Blue Note, seventy-five years of jazz in pictures – Echoes

75 years of Blue Note (Two books illustrated birthday (in Textuel and YellowKorner))

Jazz is a genre of photography. Just to be convinced to flip two beautiful books that celebrate the seventy-five years of a legendary label, created by Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, two German Jewish immigrants in the United States on the eve of World War II Blue Note Records.

The first of these works (1), “Blue Note, the best jazz since 1939″ by Richard Havers (Textuel, 59 euros), tells by the fabulous history of the record menu. Pouches, contact sheets, work notes scribbled before a historic concert, portraits, documented texts that illuminate the soul of jazz … It covers the entire history of the beginnings of Sidney Bechet to the stars of the team TODAY ay, pianist Robert Glasper or singer Gregory Porter, who are among the few jazz artists to find success without compromising their music. This book will delight fans, the trip will invite the curious ears.

The second tribute book, “The Blue Note Photographs of Francis Wolff” (YellowKorner, 149 euros) is a pure collection of photos, captured throughout his life by one of the founders of the label. Bilingual, this luxury object, imposing and valuable is published in 1939 copies only (reference to the year of birth of the label). Each is numbered and signed by the hand of Wayne Shorter, the hand that stroked his saxophone while his enchanted Miles Davis trumpet, and wrote some of the most beautiful pages in the history of Blue Note, so the history of jazz.

Yes, jazz is a genre of photography, these two works are proof, often in black and white. Photos of concerts and rehearsals, shooting sessions for these pockets of identity label in the 1950s and 1960s, often in two colors, with a banner on the top and a timeless typographical elegance.

They show the beauty of Miles Davis, vivid and captivating as his music (on one of them, produced by Francis Wolff in 1954, Miles plays with his eyes closed and is sitting in a chair, cross your right leg on the left and his trumpet raised above, it is the truth of an artist). They pierce the secret inventors, Max Roach at his farm in 1956 during the recording of an album by Sonny Rollins, sunglasses and tie undone, parted lips. They reveal the intelligence of jazz, Herbie Hancock in the eye, a deep intelligence as its harmonies. Nothing better than black and white to hear the blue notes.

Laurent Guez