What was an average production run of the Blue Note Lps?

[Dmitry]

I was talking to a friend of mine when the question on the average number of LPs of a particular title first pressing by BN came up. He was adamant that the average was ten thousand or more first run Lps pressed usually; my estimate was much lower. Of course the popular acts such as Jimmy Smith or the Three Sounds would have more records pressed in the first run than say, Grachan Moncur...

Does anybody have any insight on that? I am reading the Blue Note book by Richard Cook, but he doesn't go into the nitty-gritty aspect of running the record company.

[jbs-tom]

I was talking to a friend of mine when the question on the average number of LPs of a particular title first pressing by BN came up. He was adamant that the average was ten thousand or more first run Lps pressed usually; my estimate was much lower. Of course the popular acts such as Jimmy Smith or the Three Sounds would have more records pressed in the first run than say, Grachan Moncur...

Does anybody have any insight on that? I am reading the Blue Note book by Richard Cook, but he doesn't go into the nitty-gritty aspect of running the record company.

i do not not either, but can also recommend that blue note book by richard cook !

great for a christmas present

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

David Rosenthal's "Hard bop" (OUP, 1992), pp65 & 68, gives some info about BN sales, quoting Michael Cuscuna as a source.

"average sales for the company's singles were 3,000 to jukebox operators plus another thousand or so to individuals in black neighbourhoods."

"Average initial sales for more straight-ahead [MG: compared to "Maiden voyage", "Alligator bogaloo", "Song for my father" and "Sidewinder"] hard-bop LPs like Jackie McLean's "New soil", again according to Cuscuna, ran from 6,000 to 8,000 copies, the break-even mark being about 2,500."

Interesting that BN's list price (1967) was $4.79 (mono) and $5.79 (stereo). I guess the LPs went to distributors at about $1.25 - $1-50. Perhaps there might have been as much as a dollar profit (contribution) in each sale. So, if the break-even point was a sale of 2,500, a production cost, including sleeve design, notes, RVG, musicians, Ike Quebec/Duke Pearson rehearsal supervision, mastering etc, and freebies for the DJs would have come to $2,500.

OK, there's been a good bit of inflation since then. But these BN records look damned cheap. I'd love to know the comparable numbers for Impulse, Atlantic or Prestige.

Come in Chuck.

MG

Edited November 9, 2006 by The Magnificent Goldberg

[Dmitry]

I was talking to a friend of mine when the question on the average number of LPs of a particular title first pressing by BN came up. He was adamant that the average was ten thousand or more first run Lps pressed usually; my estimate was much lower. Of course the popular acts such as Jimmy Smith or the Three Sounds would have more records pressed in the first run than say, Grachan Moncur...

Does anybody have any insight on that? I am reading the Blue Note book by Richard Cook, but he doesn't go into the nitty-gritty aspect of running the record company.

i do not not either, but can also recommend that blue note book by richard cook !

great for a christmas present

I will disagree on you re: Cook's BN book. Even though I promised myself to finish it, it is hardly an interesting read for me. For the most part there's nothing in that book that I didn't know already by reading the late BN Board and now Organissimo. IMO, leafing through Mosaic booklets of BN recording artists is more informative than Cook's book [ I have found several passages in Cook's book that came straight from the essays in various Mosaic booklets].

I'd find it a lot more interesting if I were just starting out as a collector/music lover, I guess.

[michel1969]

It has been said on various sources that poor sellers (and now rare) like BLP 1568 were initially pressed at around 2000 copies. Larry Cohn wrote me that Joe Henderson told him that he had sold around 2000 copies of its own Blue Note albums...

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

It has been said on various sources that poor sellers (and now rare) like BLP 1568 were initially pressed at around 2000 copies. Larry Cohn wrote me that Joe Henderson told him that he had sold around 2000 copies of its own Blue Note albums...

It was a very comon practice for the proprietors of indie record companies to keep two sets of books, one of which they showed to the musicians. Whether this is true of BN I don't know.

Musicians' criticisms of their record companies may well be slanted - see Jackie McLean's statements in "Hard bop" about Prestige "slavery".

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I've given some more thought to this. I can't see how an initial pressing run of 10,000 could have been the case, even for big selling albums (because BN didn't have so many that they could have forecast them that well).

First, we don't know how long the period Michael Cuscuna was using as a yardstick for "initial sales". Let's assume it was a year. Pressing 10,000 and selling, say, 7,000 in a year gives an average stock position through the year of 6,500, for which you have to find space in your warehouse.

I checked a couple of BN inner sleeves to see what the new albums issued between "26 years of BN" and "27 years of BN" were. Not all were advertised on the inner sleeves of course, but I got a highest cat no for 1965 (4185 - "Song for my father") and for 1966 (4235 "Bucket"), then worked out which BNs would have come out between times. Here's the list:

4186 Turnaround

4187 Into Somethin'

4188 Tryin' to get home

4189 Inner urge

4190 All that's good

4191 Waho

4192 Oh baby

4193 Indestructible

4194 Speak no evil

4195 Maiden voyage

4197 Out of this world

4198 Dialogue

4199 Rumproller

4200 Softly as a summer breeze

4201 Joyride

4202 I want to hold your hand

4204 Gettin' around

4205 Basra

4206 Contours

4207 Night of the cookers vol 1

4208 Night of the cookers vol 2

4209 Dippin'

4213 Components

4214 Down with it

4215 Right now

4216 Spring

4217 Compulsion

4219 All seeing eye

4220 Cape Verdean blues

4221 Unity

4224 Golden circle vol 1

4225 Golden circle vol 2

4226 Complete communion

4227 Mode for Joe

4229 Got a good thing goin'

4231 Happenings

4235 Bucket

That's 37 LPs. Three of them sold well - "Cape Verdean blues" and "Bucket" got on the pop LP chart. "Maiden voyage", which MC says sold as well as "Alligator bogaloo", must have sold rather slower than those other two, because it didn't make the chart. So let's forget about the big sellers, which presented different kinds of problems. 34 "normal" sellers, with an average stock position of 6,500 makes 221,000 LPs in your warehouse. Plus, of course, the stock that needed to be held of almost all the albums previously released by BN, because they deleted comparatively few. I haven't tried to work out what that might come to but, sticking my finger in the air, I would guess that the earlier releases could have brought BN's average stock position up to something like half a million. Frankly, I can't see Alfred Lion putting that much money (around $200,000) into stock (quite part from the cost of warehousing such a large number). Don't forget, BN only issued, more or less contemporaneously, somewhere around half the albums they recorded, hence the wonderful vault the company has had, to the delight of all of us. So a large chunk of the company's previous and current profit was tied up in sessions paid for but unissued.

I reckon the pressing strategy must have been to have as few done as they could get away with, having regard to the price differences between runs of different sizes and what their manufacturer would have been prepared to put up with (which would only have been reflected in the price as far as the manufacturer was prepared to go) and how quickly reruns could be supplied. If I'd been running it, I'd have gone for something like 3 months' worth - about 2,000. But this is all a big guess.

I would REALLY like to know about this side of BN (and PR, Riv, Chess, Atlantic, PJ, Contemp etc). Which, I suppose, is part of the reason I speculate about it.

MG

[Chuck Nessa]

Pretty hard to generalize about this since the decade + span of the records in question, but it is likely they printed around 3000 covers and initially pressed 1000 records. Repressings would be made in quantities from 300 and up. This is for the average release. For the Silvers, Smiths, etc they probably pressed around 2500 initially. Towards the end of Lion's tenure, the manufacturing numbers would have crept up some.

MG is absolutely correct about keeping the inventory levels low.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Thanks Chuck.

Was I in the right ball park in guessing a materials cost of an LP & sleeve at 20-30% of the wholesale price?

MG

[Chuck Nessa]

Thanks Chuck.

Was I in the right ball park in guessing a materials cost of an LP & sleeve at 20-30% of the wholesale price?

