Blue Note Albums with CTI-Like Cover Art that Later Received Period-Appropriate Cover Art

[Larry Kart]

 

Solution to the "Consequence" liner notes puzzle:

I hope they disentangled the "Consequence" notes for the CD issue. I wrote them for the initial issue (on LP) of this material in 1979, submitting maybe four numbered sheets of typescript. In the event, someone at Blue Note or in Japan mixed up the sheets, and in the liner notes as printed, several paragraphs are out of order.

Specifically, on the LP issue the first four graphs are in correct order, but the next graph, which begins "As evidence of this..." and the one that follows it ("The rhythm section is 'up' too...") should be preceded by the graphs that begin "Immediately striking here..." and "But Morgan turns..." (That is, graphs seven and eight of the LP notes are graphs five and six in my typescript.). The "rhythm section is 'up' too..." graph then should be followed by the one that begins "Somewhat overshadowed in critical esteem...". From there on, the LP notes are in the right order.

In any case, I think I was "on" when I wrote those notes.

[Teasing the Korean]

12 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

As I said, the notes on the LP are printed out of order; they mixed up the pages in Japan.  I posted once here how to sort things out; I'll try to found that post.

I'm talking about the US LP from 1979.  It has your liner notes, and they appear to be in order. 

And I applaud your use of the Oxford comma.  

18 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

In any case, I think I was "on" when I wrote those notes.

You absolutely were on.   Thanks for clarifying the order.  

Edited August 15, 2021 by Teasing the Korean

[sidewinder]

17 hours ago, mjzee said:

 

Just noticed - is that a younger Rupert Murdoch on the ‘Etcetera’ cover? Fitting !

[Teasing the Korean]

10 minutes ago, sidewinder said:

Just noticed - is that a younger Rupert Murdoch on the ‘Etcetera’ cover? Fitting !

It might be!  This is one that I have on CD with the correct cover art.  

[JSngry]

All things considered at this time to date, that may end up being the greatest Blue Note cover ever. Take about "period appropriate" ..

 

[sidewinder]

12 minutes ago, JSngry said:

 Take about "period appropriate" ..

 

And possibly accidental. I don’t think he had yet been let loose on the UK and US in the late 70s. I bought that one with that cover in a UK United Artists pressing. Not the greatest.

Edited August 15, 2021 by sidewinder

[Teasing the Korean]

10 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

Anyway, can we all agree at least that the Verve reissue series in the 1990s was the absolute pits? Everything looks designed to be sold over the counter at Starbucks, in the 90s.

Is The Essential Charlie Parker in this category? I had this, but unloaded it, largely because of the cover art.

[JSngry]

8 minutes ago, sidewinder said:

And possibly accidental. I don’t think he had yet been let loose on the UK and US in the late 70s. I 

What did Ra say about today being the shadow of tomorrow?

Even if it was Joe Tommie Tim Tomm on that screen, still possibly the GOAT. A moment of the then-present that was totally prescient. 

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I'm talking about the US LP from 1979.  It has your liner notes, and they appear to be in order. 

And I applaud your use of the Oxford comma.  

You absolutely were on.   Thanks for clarifying the order.  

About the order of the notes on the 1979 LP, you're mistaken. I'm looking at that LP, and the order of the original pages I sent along is all mixed up. Follow what I said in my previous post and you'll sort it out. 

[Teasing the Korean]

1 minute ago, Larry Kart said:

About the order of the notes on the 1979 LP, you're mistaken. I'm looking at that LP, and the order of the original pages I sent along is all mixed up. Follow what I said in my previous post and you'll sort it out. 

Yes, I saw your clarifying post.  I said "appear to be" because, on first read, I didn't notice anything egregious.  Once you clarified, I could see how they were out of sequence. 

And again, I applaud your use of the Oxford comma.  I assume that choice was yours and not that of a Japanese editor.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

1 hour ago, sidewinder said:

Just noticed - is that a younger Rupert Murdoch on the ‘Etcetera’ cover? Fitting !

I assume you mean because it has the song "Barracudas" on it?

