The First Blue Note Session
The 69th Monterey Jazz Festival ends today with Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter billed as a duo, which the festival says is the first time they have appeared anywhere that way, on the hundredth anniversary of Miles Davis's birth, and with Charles Lloyd playing the sixtieth anniversary of Forest Flower on the same stage at six. Today's record is "The First Day," the Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis session Blue Note lists first in its own catalog, and then Sekou takes us into the small New York studio Alfred Lion rented for a single day in January 1939.
LioraHerbie Hancock and Ron Carter play as a duo tonight, and Monterey says it is the first time anywhere. Today's record is the first one Blue Note ever made. And later, a studio rented for one day. It's Sunday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Sunday, September 27th. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: The 69th Monterey Jazz Festival ends today, and it ends with Herbie Hancock, 86
LioraThe sixty ninth Monterey Jazz Festival ends today, and it ends with two men who were in their twenties the first time they played that fairground.
Herbie Hancock is eighty six. Ron Carter is eighty nine. They first played Monterey with Miles Davis, in 1963 and 1964, and came back together in 1992 to honor him after his death. Tonight they are billed "Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter: For Miles." Jimmy Lyons Stage, scheduled seven forty five to nine.
The festival's own words: the first time they've appeared anywhere as a duo, ever. Its press release calls it one time only. The occasion is the hundredth anniversary of Miles Davis's birth.
LioraSix o'clock, the same stage. The festival's printed grid bills the Charles Lloyd Quartet, sixtieth anniversary of Forest Flower, dedicated to Jack DeJohnette. Lloyd built that quartet in 1965 with Keith Jarrett, Cecil McBee and DeJohnette. Lloyd's own site gives tonight's band as Gerald Clayton, Larry Grenadier and Brian Blade.
And at seven fifteen, The Bad Plus play what the festival bills their farewell tour. Twenty six years, and the band says it is closing this chapter.
All of it as scheduled.
Two. Listen to This: "The First Day," Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis
LioraToday's record is the one Blue Note made first, and the label still lists it. "The First Day," Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis.
The label tells it like this. Alfred Lion went to John Hammond's Spirituals to Swing concert on December 23rd, 1938, and heard two boogie woogie pianists. Two weeks later he started a label by recording them, in a single day. January 6th, 1939. Nine Ammons solos, eight by Lewis, and a pair of heated duets.
Here is the tip. Listen for the duets. Start with Lewis's five part "The Blues," Ammons's "Boogie Woogie Stomp," and their "Nagasaki." Those are Scott Yanow's picks, on Blue Note's own page.
The release desk. Blue Note Records China has announced "Now's the Time," an anthology of contemporary Chinese jazz, out October 23rd, with a first single by Red Hand Band.
LioraLater, on The Bridge: New York, 1939, a small studio rented for a single day, two boogie-woogie pianists, and a man who had never made a record. Blue Note Records dates its founding to that session. Sekou has the story.
Three. The Bridge: New York, 1939, a small studio rented for a single day, two boogie-woogie pianists
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Sekou tells it, I ask the questions. Sekou, where are we?
SekouNew York. Friday, January 6th, 1939. A small studio, rented for a single day. Two boogie-woogie pianists, Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis. Plenty of whiskey. The man who rented the room is Alfred Lion, a German-Jewish immigrant who has never made a record in his life.
Years later, he remembered it like this: "It was late afternoon, and the sun was kind of mellow."
Blue Note Records dates its founding to this session.
LioraHis first record ever. How did he end up in that room?
SekouBy one account, he first came to New York after high school, worked the docks and slept in Central Park, to be near the music. That stay was short.
Two weeks before this session, to the day, he is in the audience at Carnegie Hall. Friday evening, December 23rd, 1938. John Hammond puts on a concert called From Spirituals to Swing. On the bill, three boogie-woogie pianists: Ammons, Lewis, and Pete Johnson. The three play two numbers together, and Ammons and Lewis each take a solo. Lewis plays his "Honky Tonk Train Blues." Keep that title in mind.
