Blue Note. A Story of Modern Jazz (BBC) Page #3

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somehow on the record, there was

some real swing going on.

Even in the ballad.

There was an Ike Quebec

kind of ballad, you know,

or a Sam Rivers kind of ballad.

There was some swing going on there.

That was Alfred's concern.

VOCALIST:
We want to sock it to you

for a couple of minutes there.

MACHINERY WHIRS AND RINGS

They'd be in the place

a lot of times...

You wouldn't even know

they were there. That's true.

Unless you'd look around.

If you were just

looking around the place,

"Oh, there's Al over there!"

He'd sit back

laughing and listening.

You know? Yeah. Both of them.

Oh, that was some good times

up there. Yes, sir.

Every soul and his brother

came up there.

Yeah, I met a lot of guys

up there. Yeah.

They were in paradise.

Yes, right, uh-huh.

Big Nick. Mm-hm. Big Nick, yes.

Everybody used to come

to those sessions.

You know, uh... Sonny...

Hey, well, man, you just name them,

they were there.

That's correct. Every night.

You knew there would be

something very interesting

that would hold your attention.

True, true. Every night.

Seven nights a week.

The school that I came from,

from Charlie Parker,

Dizzy Gillespie, and...

Of course, I mean, the business

itself was controlled by whites.

If you wanted a gig

or a job or whatever,

it was in the white places

that you worked.

Only places that were

controlled by blacks

were the clubs in Harlem

prior to the...

Just about the end of

the Second World War,

when things became integrated.

Other than that, Small's Paradise

and Murrain's and Minton's,

these were all run by blacks.

MUSIC:
Search For The New Land

by Lee Morgan

Well, this is the home of bebop.

This is the bebop laboratory,

and all of the great jazz musicians

of the 1940s performed here,

and it was just a home of...

Of the beginning of the music,

where they experimented with

new ideas and talked things out

and worked on new songs,

the ones that became classics.

And this is where it began,

118th at Minton's.

THE place.

Historically speaking...

the music always was held

in high esteem in black communities.

Hence, from Jelly Roll Morton

on up into Louis Armstrong

and on up into Sidney Bechet and

everybody else, the music was...

really, in the black community,

always prevailed.

Al Lion and them came into it

cos it was fertile, it was popular,

and we had all the clubs uptown.

It wasn't...

And we used to... New York

and all the cities were separated.

There was white town

and black town, and...

Black town was where

black music was played.

Monk was a pianist

who worked in Harlem.

The only claim to fame

he had was, I think he wrote

'Round Midnight

for Cootie Williams in 1941

and Cootie Williams paid him

a few bucks and put his name on it.

I've heard that story.

I presume it's true.

But it was Alfred....

He had his monthly budget

to do an album,

and the choice came down to

Bud Powell or Thelonious Monk,

and all of Alfred's friends said,

"Well, Bud Powell.

You gotta record Bud Powell.

"He really has a lot of technique,

and he's really a pianist,

"and Monk, I mean,

nobody knows what he's doing.

"He writes these weird compositions,

"and he doesn't play

technical piano."

So Alfred's probably

the only man in the world

that would have made the decision

to record Thelonious Monk.

When I heard Epistrophy

and Off Minor

and Thelonious and Four In One

and Eronel and all these things

that Monk wrote, I mean,

I realised that a revolution

was happening here.

This was a man who doesn't think

like any other musician

in all of musical history,

let alone jazz,

and Alfred had that good sense -

not after the fact,

but before the fact,

before anyone else

recognised his abilities,

to get in there and record him.

Monk was a sideman

with Coleman Hawkins,

and he was writing

all this wonderful music,

but no-one was really paying that

much attention, excepting Al Lion.

They seemed to be...

..in a way, visionaries.

They saw something in these

musicians of the future,

and so, their vision of

holds hanging in there,

I think, paid off, historically,

musically and creatively.

MUSIC:
Boperation

by The Howard McGhee

and Fats Navarro Boptet

I'm Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,

and I'm a lifetime Blue Note fan.

Nice to see you.

COMPERE:
Ladies and gentlemen,

as you know,

we have something special

down here at Birdland this evening.

A recording for Blue Note Records.

When you applaud for

the different passages,

your hands go right on

the records there,

so when they play them over

and over throughout the country,

you may be some place and say,

"Well, that's my hands

on one of those records

"that I dug down at Birdland."

We're bringing back to

the bandstand at this time,

ladies and gentlemen, the great

Art Blakey and his wonderful group,

featuring the new trumpet

sensation Clifford Brown.

Horace Silver's on piano,

Lou Donaldson on alto,

Curly Russell is on bass.

Let's get together and bring

Art Blakey to the bandstand

with a great, big round of applause.

How about a big hand now

for Art Blakey?

APPLAUSE:

Thank you!

With the help of Ike Quebec,

they sought out the

most creative artists

and gave them

the Blue Note treatment.

Care, planning

and quality at every level.

1947, they recorded Bud Powell,

whose tortured life

would later affect his work.

MUSIC SUDDENLY STOPS

Would you say that the

basic of jazz is blues?

MUSIC:
Politely

by Art Blakey

They set a standard.

It was always a high standard,

whether it was the recording

or the presentation,

the materials

used to press the records...

And this went from

the 78 era to the LP.

And it was always quality.

My name is Max Roach

and I'm a new Blue Note artist.

And...

KNOCK AT DOOR:

..someone has knocked on the door...

Second sticks.

Hi, this is Taj Mahal

and I'm just enjoying myself,

dealing with the opportunity

to reminisce

about music from

the Blue Note years.

Hello once more.

For those of you who aren't familiar

with me, my name is Max Roach.

I'm a percussionist, composer...

father,

friend...

of the Blue Note...

..family...

Ah, what the BLEEP am I saying?

Jesus Christ.

It's... It's very quiet

out in the hallway...

HE LAUGHS:

How you can tell a pressing or not

is a little indentation.

You can tell how close to

the original pressing you are

by an ear which is just

slightly marked on the pressing.

You see our friendly ear, you see

all the information on the record.

See on here, Rudy Van Gelder's

name on the early ones.

He was the guy who did

all the mastering.

So the plant could

look at this and go,

"Oh, Rudy Van Gelder

has the mastering,

"this is a first pressing.

Blue Note LP1515, Side A."

So that's how they used to make them

and manufacture them with identities.

Alfred was very reluctant

to meet Rudy Van Gelder,

and especially when I told him

that Rudy had built a studio

in his house.

His living room became the studio,

and he knocked out the wall between

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