OKeh’s revival is more than OK

Record labels come and go. In the case of one historic imprint, they come back with new purpose. And it is not the first time for OKeh Records.

The OKeh label, founded in 1918, had a reputation in its early years as the home of so-called ”race records.” Its 1920 hit, Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues,” is often credited as the first blues record. OKeh also released historic early recordings by Louis Armstrong, King Oliver and Duke Ellington in its heyday.

Mat Domber - R.I.P.

Mat Domber

A true hero of classic jazz has left us. Arbors Records founder Mat Domber died yesterday (September 19) from cancer. He was 84.

In 1989, Domber, who was a lawyer, created Arbors and began recording classic jazz artists - from Dixieland to mainstream swing - who weren’t getting the attention they deserved. Over the next 20+ years, they found a welcome home on his Clearwater, Florida-based label. What began as a labor of love for Mat and his wife/business partner Rachel, and evolved into a significant force on the jazz scene. In many cases, Arbors was a career revivalist for many significant elder statesmen of jazz and a career nurturer for younger players who loved and felt most comfortable in the classic jazz style.

Activism and artistry

What do Diana Krall and jazz festival regulars Bettye Lavette, Lucia Micarelli and Angelique Kidjo have in common with Pete Townshend, Maroon 5, Miley Cyrus, Sugarland, Ziggy Marley and Marianne Faithfull? (The correct answer is not “they’re musicians.")

They’re among the 80 artists who will be featured on a new four-disc compilation being released January 24 to support the work of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization Amnesty International.

The project is called Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International. More than 80 musicians contributed new or previously unreleased recordings of Dylan tunes. The performers range in age from teenage pop star Miley Cyrus, 19, to folk music legend Pete Seeger, who, at 92, recorded Dylan's poignant "Forever Young" with a children's chorus.

Project producers Jeff Ayeroff and Julie Yannatta said in a news release this week that they consider the project “a powerful fusion of the music community's respect for Amnesty's life-affirming work and for Bob Dylan's enduring brilliance.”

The participating musicians are diverse, ranging stylistically from diversity of the musicians and musical genres - from rock, rap, hip-hop to pop, folk, country, jazz and blues. Seventy songs were recorded especially for this release. All of the artists, session musicians, arrangers, engineers, producers and recording studios worked pro-bono to support the project.

The 2012 release is quite appropriate, and will resonate with those who look at things like milestone anniversaries. In 1962, Amnesty International evolved from a one-year campaign to free political prisoners into a worldwide movement fighting for justice, freedom and human dignity. In March 1962, Bob Dylan's debut album was released, launching an unparalleled recording career. The project will be available in pysical (four discs) and digital release through Fontana Distribution.

Track list:

Disc 1
01. Raphael Saadiq – Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
02. Patti Smith – Drifter’s Escape
03. Rise Against – Ballad of Hollis Brown
04. Tom Morello The Nightwatchman – Blind Willie McTell
05. Pete Townshend – Corrina, Corrina
06. Bettye LaVette – Most of the Time
07. Charlie Winston – This Wheel’s On Fire
08. Diana Krall – Simple Twist of Fate
09. Brett Dennen – You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
10. Mariachi El Bronx – Love Sick
11. Ziggy Marley – Blowin’ in the Wind
12. The Gaslight Anthem – Changing of the Guards
13. Silversun Pickups – Not Dark Yet
14. My Morning Jacket – You’re A Big Girl Now
15. The Airborne Toxic Event – Boots of Spanish Leather
16. Sting – Girl from the North Country
17. Mark Knopfler – Restless Farewell

Disc 2
01. Queens Of The Stone Age – Outlaw Blues
02. Lenny Kravitz – Rainy Day Woman # 12 & 35
03. Steve Earle & Lucia Micarelli – One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)
04. Blake Mills – Heart Of Mine
05. Miley Cyrus – You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go
06. Billy Bragg – Lay Down Your Weary Tune
07. Elvis Costello – License to Kill
08. Angelique Kidjo – Lay, Lady, Lay
09. Natasha Bedingfield – Ring Them Bells
10. Jackson Browne – Love Minus Zero/No Limit
11. Joan Baez – Seven Curses (Live)
12. The Belle Brigade – No Time To Think
13. Sugarland – Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You (Live)
14. Jack’s Mannequin – Mr. Tambourine Man
15. Oren Lavie – 4th Time Around
16. Sussan Deyhim – All I Really Want To Do
17. Adele – Make You Feel My Love (Recorded Live at WXPN)

