You’ve produced another important resource for collectors and musicians! Thanks!

What a brilliant, informative and quality presentation! Man, you nail this -every time!. Fantastic backstories which helps to appreciate Jazz even more. Please keep these rolling. Dig Jazz

Brilliant. Thanks for all the info

Thanks for the comprehensive video, good to have you back! When I started to dive deeper into jazz after years of listening casually to albums from a few artists I knew, I was turned off by Miles and Trane and quickly drawn into the lure of Blue Note. I'm still wading through their catalogue, taking my time, and while I have started to dig into those "Rolls Royce" artists and other labels, a lot of BN artists and albums remain my favorites. I once read that jazz did not only consist of innovators, but also of consolidators who based their styles on innovations of others and consolidated these ideas. Players like Hank Mobley, Cannonball Adderley or Art Farmer could carefully work out their styles because they didn't have that urge to innovate like Miles or Trane did. I think I'm really drawn to that more relaxed approach to finding unique voice in jazz, whereas that restless urge to do something new or different.

Please don't go away again at least not for a long time you'll really missed you are so informed and generally project that in your videos that I can't think of anyone else I'd rather watch on KZfaq keep up the great work and like everyone else will probably say we missed you

Everyone watch the rest of the videos, all great❤

Great to have you back, Allan, and with a real banger too! ... ('Saving this one for later in the week, when I can watch in one sitting ;-)

I agree with you on the sound of original Blue Note pressings. They are certainly hit-and-miss, and nowhere near as amazing as collectors who have spent thousand on them will tell you. But they do have a lot of character. Ultimately, Blue Notes will sound good on any format that gets you excited about the music.

So glad you're back, hope you're refreshed after "break" I'm not a jazz newbie but still find your videos very informative and they fill gaps in my knowledge

19:50 Small note: that‘s not a photo of Reid Miles, that‘s Woody Allen. His Discogs page has the right photo, a guy with shades and big ‘stache 😊

Great notes! As a life long fan of Blue Note I know the stories and have soaked up the label’s history intensely over the last 30 plus years. Your notes hit all the right spots! A great primer all around. Cheers!

Impossible but fun question that I ask a lot, what in your opinion is the most Blue Note of Blue Note albums ? Mines Messengers Big Beat btw.

Thank you so much for creating this video!

Great stuff Alan. Really enjoyable. And well researched. Thank you.

Exceptional. Thank you!

Welcome back, Allan! Thank you for returning with a fantastic history lesson from my favorite Jazz Label, Blue Note Records. I love the Groove and Grease of a Alfred and Frank Hammond B3 album and suggest you revisit Jimmy Smith’s “Cool Blues,” “Prayer Meetin” and Grant Green’s “First Stand.” Those albums won’t make you an organ Jazz convert, but it may change your mind and opinion on how much Soul and back to the church spirit that emanates from so many of those records.

This is an invaluable overview -- and a joy to watch, so thank you! (I see you have a video on Curtis Counce, and I can't wait to catch that one. "You Get More Bounce..." is about to be reissued.) I'm no audiophile (although I do have a nice collection of vintage amplifiers and receivers from the '60s and '70s that I love listening to, probably because they deliver the rich, vivid, textured sound I grew up with) but, as much as I love (and fetishize) great old records and their memorable labels, it's the music that matters most to me. I could afford to be something of a "completist" with my favorite pop artists in the '70s or '80s (Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder...) when artists put out new LPs every year or two, but I could never have kept up with the mid-century musicians on Blue Note, Contemporary, Prestige, or Impulse! Thanks again for all your terrific work here. I'm off to explore more of your videos..

Thanks for the video! Personally, I don’t discriminate between any of the series or eras in my collection. Found a Vg+ Kenny Burrell “Midnight Blue” OG mono Deepgroove for $35 last weekend!

That was an hour well-spent, thank you so much for your hard work sir. I do think one ommission from the video was not name-dropping Grant Green as a Blue Note workhorse, dude was all over their discography. But that doesn't detract from the great information you shared with us, I like the characterization of BN as a label that was just releasing good music played by incredible musicians and not solely preoccupied with landing the biggest names in the scene

That's a good one! Regarding Japanese pressings: that's a really nice way a get a minty copy of an album that also sounds great. King Records (GXK, GXF) are very consistently good sounding. Choice of Toshiba EMI only if you found an album that you were looking for a really long time. Otherwise, Blue Note Classic and Note Poet for sure rock it for all the rest. Music Matters, Analog Productions are just too overprised now on secondary market for the value they bring. p.s: Can't wait to see Herbie Hancock play in Montreal is 2 weeks.

I enjoyed your talk! I'd add to what you said and say that WOR's Doug Hawkins was a great engineer IMO; the 1952 Horace Silver Trio and Milt Jackson sessions recorded for BN are some of the best examples of his work. I 100% agree with you about Rudy's mastering work compared to modern masterings of his BN recordings. It's really hard to find OGs in great condition, and even when they're clean, they lack what I call the "accuracy" of modern reissues. But I think it's important to distinguish between sound quality issues caused by Rudy's mastering choices vs. record wear and damage. I'm with you though, the reputation of OG Blue Notes is a bit inflated when it comes to sound quality and hence so are the records' values. You make an interesting point about the most famous/legendary jazz musicians not recording for BN, however I'm not sure I'm in full agreement. Monk recorded for BN first and exclusively for five years. Miles recorded several 78s and 10-inches for them. Herbie, of course, was exclusively theirs for a while. What also needs to be considered is that a lot of legends left smaller labels as a sheer matter of economics (RE: Trane, Impulse was backed by ABC). Even Jimmy Smith eventually left BN for Verve.

It is all about taste. I love the original Blue Note Monos but you MUST play them on a dedicated mono system. Then they are hard to beat and to me only Roy Dunan on Contemporary is as good as Blue Note. Ellington on Blue Note was never possible, Blue Note was an independent label and could not pay the big artists but they brought us the Avantgarde of the day. Who gave Monk a chance? And I like organ Jazz, maybe because I play in an organ Jazz band 🙂. The value is based on the many collectors who want them, supply and demand and this is not Blue Note fault. So as you see in my comments, I am a Blue Note collector and I have most of them up to the time the company was sold, about 450 records. I have about 70 originals and a lot Japanese pressings and I can recommend the King pressings, they sound fantastic and are as good as the Tone Poets to me. As a professional musician I maybe listen a little different than the audiophile community. Great video anyway, thank you for doing that.