Blue notes Richard Cook’s biography of a jazz label BY HARVEY PEKAR

In 1939, German immigrant Alfred Lion, with practically no resources, began a record company, Blue Note, that would eventually house a legendary catalogue, becoming the most celebrated of all independent jazz labels. In his "biography" of the label, British critic Richard Cook follows Blue Note’s development from its founding to the emergence of Norah Jones in 2002. He does give some attention to the details of marketing and promotion, but he deals primarily with the music. A co-author of The Penguin Guide to Jazz and the editor of Jazz Review, Cook has a broad knowledge of jazz and pop history and techniques, and that informs his accurate assessments of the artists he talks about. He also comments intelligently on the engineering of Blue Note’s legendary Rudy Van Gelder, the sleeve photographs of Lion’s partner, Francis Wolff, and the equally celebrated album designs of Reid Miles. What’s more, he portrays Lion and Wolff as passionate music enthusiasts, careful administrators, and humane bosses — something that’s been unusual at any time in the music industry, and perhaps especially now.

Lion attended the precedent-setting "Spirituals to Swing" concert in Carnegie Hall in December 1938 and was inspired by the performances of boogie-woogie pianists Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis. Two weeks later, he rented a recording studio, stocked it with Scotch and bourbon, and recorded the two men. More sessions followed — New Orleans great Sidney Bechet, piano giant Earl Hines, and an Edmund Hall group including guitarist and bop precursor Charlie Christian. These fresh, exciting recordings marked an auspicious debut for the fledgling label.

In 1941, Wolff, who’s described by Cook as "the real business brains behind Blue Note," joined Lion, and they continued to record traditional jazz and swing into the mid ’40s. At that point, the major avant-garde — i.e., bebop — labels were Dial and Savoy, but in 1947 Blue Note began to compete with them, recording memorable sessions by Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Tadd Dameron, and Fats Navarro.

But it was in the 1950s that the label really caught hold, with its releases of the post- and hard-boppers. This was bop with heavier gospel and down-home blues influences, but also with unusual forms and chord progressions. Soloists tended to favor more staccato phrasing, and some, like Sonny Rollins, fragmented their lines unpredictably. Post-bop was progressive, and its powerful, earthy qualities caught the fancy of listeners, who dug the music of Blue Note’s Horace Silver, Art Blakey, and Jimmy Smith.

Lion and Wolff prowled New York’s clubs and discovered new stars. The array of talent they recorded is still daunting: trumpeters Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, Art Farmer, Thad Jones, and Kenny Dorham, alto-sax men Jackie McLean and Cannonball Adderley, tenor-sax men Rollins, John Coltrane, Hank Mobley and Johnny Griffin, trombonist J.J. Johnson, pianists Silver, Sonny Clark, and Herbie Nichols, bassists Charles Mingus, Paul Chambers, and Wilbur Ware, and drummers Blakey, Philly Joe Jones, and Louis Hayes.

During the ’60s, Lion and Wolff followed the progressive influence of Davis, Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman from modal to free jazz. They understood and approved of the experiments of Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Andrew Hill, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Joe Henderson, Sam Rivers, Larry Young, Tony Williams, Elvin Jones, and Eric Dolphy. They even recorded Coleman and pianist Cecil Taylor.

But Blue Note wasn’t making huge money. In 1965, the company needed capital, and Lion made a deal with Liberty records, which backed their projects and didn’t interfere. In 1967, however, Lion, beset by health problems, retired; then in 1971, Wolff died. Without them, the label, in Cook’s words, "floundered in search of a direction." It became more commercial, issuing pop-jazz LPs by trumpeter Donald Byrd and flutist Bobbie Humphries. By 1979, it was finished. Writes Cook, "The music which had built the label in the LP era, hard bop, was at its lowest ebb, and the company had nothing to replace it."

By 1984, with the emergence of Wynton and Branford Marsalis, there was a hard-bop revival, and EMI, which owned Blue Note’s catalogue, decided to reactivate it under veteran executive Bruce Lundvall, who did his best to produce substantive music while realizing that he had to make some commercial concessions to keep the label afloat. Blue Note still exists, and sometimes it issues fine albums by the likes of Joe Lovano and John Scofield. But it’s a far cry from what it was in the 1950s and 1960s. And Cook ends on a bittersweet note, observing that Lundvall, who signed a new contract to head Blue Note in 2002, "still feels he can’t let Alfred down — honorable sentiments in discouraging times."