Product Description
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The jazz label was home to such greats as Miles Davis, John
Coltrane, ie Hancock, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Dexter
Gordon, and Sonny Rollins. This film about jazz is a testimony to
the passion and vision of label founders.
Review
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The film incorporates gobs of classic Blue Note music -- the
label's roster included just about every viable figure in modern
jazz -- along with live footage both vintage and more modern,
scads of black-and-white still photos, interviews (ie
Hancock, Max Roach and any number of behind-the-scenes folk),
anecdotes and more. -- Creative Loafing/Tampa, Eric Snider,
October 1, 2008
"The film is packed with performances
and interviews from many jazz legends and jazz lovers, a true
testament to the legacy of Blue Note, with an acknowledgment of
the label's rebirth and its quest to continue the work that Lion
and Wolff started almost 70 years ago.." --
Mishmashmusic.blogspot.com
...this was a film I could
not stop watching once it started. Director Julian Benedikt did a
masterful job of interweaving oral history, first-hand accounts
of the way the label worked, performance clips, and both still
photos and film of the label's founders. What emerges from this
kaleidoscopic view is essentially the truth: that Alfred Lion and
Francis Wolff initiated the label in response to a personal
vision and somehow, stubbornly, maintained that vision until the
jazz world collapsed. -- Fanfare Magazine, Lynn Rene Bayley, June
2008
Although that might sound like something straight
out of a hipster's Aesop's Fables or, maybe, Steve Allen's
'Bebop's Fables', the story of Blue Note Records is a real-life,
triumphant tale recounted with narrative skill in an invaluable
documentary...Using rare archival footage, classic Blue Note
s, still photographs and the recollections of musicians,
critics and other observers, 'Blue Note-A Story of Modern Jazz'
colorfully recounts the story of the label and its prime movers,
Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, the Romulus and Remus of the jazz
business. -- Hartford Courant, Owen McNally, August
2008
Ask ain climbers about peaks, and they start
with Everest. Ask jazz fans about record labels, and it's Blue
Note. Founded in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, a pair of
Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, Blue Note set an unmatched
standard for consistent quality, innovation, and devotion to
jazz.
There's nothing quite like that unmistakable Blue Note sound -
crisp, solid, densely propulsive. Lion and Wolff recorded
everything from trad and boogie-woogie to avant-garde, but its
musical home was hard bop - jazz at its most muscularly swinging.
"Even in the ballads," bassist Ron Carter says in the 1997
documentary "Blue Note: A Story of Modern Jazz," "there was some
swing going on." (Or as Lion and Wolff would say in their
accented English, "schwing.") There's also nothing quite like the
look of Blue Note albums. Wolff was a gifted photographer, and
the pictures he took of Blue Note sessions are
classics. Art director Reid Miles did things with layout,
typeface, and Wolff's photos that were every bit as innovative as
the music.
Directed by Julian Benedikt, the film concentrates on the label's
glory days, the '40s, '50s, and early '60s. (Lion and Wolff sold
the company, which is still in operation, in 1965.) There's a
wealth of archival footage - much of it jaw-droppingly good -
from a wide range of sources, as well as numerous interviews with
Blue Note artists and fans. An unexpected treat for jazz
cognoscenti is getting to see Lorraine Gordon, Lion's first wife
and the proprietor of the Village Vanguard, pick up a phone
during an interview and take a reservation for that night's show.
After a fairly chronological start, Benedikt takes an
impressionistic approach, which may make the documentary hard
going for the uninitiated. Conversely, devotees will be dismayed
by the a of time spent on fans (Kareem Abdu
--JazzReview.com, June 2008, Glenn Astarita
The performances are, predictably, wonderful: Besides vintage
performance footage (again, mostly from Europe), there is also
quite a bit from a 1985 celebration of Blue Note featuring
Freddie Hubbard and others-good stuff. --Mix, Blair's DVD Watch,
July 2008
This artwork and selected concert footage is used intelligently
and appropriately, making Blue Note: A Story of Modern Jazz an
enjoyable and informative documentary on jazz.
--allaboutjazz.com, Micheal C. Bailey