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Swiss documentary resurrects a benchmark in American music

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The newly released Swiss documentary “Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes,” directed by Sophie Huber, opens with a recording session of today’s most highly rated musicians under the direction of producer Don Was for the venerated Blue Note label. The assembled personnel include Ambrose Akinmusire (trumpeter), Robert Gasper (piano), Derrick Hodge (bass), Lionel Loueke (guitar), Kendrick Scott drums), and Marcus Strickland (saxophone). Their generation provides a bridge between the revival of the storied label and the earlier, initial recordings upon which it was founded.

As the film progresses, they are joined by elder statesmen Herbie Hancock (keyboards) and Wayne Shorter (saxophone), who reminisce about the music they made and the volatile times that shaped it. As Gasper notes “…great art comes out of messed-up situations.”

Blue Note was spawned in 1920s Germany, along with the rise of the Nazi regime. While the syncopated rhythms of this newly imported American idiom offended the sensibilities of the autocratic upstarts, this exotic new music garnered fans among the younger generation, including Jewish residents Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff. They were among the legions of immigrants who fled Germany to avoid the political and racial persecution of the upstart totalitarian dictatorship. Once settled in the United States, they took their passion to the next level and started Blue Note Records in 1939.

In the spirit of the true aficionado, profits were an after thought, as they pursued artists and music that appealed to their personal tastes rather then marketability. Among them was an oddball pianist named Theolonius Monk, an unorthodox composer and keyboardist every other label had passed on. The occasional hit, like trumpeter Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder “(1964) or pianist Horace Silver’s “Song for my Father” (1965), were happy accidents rather then the result of business acumen or promotional gimmickry.

None-the-less, Blue Note accrued a devoted following, partially due to their enduring cover art, based on Alfred Lion’s timeless black and white photographs, abetted by graphic designer Reid Miles. In time, their roster would include legends such as Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Bud Powell. In due course, this business model of art before commerce took it’s toil, and Lion and Wolff were forced to sell out to the corporate apparatus by the mid-1960s.

The legacy lived on in the psyche of the progeny of the original record buyers, however. They (partially) filled in the vacuum left by the removal of art, music and other cultural criteria from the California school system, circa 1970.

The omission of musical instruments drove disaffected youth to seek out other methods of aural recreation. In short order, as producer and Los Angeles native Terrace Martin remembers, neighborhood kids commandered turn tables from their parent’s stereo systems, and used the older generation’s jazz and rhythm and blues records as the foundation for their own musical explorations.

At 85 minutes, this documentary is not meant be a comprehensive history of the music and the times, but serves it’s purpose as an overview of this landmark imprint.

“Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes” is being presented at the Laemmle Monica Film Center, 1332 2nd St., in Santa Monica.

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