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My Blue Note Obsession

MY BLUE NOTE OBSESSION September 27, 2016

Grant Green: The Complete Quartets with Sonny Clark – 1961-62

By MARC DAVIS

Imagine if someone discovered a stash of unreleased Beatles records 15 years after they broke up. Then imagine Apple Records released all that music in a 2-CD set. That's what Grant Green: The Complete Quartets with Sonny Clark is like. I exaggerate, but not by much. Grant Green wasn't the Beatles of jazz. But for about five years in the early-to mid-1960s, he was arguably the best jazz guitarist around. He was in the same class ...

MY BLUE NOTE OBSESSION September 12, 2016

Louis Smith: Here Comes Louis Smith – 1957

By MARC DAVIS

I'm not a musical snob. I'm not a guy to drop obscure musical names to impress friends and hipsters. But when I come across a name that is undeservedly obscure, I don't mind shouting it out the window. So here's my shout for today: Louis Smith! Chances are you've never heard of Louis Smith. You should. He put out exactly two albums as a Blue Note bandleader, in 1957 and 1958, then disappeared for the next ...

MY BLUE NOTE OBSESSION August 23, 2016

Horace Silver: The United States of Mind – Revisited

By MARC DAVIS

At what point did Blue Note Records jump the shark? Is there a single moment when Blue Note stopped being the world's greatest purveyor of jazz and instead became an irrelevant producer of schlock? Truth is, it was a long, slow slide. In the 1950s, Blue Note was the greatest source of hard bop. In the 1960s, it produced the best soul-jazz on earth. And then, one day in the 1970s--poof! It was all gone. Where did it ...

MY BLUE NOTE OBSESSION August 15, 2016

Charles Mingus: Mingus in Wonderland – 1959

By MARC DAVIS

In 1959, there were two Charles Minguses: the Mingus you knew and the Mingus you didn't. In May 1959, Mingus recorded his very best album ever: the incomparable Mingus Ah Um. And I mean incomparable in the literal sense. There is, literally, no other record quite like it. It's a big band, but not a Big Band. It's progressive but approachable. It's a tribute to the past that is also forward-looking. It is simply a tour de force. ...

MY BLUE NOTE OBSESSION August 1, 2016

Art Blakey: A Night in Tunisia – 1961

By MARC DAVIS

Dizzy Gillespie's “A Night in Tunisia" has been done almost to death. Wikipedia says it has been recorded at least 500 times and it is the title track to at least 30 albums. It might be the most recorded bop tune of all time. Who did it best? Take your pick. Dizzy himself recorded many hot versions. All are good and some are great. Charlie Parker and Miles Davis can claim one of the earliest and ...

MY BLUE NOTE OBSESSION July 18, 2016

Horace Silver: Serenade to a Soul Sister - 1968

By MARC DAVIS

Is it possible to love an album for just one song? I think I do. Serenade to a Soul Sister is the happy marriage of jazz's funkiest pianist (Horace Silver) with its most soulful saxman (Stanley Turrentine). Throw in a fabulously underrated trumpeter with a big fat tone (Charles Tolliver) and you've got one of the best soul-jazz classics of the 1960s. Serenade features six original compositions by Silver, and every one is a gem. One, ...

MY BLUE NOTE OBSESSION July 5, 2016

Booker Ervin: The In Between -- 1968

By MARC DAVIS

There's a kind of music I like to think of as harder bop. It's a lot like conventional 1950s hard bop, but tougher, more muscular, more cerebral. Booker Ervin's The In Between is that kind of record. Ervin has an edgy style. It starts with a John Coltrane feel, then pushes a little further. Not into the crazy, atonal, unapproachable territory that Trane created in his later years, but into music that's more from the head than the ...

MY BLUE NOTE OBSESSION June 20, 2016

Johnny Griffin: The Congregation – 1957

By MARC DAVIS

Well, this is a disappointment. Johnny Griffin is widely regarded as one of the fastest sax players in jazz history. His reputation began with his very first album, Blue Note's Introducing Johnny Griffin in 1956. He solidified his rep the next year with a frantic three-sax attack on A Blowin' Session with John Coltrane and Hank Mobley. So maybe it's not a huge surprise that Griffin wanted to try something different a few months later, in ...

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About Jazz Story

Jazz Stories

I love jazz because it is true. I was first exposed to jazz st age 7. It's all Dad listened to. The best show I ever attended was CTI jazz show 1973. The first jazz record I bought was Weather Report's Sweetnighter. My advice to new listeners..
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I love jazz because it is true. I was first exposed to jazz st age 7. It's all Dad listened to. The best show I ever attended was CTI jazz show 1973. The first jazz record I bought was Weather Report's Sweetnighter. My advice to new listeners... just Listen. Sit down, turn off everything else, and just listen. Bring others to jazz. They will thank you for it.
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By S.P. Blanston
Member since: 2012