Today marks the 70th anniversary of Blue Note Records.

Though I don’t talk about jazz much here at Fusion 45, I’ve been a longtime fan. My Dad was obsessive about Dixieland and Big Bands (and Benny Goodman in particular), my brother introduced me to Chuck Mangione in the 1970’s and my high school friends were into Herbie Hancock and Return to Forever, to name a few.

I’ve seen Herbie, Keith Jarrett, Pat Metheny, and Marcus Roberts, shows at Carnegie Hall and Carnegie Deli (though not the one in New York, which doesn’t have live music to my knowledge). So the vibe is in the blood.

Tomorrow night, a group of seven Blue Note musicians, including pianist Bill Charlap, tenor sax player Ravi Coltrane and drummer Lewis Nash will kick off a US tour of the Blue Note 7 with a date at the Moore Theater in Seattle. From the looks of their tour dates they’ll cover just about every major city on the map before they close with a week long set at the New York Blue Note in April.

They’re also releasing an album (for which you see the artwork above). There will be cuts available to buy via download starting January 13 via Amazon. They will also offer an exclusive 2 CD set.

Like a lot of people, my favorite Blue Note stuff comes from their 4000 series, which launched in 1957 with Sonny Rollins’ album, Newk’s Time, and continued into the early 1970’s. My favorite album of all within that series has to be Eric Dolphy’s Out To Lunch, though Andrew Hill’s 1964 set, Point of Departure, and Dexter Gordon’s Go! LP are major, too. And let’s not forget Herbie’s Maiden Voyage, a timeless album from an amazing band.

I don’t have any of that stuff handy, but I did find this great video of Eric Dolphy working out with the Mingus workshop on A Train.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 11:37 am and is filed under News, Views, Props and Missives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.