History of Blue Note
 
       "The marketing of works of art can be a thankless, often self-contradictory process. A memorable painting, a great piece of literature, a unique contribution to music, cannot by definition be conceived in terms of its commercial viability. Yet from time to time there have been men involved in the creation of masterpieces who in some recondite manner have managed to serve with distinction as middlemen between the artists and the public. That this can be accomplished, not only profitably but also with a clear conscience and a sense of uncompromised achievement, has never been illustrated more clearly than in the cases of Alfred Lion, who founded Blue Note Records, and [his partner] Francis Wolff."  
 
     So wrote the late critic Leonard Feather in 1971. I would only add that they were more than middlemen; they were inspired catalysts who helped much of the greatest jazz of the mid twentieth century happen and preserved it on tape. Recording is the only medium that can capture the expressiveness, feeling, interplay, individuality and spontaneous composition that is great jazz.
 
     By 1955, the eccentric, dedicated Blue Note label, then in its sixteenth year, was sinking under the weight of hard, financial realities in an ever-changing business. Alfred and Frank recorded what moved them regardless of commercial considerations. Integrity and innovation in any art form rarely yields immediate monetary returns. Their recordings were impeccable and revered by critics. Sales, however, were not commensurate with quality.
 
     Fortunately, that year what came to be known as the Blue Note sound was born, and it met with incredible public acceptance. The Blue Note sound was more than a musical style; it incorporated larger-than-life recorded sound, consummate taste in musicians, inspired planning sessions and rehearsals and a final product that blended raw feeling with complex precision.
 
     For the next 12 years, Blue Note sought out and recorded the cutting edge in jazz and did it better and more carefully and caringly than any other company. From the seed of an idea to the final album in the store with its distinctive graphics and photography, Lion and Wolff sought and usually achieved a perfection that is unparalleled in the record business. They grasped every artistic development in jazz at the time with fresh enthusiasm and captured the best of it on Blue Note.
 
     The years 1955, when Blue Note midwifed the hard bop sound, to 1967, when John Coltrane died and Miles Davis began edging toward fusion, were a most heady time for jazz. Never before or since was there such a vast and amazing pool of brilliant artists constantly interacting and expanding the music's boundaries. Naturally, there was an astonishing amount of jazz recording going on all the time during this period. But no one even approached Alfred and Francis in consistency and quality. To this day, generation after generation of musicians consider the legacy of recorded masterpieces on Blue Note to be their first and most formative university.
 
     Born and raised in Berlin, Alfred discovered the seduction of rhythm at an early age. "My parents took me on vacation to a resort when I was five. The hotel had a ballroom with a large dance orchestra. After my parents put me to bed, they went dancing. I'd get dressed and sneak down to the stage entrance of the ballroom. The musicians thought I was cute and let me in. They put me in the orchestra pit. I sat on the floor for hours next to the drummer. It was something, to feel that rhythm."
 
     In 1924, at the age of fifteen, Alfred met Francis Wolff, who lived in the same neighborhood. They discovered a mutual passion for jazz and became good friends. That passion was to shape the fabric of their entire lives.
 
     Shortly before his twentieth birthday in 1928, Alfred Lion decided to come to New York to get closer to jazz itself. With no money and little English, he slept in Central Park and worked loading trucks on the New York docks. One dock worker, who was not a fan of immigrant laborers, swung a board with a nail protruding from it into Alfred's back, landing him in the hospital for several weeks. The duress of his New York experiences drove him back to Germany. In 1931, he and Francis formed their first partnership, driving to Spain trying to sell jewelry. It was thankfully a dismal failure.
 
     Germany was in flux as Adolf Hitler's right-wing Nazi movement was poisoning the down-trodden populace of a beaten country. Alfred and his mother moved to Chile in 1933, the year Hitler was elected. He tried his hand (and almost lost it) as a lobster fisherman while his mother worked for an import/export firm. Inexplicably, Francis Wolff, whose family was well-off, cultured, academic and Jewish, stayed on in Berlin.
 
     In 1937, Alfred got a job in an import/export company in New York, then as now the jazz capitol of the world. At last, he was able to live and work under decent conditions amid the music he loved so dearly.
 
     On December 23, 1938, he attended the legendary Spirituals To Swing concert at Carnegie Hall. He was so moved by the pulsating, dazzling boogie woogie artistry of pianists Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson that he had to do something with the energy and enthusiasm that this music unleashed within him. He immediately raised some money, found a recording studio and, exactly two weeks later on January 6, 1939, he recorded Ammons and Lewis. By the end of that day, Alfred Lion found himself in the record business. Blue Note Records was born. It was born not as an entrepreneurial business venture, but out of a passion and a need that superceded the practical realities of life. That passion never died; that passion is what defined Blue Note.
 
     Alfred pressed 50 copies each of two 78 rpm singles, one by Ammons, the other by Lewis. Out of inexperience, Lion had let the artists play too long and therefore had to issue the 78s on twelve-inch discs (usually reserved for classical recordings) rather than the conventional ten-inch size. This accidental innovation in jazz recording was the first of many elements that would make Blue Note stand out from the rest. H. Royer Smith in Philadelphia bought some, and Blue Note Records was in business.
 
