
Blue Note is loved, revered, respected and recognised as one of the most important record labels in the history of popular music. Founded in 1939 by Alfred Lion, who had only arrived in America a few years earlier having fled the oppressive Nazi regime in his native Germany, Blue Note has continually blazed a trail of innovation in both music and design. Its catalogue of great albums, long playing records and even 78rpm and 45rpm records is for many the holy grail of jazz.

In addition to paying Ammons and Lewis, Lion brought whiskey to lubricate the pianists’ fingers and it worked as they completed nineteen takes that night. When the session ended and Lion had paid their fees, he didn’t have enough money to cover cost of the studio time. The would-be entrepreneur left empty handed, returning a few weeks later to pay for the masters. Later while listening to the discs at his apartment, he knew this music deserved to be more widely heard. According to Lion, ‘I decided to make some pressings and go into the music business.’

Alfred Lion later recalled the huge challenge Blue Note faced: ‘There was nothing in ’39. No {music trade] books where you could check out things. Nothing. You had to go by your wits.’ Through his friendship with Milt Gabler, Lion persuaded Commodore Music Shop in Manhattan to sell Blue Note’s records and several other record stores followed suit.
Alongside Lion at the dawn of Blue Note were Max Margulis, a writer and later voice coach and Emanuel Eisenberg – poet, theatre critic and writer for the New Yorker. Blue Note’s status among jazz lovers was increased by the way the label presented its music. Lion and Margulis intuitively understood the importance of good marketing at a time when it was barely a recognised concept. In May 1939, Max Margulis wrote the label’s manifesto, and although there are shades of his communist leanings, the statement perfectly sums up what Blue Note was trying to achieve in 1939. Its message has been at the heart of the company ever since and is still held dear by Don Was, the label’s president in the 21stcentury:
Blue Note Records are designed to serve the uncompromising expressions of hot jazz or swing. Direct and honest hot jazz is a way of feeling, a musical and social manifestation, and Blue Note records are concerned with identifying its impulse, not its sensational and commercial adornments.

In July 1944, Blue Note took its first tentative steps towards modernity when a new name appeared on a studio log: that of twenty-five-year-old tenor saxophonist, Ike Quebec. Ike Quebec’s Swingtet, as the name suggests, a swing-based band but there are shades of something new creeping in. In one of the magazine’s very earliest mentions of the label,Billboard acknowledged that Lion and Blue Note recognised ‘across the tracks jazz as a coming force.’
Be-Bop was the latest craze in jazz and for a while Blue Note’s recordings seemed out of step with fashion, being more firmly rooted in traditional jazz. Quebec had become something of an unofficial A & R man to the label. The first of the ‘new’ artists to record was singer (and Errol Flynn’s former chauffeur) Babs Gonzales, who embraced the basics of bop when he recorded ‘Oop-Pop-A-Da’, as 3 Bips and a Bop in 1947.

Before long other Bopsters began recording for Blue Note – there were trumpeters Howard McGhee and Fats Navarro, pianist Bud Powell and Wynton Kelly and in 1952 Miles Davis recorded for the label. Also in 1952, 24-year-old Horace Silver was recorded by Blue Note; he would remain with the label for the next three decades. Another star name was Clifford Brown who tragically died very young, but not before releasing a string of classic recordings on the label.
Throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s Blue Note found it tough going competing with major record companies who were starting to release long playing records on the 33 1/3 rpm format; while the 45 was becoming the new format for singles. It was during the 1950s that Blue Note found its style, its natural rhythm, and truly began to deliver on the original founding principals. It was a decade of ‘uncompromising expressions’ by young musicians who were on the cutting edge of jazz. Alfred Lion’s vision had become a dream, his dream had become reality, and with the company’s single-minded approach, jazz was reinventing itself through every facet of Blue Note.