I haven't seen all of the comments in this thread, but I assume, as usual, one person is vociferously defending those cheap LT covers? When I first got back into vinyl and started buying Jazz, I saw a few of these LT LPs and started to skim past them. I figured that there was no way that they were legitimate releases. Bootlegs maybe? Licensed cheapies maybe? Then I saw Mobley's "A Slice Of The Top" and I had to have it, bootleg or not and then I discovered Cuscuna was behind it. I always wondered what was going on with these covers.

Has anyone ever asked him?

[Teasing the Korean]

2 minutes ago, bresna said:

I assume you mean because it has the song "Barracudas" on it?

I haven't seen all of the comments in this thread, but I assume, as usual, one person is vociferously defending those cheap LT covers? When I first got back into vinyl and started buying Jazz, I saw a few of these LT LPs and started to skim past them. I figured that there was no way that they were legitimate releases. Bootlegs maybe? Licensed cheapies maybe? Then I saw Mobley's "A Slice Of The Top" and I had to have it, bootleg or not and then I discovered Cuscuna was behind it. I always wondered what was going on with these covers.

Has anyone ever asked him?

I would assume that jazz producers, categorically, are not very much into style or aesthetics.  And I mean jazz producers from more recent decades. I'm sure the classic guys wore Brooks Brothers suits and had moderne furniture in their pads.  

Edited August 15, 2021 by Teasing the Korean

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Is The Essential Charlie Parker in this category? I had this, but unloaded it, largely because of the cover art.

Yes! That's exactly it. Grim.

[Teasing the Korean]

Just now, Rabshakeh said:

Yes! That's exactly it. Grim.

Agreed.

[mjzee]

We should have a similar thread for those late '70's series, from Columbia, Verve, and especially Savoy, that provided new covers for '50's dates.  I loved a lot of these covers, and considered them significant improvements over the tired '50's stylings.  Here are a few that I liked:

[sidewinder]

Always liked this one..

[JSngry]

26 minutes ago, bresna said:

 When I first got back into vinyl and started buying Jazz, I saw a few of these LT LPs and started to skim past them. I figured that there was no way that they were legitimate releases. Bootlegs maybe? Licensed cheapies maybe? Then I saw Mobley's "A Slice Of The Top" and I had to have it, bootleg or not and then I discovered Cuscuna was behind it. I always wondered what was going on with these covers.

You would need to know the history of Blue Note in the 70s, which you can do on your own time. But if/when you do, you can focus specifically on how Blue Note reissued it's catalog (which actually began in the very late 1960s). At first, there were new covers, some great, some horrible, but...in the wake of the success of the Prestige 24000 series and it's Milestone/etc offshoots, everybody got into the "two-fer" game. blue Note's first entry here was The Blue Note Reissue Series, which was really a mess in terms of "concept" (but already, vault material was getting leaked, Duke Pearson got one of his Stanley Turrentine sessions included).

There was one set of that, and then they kept the name, but changed everything else. This is the "paper bag" series that included a lot of stuff that was not Blue Not but was now owned by US, but also, this was when vault material really became a big thing. Cuscuna started bringing out 2-fer LPs that consisted solely of of unreleased session, or, like with Booker Ervin. This is when a LOT of the stuff we take for granted today first saw the light of day, a lot of it.

While they were doing that, the "modern" Blue Note was off someplace else entirely, and doing pretty well, actutally. So there was room on the books to do this "specialty" archive stuff. But then the money stopped, artists got better deals from bigger lables, blahblahblah. The George Butler stuff just sorta went away. It got down to where the only contract artists the label had were Bobby hutcherson & Horace Silver. Not sure about the crossover stuff, but...it seemed like that all kinda dried up too.

People who were already buying records surely noticed that the last run of twofers had lost the textured paper bag paper and went to a cheaper slick paper with a different set of colors. and a different name - it waws now the Blue Note Jazz Classic SeriesThey had one set of those, and then...nothing. UH-oh.

Until the LT (aka the Bluer Note Classic series, which very much were cheap from a production standpoint. But at the time, seeing what was happening with Blue Note as a whole (and United artists Records in general, not sure what the corporate thing was, but there was being being lost, or reported as being lost on a pretty big scale). They veritable reeked of "get them out RIGHT NOW because there might not be a tomorrow). And soon enough, there wasn't. Etc.

They weren't all vault releases, a few were actual reissues, but - ook at all they got out of the vault and into the reality of release between 1979-1981. Staggering, really.

