Reprinted from http://jazzwax.com
Blue Note Records was the first jazz label to fully grasp the potential of the LP era. When the 78 began to give way to the 10-inch album in 1948 and then expanded to the 12-inch LP in 1955, co-founders Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff fully grasped the value of modern jazz, the cost-effectiveness of magnetic tape and the power of packaging music, art and liner notes. Immigrants from Berlin, they viewed jazz recordings not simply as music but as a platform for sound and design elements drawn together with liner notes. The point was two-fold: to satisfy the consumer of the album in hand and to build a mystique for the entire label and its other releases. Together, the complete product needed to be the essence of hip without saying so.
In the 12-inch LP era, Lion and Wolff (above) pioneered the six-song album that featured at least two standards. They also turned all matters of recording over to Rudy Van Gelder, an equally eccentric jazz fan who was passionate about sound and recreating the depth and warmth of how the music sounded in the studio. The music recorded for Blue Note in the 1950s and '60s was always dramatic while the covers by Wolff and then Reid Miles delivered a nocturnal, cool image. As jazz styles changed in reaction to the times, Blue Note was the chief incubator of hard bop, funk and then jazz boogaloo.
Here's Blue Note: A Story of Modern Jazz, a 1997 documentary on the label directed by Julian Benedikt and Andreas Morell. You'll find the DVD here.
A special thanks to Tom Fine.
Used with permission by Marc Myers
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