Blue Note: 75 years of the coolest visuals in jazz

The world’s most famous jazz label – celebrated for its striking use of design as much as for its groundbreaking recordings – is 75 this year. John Fordham tells the story of Blue Note through a selection of its famous album covers

Video: the history of Blue Note

John Fordham

  • Bop glasses ad

    The 1940s bebop movement was a hipster subculture and a musical revolution. Rejecting 1930s swing’s commercialism, beboppers sought tougher technical challenges, weirder chords, fusions with 20th-century classical music and intellectual respectability. Berets, goatee beards and specs became the uniform.
    Bop glasses ad featured in Uncompromising Expression: Blue Note: 75 Years of The Finest in Jazz by Richard Havers

  • Sidney Bechet

    – Jazz Classics Vol 1Blue Note’s first records were launched in New York in March 1939 by German-Jewish emigre Alfred Lion. Photographer Francis Wolff, an old Berlin friend who escaped the Nazis, joined Lion in October. Their first releases featured the earliest jazz stars, including New Orleans sax pioneer Sidney Bechet.
    Blue Note Jazz Classics Vol 1 Sidney Bechet

  • Thelonious Monk – Genius of Modern Music

    After the second world war, the edgy modernism of bebop began to guide Blue Note. Pianist Thelonious Monk’s leadership debut in 1952 introduced classic originals such as Straight No Chaser and Round Midnight. The cover was Paul Bacon’s, who would later create the iconic first-edition design for the novel Catch-22.
    Genius of Modern Music Volume 1 by Thelonious Monk

  • Art Blakey – A Night at Birdland

    Blue Note hired gifted designers, but co-owner Francis Wolff’s subtle photographs of musicians on and off the bandstand also forged the label’s instantly recognisable style. This 1954 set by drummer Art Blakey introduces the urgent gospelly “hard bop” sound, which became a Blue Note speciality.
    A Night at Birdland by Art Blakey

  • Miles Davis – Vols 1 & 2

    Miles Davis was trying to kick heroin and kickstart his career in 1952 when these sessions began. The trumpeter was tiptoeing closer towards how jazz after bebop might sound. John Hermansader created the cover with his assistant Reid Miles, who would later become Blue Note’s most celebrated designer.
    Miles Davis Volume 1

  • John Coltrane – Blue Train

    That Francis Wolff shot of John Coltrane – pensive, self-absorbed, maybe imagining an elusive sound yet to be made on a saxophone – showed how Blue Note artwork could bring a musician’s interior journey into view. Blue Train, from 1958, foresaw the breakthroughs Coltrane would make in the 1960s.
    Blue Train by John Coltrane

  • Kenny Burrell – Midnight Blue

    Blue Note was so confident, so good at doing the right thing, that the co-proprietor could see his famous photos shrunk to postage stamps – with designer Reid Miles popping some hip typographics in their place. Guitarist Kenny Burrell beautifully balanced soul power and elegance in this sensuous session.
    Midnight Blue by Kenny Burrell

  • Joe Henderson – Page One

    Saxophonist Joe Henderson’s 1963 leadership debut revealed his sinewy Sonny Rollins-inspired phrasing and improv fertility – as well as the soulful, bluesy sound that even got him hired by Blood Sweat and Tears. A 23-year-old McCoy Tyner was on piano, and Henderson’s Recorda Me became a jazz standard.
    Page One by Joe Henderson

  • Lee Morgan – The Sidewinder

    When acid jazz hit dancefloors in the 1990s, trumpeter Lee Morgan’s funky 1964 blues theme The Sidewinder made a comeback – but it was big from the start. Alfred Lion pressed fewer than 5,000 copies at first, but he soon upped the numbers and the tune made the single charts.
    The Sidewinder by Lee Morgan

  • Herbie Hancock – Empyrean Isles

    Herbie Hancock was the biggest star Blue Note launched, his 1962 debut, Takin’ Off, showing he was a rare blend of improv genius and hitmaking songwriter. Empyrean Isles came two years later, with the 24-year-old boldly mingling hard bop, funk and free-jazz on just four long tracks.
    Empyrean Isles by Herbie Hancock

  • Ornette Coleman Trio – Live at the Golden Circle

    Blue Note took a chance with these live recordings from Stockholm. Saxist Coleman was a controversial figure who rejected the bebop tenets associated with the label, and the music was uncompromisingly wild. But Down Beat magazine voted it 1966 record of the year. This is free-jazz empathy at its best.
    At the Golden Circle by The Ornette Coleman Trio

  • Joe Henderson – Mode for Joe

    Current Blue Note president Don Was discovered jazz through this title tune as a teenager. He says the “conversational” call-and-response exchanges were what turned him on. Saxophonist Henderson, a key contributor to many Blue Note sessions, inimitably blended hot and cool.
    Mode For Joe by Joe Henderson

  • Cecil Taylor – Unit Structures

    Blue Note advanced its commitment to the 60s avant garde, and Reid Miles’s cover nailed matters again in catching the scalding moment-to-moment intensity of pianist Cecil Taylor’s music. Taylor was steeped in modern classical music and jazz, and an implacable logic steered his most feverish flights.
    Cecil Taylor - Unit Structures

  • Norah Jones – Come Away With Me

    Jazz sales slumped in the late 1960s, Alfred Lion sold up, Francis Wolff died, and Blue Note hibernated under various owners. But, as always, jazz came back. New boss Bruce Lundvall and producer Michael Cuscuna imaginatively revived the label for a new public in 1985, and Norah Jones’s 25m-selling album in 2001 secured the future.
    Come Away With Me by Norah Jones

  • Robert Glasper Experiment – Black Radio

    Pianist Glasper calls Blue Note a “unique and very special family”. The appeal of his deep jazz awareness to the cognoscenti, and his direct line to a 21st-century hip-hop audience, reflects Blue Note’s legacy and its enduring instinct for keeping a finger on the pulse. • Blue Note: Uncompromising Expression is published by Thames & Hudson. Celebrate 75 Years of Blue Note at the London jazz festival at the Southbank Centre, London on 22 November
    Black Radio by Robert Glasper Experiment
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