Richard Cook, the label's biographer, puts it carefully: "History has it as his defining moment."
After the concert, a new Greenwich Village club, Café Society, hires Ammons and Lewis. It opens five days after Carnegie Hall. One account has Lion tracking them down there and offering them money to make records.
He heard three boogie-woogie pianists that night. He records two.
LioraSo what happens that day?
SekouThey play. By NPR's count, nine solos from Ammons, eight from Lewis, and two duets. Nineteen in all.
The first two records come from that day, one for each man. Blue Note 1 is Lewis playing two slow blues, "Melancholy" and "Solitude." Blue Note 2 is Ammons, "Boogie Woogie Stomp" and "Boogie Woogie Blues." For each record, Lion pressed a few dozen copies, about fifty by Cook's count and as few as twenty-five by others. Cook calls it hardly a major statement.
Remember "Honky Tonk Train Blues"? Nearly fifty years on, Lion named it as one of the first records, with "Boogie Woogie Stomp." The discographies disagree. They list it as Blue Note 15.
LioraWhere's Francis Wolff? I always heard Blue Note was Lion and Wolff.
SekouNot in that room, and not on the paperwork. Later in 1939, a business certificate for Blue Note names three men: Max Margulis, who put up the first money, Alfred Lion, and Emanuel Eisenberg.
Wolff, Lion's childhood friend, reached New York at the end of that year, by Cook's account. The story goes he came on the last boat out of Nazi Germany. Cook calls that legend. He joined his friend's new label and became his partner.
LioraDid the boogie-woogie last?
SekouCook points out it would hardly show up in the label's catalog again. Within months, Blue Note had its first hit, Sidney Bechet's "Summertime." Lion went on to produce some nine hundred records, by Ted Fox's count, and the company now calls itself the longest-running jazz label in the world.
Lion said he met John Hammond in a post office, and they got talking. He gave Hammond the credit: "John Hammond is really responsible for me getting started, without him even knowing it."
LioraWe remember concerts for who played. Sometimes what matters is who was listening. That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Birdland in New York gives the world premiere of Ed Neumeister's NeuNeuNonet at half past
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is a premiere. Birdland in New York gives the first performance of Ed Neumeister's NeuNeuNonet. Five thirty, doors at four thirty. Nine players, and Neumeister wrote and arranged all of it. The club prints a twenty dollar food or drink minimum, per person, per set.
Now the sweep.
Also at Birdland, Matt Wilson's Good Trouble at seven and nine thirty, and the Birdland Latin Jazz Orchestra at eight thirty, gone in advance, and again at ten thirty.
In Los Angeles, Catalina marks David Garfield's seventieth birthday at seven thirty, with Lilliana de los Reyes, Rick Braun and Eric Marienthal. Forty six seventy.
In Minneapolis, the Dakota has Alicia Witt at seven, for her new album. From forty one ninety five.
LioraIn Chicago, the Jazz Showcase closes four nights with the Isaiah Spencer Quartet at eight. Thirty dollars, and no way to buy it online.
Two rooms are dark and say so themselves. Green Lady Lounge in Kansas City is temporarily closed after a fire, and MCG Jazz in Pittsburgh opens its season October 3rd. Scullers in Boston publishes nothing for tonight on its own site. Snug Harbor's own site would not answer us at all.
Five. One More Note: September 27th, 1924: Bud Powell is born in New York
LioraSeptember 27th, 1924. Bud Powell is born in New York. The Library of Congress keeps the date in its own catalog. Cootie Williams's big band from 1943. Dizzy Gillespie's group with Charlie Parker and Max Roach in 1945. Paris from 1959.
The Paris years are the ones with film on them, and the film is in New Jersey. Rutgers holds the Francis Paudras collection: over twenty hours shot by the man who lived with Powell in Paris and filmed him on a home movie camera. Powell meeting Thelonious Monk at the airport. And the funeral procession, New York, 1966.
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
That's your Sunday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.