Blue Note: A Story of Jazz

Artist: Various Artists
Label: EMI Int'l
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Format: Import
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 3

UPC: 724347454929
EAN: 0724347454929
ASIN: B0007WDC4C

Release Date: 2005-05-05

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Listmania:

Jazz label story box sets

Tracks:

Cantaloupe Island - Herbie Hancock
Rose Rouge [Radio Edit] - St. Germain,
Don't Know Why - Norah Jones
Garota de Ipanema (Girl from Ipanema) - Eliane Elias
Don't Worry, Be Happy - Bobby McFerrin
Song for My Father - Horace Silver
Feeling of Jazz - Dianne Reeve
My Funny Valentine - Chet Baker
I Can't Stop - Al Green
You're My Everything - Anita Baker
Autumn Leaves - Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis
Jardin d'Hiver - Jacky Terrasson
Blue Train - John Coltrane
Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia) - Us3,

Customer Reviews:

Mostly misses the Note.......2005-12-31

Back in 1939 when Alfred Lion started Blue Note he had a vision of producing some of the finest jazz ever recorded and thanks to studio engineer Rudy Van Gelder this vision came true. Blue Note was jazz and then some. I contributed my little bit by buying a whole load of B/N LPs during the fifties and sixties, now of course I've had to buy them all over again on CD!

I bought this latest three-disc offering partly on the strength of the title, 'Blue Note: A story of Jazz' but really it should be 'Blue Note: A story of jazz and other related sounds' that will attract as wide a spectrum of buyers as possible. Judging by what is on two of these CDs Blue Note is just another contemporary label with bad packaging.

My preference is clearly for disc one, Classic Notes, offering the original Blue Note sound, despite a tedious 'My Funny Valentine' from Chet Baker it has 'Blue Train' by John Coltrane and 'September Second' with Michel Petrucciani, both cooking tracks. The fifteen on disc two, Contemporary Notes, mostly recorded since 2000 is passable, even though it has the novelty number, 'Don't Worry Be Happy' by Bobby McFerrin. 'Earthlings' by Pat Martino is my favorite. Disc three, Modern Notes, is where it all goes downhill with some extremely tedious offerings, eight minutes from Erik Truffaz with his 'Bending New Comers', Jason Moran manages to stretch 'Planet Rock' to nine minutes. Both these tracks sound just like musicians tinkering with their instruments for minutes on end in a very uncreative way. Amos Lee does a pleasant enough rendering of 'Colors' but can it even remotely be called jazz? The same question could equally apply to the dull 'Don't Explain' by Angela McCluskey. Unfortunately disc three is a million miles from the excitement and exuberance of real Blue Note jazz.

Part of my two star rating is because of the dreadful packaging. On the UK edition the track listings on the back of the box are unreadable. The artist's names are blue type on a blue background, the tracks are not numbered and the text is centred. Needless to say it is all in tiny type. The twenty page booklet (with eight great Francis Wolf photos) is equally amateurishly produced, again the track information, partly printed in blue, is in a light typeface which, in a domestic lighting environment, becomes virtually unreadable. The marketing folk at the label clearly couldn't care less about the buyer. Why should consumers have to put up with this amateur looking nonsense from so-called professionals?

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