Classic jazz label ‘Blue Note’ still spry at 70

New York, March 23: Standing at a podium before a packed house at Dizzy`s Club Coca-Cola, dapper as usual in a blue pinstriped suit, Bruce Lundvall spoke of his "love affair with jazz, a lifelong obsession."For the past 25 years, Lundvall has translated his passion into running Blue Note Records. At the label`s 70th-anniversary party, the faces of the label`s history dotted the room: saxophonist Joe Lovano, whose forthcoming album, "Us Five," will be his 21st for the label; singer Norah Jones, whose 2002 multiplatinum debut, "Come Away With Me," elevated Blue Note`s recent fortunes; bassist Ron Carter, who has played on scores of Blue Note releases; and saxophonist Lou Donaldson, who, later that evening, performed his 1967 Blue Note hit, "Alligator Bugaloo."

"Blue Note stands for a body of music that is like a collective memory," Lundvall says. But this anniversary is as much about taking that legacy forward as it is about applauding its past. The most visible sign of that is the Blue Note 7, an all-star band of current label acts, on tour in support of "Mosaic: A Celebration of Blue Note Records," which reworks classic tunes. The band`s 50-city national tour ends with a weeklong engagement at New York`s Birdland Theater beginning April 14. In February, in a campaign dubbed "Blue Note Takes New York," more than a dozen Blue Note artists fanned out across Manhattan. And music festivals throughout the United States and abroad have organized label tributes. Releasing music on formats old and new is also part of the campaign. Blue Note`s long-running RVG Series of remasters by the legendary engineer Rudy Van Gelder continues apace, with some of the core titles in this series offered as vinyl/CD sets. On March 10, a 70-track bundle called "A History of Blue Note" was released on iTunes and other digital retail outlets. A disc-on-demand program at Amazon, "Back From the Vault," offers more than 200 out-of-print titles, including some that were recently deleted. Howard Handler, executive vice president of marketing at EMI, thinks Blue Note`s parent company is especially well equipped to bring momentum to catalog and new-release sales. "We`ve built a company that knows how to embrace this brand and maybe, if we`re lucky, create a new generation of fans," he says. "This is an opportunity we put at the top of the priority cue." That`s a welcome relief to those who worried that the boutique-label spirit, long the hallmark of Blue Note`s identity, might get lost in the corporate shuffle. Blue Note`s history began modestly, on January 6, 1939, when a German emigre, Alfred Lion, took boogie-woogie piano masters Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis into a New York studio. Lion`s childhood friend Francis Wolff, a photographer with a similarly attuned ear, caught the last boat out of Nazi-controlled Germany bound for the United States and became a partner. Jazz`s progression through the `50s and `60s can be fairly well illustrated by a succession of distinctive Blue Note album covers designed by Reid Miles, often featuring iconic black-and-white photographs taken by Wolff. After Lion`s retirement in 1967 and Wolff`s death in 1971, Blue Note survived through a program of reissues and previously unreleased material that executive Charlie Lourie and producer Michael Cuscuna started in 1975. In 1982, Lourie and Cuscuna started Mosaic Records, a reissue imprint. In 1984, EMI hired Bruce Lundvall -- who had more than two decades` experience at CBS Records and had done a stint as president of Elektra -- to resurrect Blue Note in the United States. The label was relaunched with "One Night With Blue Note," a concert at New York`s Town Hall. "I remember thinking, `Now what?`" Lundvall says. His first move was to hire Cuscuna as a consultant. His next was to think: "Who would Alfred sign?" It`s a question he`s answered mostly by continuing Lion`s tradition of signing forward-thinking instrumental artists. Saxophonist Greg Osby, who spent 16 years at Blue Note before launching his own imprint, Inner Circle, calls Lundvall "one of the last true soldiers." Another saxophonist, Lovano, says that "Bruce has given me the chance to do what the great Blue Note artists did, to play from my own personal history, to document the people I have played with and where we were going." Lundvall`s Blue Note has embraced singers, whom Lion never signed, ranging from present-day jazz standard-bearers Cassandra Wilson and Dianne Reeves (the longest-running member of the roster) to such pop-oriented vocalists as Al Green, whose 2008 CD "Lay It Down" sold nearly 200,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. While some purists have bristled at broadened horizons, Lundvall recalls the question Lion himself asked when he took over: "What are you going to do to be commercial?" At 73, with 49 years in the record business, he claims that "he`d like to make it an even 50" -- which raises questions about the label`s future. If last year is any measure, it looks solid. Blue Note had 15 charting titles on Billboard`s 2008 Jazz Albums tally, the most of any label. And the Blue Note 7 makes a good case: According to Danny Melnick, whose Absolutely Live Entertainment produced the band`s tour, the trek will gross more than $1 million. EMI`s Handler says, "We`re in a position to turn all those fans into an extremely valuable resource." Among Blue Note`s fans are, inevitably, some of its artists. "When I was a kid, I was happy just to make a collection of Blue Note albums," says guitarist Lionel Loueke, who was born in Benin, and whose Blue Note debut, "Karibu," was released last year. "But, a world away, I never imagined I`d be part of the collection one day." Bureau Report