about the “making of” Bells…

…enjoy looking through these copies of BELLS. The format and to some extent the idea for BELLS came from I.F. Stone’s Weekly, a radical political newsletter I subscribed to for some years until it ceased publication. I thought if I.F. Stone could do it with politics, I could do it with music. My Dad, Henry Sr., who still worked at a print shop in Houston when I first began publishing BELLS, used to type up headlines for me to use in the newsletter. There was no Microsoft word then, no PCs yet. The Xerox machine was the big revolution since anyone, including me, could now print or copy anything…

…excerpt from a machine typed and signed letter written by Henry Kuntz to Monsieur K. in 2007

Following a little gallery of some BELLS original’s. Just click on the thumbs to enlarge the images and enjoy. Monsieur K. would like to thanks Henry Kuntz, Martha Winneker, Allard and all others who participated on the BELLS on-line version.

One Response to “about the “making of” Bells…”

  1. At that time in the mid 1970s BELLS was a wellspring of information and critical thinking about this music. Cadence, Coda and Downbeat, certainly didn’t cover this topic to this degree. Davey’s The Improvisor did but I didn’t get to that until a couple years later and it never hit me the same way as Bells. It really helped to shape my feeling about people like Bailey, Parker, Braxton, etc although I was already a fan of their musics. It sharpened the focus for me and made the music somehow more special because of the attention to detail you provided. I also eagerly waited for my copy of this small journal more than anything other publication at that time. I owned a record store at the time and always looked forward to the special orders I would do of obscure improvised music. Not for my customers so much…for myself!
    – Don Campau, former BELLS subscriber & current host of “No Pigeonholes EXP”, KOWS-FM http://www.kows.fm | Occidental, California

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