Blue Note: Uncompromising Expression: The Finest in Jazz Since 1939 - Hardcover

Havers, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0500517444 ISBN 13: 9780500517444

Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2014

Synopsis

Released to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the coolest and best- known label in jazz, this book celebrates over seven decades of extraordinary music from a company that has stayed true to its founders commitment to Uncompromising Expression. Tracing the evolution of jazz from the boogie- woogie and swing of the 1930s, through bebop, funk and fusion, to the eclectic mix Blue Note releases today, the book also narrates a complex social history from the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany to the developments in music and technology in the late 20th century. Blue Note is not only known as the purveyor of extraordinary jazz but is also famous as an arbiter of cool. The photography of co-founder Francis Wolff and the cover designs of Reid Miles were integral to the labels success and this highly illustrated, landmark publication featuring the very best photographs, covers, and ephemera from the archives, including never-before-published material commemorates Blue Notes momentous contribution to jazz, to art and design as well as to revolutionizing the music business.

About this title

Review

As it concludes its 75th anniversary year, Blue Note finally gets the book it deserves. --Jazzwise

For the fuller picture, you'll need Richard Havers's handsome new Thames & Hudson book of the same name, full of treasures from the archives. --Sunday Times

Havers, who prefers the factual to the high-flown, has done a thorough job in charting a record company that has always aimed to chase down music made with 'uncompromising expression'. --The Times

Packed with 400 illustrations, the book is truly a thing of beauty ... Readers can casually dip into it as easily as they can peruse it from cover to cover. Alfred Lion would be proud. --Record Collector

This weighty book helps to explain the mystique that continues to surround the label. [A] lavish quantity of Wolff's images ... are reproduced, including many not used on the final cover designs. --Telegraph, Martin Gayford

[Blue Note] hasn't forgotten its visual legacy either, and in Uncompromising Expression, the first official illustrated history of the label, it celebrates that too. Even the images themselves still thrum with energy. --Sunday Herald

The book is the long awaited history of Blue Note and celebrates the legendary label in a 400-page mega-feast of text, photos, album sleeves and memorabilia, much of it drawn directly from the label's archives and the magnificent photo library of Francis Wolff's iconic images. --Jazzwise

If you rest your finger tips gently on the cover of this book you can feel the beat pulsating through it. Open the pages and the music bursts forth. Blue Note is the record label that made the world sound better. Its legendary canon is captured in this mighty tome, knowledgeably written and beautifully designed with a meticulous attention to detail. --Riddlemagazine.com

A book, which is as handsome as a Blue Note record. There's lots of great stuff in the book, it's brilliant, it is a beautiful thing. --Robert Elms, London Radio

'Blue Note: Uncompromising Expression' is a magnificent book, beautifully designed and very much in the Blue Note tradition of strong, arresting graphics ... The book weighs almost as much as one of the large volumes of the Oxford Dictionary of English - and is way more fun to read. It even smells good. --LondonJazzNews

There are some wonderful photographs of New York jazz musicians in the 1930s, which really capture the energy and optimism of the music ... The book features original contact sheets and unpublished photographs by Wolff including cover shots crop-marked in chinagraph pencil by Miles. --Design Week

Lavishly illustrated ... Packed with unseen photography and ephemera from the Blue Note archive, including the original studio sessions from some of the most important recordings. --The Independent

A monumental text ... Richard Havers, a prolific author of books on jazz, who writes in an amiably informal style, expertly shows how mainstream jazz, since Blue Note recorded Bechet, has broadened into a delta, in which jazz is a loosely defined subjective concept. --Spectator

A magnificent book ... contains some amazing archival material, documents you would never expect to see. --Chris Phillips, JazzFM

Richard Havers's book about Blue Note records, with its details of the inspirations and excesses of the label's major talents, amounts to a history of jazz itself. --Peter Conrad, The Observer

About the Author

Richard Havers is Jazz consultant to the Universal Music Group where he has produced box sets including Louis Armstrong : Ambassador of Jazz, as well as box sets including Impulse! Records to Ella Fitzgerald. His other books include Sinatra, Rolling With The Stones, Bill Wyman's Blues Odyssey and Tony Visconti: Bowie, Bolan and the Boy from Brooklyn.

Edition details

• Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0500517444
• ISBN 13: 9780500517444
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400