REALLY ABOUT LAURIE: PERSONAL MEMOIRS: Click image to sample or purchase
About Arthur Pepper Music Corporation / Widow's Taste Records
Laurie Pepper was born in 1940 in Los Angeles to a family of radicals and artists. She grew up in New York and Los Angeles, attended U.C. Berkeley, and was staff photographer for the legendary L.A. Free Press during the 1960s but went astray and wound up in rehab where she met Art Pepper. With Art she wrote the classic jazz bio, Straight Life and went on to manage his career and his bands, producing albums, writing liner notes, etc. After his death she continued to manage his publishing company, Arthur Pepper Music Corporation, and she has continued to produce and promote his music. Her very small label, Widow's Taste, has released a new album of previously unreleased Art Pepper performances every year since 2006. Her book about their unusual marriage and creative partnership is ART: Why I Stuck with a Junkie Jazzman. Her book about growing up is Me and My Mother (& Others)
Rocco Bertels lives in Belgium and commutes to Los Angeles to assist in digitizing Art Pepper's music, scanning hundreds of important documents, setting up databases, and helping to plan next releases for Widow's Taste Records. He reorganized our office and made it efficient, organized the physical tapes, documents, and photos for easy access. He is a musician, an IT wizard, a brilliant organizer and a logical thinker, all of which Laurie is not. He speaks Dutch, French, and English.
Rocco Bertels lives in Belgium and commutes to Los Angeles to assist in digitizing Art Pepper's music, scanning hundreds of important documents, setting up databases, and helping to plan next releases for Widow's Taste Records. He reorganized our office and made it efficient, organized the physical tapes, documents, and photos for easy access. He is a musician, an IT wizard, a brilliant organizer and a logical thinker, all of which Laurie is not. He speaks Dutch, French, and English.