Oh yes! This just arrived, ‘pon our return home, from a pleasant walk along the river Nene.
Well packaged, thank goodness…
The books a big 400 page affair. Lavishly illustrated. It’s a stunner!
This also arrived today. I got it as much if not if not more for Charles Kynard’s contribution. That said, I do love Stitt, who’s a very fiery player.
This was originally released on Pacific Jazz. Who would soon thereafter also put out Kynard’s debut recording as a leader.
I’m looking forward to getting more by Chuck! I should have a section of Jap’ reissues from his Mainstream period arriving fairly soon. Including Your Mama Don’t Dance, which is the album that introduced me to him.
This is the second Groove Hut release I’ve recently acquired. The other being a two-fer of Jack McDuff recordings, featuring Grant Green. Another instance of me buying as much for the ‘also starring’ role as the headline name.
I may have to investigate more of their catalogue? But let’s get back to Uncompromising Expression…
There are loads of beautiful spreads in this book. Which has clearly been put together as a labour of love by folk who dig the original Blue Note vibes.
From simple black and white images with colour tints, to images such as those above and below, which celebrate the richness of these iconic designs in their multiplicity, variety, and aesthetic homogeneity.
Breathtaking. These montages could easily be a dictionary definition of the expression an embarrassment of riches.
I can see that this meaty tome covers the whole story, from way back when, up to the present. It’s fab seeing the story told visually. And I hope that it’ll be as much fun reading the texts?
And if like me you love to nerd out on the whole thing – not just the music itself, but the history, the guys behind the scenes – this looks like a good place to go.
It’s fantastic to see so many pictures that weren’t used in finished product. They just add to whole magic and mystique.
It’s quite astonishing that any creative enterprise could be both so fecund, and yet so focussed. There seems to have been an animating spirit at work, that gives everything a wonderful cohesion.
Spreads such as those above and below almost let you feel part of the process. You can imagine the scenarios, and the desire to set up and capture imagery that will make a good visual analogue or counterpoint to the music.
To me the whole Blue Note thang has a kind of alchemical magic, which somehow touches every aspect of every part of the process. And I’m doing so it does what great art is somehow all about, transforming the everyday and mundane, via whatever language it might be – music, photography, typography, design – into something sublime.
And so it is that, in the end, the fabulous music at the heart of it all kind of sanctifies everything that facilitates it, or radiates out from it.
I have a number of books, some almost purely visual, some more textual, about both Blue Note specifically, and jazz records more generally. But this one looks to me, on first perusal, to be particularly fine.
So, it’s clearly time to rack up the records (or CDs in my case), and listen to loads of Blue Note recordings, whilst reading or just gaping in wide eyed admiration at this gorgeous book.