Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes

2018's BLUE NOTE RECORDS: BEYOND THE NOTES is yet another "talking heads" documentary where folks comment on the present and the past while in a one or two shot.  It's a style I've long since grown weary of.   It just screams "television".  But perhaps because I have an aggressive interest in this film's subject - the history of the titular record label - I found myself unconcerned with this general criticism.  Some others did emerge while I watched, but even if you know this entire story and its players, I feel this is essential viewing for the jazz aficienados among you.

Blue Note was started in the late 1930s by Alfred Lion, Francis Wolff, and Max Margulis, independent spirits for whom artistic expression was paramount.  They put up their money to allow decades of groundbreaking musicians to just do their thing, have a space and outlet for their art.  Concerns about whether a record was a potential commercial hit were minimal. Sometimes they were.   From the soprano sax of Sidney Bechet to the bebop of Thelonious Monk to the avant garde free style of Ornette Coleman (sadly not mentioned in this film), Blue Note was the unfailingly supportive Label That Could, even in the face of competition from Columbia, Capitol, and other majors.  They would be absorbed by Liberty Records in 1965.  Later, the label suffer a dormancy, then be reborn.  More recent artists include Us3, who liberally sampled the back catalogue, and Norah Jones.

BLUE NOTE RECORDS: BEYOND THE NOTES also recounts its history through numerous wonderful photo montages.  So many iconic shots of the musicians at work, frequently in engineer Rudy van Gelder's parents' living room cum studio.  Wolff is described by archivists for his unique compositions.  How he  framed another musician's face in the arc of a brass instrument, for example.  Director Sophie Huber also flashes all those striking album covers, designed by Reid Miles, reflecting the Bauhaus school..  I could watch an hour and a half of just that, honestly.

Producer extraordinaire Don Was became Blue Note CEO in 2012, and he's onscreen with many of the current artists who discuss how their jazz/hip hop hybrid styles were influenced by the classic artists, including Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, who also appear (and play a bit).   I always enjoy the latter's impersonation of Miles Davis' famous rasp.  Lou Donaldson is on hand to reminisce as well, and is most entertaining.  I feel that many of the young bucks such as Robert Glesper get a bit too much screen time and attention, but their explanations of how jazz was always a music of the people, of those of color who were (and continue to be) oppressed and how it gave birth to hip hop was always fascinating.