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Site Map Home Page September 2005 Sophie Bancroft Sue McCreeth Martin France Geoff Eales Musicians Play List Pat Metheny - Live Blue Note > Book Review Appleby Jazz Festival 2005 Built using 123web	Blue Note
	BLUE NOTE: Then & Now Article by Euan Dixon The benefits of strong branding are well known to marketers and consumers alike. Evidence of its worth is emblazoned on every high street fascia board, appears on every product label; it is the shorthand we use to recognise particular qualities, enabling us to make purchases without fearing that what we buy will fall short of our expectations. At a more superficial but no less powerful level brands can confer a kind of status on the user; they become the shibboleth of a life-style choice, the brand logo often being worn as a badge of identity to indicate that the wearer is part of a special group with exclusive and perhaps exotic tastes. I have long been the proud owner of a Blue Note sweat shirt which I wear for certain leisure activities in the guarded hope that the solid blue oval will mark me out as a man of taste and attract the attention of like minded individuals with whom I might strike up an animated conversation on, say, the merits of the Rudy van Gelder re-issues. Encounters of this type have been few I have to say but are I fear set to become non-existent if the music purveyed today under the Blue Note brand is typical of what appears in a recent retrospective set entitled: Blue Note: A Story of Jazz. The set comprises three discs the first of which, entitled "Classic Notes " reprises, with one or two exceptions which I will discuss later, pieces from the late fifties / early sixties catalogue, as masterminded by Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, that will already be in every discerning jazz fans' collection. Horace Silver, Art Blakey, Herbie Hancock and Lee Morgan are all here with familiar tunes like "Moanin' " and "Song for my Father": all epitomise the Blue Note sound which is the very essence of the brand we associate so closely with the famous logo and its by-line "The Finest in Jazz Since 1939". But wait! What is Chet Baker doing here in this robust company with his effeminate version of "My Funny Valentine"? Surely this music, pleasing as it is in its own way, has nothing to do with the musical ethos of Blue Note as defined by Lion and Wolff. Indeed its inclusion has everything to do with EMI being the current owners of the Pacific Jazz catalogue from whence it originally came and it being pressed into the service of a marketing strategy that attempts to establish a lineage, a kinship, between what happened then and what they are doing now. This becomes clear when one moves to discs two and three, respectively titled "Contemporary Notes" and "Modern Notes ? Other Notes". These are dominated by sleep inducing vocals which but for the presence of Chet Baker on the previous disc would mark out an entirely foreign territory that is quite alien to the original Blue Note concept. Indeed, as Richard Cook points out in his excellent survey of the label's artistic history, "Blue Note ? A Biography", the founders had little interest in singers and produced only two vocal discs throughout their entire tenure. Admittedly one of those was one of the greatest jazz vocal recitals ever recorded, namely Shelia Jordan's "Portrait of Shelia", but that is beside the point, the fact is jazz singing was not a Blue Note staple and attempts to establish the form as a defining part of the Blue Note oeuvre are completely spurious. It is therefore a little depressing that the authoritative voice of Michael Cuscuna is recruited to give credence to this deception, ending his otherwise informative sleeve note with the dubious assertion that in the last sixty-six years " Blue Note hasn't so much changed course as expanded its parameters", ignoring that the fact that what made the original Blue Note great was its almost obsessive single minded focus on hard-bop. It is true that the founders weren't averse to courting popular appeal in their promotion of soul jazz numbers like "Sidewinder" and "Cantaloupe Island" ? both featured here- but whilst these numbers were minor hits bringing the music to the attention of a wider audience and no doubt improving the label's economics they were also great jazz and didn't betray the Blue Note aesthetic. Except in respect of the popular appeal accorded to them through the transitory endorsement of an essentially non-jazz listening audience, where do these numbers connect with Norah Jones charming but lightweight country-pop, Bobby McFerrin's smurf like philosophising and Medeski, Martin and Wood's rock oriented banalities? Even the tracks that employ samples of the Blue Note classics like Us3's "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia), though great fun, use jazz as a fashion accessory picking out little more than horn riffs to enhance their foot tapping appeal, ignoring the substance of the music that makes jazz at once intellectually and emotionally satisfying. At least Us3 are rooted in the African-American tradition and sound more authentic than the likes of St Germain and Marc Moulin who devoid of any street cred are pure Euro-jazz chic for posers only. African-American authenticity is of course present in most of the ballads which are like Al Green's "I Can't Stop" and Anita Baker's " You're My Everything" are fine examples of soul music that would be more appropriately featured on a mainstream pop label. Some of the vocals, it has to be said, do have jazz credentials and though these are few Angela McCluskey's scary rendition of the Billie Holiday classic "Don't Explain", in which her troubled, alienated voice