|
This year marks an important anniversary for American jazz, one that - on a number of occasions - looked like it would never arrive. The legendary Blue Note record label is celebratating its 75th birthday. Nothing that becomes legendary starts out that way. In 1939 Blue Notes Records was the grain of an idea by Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff - two Germans who fell in love with music like that by the boogie-woogie piano player, Albert Ammons. They first heard jazz improvisation as young men in Germany during the early years of the Nazi regime. Richard Havers is writing a book about Blue Note, called Uncompromising Expressions. He says that, to the Nazis jazz was everything that they hated. It was freedom of expression. It was not regimented. It didnt go to a militaristic beat. Lion and Wolff pursued their love of jazz and freedom by leaving Germany for the United States. Shortly after arriving and hearing Ammons and another boogie-woogie piano-player, Meade Lux Lewis, they scratched together some money, put Ammons in a studio, and Blue Note Records was born. The label was swimming against the tide by promoting boogie-woogie. Back then it was all about dancing, said Dan Ouellette, who has written a book about Blue Note called Playing By Ear. . And people were not dancing to boogie-woogie piano. Ouellette says Alfred Lions approach was more like a museum curator than a record producer. | 
