August 9, 2019
On January 6, 1939, a German Jewish immigrant and passionate Jazz fan named Alfred Lion produced his first recording session in New York City with two Boogie Woogie pianists—Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis—founding what would become the most-respected and longest-running Jazz label in the world. Blue Note Records has gone on to represent The Finest In Jazz for the past 80 years, and today Apple Music has begun a celebration of that legacy in honor of the label’s 80th Anniversary with the launch of a new feature dedicated to Blue Note’s fabled 1500 Series that presents a collector’s savvy curation of 10 classic albums with studio quality sound via Apple Digital Masters and the new playlist Blue Note Records Essentials. Explore the feature here: https://bluenote.lnk.to/1500Series.
Blue Note was already a major force in Jazz by the early ’50s—a name synonymous with the rise of bebop and the reframing of jazz as a genuine art form. But the label had hit a rough patch: The market was unpredictable, and the industry was shifting toward a 12-inch LP format that Lion was reluctant to embrace. At one point, Lion and his co-founder Francis Wolff even considered selling Blue Note to Atlantic.
Instead, the label evolved. In 1953, Lion had met Rudy Van Gelder, an optometrist with a tinkerer’s obsession for audio who had jury-rigged a recording studio in the front room of his parents’ house across the river in Hackensack, New Jersey. Warm, present, and uncannily three-dimensional, Van Gelder’s sound came to define the label, an aural watermark that helped not only stabilize the brand but advance the art.
Along with a shift in sound came a shift in image—which would coalesce in Blue Note’s 1500 series, a reference to the catalog numbers of roughly 100 LPs cut between 1955 and 1958. The label had already developed something of a reputation for its covers, often anchored by Wolff’s photography. Around 1956, the label started working with a graphic designer named Reid Miles. Miles’ design—a Bauhaus-inspired mix of limited color palettes, sans-serif typefaces, and bold textual arrangements—was stark, but had a tightly bottled energy that echoed not only Wolff’s photos but the music itself. In the synthesis of Wolff’s photography and Miles’ design, Blue Note found a visual identity that made their records not only distinctive objects in the marketplace, but interjections in a broader conversation about design that cemented the label not just as a bastion of jazz but of American art. That identity found its ideal canvas on the larger album cover jackets of the 12-inch format that Lion finally embraced.
These early LPs constituted both a rebirth and a missing link, bridging the look and sound of the label’s early 78s with Miles and Wolff’s iconic collaborations on later series like the 4000s. Original pressings also constitute grails on the vinyl market—some of the rarest Blue Notes in the world. In celebration of the label’s rich 80-year history, Apple Music presents a stack of 10 of their favorites from the 1500 series, polished off as Apple Digital Masters—an approach that mines high-quality sources designed to cut noise while maximizing clarity and efficiency, bringing the listener a sound virtually indistinguishable from the 24-bit masters. “They sound f*ing great,” Blue Note president Don Was told Apple Music. “They really uphold the integrity of the music.”
Stay tuned for a Blue Note takeover of Apple Music’s Pure Jazz radio station, and follow the Blue Note Records curator profile for more of The Finest In Jazz Since 1939.
