Birth Of The Blue: “Uncompromising Expression” Box Set Celebrates 75 Years of Blue Note

Blue Note Records’ 75th anniversary celebration has already encompassed compact disc and vinyl reissues from the venerable jazz label’s classic roster of artists including Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Clifford Brown and Thelonious Monk.  On November 4, the Blue Note party continues with the release of a new 5-CD box set.  Blue Note: Uncompromising Expression is the title of both the box set, a 75-track compendium of key Blue Note singles, and an accompanying hardcover book.  Uncompromising Expression, the book, has been written by jazz historian Richard Havers who has also curated the box set.  Havers performed the same duties last year for the book and CD releases of Verve: The Sound of America from Blue Note sister label Verve Records.

Blue Note: Uncompromising Expression, the box set, opens with the label’s very first artist, pianist Meade “Lux” Lewis, and comes to a close 75 years later with bassist Derrick Hodge.  Among the numerous artists featured are drummer Art Blakey, trumpeters Miles Davis and Donald Byrd, saxophonist John Coltrane, pianists Bud Powell and  Thelonious Monk, and vocalists including Norah Jones, Rosanne Cash and Cassandra Wilson.  (A separate set, with all of Monk’s Blue Note single releases on two CDs, will be issued on the same date of November 4.)

Founded in 1939 by German immigrant/impresario Alfred Lion and musician Max Margulis, Blue Note was quick to recognize the seismic changes coming to the sound of jazz – namely bebop and hard bop – in the late 1940s.  Adapting with the times, the Blue Note roster boasted some of the most legendary names in jazz, among them Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Art Blakey, Fats Navarro, Hank Mobley, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock. In the late 1960s, Blue Note was acquired by Liberty Records, which was in turn acquired by United Artists (the conglomerate of which was bought by EMI in 1979). The label’s output waned by the end of the 1970s, but within a few short years, the Blue Note name was reactivated as many of the label’s past triumphs were revisited on CD.  Eventually, Blue Note returned to new music including Come Away with Me, the Grammy-winning 2002 debut album by Norah Jones.  In 2006, a number of related labels were consolidated by EMI as the Blue Note Label Group, and today, Blue Note is a division of Universal Music Enterprises, a result of Universal’s purchase of many of EMI’s assets.

Each of the box set’s five discs covers a specific era of the label’s evolution.  Over 75 years, Blue Note has been at the vanguard of boogie, bebop, hard bop, bossa nova, soul jazz and beyond, and Havers has chronologically compiled the discs as follows:

• Disc 1: From Boogie To Bop 1939 – 1953
• Disc 2: Messengers, Preachers and Hard Bop 1953 – 1958
• Disc 3: Struttin’, Moanin’ and Somethin’ Else 1958 – 1960
• Disc 4: Bossa, Blues and Hits 1961 – 1965
• Disc 5: Can You Dig It? 1969 – 2014

After the jump, we have more on these upcoming releases!