Blue Note T-shirts

Via Peter Hum, Blue Note t-shirts. Alas, the site selling them is in Japan, so you'll need the aid of a translator to make the order. But 22 designs are available from Uniqlo, including Sonny Clark's Cool Struttin, Joe Henderson's In 'n' Out, and Jackie McLean's Let Freedom Ring. Solid.

Friday Album Cover: Video Edition

I almost couldn't wait until Friday to post this, but I'm all about delayed gratification. The video below comes via Peter Hum.

Hi-Fi from bante on Vimeo.

That was beautiful. Have a good Friday!

Friday Album Cover: In My Element

Robert Glasper
In My Element

In a recent interview on Jason Crane's The Jazz Session, Robert Glasper said something that revealed the inherent trickiness in playing hip hop-flavored jazz:

"As far as I know, most people, you know, when they do do an electric album, it's after they finish doing their acoustic stuff and then they do an electric album."

At the risk of digging too deeply into one sentence from an hourlong interview, it seems like Glasper is implying that if you want to be taken seriously as a jazz musician, you have to start out by playing acoustic jazz. I will not argue with Glasper here, some people will still reflexively dismiss a musician who only plays fusion, and not any kind of straightahead postbop (those people were a convenient straw man to one side in the jazz wars of the 1980s and 1990s). Instead, what interests me is how this line of thinking can be extended to album art as well.

A while back, I examined a common template used on Blue Note album covers during the 1950s and 1960s, which I dubbed the "Blue Note Special." The cover to Glasper's In My Element features many characteristics of the Blue Note Special, including black-and-white photography, minimal text, the color blue, and a simple layout. That Glasper would reference such a classic design makes sense when considering the style of this album (which I would roughly classify as an adventurous postbop album) and his comment that jazz musicians often hew more closely acoustic jazz during the early stages of their careers. It is as if Glasper wanted to make sure we know that he is both referencing and updating a jazz tradition. In this case, the art, and the album itself, manage to deftly point forward while referencing a revered tradition: the classic Blue Note album covers of the 1950s and 1960s and the adventurous hard bop that filled the label's catalogue during that era.

Friday Album Cover: Talkin' About!

Grant Green
Talkin' About!

Blue Note's album catalog is so large that every so often I will come across an interesting album cover that I had never seen before. Such is the case with Grant Green's Talkin' About, which I did not know even existed until I saw it featured on Into the Rhythm this morning. The cover follows the traditional Blue Note motif (black-and-white photo, sans-serif text, minimalist theme), but adds a wrinkle with the album's title adding it to the album's song titles. This gives the cover kind of a vernacular feel to it, highlighting Green's bluesy aesthetic. The album also claims, "You'll be talkin' about it too!," a not-so-subtle endorsement reminiscent of Everybody Digs Bill Evans. All in all, the cover is a winner.

h/t: Into the Rhythm

Blue Note Records

Blue Note Records celebrated its 70th birthday this week, and while I did not plan on writing anything to commemorate the occasion, plenty of people around the web have been talking about the label this week, including Rifftides and Straight No Chaser. On NPR, Neal Conan's Talk of the Nation devoted a large chunk of time to the anniversary this week, interviewing producer, archivist, and Blue Note consultant Micheal Cuscuna, current Blue Note CEO Bruce Lundvall, and pianist Bill Charlap in a very fun segment.

Also be sure to check out Blue Note Records: The Biography, by the late Richard Cook. Anyone interested in the label would do well to check out this exhaustive study of the label by a great journalist. Those interested in Blue Note's iconic cover art should head over to Vintage Vanguard, where you can look at every album cover made by Blue Note. I've covered their covers (no pun intended) as well on Friday Album Cover, and broke down the go-to Blue Note cover art theme, the Blue Note Special.

In my own life, Blue Note played a major role in my own development as a jazz fan. A good portion of the albums I listened to endlessly as a teenager were from the Blue Note catalogue. My top five Blue Note albums as a high school student, in no particular order:

• John Coltrane, Blue Train
• Lee Morgan, The Sidewinder
• Horace Silver, Song for My Father
• Cannonball Adderley, Somethin' Else
• Herbie Hancock, Maiden Voyage

Happy Birthday, Blue Note...

Friday Album Cover: Page One

Joe Henderson

Page One

Jazz was full of suave men who exuded cool, think of Diz, Miles, Dex, Duke. Joe Henderson was no square either; check out the cover to Page One, his first album for Blue Note from 1963. It is an underrated gem from the Blue Note catalogue, and makes a great first impression.