Disc 3
01. K’NAAN – With God On Our Side
02. Ximena Sariñana – I Want You
03. Neil Finn with Pajama Club – She Belongs to Me
04. Bryan Ferry – Bob Dylan’s Dream
05. Zee Avi – Tomorrow Is A Long Time
06. Carly Simon – Just Like a Woman
07. Flogging Molly – The Times They Are A-Changin’
08. Fistful Of Mercy – Buckets Of Rain
09. Joe Perry – Man Of Peace
10. Bad Religion – It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
11. My Chemical Romance – Desolation Row (Live)
12. RedOne featuring Nabil Khayat – Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
13. Paul Rodgers & Nils Lofgren – Abandoned Love
14. Darren Criss featuring Chuck Criss and Freelance Whales – New Morning
15. Cage the Elephant – The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
16. Band of Skulls – It Ain’t Me, Babe
17. Sinéad O’Connor – Property of Jesus
18. Ed Roland and The Sweet Tea Project – Shelter From The Storm
19. Ke$ha – Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
20. Kronos Quartet – Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right

Disc 4
01. Maroon 5 – I Shall Be Released
02. Carolina Chocolate Drops – Political World
03. Seal & Jeff Beck – Like A Rolling Stone
04. Taj Mahal – Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream
05. Dierks Bentley – Senor (Tales of Yankee Power) (Live)
06. Mick Hucknall – One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)
07. Thea Gilmore – I’ll Remember You
08. State Radio – John Brown
09. Dave Matthews Band – All Along the Watchtower (Live)
10. Michael Franti – Subterranean Homesick Blues
11. We Are Augustines – Mama, You Been On My Mind
12. Lucinda Williams – Tryin’ To Get To Heaven
13. Kris Kristofferson – Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)
14. Eric Burdon – Gotta Serve Somebody
15. Evan Rachel Wood – I’d Have You Anytime
16. Marianne Faithfull – Baby Let Me Follow You Down (Live)
17. Pete Seeger – Forever Young
18. Bob Dylan – Chimes Of Freedom

Has it really been 20 years?

The reissue phenomenon has been so steady and so strong when it comes to Miles Davis, that it almost masks the fact that the influential trumpeter, composer and bandleader died almost 20 years ago… on September 28, 1991.

On September 20, Legacy Recordings will release Miles Davis Quintet - Live In Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series Vol.1. It is the first offering in a series of rare and previously unreleased live recordings from around the world.

Another project is in the works that is a bit different… because it is aimed squarely at the younger, digital and social-media fan base.

On August 1, Legacy Recordings launched The Miles Davis Fan Project, an innovative online initiative designed to introduce his music to a digital audience via Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/MilesDavis) and Davis's official website, milesdavis.com.

Throughout August, 40 classic Miles tracks spanning the post-bop cool of Kind of Blue through the ferocious fusion of Bitches Brew and other Davis explorations are being featured on Facebook via the social sound sharing platform SoundCloud. The tracks feature an active "like" button that enables fans to vote.

The 10 recordings receiving the most "likes" from fans online will be assembled for Blue Flame. Given the premise of this project, the fan-selected, digital-only album could have been alternately titled As You Like It. According to the label, the title Blue Flame was nominated through an onlne Facebook poll.

By mid-August, more than 20,000 "likes" had been cast on Facebook with some songs grabbing more than 2,500 "likes." More than 35,000 plays have been racked up between the various contenders for final inclusion on the album.

In a news release, Legacy Recordings General Manager Adam Block said this is the first time the label “has put the music of an artist of this stature in the hands of fans via social media and asked them to create a collection of songs as a new release. That so many fans have chosen to engage, and to utilize the new technologies available to them, testifies to Miles' enduring appeal and eternal 'nowness.'"

Online fans are also being encouraged to create the official artwork for the release and describe what Miles and his music means to them in personal testimonials to be featured in a digital booklet coming with the online release.

Blue Flame’s release will coincide with the 20th anniversary of Davis's passing on September 28. The final track listing, sequencing and artwork for Blue Flame will be revealed two days earlier. The Miles Davis Fan Project has been endorsed by Miles Davis Properties, LLC.

[Above is a Ken Franckling photo of Miles, taken in April 1986 at his apartment in Manhattan overlooking Central Park.]

What would you call it?

Bizarre.

That’s the only word that seems to fit this year’s primetime Sunday night glitz that was the 53rd annual Grammy Awards.

If you saw it, you know what I mean. If you missed it, you didn’t miss much, trust me.