In 1955 The Preacher’, a 45 by Horace Silver was a big seller for the label and shortly thereafter organist Jimmy Smith signed to Blue Note selling well on album, in part through the exposure his singles were getting on juke boxes. Throughout the 1950s the list of artists releasing Blue Note records was impressive – Lou Donaldson, J.J. Johnson, Sonny Rollins, Kenny Burrell, Hank Mobley, Curtis Fuller and John Coltrane who’s one Blue Note album, Blue Train is one of his finest. The Blue Note logo appeared on albums by Sonny Clark, The Three Sounds, Cannonball Adderley, Dizzy Reece, Jackie McLean, Freddie Hubbard, Stanley Turrentine, Dexter Gordon, Tina Brooks and Grant Green during the latter years of the 1950s and early 1960s.

In 1962, just as Jimmy Smith was about to leave Blue Note for Verve Records, he had a hit on the Billboard best seller list when ‘Midnight Special parts 1 & 2’ went to No.69 on the pop charts, several more records also made the lower reaches of the chart, all of which helped introduce more people to his sound. In 1964 trumpeter, Lee Morgan also had a hit with ‘The Sidewinder’. Other names that joined the label’s impressive roster includedHerbie Hancock, Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter, Eric Dolphy, Andrew Hill, Tony Williams, Don Cherry, Larry Young, Grant Green, and Ornette Coleman. If it all sounds like a who’s who in jazz, it’s because it is

By 1970 Blue Note had gone through many changes, jazz in general was finding it tough. The ‘British Invasion’ spearheaded by The Beatles may not have affected jazz directly but it was part of the heady mix that gave rise to alternative cultures and ideas. Those dubbed the ‘Woodstock Generation’, following the 1969 Festival did embrace some jazz artists, but in the main they had their own music – progressive music. Jazz needed to find a new direction home and once it did it was not to everyone’s liking.

In the early 1980s, after a period of hiatus in which Blue Note lay dormant, the company was resurrected under new boss Bruce Lundvell. An experienced record company man, and most importantly for Blue Note a jazz lover, Lundvell set about making records that would sell. One of his earliest signings was Bobby McFerrin; Lundvall’s instincts were proved right, especially when two years later McFerrin had a worldwide smash hit with ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ – although it was on the EMI label rather than Blue Note (EMI had purchased Blue Note by this time).

Three years into the label’s seventh decade, along came an artist who took even Lundvall and other Blue Note executives by surprise with a record that was both controversial and brilliant – but was it jazz? To some, sitar player Ravi Shankar’s daughter, Norah Jones, was anything but, yet according to Michael Cuscuna: ‘I was absolutely thrilled when Bruce signed Norah Jones. She was a jazz artist, playing piano and singing standards with an acoustic bass and a jazz drummer. When her demos started to show more pop and country directions, Bruce, with his whole concern about the integrity of Blue Note, offered to sign her to the Manhattan label, which was more pop-oriented. But Norah said, “No. I want to be on Blue Note. That’s who I signed with. I love that label. I grew up with that, and that’s where I want to be”’. Her single, ‘Don’t Know Why’ made No.30 on the Billboard chart and later won a Grammy and her album Come Away With Me marked the beginning of a shift in emphasis for Blue Note Records.

By the second decade of the 21stcentury a man who admits, ‘I’ve spent all my life avoiding having a job, which is why I became a musician’, was invited to take up the newly created role of Chief Creative Officer at Blue Note. But this was no ordinary job and Don Was, musician, songwriter and Grammy award-winning producer, was an inspired choice. Having worked with artists including Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop, Bonnie Raitt, Al Green, B.B. King and theRolling Stones, Was’s rock credentials were impeccable. Yet at the time of his appointment, few people realised just what a jazz-head Don Was is, and has been for all his life.

