Growth and revolution are the purest outcome of the jazz experience —
Don Was
The president of the iconic Blue Note Records, the man who is stewarding the label as it marches into it's 75th anniversary year celebration, comes from the wrong side of the tracks, in a sense. He's not a gut in a suit. He came up through the trenches as a working musician. He liked jazz and played gigs in bunches during his years in his hometown of Detroit. But his adaptability to all kinds of music brought him to fame in rock, R&B, country and funk.
Don Was, co-leader of the 1980s group Was (Not Was) and producer of every Rolling Stones album since 1993, took the baton from Bruce Lundvall in 2012, the latter having spearheaded the revival of the label in 1985. They walk in the footsteps of the fabled Alfred Lion, an immigrant who founded the label in 1939 and steered it into a special place in American music and culture. Lion was ably assisted by Francis Wolff, also an immigrant, who blended his extraordinary photography skills with his producing activities.
The place that Blue Note carved out by the 1950s and 1960s is revered by musicians—both those fortunate enough to have recorded for the label, and younger musicians inspired by those recordings.
"I think they were radical records," said Was, who was a teenager in the '60s when he discovered the vinyl with the smoldering photos by Wolff and the cover design of Reid Miles that often drew eyes to the product before ears. "Even if it was something inside, like Jimmy Smith. What Jimmy Smith was doing on the organ, it was radical. Never mind Unit Structures by Cecil Taylor (1966) or Ornette Coleman At the "Golden Circle" Stockholm (1965), which is actually one of the first Blue Note records I ever got. It was radical, but they were so good about the total package. The playing, the writing, but also the way Rudy [Van Gelder, engineer] recorded the music. The way Reid Miles designed the package and Francis Wolff's photographs. It had quality, ya know? It was one of those few labels you could just drop the needle down and wherever it landed ...You may not know who the leader was on the session, but you recognized it was a Blue Note album and you could probably pick out players from the repertory company."
by: R.J DeLuke
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