Remember, before any of this started happening, "Blue Note" was either a catalog label (and find an early 70s inner sleeve to see just how truly limited it had become) or a Hits A New Note-conglomeration of various productions. If none of these "reissue" series had happened, so much of those vault stuff would be, at best, words on a discography page, or, possibly even more likely,, increasingly mythical conversations that musicians would talk about and the public would just roll their eyes about it, because, you know, old shit, if it was any good, why did it not get released to begin with. The reality of the business end of Blue Note provides an easy answer to that - it went from being a small independent business to a corporate holding that became (and continues to become) and increasingly insignificant piece (hell, crumb) of that particular pie.

If anybody wants to do the work (and it will be work), check these two links out: and look at what all got done in the space of about 7 years:

https://www.discogs.com/label/287655-The-Blue-Note-Re-Issue-Series?sort=artist&sort_order=asc

https://www.discogs.com/label/66004-Blue-Note-CLASSIC?sort=title&sort_order=asc

You can have narrative, or you can have history. Make mine history, please.

 

 

[Teasing the Korean]

26 minutes ago, mjzee said:

We should have a similar thread for those late '70's series, from Columbia, Verve, and especially Savoy, that provided new covers for '50's dates.  I loved a lot of these covers, and considered them significant improvements over the tired '50's stylings.  Here are a few that I liked:

I dunno.  I had that Bud Powell with the cat, and couldn't wait to unload it.

And I am obsessed with cats.  

[felser]

2 hours ago, sidewinder said:

Always liked this one..

Me too.

[Rabshakeh]

7 hours ago, JSngry said:

You would need to know the history of Blue Note in the 70s, which you can do on your own time. But if/when you do, you can focus specifically on how Blue Note reissued it's catalog (which actually began in the very late 1960s). At first, there were new covers, some great, some horrible, but...in the wake of the success of the Prestige 24000 series and it's Milestone/etc offshoots, everybody got into the "two-fer" game. blue Note's first entry here was The Blue Note Reissue Series, which was really a mess in terms of "concept" (but already, vault material was getting leaked, Duke Pearson got one of his Stanley Turrentine sessions included).

There was one set of that, and then they kept the name, but changed everything else. This is the "paper bag" series that included a lot of stuff that was not Blue Not but was now owned by US, but also, this was when vault material really became a big thing. Cuscuna started bringing out 2-fer LPs that consisted solely of of unreleased session, or, like with Booker Ervin. This is when a LOT of the stuff we take for granted today first saw the light of day, a lot of it.

While they were doing that, the "modern" Blue Note was off someplace else entirely, and doing pretty well, actutally. So there was room on the books to do this "specialty" archive stuff. But then the money stopped, artists got better deals from bigger lables, blahblahblah. The George Butler stuff just sorta went away. It got down to where the only contract artists the label had were Bobby hutcherson & Horace Silver. Not sure about the crossover stuff, but...it seemed like that all kinda dried up too.

People who were already buying records surely noticed that the last run of twofers had lost the textured paper bag paper and went to a cheaper slick paper with a different set of colors. and a different name - it waws now the Blue Note Jazz Classic SeriesThey had one set of those, and then...nothing. UH-oh.

Until the LT (aka the Bluer Note Classic series, which very much were cheap from a production standpoint. But at the time, seeing what was happening with Blue Note as a whole (and United artists Records in general, not sure what the corporate thing was, but there was being being lost, or reported as being lost on a pretty big scale). They veritable reeked of "get them out RIGHT NOW because there might not be a tomorrow). And soon enough, there wasn't. Etc.

They weren't all vault releases, a few were actual reissues, but - ook at all they got out of the vault and into the reality of release between 1979-1981. Staggering, really.

Remember, before any of this started happening, "Blue Note" was either a catalog label (and find an early 70s inner sleeve to see just how truly limited it had become) or a Hits A New Note-conglomeration of various productions. If none of these "reissue" series had happened, so much of those vault stuff would be, at best, words on a discography page, or, possibly even more likely,, increasingly mythical conversations that musicians would talk about and the public would just roll their eyes about it, because, you know, old shit, if it was any good, why did it not get released to begin with. The reality of the business end of Blue Note provides an easy answer to that - it went from being a small independent business to a corporate holding that became (and continues to become) and increasingly insignificant piece (hell, crumb) of that particular pie.