Album cover photo via Vintage Vanguard

Under the Radar: New Directions

New Directions
New Directions

The early 1960s were a veritable golden age for Blue Note records. The independent label churned out album after album characterized by the tried-and-true "Blue Note sound," many of which sold well in urban black neighborhoods. Allowing for exploration that streched the boundaries of postwar bebop, undergirded by a heavy dose of the blues, Blue Note created a sound characterized by the stars of hard bop it frequently recorded: Art Blakey, Joe Henderson, Lee Morgan, and others. It is not surprising, then, that just before 2000, the record label sought to revisit its backcatalogue in a way that revitalized the tunes for the next century of jazz.

Blue Note entrusted the task to Greg Osby, a veteran of the label who then selected some of the label's up-and-coming talents to fill out the group, including pianist Jason Moran and vibraphonist Stefon Harris. The album is full of classics from the Blue Note catalogue, like "The Sidewinder" and "Recorda Me," reharmonized and reworked to sound fresh without losing the adventurous and organic spirit of the originals. Many of the members of this sextet have worked with Osby before. Moran was Osby's regular pianist at the time, while Harris, Shim, and Mateen had played on a number of Osby's albums. This group makeup resembles Blue Note's style of assembling recording ensembles during the early 1960s, in which the label would gather sidemen from Blue Note's stable of musicians who was familiar with the leader for that particular day's sessions, underscoring the familial aspect of Blue Note records at the time.

The Lee Morgan classic "The Sidewinder" epitomizes the feel of the album. After Osby riffs on the familiar lead-in to the melody, the full ensemble plays a reworked melody. The boogaloo rhythm of the original is replaced by a more jagged, on-top-of-the-beat feel. The melody is played with a sense of time that is both freer and more spontaneous, while staying in lock-step with the rhythm section. Osby solos first, giving an adventurous take on the tune's blues-based harmony. Harris follows with a chorus, as does Shim. Both solos have the feeling of an overworked variation on the melody, and offer little surprise. Moran, however, concludes with a gem of a solo, shifting between amelodic clusters of chords and angular runs with his right hand. Moran's solo best achieves the goal of presenting familiar tunes in an updated context. The group closes with a restatement of the melody, with Harris hanging ominous long tones over the punctuated eighth notes of Osby and Shim.

The Sidewinder

Though "The Sidewinder" is a mixed bag, Jason Moran's arrangement of the Wayne Shorter tune "Tom Thumb" is a highlight. Selecting a Wayne Shorter tune is a brave move, considering how inimitable his writing style had become by the time he wrote the tune. Moran wisely tries not to do too much with the arrangement, adding a bossa nova beat in the piano and giving the tune a more relaxed rhythmic feel. This allows Shorter's harmonies to sound new without actually changing them. Moran begins the solo sections with a well-conceived solo that shows why he is perhaps the most exciting young pianist in jazz today. Shim follows with a solo that sounds like in the beginning like vintage Joe Henderson, and it sounds surprisingly enjoyable. After a quick restatement of the melody, the tune is finished in just over five minutes.

Tom Thumb

This highlights one of the shortcomings of the disc. Because Osby wanted to fit in twelve tunes and five sidemen, we are deprived of the chance of hearing the band stretch out. Most of the classic Blue Note sessions had the feel of a blowing session; tracks stretched on for eight-plus minutes at a time, and soloists could get in three or four choruses per tune. Because of the packed program, I am left wanting more after listening to this album, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but not optimal.

Sadly, the overlords at Blue Note have let New Directions go out of print (you can buy a used copy here). Though the album will not become a classic with age, it is still worth buying, if only to hear some of today's young up-and-comers like Harris and Moran while they were still paying their dues (Harris and Moran's duet on "Beatrice" is especially enjoyable). Grab a copy if you can, you won't be disappointed.

Personnel: Greg Osby, alto saxophone; Mark Shim, tenor saxophone; Stefon Harris, vibes; Jason Moran, piano; Tarus Mateen, bass; Nasheet Waits, drums
Track Listing: Theme from Blow Up, The Sidewinder, Ping Pong, Beatrice, No Room for Squares, Song for My Father, Tom Thumb, Commentary on Electrical Switches, Big Bertha, Recorda Me, Song of the Whispering Banshee, False Start, 20 Questions

Friday Album Cover: Channel Three

Greg Osby

Channel Three

Greg Osby's 2005 Blue Note album Channel Three does not fit the Blue Note archetype (discussed earlier) at all. Other than the simple typography listing the artist and album title, there is almost no resemblance to the classic Reid Miles covers of the 1950s and 1960s. In many ways it is an anti-Blue Note cover: the cover is superimposed onto a vintage television screen, giving it a mixed-media feel. Additionally the image on the screen is really two images superimposed to resemble a busted television screen. There is also no hue to the black-and-white photo, which is a rarity for Blue Note covers.

