Marcus J. Moore Promotes Blue Note Records

Once again I find myself taking issue with Marcus J. Moore over at The New York Times. Some readers may recall that, back in July of 2023, I took him to task for his article “Five Minutes Will Make You Love Avant-Garde Jazz.” However, just like that wind-up bunny toy, Moore appears to just keep going and going. The title of this morning’s article is “5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Blue Note Records.” Mind you, it will take any serious reader more than five minutes to go through the fourteen items on the list, with each contributor having a different background.

Nevertheless, I fear that this article was written more as publicity for what its Wikipedia page calls the “Modern era” of Blue Note Records, rather than an examination of the rich diversity one encounters in pursuing the history of jazz, particularly that period of history that dominated the second half of the last century. Mind you, Blue Note accounts for a significant sector of my jazz recordings, many of which are due to the box sets compiled by Mosaic Records. Nevertheless, there were only three tracks in the Times list that could be found in my own collection:

1. Wayne Shorter, “Speak No Evil”
2. Sonny Rollins, “Striver’s Row”
3. Grachan Moncur, III, “Evolution”

I should also note, out of fairness, that my copy of the last of those three selections was not included in my Blue Note collection. Rather, it was part of a Japanese Collection called Jazz Master Series, which, if I am believe the back cover, was properly licensed from the United Artists Music and Records Group in 1975.

Robert Glasper, my favorite “loyal opposition” (2013 photograph by SSPoffice, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license) 

Of course, there are any number of artists on the Times list that have secure positions in my collection. These would include Lee Morgan’s Party Time, Donald Byrd’s Chant, and Bobby Hutcherson’s “Avis.” On the other hand (as some will say), I suspect that many of my readers would have recognized my cringing at the presence of Robert Glasper. Glasper did not appear on Blue Note until 2005. By that time Mosaic had run its course of a prodigious number of box sets of Blue Note sources. After Mosaic had accounted for over 30 years of the second half of the twentieth century, there may have been a lingering sprit of what that label represented; but the “flesh” just was not there.

Had it not been for the Times, I would not have launched into writing this article. Nor would I have been grooving on “Speak No Evil” while writing it! Whatever Glasper’s intentions may have been, I have come to grips with the fact that Blue Note is not Blue Note any more. I have no trouble with this state of affairs, given that I have more than enough tracks that can hold their own against the many albums in my classical collection!