Blue Note. A Story of Modern Jazz (BBC) Page #5

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"Here's what you do." He said,

"Call up Alfred," - meaning

Alfred Lion.

"Tell him that, you know,

you're ready to do your own thing."

So I went in there with three tunes

and he really liked them.

And I got ready to play the blues

and two standards and he says,

"No, why don't you write three more

originals?"

I said...

I was stunned.

I said, "Sure, Alfred."

So my first album

under my own name,

six original tunes.

I mean, they never do that.

Actually, one of the tunes

was Watermelon Man.

I think he says that it was a tune

that could really become popular.

Alfred had a very unique situation.

He had complete autonomy,

because it was a small label.

There were no A&R men.

There was no art department,

there was no shipping department.

There was Alfred and Frank.

That was it.

When he needed an engineer,

he went over to Rudy's place.

When he needed his accounting done,

he hired an accountant.

But Alfred made the decisions.

And what you are witnessing in those

1,000-odd records that

Alfred made is one man's

personal taste,

his idea of what

he thought was right and true.

He was so driven by artists

he heard.

And even when he first

recorded Bud Powell,

or later when he recorded

Herbie Hancock, I mean,

these were unknown musicians, but

he heard something that excited him.

And he could not NOT record them.

There was absolutely no financial

consideration in what he did.

He recorded what he felt

and what he loved,

and some of it sold a lot,

and a lot of it sold nothing.

But we owe him a great

debt for the music he documented,

which is some of the music

that is still being

used as a model by young

artists today.

I think that, you know,

Blue Note is going through...

It seems to have gone through some

really interesting changes.

Recently, there's been more of a

concentration on vocalists.

And maybe it's following a certain

trend in the music.

There was a time when the vocalists

imitated the instrumentalists.

And now, perhaps, we're getting to,

once again - in a cycle - you know,

getting to a point in

the music where

the instrumentalists

are listening to the vocalists.

# A little warm death

# A little warm

death won't hurt you, no

# Come on, relax with me

# Let me take away your physicality

# One little warm death comin' up

One little warm death with me tonight

# A little sweet death

# Momentary breathlessness

# Feels like eternity

# There's nobody here but you and me

# Oh, one little warm death comin'

'round

# A little warm death with me

tonight

# In and out of stages

With the phases of the moon

# It can shine so brightly

# Let the fullness soon

come soon, come soon

# Now I feel you near me

# See you much more clearly

# I can hardly wait to

Feel you movin' through my world,

oh, my world

Isn't deep without you.

All of a sudden,

in 1954 or 1955, erm,

Columbia introduced the 12-inch LP,

which...

In other words, the average playing

time of the side would

go from 12 minutes to 20 minutes.

And...

Suddenly, their whole

catalogue that they had worked

so hard to stay in business to

generate, was obsolete.

Stores were converting to the

12-inch LP.

And at this point,

Alfred almost threw in the towel.

He actually was entertaining offers.

There was

an offer from a company that was

so embarrassingly low that Alfred

decided to fight it out.

And stick with Blue Note

and fortunately he did because,

erm, two very important

things happened.

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers

and later,

the Horace Silver Quintet.

MUSIC:
Song For My Father

by Horace Silver Quintet

APPLAUSE:

A lot of the other guys that grew

up in those days,

great musicians and they made great

records,

but they didn't get

involved in the WHOLE record.

They got involved in the music only.

Which is all right, you know?

They produced some great music.

After that, they said,

"OK, Alfred, you got it.

"You got the liner notes,

you got the photograph on the cover,

"you got the graphics, you got the

rest of it, you know? I did my part.

"So, you got the rest of it."

But I wasn't like that.

I went to them, I said, "Look, I

would like to be involved in the

whole project."

You know, not just after the music,

you know,

I'd like to sit down and talk about

who we're going to get to write

these liner notes,

is it going to be Leonard Feather?

Is it going to be somebody else?

Who's going to do the graphics?

Let me see 'em before you print 'em,

you know?

And let me check out,

make sure everything is right.

And let's pick the photos you're

going to use cos I don't want to

wind up seeing photos

that I don't like of myself on an

album cover, you know?

And so, we worked hand-in-hand

together, with every phase of the

thing.

Everything I know about making a

record today, I learned from Alfred

Lion.

And he allowed me

to learn from him, you know?

MUSIC ENDS ON BASS PIANO NOTE

APPLAUSE:

Thank you! Thank you very much.

What people don't realise today

is that the difference between 78s

and LPs is cover art.

You make a 78, you put it

in a brown envelope and, boom,

you have a record.

Erm, once you come to the LP

era, even the 10-inch LP era,

with three or four songs on a side,

not only do you have more

recording costs,

but even if you're reissuing stuff

that you already own,

suddenly you have art costs.

You have to create a front cover,

write liner notes,

create a back cover.

And it became a far more expensive

business to be in.

WOMAN:
The day that that guy

walked in there, Blue Note changed.

Erm, the one thing about working with

Blue Note is that it gave him

the freedom

and the creativity that he was

lacking in the advertising industry,

to be able to go in on the weekend

and to allow

and just play with type

and do all these wonderful creative

things that would be key to

the look of Blue Note records.

I like the fact that,

I know it's not supposed to

matter that much, but the records

always LOOKED so good.

Sometime I just look at the covers,

I pull out my Blue Note stuff

and I just look at the covers

just to get a vibe.

I don't even have to listen to the

records.

This is a classic cover.

It's Time, Jackie McLean.

And the music inside

is really reflective.

I mean when you put it on, you feel

the urgency. You feel the...

The movement of the record itself,

and when you look at the cover, it

just seems to work so well. Great!

He played with the words,

he'd play...

He'd take Frank's pictures

and crop through the head,

which Frank absolutely hated.

Erm, you know, he did some wonderful

things with those pictures.

And they used to have terrible

fights about it. Screaming fights,

where Reid was screaming

and Frank was screaming

and Alfred was screaming.

But they got the cover through.

They got the cover through

that the three of them wanted.

It was always a compromise

because maybe Reid was just

so terribly daring for his time.

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