Blue Note

Riddle kicks back with Uncompromising Expression, the first official illustrated history of the arbiters of style and most influential and important name in jazz, Blue Note.

Article by Sam Clark

If you rest your finger tips gently on the cover of this book you can feel the beat pulsating through it. Open the pages and the music bursts forth. Blue Note is the record label that made the world sound better. Its legendary canon is captured in this mighty tome, knowledgeably written and beautifully designed with a meticulous attention to detail.

It is released to commemorate the 75th year of this legendary record label and documents over seven decades of jazz evolution and the complex social history surrounding it. Overflowing with, among others, exclusive images by Blue Note co-founder, Francis Wolff and the iconic cover art of Paul Bacon and Reid Miles.

If your ears want to get in on some of the action your eyes are treated to, Blue Note have compiled a special box set to accompany the book containing a comprehensive collection of their singles. Ranging right back to their first signing, pianist Meade Lux Lewis, and moving on through musical delights from the likes of Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey and John Coltrane to contemporary releases by Donald Byrd, Cassandra Wilson and Norah Jones.

As acclaimed pianist, Robert Glasper, writes in his forward, ‘Blue Note is a state of mind; it’s not just a record company’. Sit back and enjoy!

Uncompromising Expression, 75 Years of the Finest in Jazz by Richard Havers is published by Thames & Hudson 3 November 2014, Twitter hashtag #BlueNote75 Music Release: 3 November 2014: Blue Note Records, UPC: 0600753550939

EFG London Jazz Festival/ 22 November/South Bank Centre
6-7pm FREE: Author Richard Havers meets Blue Note President Don Was

7.30pm Celebrating 75 Years of Blue Note - Royal Festival Hall/www.efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk

Contents page image Lee Morgan under the vaulted ceiling of Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs studio. Photo by Francis Wolff © 2014 Mosaic Images

From the top:

Grant Green at the rehearsal for the Remembering session, August 1961. Photo by Francis Wolff © 2014 Mosaic Images

Left Contact sheet for Herbie Hancock’s album Inventions And Dimensions (1963) Photo by Francis Wolff © 2014 Mosaic Images. Right Contact sheet of the cover shoot for Donald Byrd’s The Cat Walk (1962). Photo by Francis Wolff © 2014 Mosaic Images

Miles Davis during a recording session with the Miles Davis All Stars at WOR Studios, New York, April 1953. Photo by Francis Wolff © 2014 Mosaic Images

Composite Blue Note covers. © 2014 Universal Music Group

Hank Mobley, 19 January 1968. Photo by Francis Wolff © 2014 Mosaic Images