If anybody wants to do the work (and it will be work), check these two links out: and look at what all got done in the space of about 7 years:

https://www.discogs.com/label/287655-The-Blue-Note-Re-Issue-Series?sort=artist&sort_order=asc

https://www.discogs.com/label/66004-Blue-Note-CLASSIC?sort=title&sort_order=asc

You can have narrative, or you can have history. Make mine history, please.

Thanks. This is interesting. It's a shame there's never going to be a book covering what happened to the jazz indies as a group, from a position that is neither discological nor just a hagiography for one particular label. It's an interesting story that contains a lot of the actual facts that lie behind the more visible events that were going on at the time.

At a certain point, probably late 80s, it felt like the Blue Note legacy became marketable. There were suddenly all sorts of hip hop tie ins and coffee table books. I presume that wasn't a natural organic development, and it reflected a concerted but quite far sighted marketing campaign (at least, that's how I saw it as a 14 year old in the mid-90s). But it is still hard for me to imagine a time before Blue Note has its current "aura", and was just another name on a list of past acquisitions that had proved not to have long term prospects.

[JSngry]

The "real" Blue note in the 70s was artists such as Mizell Brothers Donald Byrd, Bobbi Humphry, Noel Pointer, Ronnie Laws, Earl Klugh, people doing that thing. That stuff still has traction on some circles too.

But the current Blue Note "mystique" was very much in the air then, I know I was into it at some point, probably around 1977 or so, long story....and THAT was what the whole reissue projects played to that. Still, very much a sub-market for "Blue Note". The first packages were indeed reissues (and very worthy ones), but pretty soon, the vault stuff started coming out, and that REALLY fed they mystique, like, WOW, there's MORE Blue Note?

And as the corporate parent started to wither and dither, the vault material started gushing out to market, totally counter-intuitive, somebody was doing this in spite of circumstances, not because of them.. Again, look at those Discogs pages and how much got released, especially from, like 1979-1981.

Now that they've covered it all up (pun intended), it's very easy to look at it all like, oh, THIS is Blue Note, THIS is the legacy, but...if things had broken just a little bit differently, if those holdings had just sat in the vault without an aggressive, interested set of people turning them loose, it would still be a great label, but the catalog would be significantly different - smaller and narrower, than it is now.

Worth noting that around this same time, Cuscuna was also getting Braxton Arista records put out "over the transom" I believe he put it as. Again, just getting as music/product out in the air while he could. Him and his cohorts really were guerilla warriors inside the normal record business.

Just saying, what we today see as "Blue Note" is NOTHING like what it was 45 or so years ago, If I can find an image of an early 70s inner sleeve that listed the catalog, I'll post it. And remember, can't stress this enough, the REAL 70s Blue Note was NOT anything being reissued or released from the vaults. Totally different world there.

And those "cheap" "ugly" LT covers...those were escapees of...some metaphor. Those were the clothes they had, and they presented well enough to make it out, if nothing else they brought a picture from home with them. If people want to put new clothes on them, like a family of boat people, make them look like they were born here and lived in the burbs all their life, hey, do that. But I've never known a refugee family who does not know their own story, or is ashamed of it.

Records are not people, but I see the same dynamics at play. Records ARE culture, they are not people, but what they carry is. That's how I roll with it. The 2-fers were, like, refugees with sponsors waiting, but those LT things....just get grab the family, get in the boat at midnight, duck the bullets, and row like hell until you get picked up.

[Rabshakeh]

So, where was Dr. Butler in this? Just taking care of what was left of the "Real Blue Note" whilst eying his own next move, and not overly interested of what's going on in the vaults?

[Rooster_Ties]

I wonder if you looked at the total number of Blue Note sessions between let’s say 1957-1970 — what the breakdown would be (percentage-wise) of those released within 2-3 years of recording date — vs. those not issued until 4 years or more later. Maybe even include if the stuff that’s “escaped” since Blue Note got reactivated in the 80’s (like all the Conns and Rare Grooves — and the handful of unreleased sessions that didn’t come out until Mosaic  (a few Andrew Hills qualify there).

Maybe out of the grand total of all released BN material, perhaps as much as 25% of that came out in the 70’s thru the early 2000’s — ??  Can’t imagine it being as high as 30%, but I would believe 25%.

