The Visual World of Blue Note Records: The History
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- čas přidán 9. 07. 2018
- When it comes to the ongoing experiment that is modern jazz, there have been few cooler laboratories than Blue Note Records. For 75 years and counting, Blue Note has put the recording of innovative, authentic, uncompromising jazz above other measures of success.
The label’s formula has gathered innovators-Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Horace Silver, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Norah Jones, to name an all-star lineup-and encouraged them to take their music to new places in the studio. And sliding their records inside album covers that double as eye-loving art added another element of cool to the Blue Note brand.
Blue Note Records was the brainchild of Alfred Lion. A German Jew, he had escaped Nazi persecution in the early 1930s and eventually made his way to New York City. Lion had been a jazz fan since childhood, and on January 6, 1939, he rented a small studio and recorded a pair of boogie-woogie pianists-Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis. It was a modest start-they pressed only 50 copies-but the first Blue Note record was spinning. Lion was soon joined by Francis Wolff, a childhood friend who added his business sense-and eventually his photographic talents-to the brand new label.
Those first years proved lean, and the label’s limited resources required a strong strain of Do-It-Yourself. But Blue Note had an ethic that set the label apart from other record companies: It treated musicians with respect. They were paid for rehearsals as well as the recording sessions. Food and drink were waiting for them at the studio. And Lion scheduled sessions around their paying gigs, often starting after midnight. Most importantly, he encouraged teams of the day’s jazz greats-saxophonist Sidney Bechet, pianist Art Hodes, drummer Sid Catlett among them-to play from the heart and soul rather than chaining them to some notion of what the public might buy.
Word spread in the New York jazz scene: You could trust Alfred Lion and Blue Note Records. At the heart of that trust was Lion’s faith and joy in the experimental nature of jazz-specifically bebop, then hard bop, and beyond. “[W]hen the groove was right in the studio, [Alfred] used to start to jump up and dance to the music in the studio,” recalled record producer Michael Cuscuna. “And a lot of the musicians said that’s when they knew they had the right take, when Alfred got out of his chair and started dancing.”
In the mid-1950s, Blue Note Records entered a uniquely creative period. Musically, the charge was led by a who’s who of ensemble leaders, including Horace Silver on piano, Art Blakey on drums, and The Incredible Jimmy Smith on jazz organ. The flow of creativity was occasionally spiked by the likes of trumpeter Miles Davis and sax-man John Coltrane.
Behind the microphone, Blue Note recruited another kind of talent: Rudy Van Gelder as recording engineer. An optometrist by profession, Van Gelder was a jazz fan who had built his own New Jersey sound studio. He was passionate, exacting, yet intuitive about the process of recording, mixing, and blending the various instruments while capturing the interplay between them. His work contributed greatly to what became known in the industry as “the Blue Note sound.”
Blue Note Records also took on a distinctive “look” during this period. Artist Reid Miles designed album covers for the label featuring bold text treatments and memorable images. The covers were often built around the tinted black-and-white photographs of in-studio performers snapped by Francis Wolff. Like the music they represented, the cover graphics and Wolff’s photos played with lines and curves, reflection and shadow, mood and space.
For many fans of modern jazz, the first 30 years of Blue Note became synonymous with living, breathing, striving forms of the music-styles willing to experiment and innovate as well as entertain. Its catalog of classic albums remains a testament to the vision of Alfred Lion, who retired in 1967. It was a shining era for the label, deep and unique enough to secure its place in jazz and music history.
Blue Note Records changed ownership several times in the years that followed, and the label began a slow fade. Occasional reissues from its catalog gave way to random recordings in the mid-1980s. But as the 1900s ended and the 2000s made their entrance, Blue Note found new life. It recorded jazz-influenced stars like Van Morrison and Norah Jones, as well as jazz heavyweights Wynton Marsalis, Jason Moran, and Terence Blanchard.
In true Blue Note style, the label also has built experiments around Hip-Hop (for example, Madlib’s 2003 Shades of Blue that samples from Blue Note’s past) and music that moves easily between categories (Robert Glasper’s Black Radio). The future promises more of that brand of innovation under the leadership of producer and visionary Don Was, who was named president of Blue Note in 2012. Says Was: “The music of Blue Note is about change, it’s about constant change.”
My great grandfather AlfredLion 💙💛
Your great grand is a Jazz LEGEND👏
💜
I recall Miles saying "Is that how you wanted it Alfred?"
Whenever I think about Blue Note Records, 3 things always come to mind: the amazing music and musicians, the awesome album covers (look up "best designed jazz album covers" and 99% of them are Blue Note) and Rudy Van Gelder who engineered the albums to sound like you were right there in the club. My 2 favorite labels of all time are Blue Note and Chess Records. Man! What a combo!
Great story and very well produced. Thanks
Super nice video! Thanks
Why are they played coltrane’s my favorites things in the background? Great track, but there are other blue note records that can serve as the backdrop of the documenysry
"...to keep it moving forward you have to have new people coming along who know the traditions in order to in order to break them" "
I'm age 66 and grew up as a child in the 60s listening to my parent's jazz 78s from the 40 and 50s. alongside the Mamas and Papas, Perry Como, Beatles, Temptations, and iconic movie soundtracks, Nina Simone--the great music revolution. Amongst my careers, I am also a photographer and am a slave to visuals so I was greatly impacted by the Blue Note album covers. I strive to photograph a jazz artist in the tradition of that period. It's frustrating as hell when the artist doesn't get it--oftentimes because they were never grounded in the tradition. (much as we're seeing in so-called R&B and Country music)
Music is like food, if a rich classic French dish continues to be reinvented (breaking the tradition) and infiltrated with present-day sensibility, less butter, nonfat milk until all that made it great is now tasteless and believed to be pure by those who had never known it to be made otherwise.
This video includes Coltrane playing "My Favorite Things"...on Atlantic ?!?
Dear Kennedy Center. There are a lot of things wrong with this but I don't feel like typing that much so I'll highlight just the greatest error: While celebrating Blue Note's many achievements, at 12:43 the voiceover mentions "...a Blue Note sound.". The picture that is shown documents the historic recording of Kind of Blue, featuring (L-R) John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis and Bill Evans. This was recorded by Columbia Records, not Blue Note. Tell the intern who's producing your output that he/she/they are/is/ an idiot. Get your cellphone and do some research.
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How dare you present a 'history' of Blue Note and never once mention Jimmy Smith? How dare you?
well funny story but blue note is still all about old cats which is clear by the amount of classic releases resurfing as a common trend for reviving jazz. same music, worse quality of producing vinyl though.
Blue Note is da bomb.....the world doesn't need anything else but Blue Note vinyl....
The delirious division distally fail because smell mostly request without a stereotyped trowel. eager, round cougar
when molly said “fail because smell mostly” ... I felt that
Sorry but ??????????
Please,I'm not sure how you want your statement to land,but please interpret,if possible.
Omg. Nice intentions- awful accuracy. An American institution and its heroes- deserved better. Then again- in America so did the musicians.