Even so, the cover is in some ways a perfect fit for the album. Osby is playing in a pianoless trio (with drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts and bassist Matt Brewer), and plays the kind of dark, pensive music often associated with the romantic image of the jazz musician as a singular, contemplative individual (Think Sonny Rollins woodshedding on the Williamsburg bridge circa 1959). Osby is playing the type of music that makes you think of quiet, late nights alone with one's thoughts. Similarly, the dark image of a saxophonist on a tv with a broken picture, to me, conjures up a similar, somewhat desolate image of someone alone with his own thoughts.

Update and Links

My posting has been a bit erratic (or absent) lately, and I will be back up to speed starting tomorrow with a Friday Album Cover.

In the meantime, check out Vintage Vanguard (h/t Dial M for Musicology). It is a Japanese site with a bunch of hi-res scans of Blue Note album covers, along with scans of the liner notes on the back of the cover. You could easily waste hours staring at all these covers and reading the notes. What a great find...Also, while it's still up, listen to two great cuts of avant-garde supergroup Air on Destination: OUT.

Friday Album Cover: Blue Note Special

John Coltrane

Blue Train

This week, let us examine one of Blue Note Records' most widely-employed album-cover motifs. For simplicity's sake, I will refer to the motif as the "Blue Note Special." The ingredients for the Blue Note Special are quite simple: One black-and-white photograph, tinting, and text. In-house graphic designer Reid Miles often utilized the photography of Blue Note co-founder Francis Wolff, who was often in the studio during recording sessions with his camera in hand. Wolff's collection is full of candid shots of musicians playing and thinking, like the shot used above on the cover to John Coltrane's Blue Train. Miles often employed these shots in his cover art, often giving the photo a tint (with blue being one of the most frequent choices) and using a sans-serif font for the album credits.

As mentioned earlier, blue is one of the most common hues added to Blue Note albums. This has a dual effect. Not only does it present a nice branding synergy with the label name, but it adds a certain amount of feeling to the photos. Blue is often associated with jazz, both because it has roots in the blues and because the mood created by blue light often matches the feeling of jazz. Even now, Blue Note continues to use this theme on its album art (see Greg Osby's 2000 album The Invisible Hand, below). However, Miles was not afraid to adjust the Blue Note Special for variety, whether it meant using different colors on the hue, adding some white space to juxtapose the photo, or using a tinted photo against geometric figures. All these treatments share one common characteristic, they place the musician in the forefront of the album, and display the musician as an artist at work or in contemplation, lending credibility to jazz as an art form. Being such a useful template, it is no surprise that the Blue Note Special became one of the defining archetypes in jazz album art.

Greg Osby
The Invisible Hand

Friday Album Cover: A Night in Tunisia

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers
A Night in Tunisia

Note: I know I have been depending a bit too heavily on the Blue Note catalogue for album covers lately, so this will be the final Blue Note title for awhile.

Blue Note was responsible for a number of iconic album covers during the 1950s and 1960s, and while many remember certain albums for their photography or artwork, some albums relied solely on typography. Like other classic Blue Note albums Somethin' Else or In 'N Out, A Night in Tunisia features a simple cover consisting of the band name and album title. I always liked these covers for their understatement. With a group like Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Blue Note did not need to put much on the cover to grab someone's attention at a record shop. Even so, covers like this stick out, and reflect a certain aspect of each album. In this case, the cover's vaguely African color scheme matches Art Blakey's drumming style, in which he synthesized various traditions of African drumming on his drumkit. Besides Lee Morgan's raging solo on the title track (which is quite possibly the best solo on "A Night in Tunisia" ever recorded), this album cover is something that always comes to my mind when I think of this album. No small feat for a simple text design, indeed.

Friday Album Cover: Cool Struttin'

Sonny Clark
Cool Struttin'

It's back to Blue Note this week for the Friday album cover with Sonny Clark's Cool Struttin'. Recorded in 1958, it is a notable example of the hard bop style prevalent during the mid-1950s, and also epitomizes the "Blue Note Sound." Hard Bop was clearly the most danceable style of postwar jazz, as evident in its popularity in ghetto jukeboxes between the mid-fifties and mid-sixties. The legs on this cover aptly display the feeling Clark imparts on the album: cool, swinging, and stylish.

Friday Album Cover: Oh!

ScoLoHoFo

Oh!