     The label's first brochure in May, 1939 carried a statement of purpose from which Lion rarely strayed for the next 28 years. "Blue Note Records are designed simply to serve the uncompromising expressions of hot jazz or swing, in general. Any particular style of playing which represents an authentic way of musical feeling is genuine expression. By virtue of its significance in place, time and circumstance, it possesses its own tradition, artistic standards and audience that keeps it alive. Hot jazz, therefore, is expression and communication, a musical and social manifestation, and Blue Note Records are concerned with identifying its impulse, not its sensational and commercial adornments."
 
     In April and June, Alfred recorded two all star affairs with Ammons, Lewis, trumpeter Frankie Newton, drummer Big Sid Catlett and soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet under the banner Port Of Harlem Jazzmen. Alfred's idea was to get a series of very real, bluesy after-hours performances so he set the sessions to start at 4:30 am after the musicians had finished their club dates. These were among the first nighttime recording sessions in jazz. The second date spawned Blue Note's first bona fide hit with Sidney Bechet's interpretation of "Summertime". Alfred remembered in 1985, "A lot of musicians had heard about these late sessions. At one of them, Billie Holiday and her entourage were on the sidewalk shouting to be let up. But I was so nervous because I didn't really know what I was doing yet that I wouldn't let her up. I probably could have recorded her that night, but I couldn't deal with anything beyond what I was trying to do."
 
     By the end of 1939, Frank Wolff, an accomplished professional photographer, caught the proverbial last boat out of Germany and joined his childhood friend in New York. Starting from scratch, he found a job as photographer's assistant. Together, he and Alfred kept the idiocyncratic, little label alive while maintaining their day jobs.
 
     An innovative February, 1941 session by clarinetist Edmond Hall with the unconventional support of Meade Lux Lewis on celeste, Charlie Christian on guitar and Isreal Crosby on bass, yielded Blue Note's second hit, an atmospheric blues entitled "Profoundly Blue".
 
     That year, Lion was drafted and Blue Note ceased recording. Wolff left his day job to work at Milt Gabler's Commodore Record Shop at 46 West 52nd Street in Manhattan out of which Gabler ran his superb Commodore label. More than a record shop, the store was the daily meeting hall and forum for jazz cogniscenti and musicians. Frank was able to run and distribute Blue Note from the shop. The label had by then released 23 twelve -inch 78s and four ten-inch 78s from the eleven sessions that they had recorded.
 
     After Alfred's discharge in 1943, Blue Note would become the full time mistress of both Lion and Wolff. They quit their day gigs and got permanent offices at 767 Lexington Avenue. They recorded masterful gems in the mainstream and swing idioms for several years, scoring modest successes with some magnificent blues and ballads by tenor saxophonist Ike Quebec.
 
     Bebop was exploding at the time, and Lion and Wolff knew that they had to confront change. They stopped recording for a year (September, 1946-'47) while they listened to new musicians and considered where jazz was heading. Although many swing musicians were hostile to the new modern jazz developments and saw it as a threat to their own careers, Ike Quebec, Blue Note's most popular swing artist, welcomed new innovations and introduced Alfred and Frank to the music of Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. Soon they were making beautifully crafted modern records, including the debuts of Monk, Tadd Dameron, James Moody and Art Blakey.
 
     Monk especially captured Lion's imagination. He was so taken by the ferocious swing and completely unorthodox melodic and harmonic inventions of this unique pianist/composer that in October and November, 1947, he recorded 14 sides by Monk before issuing a single record. He didn't care if Blue Note had enough money (it didn't) or if they didn't sell (and they didn't!). He loved what he heard; he had to. He told me in 1985, "Monk was so fantastically original and his compositions were so strong and new that I just wanted to record everything he had. That happened to me later when I first heard Herbie Nichols and Andrew Hill too. It didn't matter. It was so fantastic that I had to record it all."
 
     Horace Silver told me in 1980, "Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff were men of integrity and real jazz fans. Blue Note was a great label to record for. They gave a first break to a lot of great artists who are still out there doing it today. They gave me my first break. They gave a lot of musicians a chance to record when all the other companies weren't interested. And they would stick with an artist, even if he wasn't selling. Of course, if every record a guy made didn't sell at all, they couldn't stay with him forever. But if a guy was a great player who didn't sell - and there were many - and if Alfred and Frank believed in him, they would stay with him. You don't find that anymore."
 
     Blue Note's reputation for individuality, taste and excellence was already being recognized. But its financial condition was tenuous at best. In 1949, Columbia Records introduced the ten-inch long-playing record which could offer up to twelve mintues of music on each side, enabling a record to contain three or four selections per side rather than one. 78 singles came in individual generic sleeves; all the necessary information was on the record label itself. The ten-inch LP introduced the need for albums covers with information and graphics. A paper sleeve no longer sufficed because a record label could not contain all the vital information about its contents. This development offered all sorts of marketing opportunites, but it also upped the cost of doing business tremendously.
 