Either way, given the overall size of the catalog, that’s quite a lot of material — probably close to 75 sessions?

I’m just thinking out loud, and I suppose I could imagine these estimates a little better going thru the Ruppli book and tally all the sessions into a couple categories.

Then there’s that one Woody Shaw “demo” tape too (In The Beginning), which there seems to be a lot of recent strong rumor about having been from actual legit Blue Note session(s). I’ve forgotten the details of the rumors, but some circumstantial evidence was bandied about, iirc.

I do think we are indeed fortunate all that material “escaped” the vaults. It wouldn’t be hard for me to come up with 15-20 such “previously unreleased” albums that are among my personal top-50 all-time favorite Blue Note sessions.

[JSngry]

6 minutes ago, Rooster_Ties said:

I do think we are indeed fortunate all that material “escaped” the vaults.

Just saying, if you look at where the company was in the early 1970s, with George Butler as the UA-appointed leader, and then the success of black Ryd. and all that came after that, it's not hard to imagine a corporate label the really didn't give a rat's ass about all that old mucis that never got put out to begin with, wha want's to hear tha?, right? It very easily could have gone down that way.

Whyat really turned things around, as I remember it, was Prestige doing those 24000 series two-fers. And then Milestone doing the same thing with the Riverside catalog. Those things were successful enough that they set an industry trend in motion, or so it seemed. I think Columbia was already doing it with older materierial, but this was "modern" music, packed in a then-modern package, with new liner notes and all that. A contemporary product if you will. Everybody got with that program...everybody who could, anyway.

So that was the landscape. But even at that, it was kind of a gamble to start putting out unissued material in what was quite blatantly marketed as a reissue program. Blue Note (ie - UA) was making money on their new stuff, so...maybe it was a feasible project one way or the other. But is sure wasn't "The Old Blue Note Springing Back To Life" or anything like that...we'd have to wait until 1984 and Bruce Lundvall for that.

The other UA jazz holdings besides blue Note, they all got something out of this as well...Imperial, ACTUAL United Artists, Transition, Pacific Jazz (although...there's a chapter there where if anybody wants to bitch about a short chapter with hideous packaging, there's a totally legit one), whatever label that Art Pepper stuff was on, ec. But the real story in all that reissue stuff as it pertains to "Blue Note" as we know it today was the vault material. That pretty much changed everything, We shouldn't forget that (if we ever knew it), and if we weren't there to see it, we need to tell it. Because today's concept o "Blue Note"...maybe they rested on the 7th day, but on the 8th day, they got busy with revisions.

[JSngry]

28 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

So, where was Dr. Butler in this? Just taking care of what was left of the "Real Blue Note" whilst eying his own next move, and not overly interested of what's going on in the vaults?

Dr. Butler was all up in the new stuff that was selling...and their was a lot of it.

The "Real Blue Note" as a living label really did not exist except as catalog, Bobby Hutcherson (until he left for Columbia) and Horace Silver (who stayed until the end). There were a few one or two offs early on, but it wasn't a real effort, and it didn't ever gain traction. Again, Bobby and Horace, period.

Those reissues...I don't know what role Butler played in that other than maybe signing off on it and having some talking points if anybody pressed him.

Something happened at UA, the parent company. I don't know too much about that, other than that they had Don McLean/American Pie and some other successful pop stuff in the first part of the decade, KENNY ROGERS for crissakes, and then a lot of their shit ended up in cutouts, a LOT. So, i don't know. But whatever it was, Blue Note as a good-selling label with all their "New Note" stuff, that had faded away by the later part of the 70s, and the paret corparent was off into doing whatever it is things like that do whenever they do whatever they do. ISomething happened, that's all I know.

I might be wrong on this, but I'm wanting to say that the LT series outlived Horace Silver? Pretty sure that the last LTs came to market after Horace's last releases, but I could be wrong about that. But if true, Blue Note v.1 ended it's life strictly as a reissue label! Into which vault material was snuck in. amazing how all that happened, it could/should have just died. And did, until 1984. Three years, ore or less, but...that's was a looooong three years. And, you know looking for a copy of Face To Face or something like that, kinda took on a new urgency, because,, wow, this shit is GONE, right? Gone for good, never to return.