Some people carry baby photos or shots of their Labradoodle doing something cute. On his smartphone, music business veteran Don Was— president of the venerable Blue Note Records since January — keeps a short mission statement the company’s co-founder, Alfred Lion, wrote in 1939. It uses words such as “uncompromising,” “genuine” and “significance,” all of which have come to symbolize every aspect of the label — the Blue Note “brand.”
“[Lion] committed to recording musicians who played with authenticity,” says Was from his Los Angeles office. “He wasn’t interested in commercial adornments.”
Seventy three years later, while every aspect of the recording industry has changed, and Blue Note itself has changed hands a half-dozen times, Was is keeping faith with Lion.
“We’re creating a safe environment for artists.”
A safe environment was much on the minds of Lion and his childhood friend Frank Wolff when they escaped Germany on the eve of the Second World War and launched a small recording venture in New York City. Early projects focused on so-called “hot jazz” by established musicians like Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis, but after the war Lion and Wolff began to record young firebrands like Thelonious Monk and Art Blakey.
While most entrepreneurs in the recording industry had a one-dimensional view of music as a commodity, Lion and Wolff saw value in making music consumption appeal to several senses. A gifted documentarian with a camera, Wolff captured striking images of the label’s artists at work. Beginning in 1953, Rudy Van Gelder, an optometrist with a passion for sound technology, recorded the results of that work in stunning clarity. Then, as the 12", long-playing record was launched in the mid-'50s, Blue Note hired 28-year-old art director Reid Miles to design its cardboard sleeves.
Reaching its apotheosis with John Coltrane’s Blue Train in 1957, Miles’s cover designs combined tinted versions of Wolff’s black-and-white, in-studio photos with prominent typography.
“Reid Miles’s designs were magical,” advertising veteran and host of CBC Radio's Under the Influence, Terry O’Reilly, tells me in an email. “When I look at them, I have always felt they look like the music sounds. They ‘feel’ like cool jazz…. He used type as a major design force, not just as an element. His type has movement. His font choices are bold. Jazz moves; so do his album covers.”
Distinctive packaging and superior sound — combined with the fact that Blue Note recorded both the cream of the burgeoning hard bop genre (Lee Morgan, Horace Silver, Lou Donaldson) as well as innovative newcomers (Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Andrew Hill) — helped establish a strong brand identity that set the label apart, and continues to echo through popular culture today. For example, during the recent U.S. presidential campaign, social media channels were filled with Blue Note cover knockoffs featuring President Barack Obama. No explanation needed: the president is cool.
“It’s extremely important for any company, let alone a small, independent company, to use branding to differentiate itself in the marketplace,” says O’Reilly. “Many people think branding is all about selling stuff, but at the higher realm of marketing it is about differentiation…. When done well, and with taste and smarts, branding creates not just customers, but loyal customers. It protects companies against downturns, and aggressive, cheaper competitors.
“As well, branding is an internal rallying cry. It helps employees understand the mission, and it makes them want to be part of it. At Blue Note, it attracted artists. They wanted to be on that label.”
That was the case with Javon Jackson. As a budding saxophonist in Missouri, “all my heroes were on the label,” he says. “We all loved Blue Note. When you saw one of their recordings, you knew you could count on it sounding great.”
Signing his own recording contract with the label in 1994 “brought the whole thing full circle. It was an incredible experience to become part of that lineage. Recording five or six albums for Blue Note really gave me important visibility for my music.”
By the time Jackson joined the Blue Note roster, the label had emerged from rough times. After selling it to Liberty Records, Lion retired in 1967. Wolff died four years later. In a corporate takeover, Britain’s EMI Group Ltd. acquired Blue Note in 1979, and let the imprint go dormant for several years. Revived in the early '80s, the Blue Note imprint was used sparingly to badge products by a small stable of musicians who included French pianist Michel Petrucciani and guitarist Stanley Jordan.
In the '90s, under the leadership of Bruce Lundvall, Blue Note charged back to relevance with recordings by compelling, young artists like Jackson, John Scofield, Joe Lovano and Cassandra Wilson. Hip-hop DJs began sampling funky beats from Blue Note recordings by the likes of Jimmy Smith and Grant Green. Young fans began to dig back into the label’s past to find digital versions of cornerstone recordings like Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage and Eric Dolphy’s Out To Lunch!. With an unparalleled legacy and a decades-deep catalogue, the brand was still strong.
“Blue Note is an anomaly in branding,” says O’Reilly. “It is incredibly rare for a company to be consistent over six decades. I would be hard-pressed to find many other companies that have ever done it.”
He believes Miles’s designs played a large role. “They came out of the music and the creative task: brand Blue Note Records to be as unique as the artists themselves.”
The strength of the brand was tested as digital downloading began to devastate the established recording sector. Calling on his background in pop music, Lundvall recruited singer Norah Jones, whose debut release became a massive hit, and signed veterans Van Morrison and Al Green. Lundvall also shored up the label’s jazz roster with well regarded artists like Wynton Marsalis and Terence Blanchard.
Even with these moves, the label seemed to be in jeopardy as a corporate entity. In 2007, parent company EMI was sold to a private equity firm, which then defaulted to the financial services giant Citigroup in the midst of the global economic meltdown. In 2011, Universal Music Group paid $1.9 billion for EMI’s music operations.
After Lundvall’s retirement as president, Was quickly made his mark at the label by re-signing the iconic saxophonist Wayne Shorter — who last recorded for Blue Note in 1970 — co-producing (with Keith Richards) a new album by Aaron Neville, and releasing acclaimed recordings by Morrison, Ravi Coltrane and Robert Glasper. He points to Glasper’s Black Radio, which blends hip-hop and jazz, as an example of how Blue Note is reflecting changing times.
“Robert’s music is rooted in tradition, but he’s looking ahead, as well," says Was. "The business has changed so much. For example, Robert brought in the concept for the cover of Black Radio along with the music. The best artists continue to be unique and of the moment, and continue to regenerate themselves. Artists have now taken more control of their careers, and we do what we do to support them.”
To stay in touch with the label’s heritage, Was says he still refers to Lion’s mission three or four times a month. Was's own approach to keeping the brand strong is simple: “Just try not to make shitty records.”
On a more serious note, he says, “You stay true to the mission by not trying to regurgitate the 1960s. Blue Note has already done that; now, we have to keep looking ahead.”
Alfred Lion's Blue Note Records mission statement
Blue Note Records are designed simply to serve the uncompromising expressions of hot jazz or swing, in general. Any particular style of playing which represents an authentic way of musical feeling is genuine expression. By virtue of its significance in place, time and circumstance, it possesses its own tradition, artistic standards and audience that keeps it alive. Hot jazz, therefore, is expression and communication, a musical and social manifestation, and Blue Note records are concerned with identifying its impulse, not its sensational and commercial adornments.
Jazz at The Lincoln Center presents The Best of Blue Note Records Nov. 16 and 17.
Related:
A conversation with jazz legend Benny Golson
Lee Morgan’s Sidewinder, a soul spark in a life of hard bop
Jazz Faceoff: Cannonball Adderley and Miles Davis vs. the Bill Evans Trio