Blue Note. A Story of Modern Jazz (BBC) Page #7

---

..and Jimmy Smith had given him

this reel-to-reel tape

of something he had done

live in a club in Atlantic City.

And Freddie said, you've got to hear

this organ player. He's incredible.

And the tapes were rather raw

and the sound was crackly.

But you could hear that Jimmy Smith

was the young genius.

And I was with Prestige at the time.

And I said to Bob Weinstock, "You've

GOT to sign this guy. He's...

"You know, he's the next thing."

And I only suggested TWO things

in my life to Bob Weinstock.

Jimmy Smith and Bill Cosby. And

he didn't pick up on either of them.

Jimmy Smith, I think the very next

week was snapped up by Alfred Lion.

Nobody had ever created a modern,

clean sound with bebop and blues

and everything that

Jimmy Smith put into it like he did

and he was a very serious guy,

he had spent a year... He rented

a warehouse, leased an organ

and just spent a year,

every day of his life,

just working out on the organ.

And so when he came to New York,

he was like, fully grown

as an artist and

an astonishingly exciting one.

What happened was Alfred

was in one of those absolutely

exhilarated moods and I thought,

"Gee, he's off his rocker."

He said, "You know,

I'm going to sell Blue Note."

I say, "Yeah?" "I'm going to sell

Blue Note and I'm going to go

"with Jimmy Smith as his road

manager

"so I can hear him every night."

He was absolutely ecstatic.

You know, Jimmy was coming through

with all these sounds that

nobody had ever heard before

and he never lost that...

happy enjoyment and, of course,

the other side of happiness

is the sadness.

Jimmy got so big and the company,

which had been a very

tiny little company,

then became a bigger company

with Jimmy Smith

and it attracted a LOT of attention.

And I won't name names, but some

great big record company came

and took Jimmy away and that

was a sad day at Blue Note.

How are you? Fine, and you today?

Fine, thank you. Mm-hmm.

Alfred, when he first recorded,

he wasn't recording

compositions, he wasn't coming out

of a European classical background,

he was looking for blues,

for very soulful blues.

And, really, what...

happened was that...

his organic feeling for music

that moved him

and his compulsive, intellectual

side met and that, after all,

is the basic ingredients of jazz.

And that's, I think, why

a lot of musicians describe Alfred

and Frank as being different.

"They were one of us,"

is the common phrase that you

hear from musicians,

they really understood what

we were doing

and what they really understood

was that jazz was something

where the mind, the intellect and

the soul and the feet got together.

And that's really what musicians

were projecting.

And that's really what

Alfred was all about

and that's why Blue Note can

record Herbie Nichols

and Blue Note can also record

Song For My Father

and The Sidewinder.

It's all the same thing.

The Blue Note era and Alfred Lion

and Francis Wolff ended in 1966

when Alfred Lion decided to sell

the company to Liberty Records.

With his wife Ruth, Alfred Lion

retired to Mexico

and began a new life.

Francis Wolff died in 1972.

In 1981, jazz producer

Michael Cuscuna started to reissue

the most important

Blue Note recordings.

His partner Charlie Laurie

began to publish

the enormous work of Francis Wolff.

In 1985, the major Blue Note artists

joined for the legendary

Town Hall Concert.

The Blue Note label

was reborn in 1986

under the direction

of Bruce Lundvall.

Alfred Lion died in 1987.

MUSIC DROWNS OUT SPEECH

No, that ain't no '73. '53.

'53, I was going to say.

You'll see I'm playing that...

I haven't played that since '57.

And I'm looking...

This bass that I had here,

somebody walked in...

I paid maybe...

2,000 something for the bass

I bought in Chicago

and they walked in the club,

I was playing at the Blue Angel

and playing shows and somebody

walked in, all the other instruments

onstage, there was two basses,

they grabbed my bass.

It was like a blessing.

You mean they stole it?

Stole it. Oh, boy.

Six people.

Clifford had the same model.

Yeah, Clifford had one like that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Do I look different?

How different is this?

What is that goofy looking...

Not too much.

You almost look the same.

No, you haven't changed.

No, you look about the same.

You haven't changed much.

If you put those glasses

on that picture,

you would be about the same.

Definite.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes