Quality 70's Blue Note Albums

[clifford_thornton]

yes. It was recorded in July 1970 and released in '71.

I like Head On, but my tastes run towards the avant-garde. Hence, later Lee Morgan and Wayne Shorter from this period are up my alley (as are Corea's BN and Solid State LPs).

[johnblitweiler]

The Blue Note doubles and the single LPs that begin LT- include lots of interesting music that was recorded in the 60s or before but never released until the '70s. And some of the liner notes by Roswell Rudd and Ran Blake a.o. are especially excellent. Surely Lion and Wolff went to heaven.

[JCR1992]

Oh, wasn't Bobby Hutcherson's San Francisco released in the 1970s? I personally don't think this is one of his very best, but it's a good one and quite enjoyable.

"Goin' Down" South is incredible!!!

[felser]

Here are the ones I can fully recommend. The Tyner 'Extensions' album and the Elvin Jones 'Coalition' and 'Genesis', the Hutcherson Montreux set, the Lee Morgan, the Jones/Lewis, and the Wayne Shorter are classics to my ears. YMMV. The Tyner is, to me, absolutely one of the greatest albums ever made, period.

4346: The Thad Jones/ Mel Lewis Orchestra - Consummation (1/20/70, 1/21/70, 1/28/70, 5/25/70)

4354: Jeremy Steig - Wayfaring Strangers (3/??/70)

4361: Elvin Jones - Coalition (7/17/70)

4363: Wayne Shorter - Odyssey of Iska (8/26/70)

4369: Elvin Jones - Genesis (2/12/71)

4417: Hank Mobley - Thinking of Home (LT 1045) (7/31/70)

• BN-LA 006-F McCoy Tyner - Extensions
• BN-LA 015-G2 Elvin Jones - Live at the Lighthouse
• BN-LA 054-F Horace Silver - In Pursuit of the 27th Man
• BN-LA 223-G McCoy Tyner - Asante
• BN-LA 224-G Lee Morgan - The Last Session
• BN-LA 249-G Bobby Hutcherson - Live at Montreux
• BN-LA 710-G Bobby Hutcherson - The View from the Inside
• BN-LA 789-G Bobby Hutcherson - Knucklebean

[ArtSalt]

I quite like Chico Hamilton and The Players and his Peregrinations album.

The 70s was a good era for jazz though, it may not have been hard-bop city, but there was a lot of great jazz recorded in the 70's, just not on Blue Note!

Edited January 27, 2015 by ArtSalt

[Shawn]

I love Bobby Hutcherson's San Francisco. In fact it's one of my very favorites of his.

In general I really like late 60s and early 70s jazz, I think the entire era gets way too much hate from the old school...school.

[Guy Berger]

I think it's both true that the late 60s / early 70s were a great time for jazz, and that by then BN output's centrality to jazz had diminished significantly.

[felser]

The 70s was a good era for jazz though, it may not have been hard-bop city, but there was a lot of great jazz recorded in the 70's, just not on Blue Note!

Amen! Strata-East, Nimbus West, Black Jazz, Steeplechase, Flying Dutchman, MPS, Muse, even some of the Don Sebesky era CTI catalog, etc. etc., all sorts of fascinating things going on. Lots and lots of choice quality wheat mixed in with a lot of chaff.

[JCR1992]

The Blue Note doubles and the single LPs that begin LT- include lots of interesting music that was recorded in the 60s or before but never released until the '70s. And some of the liner notes by Roswell Rudd and Ran Blake a.o. are especially excellent. Surely Lion and Wolff went to heaven.

I have so many of those already. I don't even understand why a lot of those were released so many years later.

[BFrank]

So, what is it about 70s BNs that you are interested in? Their best years were the 50s-60s.

I have so many from those two decades so it only makes sense to get some stuff from the 70's.

I don't have EVERY good release from those decades but I have enough at the moment.

There are LOTS of good 70s albums, they're just not on BN.

[JSngry]

Let's cut the notion of being interested in 70s BN some slack. Not only were there some - a few - genuinely GOOD albums on the label during that time (even if no GREAT ones), but there for a few years, they were having monstercrossover hits at a time when a lot of other labels were either actually having them or trying to have them. they were, as the parlance goes, "part of the conversation". Now, what conversation taht was, exactly, well, several, actually, as witnessed by the rabid megalove of the Mizell stuff by a lot of beatheads being countered by the equally rabid disdain of same by "jazz fans". The mere existence of that divide might very well be THE conversation, actually.

We got a guy(?) here who's 22 and is displaying an open mind about some things that are generally (and imo, inaccurately) dismissed out of hand as a whole. I think it's a good thing to be interested in "the whole picture" rather than just looking through somebody else's photo album and figuring this must be all there was.

Submitted for consideration, not as "jazz", but just a damn good record, period. If you don't like it, you don't like it, but it's not because they made some half-assed rootypoot fake music record. They made plenty for sure, but this is not one of them.

[danasgoodstuff]

Corea's Song of Singing is quite good, as is the same band (Atchul & Holland) with Braxton added, but I don't know if the latter group's BN work has made it to CD

[JSngry]

Corea's Song of Singing is quite good, as is the same band (Atchul & Holland) with Braxton added, but I don't know if the latter group's BN work has made it to CD

Don't remember seeing this CD, but here it is: http://www.amazon.com/Early-Circle-Chick-Corea/dp/B000008ANC

[jeffcrom]

Hutcherson's Live at Montreux has been mentioned twice, but I would like to "third" it and elaborate. It's really good - my guess is that it's exactly the kind of thing you're looking for. It's a hard-bop/post-bop quintet playing four excellent compositions, two by Hutcherson and two by Woody Shaw, who is Bobby's front-line partner. Hutcherson's and Shaw's soloing is really fiery. I'm guessing that this album is overlooked because it was released at the time only in Europe and Japan; It was only released in the U.S. in 1994.

[Teasing the Korean]

I am interested in any straight ahead jazz and some early mild fusion but nothing like Donald Byrd's Black Byrd, Street Lady and etc.

I was getting ready to chime in until I read this last sentence. It was the 1970s, and this is what Blue Note sounded like.

[paul secor]

Let's cut the notion of being interested in 70s BN some slack. Not only were there some - a few - genuinely GOOD albums on the label during that time (even if no GREAT ones), but there for a few years, they were having monstercrossover hits at a time when a lot of other labels were either actually having them or trying to have them. they were, as the parlance goes, "part of the conversation". Now, what conversation taht was, exactly, well, several, actually, as witnessed by the rabid megalove of the Mizell stuff by a lot of beatheads being countered by the equally rabid disdain of same by "jazz fans". The mere existence of that divide might very well be THE conversation, actually.

We got a guy(?) here who's 22 and is displaying an open mind about some things that are generally (and imo, inaccurately) dismissed out of hand as a whole. I think it's a good thing to be interested in "the whole picture" rather than just looking through somebody else's photo album and figuring this must be all there was.

Submitted for consideration, not as "jazz", but just a damn good record, period. If you don't like it, you don't like it, but it's not because they made some half-assed rootypoot fake music record. They made plenty for sure, but this is not one of them.

If you're looking at things from sociological/musical point of view, ok. From a strictly musical point of view, there was too much good music from that era to bother with BNs's 70's output. At least imo. I know you look at things differently, Jim. So we can agree to disagree.

[Big Beat Steve]

If you're looking at things from sociological/musical point of view, ok. From a strictly musical point of view, there was too much good music from that era to bother with BNs's 70's output. At least imo. I know you look at things differently, Jim. So we can agree to disagree.

To paraphrase your words, by the 70s BN had become an also-ran?

[soulpope]

Bobby Hutcherson's Montara (not part of the Select as far as i know) is a classic AFAIC.

Agreed

[JSngry]

Let's cut the notion of being interested in 70s BN some slack. Not only were there some - a few - genuinely GOOD albums on the label during that time (even if no GREAT ones), but there for a few years, they were having monstercrossover hits at a time when a lot of other labels were either actually having them or trying to have them. they were, as the parlance goes, "part of the conversation". Now, what conversation taht was, exactly, well, several, actually, as witnessed by the rabid megalove of the Mizell stuff by a lot of beatheads being countered by the equally rabid disdain of same by "jazz fans". The mere existence of that divide might very well be THE conversation, actually.

We got a guy(?) here who's 22 and is displaying an open mind about some things that are generally (and imo, inaccurately) dismissed out of hand as a whole. I think it's a good thing to be interested in "the whole picture" rather than just looking through somebody else's photo album and figuring this must be all there was.