     Blue Note didn't begin issuing ten-inch LPs until 1951, much later than other labels, because of the cost of artwork and remastering. When twelve-inch LPs came in in the mid-fifties, the cost of retooling its catalog yet again almost put Blue Note out of business. Several relationships were developing that saved the label from being an admirable footnote in jazz history and catipulted it into a pantheon without peers.
 
     In 1953, Lion had met, through saxophonist Gil Melle, a young engineer named Rudy Van Gelder, who'd turned his parents' living room into a recording studio and who was developing a warm, clear, big sound that would forever redefine the way jazz was heard. The excitement and expansive sound of jazz could finally be captured on tape.
 
     In 1954, Alfred's favorite drummer Art Blakey had become a bandleader and signed with Blue Note. With alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson, trumpeter Clifford Brown and pianist Horace Silver, he made his classic "A Night At Birdland" recordings. By the end of that year, Blakey and Silver had conspired to create The Jazz Messengers, who introduced the rhythmic and melodic flavor of gospel music and an earlier, earthier form of blues into modern jazz, abating the chord-running pyrotechnics that had overtaken the music in the wake of Charlie Parker's mid-forties innovations.
 
     The first Jazz Messengers sessions in November, 1954 and February, 1955 were under Horace Silver's name with Blakey, Hank Mobley, Kenny Dorham and Doug Watkins and yielded Silver's classic "Doodlin'" and "The Preacher". Blue Note was back in business. Lion had always been as consumed with feeling as he was with artistry. The approach that Silver and Balkey developed resonated in him as it would in the jazz public.
 
     In 1956, Blue Note was finally able to afford to get into the twelve-inch LP market. They discovered a young designer by the name of Reid Miles, who was working in the art department at Esquire Magazine. From 1956 to 1967, he designed an endless array of striking, distinctive covers for Blue Note which incorporated Frank Wolff's photographs with Bauhaus and contemporary graphics that brilliantly depicted the spirit of the music. Amazingly, Miles was a classical music fan and had to rely completely on Alfred Lion's description of the music to conceive his covers.
 
     The Blue Note sound was born and its team in place. For the next decade or so, Blue Note dominated the artistic and commercial courses that jazz would take. As Francis Wolff once wrote, "We established a style, including recording, pressings and covers. The details made the difference." And Blue Note always put quality above the bottom line. Sessions not deemed up to "Blue Note standards" were shelved regardless of cost or financial duress.
 
     Lion's attention to detail carried over into his record productions and enabled the birth of many masterpieces. While most record companies were content to let musicians come in and blow for forty minutes of music, Alfred had meetings with his artists to discuss direction, pick the best sidemen and inspire challenging compositions. He paid for rehearsals and attended them faithfully, helping to shape something special out of each session. To him, a recording was something frozen in time that should further the music and make a strong statement. Instinctively, he knew that rehearsals were essential, enabling artists to compose beyond the expected and allowing the musicians to learn the most intricate music so that in the studio they could execute it with precision and feeling and still have the creative energy to conjure a fresh improvisation.
 
     A case in point is tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, who made one album for Blue Note in the fifties and more than a dozen for Prestige. His Blue Note date, a jazz milestone, is marked by distinctive compositions, a group sound and thoughtful, provacative improvisations by Coltrane, trumpeter Lee Morgan, trombonist Curtis Fuller and pianist Kenny Drew. It is a masterpiece. By contrast, his Prestige dates are hurried, slapped together affairs, rich with creative juices but lacking in the magic that only the right circumstances and hard work can produce.
 
     Blue Note never looked back. Lion and Wolff were always looking at tomorrow. They produced a relentless flow of masterpieces that mined the tributaries of jazz from funk to avant garde and introduced the jazz world to such artists as Thelonious Monk, Wynton Kelly, Art Blakey, Lou Donaldson, Horace Silver, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Grant Green, Andrew Hill, Bobby Hutcherson and so many others along the way.
 
     Classics like John Coltrane's "Blue Train", Cannonball Adderley and Miles Davis's "Somethin' Else", Art Blakey's "Moanin'", Horace Silver's "Song For My Father", Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder", Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage", Eric Dolphy's "Out To Lunch" and Lou Donaldson's "Alligator Bogaloo" are as vital and influential today as they were the day they were released.
 
     All this history. And all of it documented, not just on tape but also through the brilliant photography of Francis Wolff. These sounds and images capture one of the most diverse and intensely creative periods in American music. We've seen nothing since that approaches its achievements. It is the well to which we all return.
 
     On the thirtieth anniversary of Blue Note, Francis Wolff wrote, "By 1939, jazz had gathered enough momentum so that an experiment like Blue Note could be tried. We could not round up more than a handful of customers for a while, but we garnered a good deal of favorable publicity through our uncommercial approach and unusual sessions like the Port Of Harlem Jazzmen and the Edmond Hall Celeste Quartet. Somehow we set a style. But I would have difficulty to define it. I remember though that people used to say, 'Alfred and Frank record only what they like'. That was true. If I may add three words, we tried to record jazz with a feeling.
 
 
  - Michael Cuscuna
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