Sure, there were scattered poignant moments – beginning with the opening tribute to the ailing Aretha Franklin.

But they were outweighed by the sheer spectacle of the night and artists who felt they had to make spectacles of themselves, starting with Lady Gaga’s eggular entrance. What? And then her blatant performance ripoff of Madonna’s “Express Yourself” in the guise of “Born This Way.” And how about the bicycles zooming around the stage near night's end? And the heavy use of the bleep button by the network censors all night long.

But let’s look at the important stuff, to me anyway, the jazz side of the night – two pros and a con.

- Drummer Roy Haynes – the oldest teenager in jazz – was honored with a richly deserved Lifetime Achievement Award.

- Esparanza Spalding’s first win by a jazz performer of the Grammy for Best New Artist was most welcome – and came out of left field. Particularly since the singer and bassist didn’t even have an album in the running this time. (Her third CD is just out on Head’s Up International). And today, that upset had the legions of fans of the $100 million teenypopper Justin Bieber atwitter with their outrage. I say, quality music prevailed. And to quote Ozzy Osborne at the end of the new Best Buy commercial “What’s a Bieber?”

Here’s the affront to jazz that took place moments later.

- Do you get outraged when your given a serious listen in a jazz club to a great band – and two or three people at the next table won’t shut up, oblivious to the music?

That happened last night when Spalding was performing with the Grammy student jazz ensemble. Two folks on stage – one of them a high-ranking exec from The Recording Academy – blathered on about their programs. Wouldn’t it have been nice if they’d shut up and given the millions who’d never heard of the 26-year-old Ms. Spalding a chance to hear the music she’s made of?

But, hey, we are talking Grammys. Why should I be optimistic something like that will ever happen.

And isn’t it curious that they can only find time to bestow 10 of the 109 awards during the 31/2-hour prime time event.

Despite those failings, jazz did show itself well in the pre-telecast portion.

Kudos to the winners:

Best Pop Instrumental Album

Take Your Pick, Larry Carlton & Tak Matsumoto (335 Records, Inc.)

Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals

”Imagine,” Herbie Hancock, Pink, India.Arie, Seal, Konono No 1, Jeff Beck and Oumou Sangare, from The Imagine Project (Hancock Records)

Best Contemporary Jazz Album
The Stanley Clarke Band, The Stanley Clarke Band (Heads Up International)

Best Jazz Vocal Album

Eleanora Fagan (1915-1959): To Billie With Love From Dee Dee, Dee Dee Bridgewater (Emarcy)

Best Improvised Jazz Solo

“A Change Is Gonna Come,” Herbie Hancock, soloist. Track from: The Imagine Project, (Hancock Records)

Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group

Moody 4B, James Moody (IPO Recordings)

Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album
Mingus Big Band Live At Jazz Standard, Mingus Big Band (Jazz Workshop, Inc./Jazz Standard)

Best Latin Jazz Album
Chucho's Steps, Chucho Valdés And The Afro-Cuban Messengers (Four Quarters Entertainment)

Best Contemporary World Music Album
Throw Down Your Heart, Africa Sessions Part 2: Unreleased Tracks, Béla Fleck, (Acoustic Planet Records)

Best Instrumental Composition
“The Path Among The Trees,” Billy Childs, composer (Billy Childs Ensemble), Track from: Autumn: In Moving Pictures Jazz - Chamber Music Vol. 2, (ArtistShare)

Best Instrumental Arrangement
“Carlos,” Vince Mendoza, arranger (John Scofield, Vince Mendoza & Metropole Orkest)
Track from: 54 (Emarcy/Universal)

Grammy/jazz reprise

For those of you lacking the courage or patience to endure the glitz and non-music that dominate the Grammy Awards, here is a rundown of Sunday night’s winners in the jazz-related categories. Congrats to every one of the fine nominees as well.

How sad that jazz doesn’t get a significant place on the Grammy stage anymore. It was great , however, to see Clark Terry present for his Lifetime Achievement Award acknowledgement. The Recording Academy comp’ed him a room - but how unfortunate that Clark had to pony up the airfare from the East Coast for himself, his wife and his nurse who accompanies whenever he travels now.

Here are the winners:

Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group

Five Peace Band - Live

Chick Corea & John McLaughlin Five Peace Band (Concord Jazz)

Best Contemporary Jazz Album
75
Joe Zawinul & The Zawinul Syndicate (Heads Up International)

Best Jazz Vocal Album

Dedicated To You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman

Kurt Elling (Concord Jazz)

Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album

Book One

New Orleans Jazz Orchestra (World Village)

Best Latin Jazz Album -Vocal or Instrumental
Juntos Para Siempre

Bebo Valdés and Chucho Valdés (Sony Music/Calle 54)

Best Improvised Jazz Solo
Dancin' 4 Chicken

Terence Blanchard

Track from Watts (Jeff "Tain" Watts) (Dark Key Music)

Best Instrumental Arrangement

West Side Story Medley

Bill Cunliffe, arranger (Resonance Big Band)

Track from Resonance Big Band Plays Tribute To Oscar Peterson (Resonance Records)

Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)

Quiet Nights

Claus Ogerman, arranger, track from Diana Krall’s Quiet Nights (Verve)

Best Pop Instrumental Album
Potato Hole

Booker T. Jones (Anti)

Best Pop Instrumental Performance

Throw Down Your Heart

Béla Fleck

Track from Throw Down Your Heart: Tales From The Acoustic Planet, Vol. 3 - Africa Sessions (Rounder)

Best Contemporary World Music Album Vocal or Instrumental
Throw Down Your Heart: Tales From The Acoustic Planet, Vol. 3 - Africa Sessions

Béla Fleck (Rounder)

Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album
Michael Bublé Meets Madison Square Garden

Michael Bublé (143/Reprise)

Best Rock Instrumental Performance

A Day In The Life

Jeff Beck,track from Performing This Week...Live At Ronnie Scott's (Eagle Records)

Best Album Notes
The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-1946)

Dan Morgenstern, album notes writer Mosaic Records)

Best Historical Album
The Complete Chess Masters (1950-1967)

Andy McKaie, compilation producer; Erick Labson, mastering engineer. Hip-O Select/Geffen Records)

Best Classical Crossover Album

Yo-Yo Ma & Friends: Songs Of Joy And Peace

Yo-Yo Ma wiith Odair Assad, Sergio Assad, Chris Botti, Dave Brubeck, Matt Brubeck, John Clayton, Paquito d'Rivera, Renée Fleming, Diana Krall, Alison Krauss, Natalie McMaster, Edgar Meyer, Cristina Pato, Joshua Redman, Jake Shimabukuro, Silk Road Ensemble, James Taylor, Chris Thile, Wu Tong, Alon Yavnai & Amelia Zirin-Brown. (Sony Classical)

Note: I threw in Jeff Beck for two reasons, even though he won in an instrumental rock category. 1) He recorded his CD at Ronnie Scott’s. 2) He had a super jazz-related performance on the telecast with a Les Paul tribute performance – playing “How High the Moon” – on a Les Paul model guitar, of course.

One thing that doesn’t really make sense to me
You’ll note the category for Best Latin Jazz Album - Vocal or Instrumental.
Latin Jazz is also a part of the now-10-years-old Latin Grammy Awards. Why the duplication? And if it is so necessary, why don’t we have separate nights for Bluegrass Grammys, Blues Grammys, Classical Grammys, Folk Grammys, Jazz Grammys, Movie Soundtrack Grammys and Grab-Your-Crotch & Rhyme Grammys, etc.?

I’m curious why one genre gets its own separate night but NOTeach of the others. Then again, we are talking about a mainstream entertainment awards event.

I think I just answered my own question.

The best in jazz recordings in 2009

Here are this writer's choices for the top jazz recordings and reissues of 2009. Always keep in mind that top 10 listings of this sort reflect the reviewer's musical taste at the moment he/she does the evaluations. They only carry significant weight when the same recordings show up on many such lists. That being said, here we go:

The 10 best new jazz releases of 2009, listed alphabetically:
- Lili Añel, “Every Second in Between” (Wall-I Records)
- Big Band Ritmo Sinfonica Città Di Verona, "Restless Spirits" (Velut Luna)
- Seamus Blake, “Live in Italy” (Jazz Eyes)
- Mike Clark, “Blueprints of Jazz, Vol. 1” (Talking House)
- Bill Cunliffe, “Blues and the Abstract Truth, Take 2” (Resonance)
- Kat Edmonson, “Take to the Sky” (Convivium Records)
- Steve Kuhn, “Mostly Coltrane” (ECM)
- LeBoeuf Brothers, “House Without a Door” (LeBoeuf Brothers Music)
- John Scofield, “Piety Street” (EmArcy)
- Joe Zawinul, “75” (Heads Up International)

