Blue Note's First Platinum Record
Big Ears puts its 2027 lineup on the clock day by day, four days in Knoxville with the Brad Mehldau Trio on Thursday and seventy four billings on Friday, and single day passes already priced. Then a Blue Note session cut in Hackensack on this date in 1956, five rooms from Los Angeles to New York on Dizzy Gillespie's birthday, and the London producer who sampled Blue Note without permission.
LioraBig Ears puts its 2027 lineup on the clock, day by day. Tonight, New York throws Dizzy Gillespie a birthday. Later, a producer samples Blue Note without asking. It's Wednesday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Wednesday, October 21st. 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: Big Ears publishes its 2027 daily lineup eight days early
LioraBig Ears has told you which day to come.
The festival's own post went up eight days ago: "The 2027 Daily Lineup Is Here." Four days in Knoxville, April first to the fourth, the fourteenth edition.
Thursday runs thirty four billings, among them the Brad Mehldau Trio and Trio of Bloom: Nels Cline, Marcus Gilmore, Craig Taborn.
Friday is the heavy day, seventy four. The Bill Frisell Trio. The Vijay Iyer Quartet with Adam O'Farrill. The James Brandon Lewis Quartet.
Saturday, sixty four, led by the Chucho Valdes Royal Quartet and the David Murray Quartet. Sunday closes with thirty four: the Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, Robert Glasper, the Nduduzo Makhathini Trio.
LioraEach night also carries one reserved seat show, on its own ticket and not in any pass: Gillian Welch and David Rawlings Thursday, Nathaniel Rateliff Friday, The Roots Saturday, Norah Jones Sunday.
Single day passes are on sale, fees in: a hundred thirty five dollars Thursday, two hundred Friday, two hundred twenty five Saturday, a hundred fifty Sunday.
On the four day pass, early bird and wave one are gone. Wave two is five hundred fifty. The full schedule goes on sale in November.
Two. Listen to This: The French national library holds two records of one Blue Note afternoon at the Van
LioraToday's record was cut seventy years ago today.
The French national library keeps the paperwork. Its recording line: the Van Gelder recording studio, Hackensack, New Jersey, October twenty first, 1956.
J. R. Monterose on tenor saxophone. Ira Sullivan, trumpet. Horace Silver, piano. Wilbur Ware, bass. Philly Joe Jones, drums.
Here is the tip. The library files that afternoon twice, and the two records disagree. The 1994 edition times three tracks three seconds shorter than the 2008 reissue, whose title field spells the leader Montrose where the catalog's own authority says Monterose.
One tie to tonight's Bridge: Blue Note's page for the record at its center names Horace Silver among the sounds the samplers took.
And one out Friday. International Anthem and Nonesuch put out "Animative," by Josh Johnson.
LioraNow London, 1991. A producer samples a Blue Note record without permission, and then the label's parent company calls him into a meeting. Tonight on The Bridge: what he pitched in that room, and the record Blue Note's president called the label's first platinum disc. Silas has the story.
Three. The Bridge: A London producer samples a Blue Note record without permission
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Silas tells it, I ask the questions. Silas, where are we?
SilasLondon, 1991. Two producers, Geoff Wilkinson and Mel Simpson, put out a record as NW1. It's called "The Band Played the Boogie." It's built on a sample of a Blue Note track, Grant Green's "Sookie Sookie." They never got permission. Then an A&R man at EMI, Blue Note's parent company, calls Wilkinson in for a meeting. His name is David Field. He has already sent copies of the single to Capitol Records and to Blue Note's president, Bruce Lundvall.
LioraSo is he in trouble?
SilasHe's nervous. His first move, he says, is to ring Ninja Tune, the label that put the record out, and ask whether the sample was ever cleared. You may hear this told as a lawsuit story. No source we found shows a lawsuit, or even a formal threat. And most of what we know about that day comes from Wilkinson himself. Here's how he tells the arrival: "I went to the guy's office, knocked on his door and he was smiling, so I knew we were off to a positive start." Field knows the Grant Green sample. He sees a chance, not a legal matter. So Wilkinson pitches him, right there. As SPIN prints it: "If you let me have the Blue Note back catalogue as a resource, we could create the ultimate fusion of hip-hop and jazz."
LioraBold. What does Blue Note say?
SilasField takes it to Lundvall. A couple of days later, Wilkinson says, Lundvall calls with an offer: 2,000 pounds to make some demos. Wilkinson called it "a brave decision by Bruce Lundvall." Around March 1992 they cut two tracks. One never makes the album. The other is "Cantaloop." Even then, Wilkinson says, Blue Note plays it safe. The first deal is for three singles.
LioraWhat's inside "Cantaloop"?
SilasThe backbone is Herbie Hancock's "Cantaloupe Island," from 1964. There's a piece of a Lou Donaldson record from 1970. There's the voice of Pee Wee Marquette, the Birdland emcee, introducing Art Blakey. A rapper, Rahsaan Kelly, writes the hook overnight after hearing the backing track. And a trumpeter named Gerard Presencer plays on it, 17 or 18 years old, as Wilkinson remembers it. Hancock's reaction, as SPIN prints it: "At first, I thought they just edited and beefed up my original track and added rap to it."
LioraAnd does it land?
SilasIt comes out in Japan first, in October 1992. After the response there, Wilkinson says, "the three-single deal suddenly turned into an eight-album deal." Blue Note's own page says the label gave them "free rein to sample anything from the catalog." In March 1994 "Cantaloop" reaches No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the single goes gold. The album is "Hand on the Torch." The RIAA certifies it platinum on April 1, 1999. Was it the label's first? Lundvall said so, as SPIN prints it: "That's the space where I'm going to put the first-ever platinum disc that Blue Note ever had, and it's Hand on the Torch." Wilkinson, for his part, called the whole thing "the best crime I've ever committed."
LioraHe took from the catalog without asking, and eventually secured free rein to sample all of it. That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Five rooms tonight, from Dizzy's Club in New York throwing Dizzy Gillespie a birthday
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is in New York, and it is a birthday.
Dizzy's Club bills it "Dizzy Gillespie Birthday with Jon Faddis." Two sets, seven and nine. Faddis on trumpet, David Hazeltine piano, Todd Coolman bass, Dion Parson drums.
The seven is sold out. The nine is sixty dollars all in, thirty for a student, over a twenty five dollar minimum.
Now the sweep.
In Los Angeles, Catalina has the Andy Dominguez Quartet playing Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown. Half past eight, thirty five ninety to forty six seventy.
In Chicago, the Jazz Showcase has the Christian Dillingham Quartet. Its calendar prints one block, eight to eleven. Its ticket page prints two sets, eight and ten. Twenty five dollars.
LioraIn Minneapolis, the Dakota has one set, MC Lyte, seven to nine, from eighty one dollars and nine cents.
And back in New York, Birdland runs four sets in two rooms. David Ostwald's Louis Armstrong Eternity Band at half past five. Frank Vignola's Guitar Night at half past eight. And Ron Carter's Great Big Band at seven and half past nine, the early set off sale.
Five. One More Note: Dizzy Gillespie was born on this date in 1917 in Cheraw, South Carolina
LioraA hundred and nine years ago today, in Cheraw, South Carolina, John Birks Gillespie was born.
The National Endowment for the Arts made him a Jazz Master in 1982, and its page prints the date. October twenty first, 1917. The French national library prints the same day.
And he shares it. Don Byas was born October twenty first, 1912, in Muskogee, Oklahoma. The French and American national libraries both give that day.
And the French library files Byas as a member of one group in particular. The Dizzy Gillespie septet.
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 Wednesday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.