If ‘Uncompromising Expression’ needs further definition then this is it– ‘Just do it. You don’t have to describe it’. For Don Was, ‘It’s a great contribution to society to make great records’. And that’s exactly what Alfred Lion, Francis Wolff, Bruce Lundvall, Michael Cuscuna, and the others that have been so closely involved with Blue Note for three quarters of a century have all done.
Can you dig it?
Words: Richard Havers


This is for you if you want to a journey into listening to jazz more seriously, or if a friend asks you what jazz records they should listen to in order to appreciate it more fully. It’s no good people starting to listen to jazz on the margins; it’s like giving a ten year old, Tolstoy’s ‘War & Peace’ to read, chances are they will not make it past the first page.
There are some jazz fans that can be awfully snooty about the music they love, they almost try to turn it into a club that refuses to let in new members. So we decided to put together a list of the 20 albums to start your collection with. Every one is a brilliant record and no discerning jazz fan would turn their nose up at any one of them. So our list is both credible and accessible.
It includes albums like Miles Davis‘s, Kind of Blue, Bill Evan‘s, Waltz For Debby andJohn Coltrane‘s, Blue Train; all three consistently make the list of the most important jazz albums ever. Our 20 also includes some albums that put breadth to the genre that is jazz, like Louis Armstrong‘s, Satchmo at Symphony Hall that was the genesis of his All Stars. There’s Ella‘s Mack The Knife, a live concert recorded in Berlin in 1960 that proves that she is one of the greatest jazz vocalists ever…maybe the greatest. But some would tell you that honour belongs to Billie Holiday, and so we have her 1950 album she recorded for Norman Granz that is not one that makes too many lists, but should.
We have big band jazz from Count Bill Basie, great guitar from the brilliant Wes Montgomery, the funkiest organ in town played by Jimmy Smith (still too under-appreciated in our view) and Getz/Gilberto one of the biggest selling jazz albums of all time, but no less credible for it…and much more
We’ve listed them chronologically and we would love to hear what you would add to the list, and maybe even subtract!






![John Coltrane - [1957] Blue Train_oo1](http://www.udiscovermusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/John-Coltrane-1957-Blue-Train_oo11.jpg)



















![John Coltrane - [1957] Blue Train_oo1](http://www.udiscovermusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/John-Coltrane-1957-Blue-Train_oo11.jpg)













Follow us on Twitter for music news, great features, uRadio podcasts, the best audio playlists and our legendary big prize music competitions...

→
→
→
→
→
→
→
→
→
My suggestions for entry points (so no Ornette, Dolphy, George Russell, or Cecil Taylor which is too bad—and no Herbie Nichols). I am not a fan of vocalists so I have left out Billie Holiday et al. Not enough room for such a short list. Especially if trying to include post -1970 jazz.
1. Kind of Blue for Miles Davis
2. Giant Steps for John Coltrane (even though I love Blue Train I think an Atlantic session is a better, more accurate entry point)
3. Mingus Ah Um for Charles Mingus
4. Jelly Roll Morton Red Hot Pepper sessions
5. Louis Armstrong Hot 5 and Hot 7 sessions—the source of his fame
6. Count Basie Decca sessions with Lester Young—far more important than April in Paris
7. Bill Evans Live at the Village Vanguard—definitive trio
8. Newk’s Time or Saxophone Colossus for Sonny Rollins—Rollins is essential
9. Thelonious Monk Genius of Modern Music—toss up between the two volumes, no. 1 has Misterioso and Epistrophy but no. 2 has Criss-Cross; buy the combined rerelease from the 1970s or the complete Monk on Blue Note CD package
10. Carla Bley Social Studies
11. Fats Waller piano sessions
12. Joe Lovano From the Soul [or Friendly Fire]
13. Herbie Hancock Maiden Voyage
14. Gil Evans New Bottle, Old Wine—a great place to discover Cannonball Adderley
15. Duke Ellington The Blanton-Webster Band
16. Charlie Parker sessions with Red Rodney and John Lewis on Verve—accessible plus you get John Lewis
17. Dizzy Gillespie Big Band 1957 sessions
18. Clifford Brown / Max Roach
19. Chick Corea & Gary Burton Crystal Silence
20. Joe Henderson Lush Life—with Wynton Marsalis
→
→
→
I don’t see why anyone has to start with the earliest jazz-I certainly didn’t!
→
→
→
→
→
How about a list of the ten worst?