiful.

Saxophonist Gato Barbieri was another musician, like Oliver Nelson, with whom Bob Thiele had forged a connection in the latter days of Thiele’s time at Impulse, the two meeting when Barbieri was a member of Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra. Barbieri was a force on the 1960s free-jazz scene, but increasingly came to feel that his music should reflect more of his South American roots. In 1973 his star ascended when he and Oliver Nelson recorded the soundtrack to the Marlon Brando film Last Tango In Paris. Here’s the title track from his followup album, released by Flying Dutchman in 1974—Gato Barbieri and “Bolivia,” on Night Lights:

Saxophonist and flutist Gato Barbieri doing the title track from his 1973 Flying Dutchman album Bolivia, featuring Lonnie Liston Smith on piano, Stanley Clarke on bass, John Abercrombie on bass, and Airto Moreira on drums.

In the mid-1970s Flying Dutchman came under the umbrella of RCA, and Thiele remained active in the music business until his death in 1996. In a future episode we’ll hear other artists that recorded for Flying Dutchman and its subsidiaries, including Ornette Coleman, Horace Tapscott, Johnny Hodges, John Carter and Bobby Bradford, Tom Scott, George Russell, Steve Allen, as well as excerpts from spoken word albums by journalist Pete Hamill and critic Stanley Crouch. While his time at Impulse in the 1960s represents the cornerstone of his legacy as a producer, Flying Dutchman represents another extraordinary chapter of Thiele’s 50-year career, as well as the social issues and volatile spirit of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1971 he told an interviewer, “I believe in the revolution and power to the people. But there has got to be some humanity, some understanding involved in this thing… we live here in the United States, and I’m stuck, I’m part of the system. But I know what kind of records I make. I don’t put these records out just for kicks; they happen to be successful. But I put them out because I believe in certain things. Next year I may chuck the whole thing… but while I’m here I do the best I can.”

I’ll close with two highlights from the Flying Dutchman catalogue—Louis Armstrong’s 1970 re-recording of the song that Bob Thiele had co-written, “What a Wonderful World,” and this 1973 track from keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith, a hit cosmic jazz-and-funk track that’s enjoyed a long shelf life as an influence on club music and other genres.