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Jazz Preview: Seventy years of an iconic jazz label
SEVENTY years ago, two young German men who had fled the horrors of Hitler's regime for the safety of New York took their first tentative steps into recording the sort of music that had bewitched them since childhood.
Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff called the label on which they released their first record Blue Note. They could hardly have dared dream that it would become the most iconic label in jazz, though happily both lived long enough to see that happen.
And now, to mark the anniversary, comes an especially handsome box set from Blue Note's archives, selected and sequenced by bassist Hans Mantel. Titled, Highlights, it's a glorious eight-CD collection, which avoids obvious and much-compiled tracks in favour of some lesser-known but equally scintillating performances from the early 50s to the late 60s, split into subject areas like trumpet, bands and saxophonists.
In the trumpet section alone, there is Clifford Brown playing Easy Living and Miles Davis on It Never Entered My Mind. The saxophones include Charlie Parker on Willis and Dexter Gordon loping through I Was Doing Alright. The bands include Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers on Lester Left Down and Horace Silver on Cookin' at the Continental.
It's a great box set, and at about 50, it's also a bargain.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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