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The end of jazz at Blue Note


brownie

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Okay, now you're just toying with my optimism.

If you're old enough to remember when Was (Not Was) very first came out, they brought all kinds of influences to the table & were actually tangentally related to the "no wave" movement of the time, albeit in a significantly more overt R&B-ish way than most other in that orb.

Which is just to say that Don Was is not some musical robot programmed to function in the prevailing vacuum. The guy has skills and he's not at all musically illiterate. I think it's unreasonable to expect him to bring in an ongoing stream of small groups into Rudy's on a weekly basis (besides, there's more than a few people making those types of records now, and...really, it's over. At least for me). But I wouldn't automatically expect him to turn out nothing but crass overt pop or "adult pop" records for the imprint either.

Of course, he may do exactly that. I'm just saying that if you want anything like the "old" Blue Note, yeah, it's probably time to be suicidal. Otherwise, clean the gun, but don't load it just yet.

I was either a junior or senior in high school when that dinosaur song came out. Anything that happened before that album got past me. Quite frankly, a lot of music got past me back then in all types of genres. I listened to music all the time, but my listening habits went deep into various discographies and not wide across the spectrum of music. That has changed for me since then.

Based on the two opposing sets of videos you posted, I've returned to a state of cautious optimism.

Cheers.

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What ever happened to this??

Does anybody know what specific "material by Andrew Hill and Wes Montgomery" was being readied??

This is from the Reissues forum:

I direct you to a recent interview w/ Cuscuna (http://www.openskyjazz.com/blog/?m=200905):

"The Blue Note Rudy Van Gelder series will continue to revisit more Blue Note classics. But the Blue Note vault is tapped out of releasable unissued material. That’s why we started what we call internally the discovery series, looking to outside sources for new discoveries. And we hit with a megaton bang starting it off with the Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall. Charles Mingus At Cornell, and Horace Silver at Newport 1958 followed. We have a killer Freddie Hubbard album Without a Song - Live in Europe coming in June. Freddie was thrilled with this music - he told me he thought it was some of his best playing ever captured on tape. He was going to do a lot of press for it but alas… We are working on material by Andrew Hill and Wes Montgomery next."

Hint, hint, hint...

Whatever became of the "Discovery" series??

Anybody know what Andrew Hill and/or Wes Montgomery recordings were being prepared for release, and is any of that still in the pipeline?

FWIW, Freddie's "Without a Song" came out in June '09.

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  • 5 months later...

So he gots paid for what? Doing nothing?

Seems that even the annoying Wynetone and NoJo street team emails have stopped dropping in every other month... would wish it were different and we'd see some good reissues and some new productions that could actually be dubbed "jazz" (or #BAM or whatever).

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I'm just grateful for everything that Blue Note gave to the music over the years. From 1939 to about 1967 it's contribution to the arts was astounding. We were even treated to the Connoisseur and RVG series until a few years ago.

You can't fight progress. This Don Was fellow doesn't have to prove anything to anyone.

fine thought.

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