The 10 best new songs of the year, listed alphabetically:
- Lynne Arriale, “A Gentle Soul” from “Nuance” (Motéma Music)
- Jeff Ballard, “Lady B” from Fly’s “Sky & Country” (ECM)
- Scotty Barnhart, “Haley’s Passage” from “Say It Plain” (Unity Music)
- Gerald Clayton, “Peace for the Moment” from “Two-Shade” (ArtistShare)
- N. Glenn Davis, “Come Right In” from “Come Right In” (Jazzed Media)
- Richie Goods, “Desert Song” from “Live at the Zinc Bar” (RichMan Productions)
- Fareed Haque. “Big Bhangra” from “Flat Planet” (Owl Studios)
- Sean Jones, “The Ambitious Violet” from “The Search Within” (Mack Avenue)
- Mark Rapp, “Thank You” from “Token Tales” (Paved Earth)
- Greg Skaff, “Willie D” from “East Harlem Skyline” (Zoho)

The best jazz boxed set or historic recordings of 2009, listed alphabetically:
- Dupree Bolton, “Fireball,” (Uptown)
- Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins, “The Classic Prestige Sessions, 1951-1956 (Prestige)
- Lucky Thompson, “New York City, 1965-65” (Uptown)
- Freddie Hubbard, “Without a Song (Live in Europe, 1969)” (Blue Note)
- Scott LaFaro, “Pieces of Jade” (Resonance)

The best jazz-related DVD of 2009
- "'Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris," (Outsider Pictures/Naxos of America)

Add Detroit to a year of big numbers for jazz

50, 30, 55. The numbers have been all over the lot this year with significant anniversaries for historic recordings, jazz festival foundings or longevity. You name it, there’s been or will be a lot of hoopla.

Now you can add 30 and 91 with the Detroit International Jazz Festival to the mix this Labor Day Weekend.

Detroit, which bills itself as the largest free jazz festival in the U.S., is commemorating its 30th anniversary edition with a six-part suite that it commissioned from West Coast composer-bandleader Gerald Wilson. He and his big band will premiere the work on September 4, which just happens to be Wilson’s 91st birthday.

A recorded version, Detroit, will be released September 29 by Mack Avenue Records.
Wilson recorded the work with both his Los Angeles and New York orchestras.

The combined personnel include trumpeters Jon Faddis, Bobby Rodriguez and Jimmy Owens; trombonists Dennis Wilson, Luis Bonilla and Doug Purviance; saxophonists Steve Wilson, Kamasi Washington, Antonio Hart, Jackie Kelso and Ronnie Cuber; pianists Brian O'Rourke and Renee Rosnes; bassists Trey Henry, Peter Washington and Todd Coolman; and drummers Mel Lee and Lewis Nash. The guest soloists are flute player Hubert Laws, trumpeter Sean Jones and the bandleader's son, guitarist Anthony Wilson.

Gerald Wilson calls his work a musical sonnet to the city where he spent five key years in the late 1930s. He said Detroit's progressive social policies made a huge impression on him. "The city itself showed me so much," Wilson says. "All of the schools were integrated; so was the musician's union. I had only known segregation before."

Some golden jazz projects take on a new spin

A golden anniversary only rolls around once, so producers and promoters are smart to make the best of it.

To some ears, 1959 was the greatest year in jazz, given the pinnacle of talent and artful productivity in so many facets of the music. It was the year for recording projects that turned out to be pivotal for their makers – and for listeners. Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, John Coltrane’s Giant Steps and Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come led the charge.

We don’t dare forget about Davis’s enduring classic Sketches of Spain, Dave Brubeck’s Time Out and Charles Mingus’s Mingus Ah Um. And Columbia / Legacy is making sure we don’t forget them.

On May 26, the label is releasing 50th anniversary two-CD deluxe sets of the three classic recordings as part of its Legacy Edition series. Each has been enhanced or beefed up in some way for this 1959 – Jazz’s Greatest Year set:

· Sketches of Spain (50th Anniversary Enhanced 2 CD Legacy Edition) - The original of this Gil Evans-Miles Davis collaboration plus more than an hour of rehearsal or alternate takes, as well as a version of “Concerto de Aranjuez” from the only time they performed it live (Carnegie Hall, 1961) and a new essay by Gunther Schuller.

· Time Out -50th Anniversary (2 CD/1 DVD Legacy Edition) - Jazz’s first million-selling album is accompanied by previously unreleased recordings of Brubeck’s Quartet at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1961, 1963 and 1964 (eight tracks in all), as well as a 30-minute DVD documentary on the making of the project, an interview with Brubeck, an interactive piano lesson, and historic performance footage. There’s also a new essay by Ted Gioia.