For this week's album cover, I'm going with Oh!, the 2003 recording of ScoLoHoFo, a supergroup consisting of John Scofield, Joe Lovano, Dave Holland, and Al Foster. Like some of our other Friday album covers, this one comes courtesy of Blue Note, proving that the label is still dedicated to presenting distinctive album art in the 21st century. This cover is reminiscent of the Beatles' Let it Be in its compartmentalization of the four principles of the group, represented here by their respective instruments.

The comparison to Let It Be also provides an interesting insight into the jazz group. Many rock critics have pointed out that the presentation of the Beatles in individual frames on Let It Be is quite significant, being that it was the last album the band would release together before breaking up. It is now well-known that the band was under considerable tension by this point in its history. Indeed, the project had to be salvaged in post-production by Phil Spector, since the band members were not talking to each other by the end of the Let it Be sessions. Considering this interpersonal strife, the layout of the album cover seems like a telling omen in hindsight, with John, Paul, George, and Ringo just breaking free of each other before calling it quits for good.

This is clearly not the case with ScoLoHoFo. True, they only came together for one album, and did not suffer from the pressure of stardom like the Beatles did. But even so, for these four musicians, all of whom are masters of their instruments on the present jazz scene, and lead well-regarded bands of their own, coming together for an album such as this requires a certain amount of pride swallowed. But is indicative of jazz that such individuals could come together and create a work of art free of egotism. That is why it is significant that the instruments are presented on the cover to Oh!. Whereas the Beatles (or more likely their record company) employed headshots to present great individuals at work, ScoLoHoFo (or more likely Blue Note) chose to simply present the instruments in a (kind of) use of negative space. The absence of their faces says more about this album than their presence would. Alone they are individuals, together they are a jazz band, whose sound is greater than the sum of its parts.

Friday Album Cover: Unity

Larry Young
Unity

It's back to Blue Note this week for the Friday Album Cover, with Larry Young's seminal 1965 album Unity. Whereas our previous Blue Note covers (A New Perspective and Out to Lunch) utilized photography to give a visual representation of the music on the respective albums, on this cover Reid Miles eschews photographs for simple text and geometric figures. A few years after making this album, Young would team up with Tony Williams and John McLaughlin to form the Tony Williams Lifetime, a major force of the jazz fusion movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. By 1965, Young had not fully developed the driving sound that would characterize his work with Lifetime, but on Unity, he shows off a new conception of jazz organ which was free of the (by that time) clichéd groove-oriented sound pioneered by Jimmy Smith. Thus, the figure of the U with spheres rising out of the top is fitting, evoking a overflowing test tube. Young shows his mettle by leading a reknowned group of sidemen, Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson, and Elvin Jones, all the while demonstrating new possibilities for the Hammond B3 organ.

Friday Album Cover: Out To Lunch

Eric Dolphy
'Out To Lunch!'

I could not think of a better a representation of the avant-garde Eric Dolphy's saxophone style than the clock this album cover. Another gem from Reid Miles and Blue Note, this cover combines the tinted black & white photo so often employed on the label's covers with bold and simple typefaces to give the viewer an idea of the wild music contained on the disc. Nothing much needs to be written about the cover to Out To Lunch; of all the iconic album covers put out by Blue Note, this remains one of the best and most memorable.

Friday Album Cover: A New Perspective

Note: Friday Album Cover will be a weekly feature in which I discuss an iconic, innovative, or otherwise interesting jazz album cover. Though examining album covers is not necessarily imperative to an understanding of jazz, plenty of people, myself included, find them to be a noteworthy facet of a music in which image and mythology often play a central role. Enjoy...

Donald Byrd
A New Perspective

What better way to open this feature than with one of the classic covers of the Blue Note catalogue? Blue Note founders Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff employed the talented graphic designer Reid Miles to design much of the label's distinctive cover art during the 1950s and 1960s, often employing the photographs of Wolff, who always had his camera nearby in the studio. As a result, the album covers of Blue Note's catalogue are among the most memorable and distinctive in the history of jazz.

Recorded in 1963, Donald Byrd's A New Perspective employs an eight-voice choir in addition to his septet to give the music a distinctive gospel tinge. Byrd intended to innovate on this album, using the choir to bring gospel to the fore in an unprecedented manner. Hence, the album's title and unique album cover, in which Byrd is photographed next to a Jaguar roadster at a peculiar angle. The passenger-side headlight dominates the album cover, and serves multiple allusions. Byrd intends to shine new light on the influence of gospel on jazz, and the term "shine a light" is a familiar trope in gospel lyrics. Additionally the odd angle of the photograph (the new perspective) forces the audience to look at Byrd in a new way. All things considered, the album cover is quite memorable and fits in with the concept of the music quite well.