Submitted for consideration, not as "jazz", but just a damn good record, period. If you don't like it, you don't like it, but it's not because they made some half-assed rootypoot fake music record. They made plenty for sure, but this is not one of them.

If you're looking at things from sociological/musical point of view, ok. From a strictly musical point of view, there was too much good music from that era to bother with BNs's 70's output. At least imo. I know you look at things differently, Jim. So we can agree to disagree.

Yes, there was a lot of good music in the 70s, no argument there. But some of it was on Blue Note, not a lot, but some. So why would you look for good music in general and not bother with a place where some of it is, especially if you have some guidance into what to avoid? Selectivity is definitely needed, but wholesale dismissal...baby with bathwater, even if baby is bathing in an ocean.

Save The Children, Save The Babies!

OTOH, hell, part of the education of any music lover is getting burned by buying some steaming pile of crap thinking it's going to be halfway decent. That's a life lesson for us all.

[jeffcrom]

Part of this discussion reminds me of separate conversations (in person or online) with Paul and The Magnificent Goldberg. I find that I don't want to listen to "great" music all the time. I often want/need good, approaching-good, not-really-that-good-but-interesting, mediocre, and mostly-bad-with-good-parts music. (A lot of 70s BN falls toward the right of that continuum.) I listen to this stuff for different reasons at different times - I don't want to give full attention to the music at that time ("great" music forces my attention its way), I want variety, I want to learn something, I want something "lighter" than great, I just enjoy it.

I mean, take Donald Byrd. I could listen to The Cat Walk, Royal Flush, and Free Form for the rest of my life and know that I'm listening to the best work that musician produced. But if the pleasures of Electric Byrd, Ethiopian Nights, and (God help me) occasionally even Black Byrd are don't reach the heights of those earlier albums, those pleasures are there (for me, anyway), and they're different enough that I want to sample them sometimes.

[felser]

Hutcherson's Live at Montreux has been mentioned twice, but I would like to "third" it and elaborate. It's really good - my guess is that it's exactly the kind of thing you're looking for. It's a hard-bop/post-bop quintet playing four excellent compositions, two by Hutcherson and two by Woody Shaw, who is Bobby's front-line partner. Hutcherson's and Shaw's soloing is really fiery. I'm guessing that this album is overlooked because it was released at the time only in Europe and Japan; It was only released in the U.S. in 1994.

Actually it leaked out a little in the USA back then, at least as cutouts. I had a cutout vinyl of it I got from Jerry Gordon's magical Third Street Jazz in Philly back in the day.

[felser]

The 70s was a good era for jazz though, it may not have been hard-bop city, but there was a lot of great jazz recorded in the 70's, just not on Blue Note!

Amen! Strata-East, Nimbus West, Black Jazz, Steeplechase, Flying Dutchman, MPS, Muse, even some of the Don Sebesky era CTI catalog, etc. etc., all sorts of fascinating things going on. Lots and lots of choice quality wheat mixed in with a lot of chaff.

Even some of the (duck, incoming flak!) early fusion was pretty great. Listening the the Hancock Warner Bros. box right now. 'Mwandishi' and 'Crossings' were/are fabulous, as was early Weather Report, early Mahavishnu Orchestra, much of Return to Forever, even (shudder) Chuck Mangione on Mercury up through (and including) 'Land of Make Believe'. As well as Gil Scott-Heron, Terry Callier, Gary Bartz's Milestone/Prestige albums, and other various hybrids. There, I''ve said it I have my armor on, and am ready for the assault now

Edited January 28, 2015 by felser

[CJ Shearn]

Another vote for "Extensions", add "Asante" to the list, in addition to Grant Green "Live at the Lighthouse", Elvin, ditto, and Bobby Hutcherson "Live at Montreux" which is a must.

[clifford_thornton]

A significant chunk of the heavy 1970s jazz output was on smaller labels or recorded and released by overseas artists/imprints. So yes, to echo statements above, there were some strong BN sessions that came out during that decade (or the first half of it, anyway), but looking elsewhere might yield more fruit.

[JSngry]

Man does not live by fruit alone, look everywhere for everything, get a well-stocked pantry from around the world of variability, then you can have all the delicacies at your disposal as well as all the things to fix for the unwelcome guests, to say nothing of that junk-binging fits we all get every once so often.