· Ah Um 50th Anniversary (Legacy Edition) - The 1959 recording and its sequel, Mingus Dynasty, in their entirety, plus bonus tracks and alternate takes from the 1959 recording sessions for Mingus Ah Um and a new essay by Michael Cuscuna.

All three 50th anniversary sets also contain rare photos and previously unpublished documents and/or correspondence concerning the recording sessions.

The completists among us are likely to rejoice with this new ammunition for the argument that silence isn’t always golden.

Timing is everything

Timing has an impact on just about everything we do, including the attention given to various jazz releases. Bill Cunliffe’s Blues and the Abstract Truth: Take 2 released late in 2008 on the Resonance label is a case in point.

The CD is a masterful work - updating Oliver Nelson’s classic 1961 all-star project with great reverence while skillfully adding new twists and turns. Cunliffe and his nine-piece band perform updated arrangements of all six tunes from Nelson’s septet project, in exact order. Then he tacked on two originals, a forward-looking bop exploration called “Port Authority” and a Nelson-like homage to Cunliffe’s own piano mentor, Mary Lou Williams, called “May Lou’s Blues. This disc belongs on many a CD shelf, right next to Nelson’s original.

Now, about that timing. The CD was released on October 14, 2008, late in the year for consideration by critics assembling their Top 10 lists for 2008. I can’t begin to guess even how many received it or had a chance to give it a listen prior to submitting their various ballots or publishing their own year-end lists.

More than 75 of us contributed to Francis Davis’s very important 2008 jazz poll published last December 30 in the Village Voice. I double-checked yesterday. Cunliffe’s CD didn’t appear on a single list. My list for that poll, the Jazz Journalists Association’s Web site and allaboutjazz.com didn’t contain it, unfortunately, because I never received the disc. I listened to a friend’s copy this past week. Suffice it to say that I was blown away by this exceptional revisit/reinterpretation of the original project made nearly a half-century ago.

So even though it technically came out late in 2008, I am tempted to put it in my 2009 Top 10 list. And why not? It can balance things a bit - as several critics put drummer Mike Clark’s excellent Blueprints Of Jazz Vol. 1 (Talking House) on their 2008 lists… even though it wasn’t released until February 3, 2009 (see My January 25 blog entry).

Blue Note Records is doing it up big – again

The esteemed Blue Note jazz label loves milestone celebrations. And we are at the beginning of another.

It was 25 years ago this month that the label re-launched itself under the leadership of current President Bruce Lundvall, celebrating the revival a year later with a February 22, 1985 concert of historic proportions at Town Hall in midtown Manhattan that featured dozens of Blue Note artists past and future.

The who’s who in jazz that night included Art Blakey, Lou Donaldson, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Charles Lloyd, Jackie McLean, Woody Shaw, Jimmy Smith and Grover Washington Jr. The new voices included Stanley Jordan, Michel Petrucciani and Bennie Wallace. There were many more participating, including a solo performance by Cecil Taylor and a cameo walk-on by the ailing Hank Mobley. It was a stirring evening of musical moments to witness. Soon after, Sony released the concert on a two-volume video called One Night With Blue Note Preserved.

Grover Washington Jr., Jack DeJohnette, Jimmy Smith and Stanley Turrentine – One Night With Blue Note rehearsal, Feb. 21, 1985 ... >
Now, the label is marking the 25th anniversary of its rebirth as well as the 70th anniversary of its founding in 1939 by a pair of jazz-loving German immigrants, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, a musical commitment that spawned a historic catalog of music by many of the giants of jazz when the music was thriving.

The current Blue Note anniversaries celebration will feature a worldwide tour (with 50 U.S. concert dates) and a CD release Mosaic: A Celebration of Blue Note Records (2 CDs) [AMAZON EXCLUSIVE] by the Blue Note 7, a septet consisting of pianist and musical director Bill Charlap, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, alto saxophonist Steve Wilson, tenor saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, guitarist Peter Bernstein, bassist Peter Washington and drummer Lewis Nash.

The year will also include book releases; jazz festival spotlights in Monterey, Montreal, Newport, New York and Portland, among others; a month-long Manhattan jazz club invasion by Blue Note artists that opens in late January, a Grammy salute in Los Angeles; a series of Blue Note reissues and a newline of clothing by the company Friend or Foe featuring classic Blue Note cover art.

It has the makings of a high-visibility year. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the effort brings more followers to – or back to – jazz.