contrasts chillingly with a spare, sombre cello line, is very special and whets ones appetite for more of the same. Excellent though it is it hasn't, however, a lot to do with the fundamental brand and Cuscuna's contention that the affinity between the performers, past and present, lies in their personal artistic integrity is just too soft cantered to carry any conviction. If this is the case then you might as well add in musicians as diverse as Murray Perahia and Madonna for being an artist of "depth and purity" with a desire to find a way of "making music that is all their own", is hardly an exclusive Blue Note trait and in the case of a number of the musicians featured here it isn't even true. Consider some of the European examples like for instance Erik Truffaz whose offering owes too much to Miles Davis's later output. It isn't the integrity of the musicians that is an issue anyway, it is the integrity of the Blue Note brand and in my view this is threatened by the genre stretching ambitions of the label owners who will have decided that to earn its keep it must be a profit centre in its own right. One can almost hear them saying "If you can't make any money out of jazz, then the jazz must go- we'll give 'em something else and call it jazz". Apologists will argue that the "something else" is essential if genuine jazz is to featured at all and that if the likes of Moran and Lovano are to be produced more popular music will have to make up the shortfall on the capital return target. Why EMI can't retain Blue Note in its specialist splendour and subsidise it from elsewhere within their balance sheet is something I'm never likely to know but from the evidence of these discs they do seem to be running the risk of watering down a distinctive asset to the point of liquidation. Of the pure jazz artistes that have featured in the contemporary Blue Note catalogue of the recent past, few are represented here. There is nothing by Don Pullen and George Adams, John Scofield or James Newton and Bennie Wallace. Joe Lovano is hidden away unidentified in a track by Pat Martino where he delivers a solo that is hardly indicative of his towering talent. Interestingly there are no personnel listings for individual tracks except, strangely, for St Germain whose track is so processed it hardly matters. Presumably the new target audience for Blue Note aren't thought to be interested in such superfluous detail. On the credit side, Jason Moran and Gonzalo Rubalca nobly highlight the catalogue's pianistic strengths with pieces that connect authentically with the Blue Note tradition whilst achieving an original synthesis with contemporary modes. These pieces stand out like monuments amongst the slag heaps of derivative dross that surround them. There are other tracks that are worthwhile from a jazz perspective but only these and the Pat Martino have that leading edge quality that one associates with the founding years. It will be clear to anyone listening to this set that the "popular appeal" claimed for the original label is not the same thing as the "popular appeal" sought by its new owners and that the "enduring power" of the Blue Note brand is imagined and under threat of extinction from the desire to turn it into some kind of adult oriented pop label. I may be overly pessimistic in lamenting its passing but I do think it is probably time to retire the sweat shirt now that the brand has lost its potency and ability to inspire respect amongst those who appreciate the real thing. In conclusion then it is my personal view that this presentation is highly defective for as a retrospective of the Blue Note contribution to the story of jazz it is guilty of both omissions and fabrications. In the former it fails to acknowledge the early work Lion did with Bechet, Edmond Hall and Art Hodes as well as the less accessible but hugely important avant-garde output of the mid sixties. As regards the latter ? i.e. the re-writing of history-, to imply that Blue Note?s popularity was ever predicated on the vocal talents of Chet Baker and that that artists like Norah Jones and Patricia Barber are carrying on some kind of Blue Note tradition, is just plain wrong. Blue Note: A Story of Jazz has been given the following catalogue number 7243 4 74549 2 9 Track Listing: Disc One: "Classic Notes", Horace Silver "Song for My Father"; Cannonball Adderley & Miles Davis " Autumn Leaves"; Herbie Hancock " Cantaloupe Island"; Lee Morgan "Sidewinder"; Kenny Burrell "Midnight Blue"; Chet Baker "My Funny Valentine"; John Coltrane "Blue Train"; Art Blakey " Moanin' "; Jimmy Smith "Back at the Chicken Shack"; Michel Petrucciani " September Second". Disc Two: " Contemporary Notes" St Germain "Rose Rouge"; Al Green "I Can't Stop"; Norah Jones " Don't Know Why"; Wynton Marsalis & Dianne Reeves "Feeling of Jazz"; Anita Baker" You're My Everything"; Cassandra Wilson " Some Day My Prince Will Come"; Jacky Terrasson " Jardin D'Hiver"; Patricia Barber " Pieces"; Stefano Di Battista " Around Midnight"; Charlie Hunter & Norah Jones " More Than This"; Kurt Elling " In The Winelight"; Eliane Elias " Girl from Ipanema"; Pat Martino "Earthlings"; Gonzalo Rubalca " Supernova"; Bobby McFerrin "Don't Worry, Be Happy". Disc Three: "Modern Notes / Other Notes" Us3 "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia) "; MadLib "Steppin' into Tomorrow"; 4 Hero "Won't You Open Up Your Senses"; Troublemakers "Lemon"; Erik Truffaz "Bending New Corners"; Marc Moulin " Silver ?Who Stole the Groove"; Nicola Conte "Kind of Sunshine"; Medeski, Martin & Wood "Anonymous Skulls"; Soulive "Romantic"; Jason Moran "Planet Rock" Amos Lee "Colours"; Angela McCluskey " Don't Explain"; Paul Midon "Devil May Care".
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