MG

Yup.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Thanks Chuck.

Was I in the right ball park in guessing a materials cost of an LP & sleeve at 20-30% of the wholesale price?

MG

Yup.

Ta.

MG

[jbs-tom]

ah ok dmitry for jazz prof. like you its maybe not that deep interesting, but to get a great overview about the history of blue note and his heads it's really fine.

... and not everybody is collecting mosaic issues !

--

Edited November 10, 2006 by jbs-tom

[jbs-tom]

I was talking to a friend of mine when the question on the average number of LPs of a particular title first pressing by BN came up. He was adamant that the average was ten thousand or more first run Lps pressed usually; my estimate was much lower. Of course the popular acts such as Jimmy Smith or the Three Sounds would have more records pressed in the first run than say, Grachan Moncur...

Does anybody have any insight on that? I am reading the Blue Note book by Richard Cook, but he doesn't go into the nitty-gritty aspect of running the record company.

i do not not either, but can also recommend that blue note book by richard cook !

great for a christmas present

I will disagree on you re: Cook's BN book. Even though I promised myself to finish it, it is hardly an interesting read for me. For the most part there's nothing in that book that I didn't know already by reading the late BN Board and now Organissimo. IMO, leafing through Mosaic booklets of BN recording artists is more informative than Cook's book [ I have found several passages in Cook's book that came straight from the essays in various Mosaic booklets].

I'd find it a lot more interesting if I were just starting out as a collector/music lover, I guess.

ah ok dmitry for jazz prof. like you its maybe not that deep interesting, but to get a great overview about the history of blue note and his heads it's really fine.

... and not everybody is collecting mosaic issues !

--

[JohnS]

Dmitry is right about the Cook book imo. A very disapponting read. Very little new.

[WD45]

Pretty hard to generalize about this since the decade + span of the records in question, but it is likely they printed around 3000 covers and initially pressed 1000 records. Repressings would be made in quantities from 300 and up. This is for the average release. For the Silvers, Smiths, etc they probably pressed around 2500 initially. Towards the end of Lion's tenure, the manufacturing numbers would have crept up some.

MG is absolutely correct about keeping the inventory levels low.

It is possible that there may have been many extra sleeves hanging around somewhere. Or would they have used them up at some point through the years?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Pretty hard to generalize about this since the decade + span of the records in question, but it is likely they printed around 3000 covers and initially pressed 1000 records. Repressings would be made in quantities from 300 and up. This is for the average release. For the Silvers, Smiths, etc they probably pressed around 2500 initially. Towards the end of Lion's tenure, the manufacturing numbers would have crept up some.

MG is absolutely correct about keeping the inventory levels low.

It is possible that there may have been many extra sleeves hanging around somewhere. Or would they have used them up at some point through the years?

Gokudo got them all!

MG

[andybleaden]

sure enough that is why there are many peoples lps with different cover to record issue...eg NY or Liberty etc as well as the record labels sometimes being different

[michel1969]

I think that all those independant labels such as Blue Note, Riverside, Prestige, etc were managed approximately the same way. It would be interesting to know what are actually the managment method of a record company to have an idea of all the others. Surprisingly, nobody ever asked about it to Lion Wolff, Weinstock, Keepnews, Grauer when they were still alive : for sure they all had anwers to those endless questions...

[Daniel A]

Surprisingly, nobody ever asked about it to Lion Wolff, Weinstock, Keepnews, Grauer when they were still alive : for sure they all had anwers to those endless questions...

Isn't Keepnews still around?

[michel1969]

Yes. Sorry for him. Grauer's gone.

Edited November 13, 2006 by Michel

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Trouble is, Orrin Keepnews ran the only one of those companies that FAILED. The others were all profitable.

There were different management styles in any case; Chris Albertson said a little bit about the differences in the thread on Bob Weinstock, when he died.

The person who could tell the most, I suspect, is Joe Fields, who worked at Prestige and, when that company was sold to Fantasy, started Cobblestone, then Muse and now HighNote/Savant/Fedora.

MG