This is the music that reminds us we’re listening to music. Because in jazz, musicianship is paramount, unlike most popular modern forms where musical knowledge and ability play a much smaller role in the success of the product. Jazz is nothing but the product itself. To listen to instruments, acoustic instruments in particular, is to hear a song in a literal way; often it forces us to think about the sounds we are hearing. And when the music really works, when it not only speaks the relevant language in the truest voice, but walks into the room and moves things around, we feel what it’s saying, we are moved.
Jazz is its own music but can assume the form of any other. The term “fusion” came out of a jazz setting. Alongside and in collusion with the blues, this is the original American art form this, the most democratic of all the arts, truly speaks in the voice of the people. Those who criticize the breadth and scope of the music, complaining that it’s too “out there,” are only criticizing themselves for being locked up “in there.” Across the universe of musical possibilities there is no “out there.” That being said, this listener has run up against many various situations that were too far out…just acknowledging my own limitations.
One of the more common syndromes afflicting the uninitiated who would like to explore jazz is the daunting abundance of material, old and current, issues and reissues, hot/cool, bop/post-bop etc. A large part of exploring any corner of American culture lies in wading through and deciphering market strategies. Markets are still opening up (online), although not so long ago someone who wanted a starter kit for any particular genre or style, say jazz for instance, would begin with several familiar sounding best-of packages. As any music aficionado will tell you, this is by far, the lamest approach.
The antidote I’ve prepared to treat this syndrome involves focusing on a particular market, in this instance a record label, to get the ball rolling. What I propose is a month of Blue Note, the label I consider to be at the heart of golden-age jazz. This of course, is subjective, it is my own opinion that the hard-bop era (roughly 1953-’66) encompasses the golden age of jazz. The argument gains strength when we’re discussing actual recordings.
Beginning in 1939, Blue Note Records was financed by communist writer Max Margulis and operated by co-founders Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff. Lion and Wolff (and I am not making that up). This was to be the laboratory for the post-war wind that swept through jazz from larger orchestras playing fast “hot” music for a dance audience – to smaller combos playing improvised music over blues chord progressions, to be known as hard-bop. The label got off to a slow start but by the end of the 40’s, when the music called hard-bop was ready to emerge through the mind and lips of Charlie Parker, the key players began falling into place. Thelonious Monk recorded most of the originals that made his legacy over a half-dozen or so Blue Note sessions at this time. Art Blakey along with Horace Silver, formed the first of several immortal Jazz Messengers line-up’s in the Blue Note studios.
The Only Recording Engineer
Of course I’m referring to Rudy VanGelder who, from 1953 to the present day is the preferred recording engineer for everyone who’s anyone passing through the jazz scene. With only a few exceptions, Van Gelder was at the controls for every Blue Note record made between ’53 and ’67, the year Alfred Lion retired and the label began to move in different directions. Since 1999 he has been remastering his catalog, which not only covers the hundreds of Blue Note records, but the scores of recordings he engineered for Prestige, Verve and Impulse, some of the more important houses covering the bop and post-bop eras. If you had to pick a single living (or not, for that matter) person to recount the history of this music and the people that gave it form, Rudy VanGelder is the inevitable choice. What marked the Blue Note sessions more so than his work for the other labels was the simplicity with which he got it all down; mostly two-track recordings focusing on the definition, timbre and shape of each instrument while highlighting the spaces between. What this setting brought into play was a recording with immediacy; Blue Note sessions speak loud, proud and clear, no fade-in’s or overdubs, these records come right at you. For those unfortunate few who really object to the naked sound of drums, bass, piano, horns and guitar, these recordings heighten the torture.
The Blues Inspire The Jazz – Getting Paid Inspires The Player
When comparing the quality of Blue Note sessions with the other leading labels at the time, a contributing factor was budgetary ethics. Alone among jazz labels, Blue Note paid musicians for rehearsal time prior to recording sessions, which practice had natural consequences for the finished product - intimate, breathing, nearly flawless recordings. Alfred Lion, a former photographer, produced most of the cover art which by itself, created a revolution in music marketing and pop culture. Nearly all the key players in the formation and evolution of jazz are of African-American descent, yet this was the first time that the musicians themselves were pictured on the covers; there are some, but not a whole lot of pretty white ladies gracing the covers of classic Blue Note albums. Lion, Wolff, Margulis and Van Gelder made no decisions, did nothing without the musicians in mind.
The Lion’s Den
So it was no surprise that the latest and greatest of the young lions were stampeding to get on board the train and get in front of Rudy’s mixing board. Tenor saxophonist Ike Quebec acted as talent agent and musical director for Blue Note from the end of WWII until his death in 1963, putting together a roster of house musicians that was the envy of every other label. Even if they were only passing through, just about every big mover in jazz made a stop at the Blue Note studios, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Milt Jackson, Bud Powell; think of a founding father in modern jazz and see if he hasn’t at the very least, stood in as a guest. An exercise can be made in tracing weeks or even months in the life of a particular player, just by tracking consecutive recording dates for various sessions. In 1959, the seminal year for modal jazz, Rudy Van Gelder chucked his day-job as an optometrist and moved his operation to Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey where he presently resides. This was the stage for many of the dramas and lives that drove America’s original music form.
With this in mind friends, I present to you a Blue Note Month. For each day of November we’ll revisit an album from the essential label of the golden era, each led by a different artist. Although many of the same players crop up in different recordings, each selection reflects its own mood and outlook. By the end of the month initiates should be aflame in the cool world of bop, soaring the heights of musical improvisation at its zenith, with solid ground waiting below when your feet return to earth.
Scott Cramer - Scott lives in Chicago and is an insufferable know-it-all on certain topics. He writes fiction (primarily short stories) much of which ...
