Blue Note

Blue Note is a label that is mostly known for its releases in the jazz genre.

Label Code: LC 0133 / LC 00133

Founded by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis in 1939, the label was soon joined by Lion's childhood friend Francis Wolff (who took photographs during rehearsals used on LP sleeves). The early years saw BN issue 78rpm sides featuring traditional jazz artists and small-group swing, but from 1947 the company began to record the emerging bop movement with sides from Thelonious Monk and, in the next few years, Bud Powell and Fats Navarro. From the 1950s, Blue Note recorded musicians such as the Hammond organist Jimmy Smith and artists in the hard-bop idiom such as Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers. Albums by long-time artists Lee Morgan (The Sidewinder) and Horace Silver (Song For My Father) made a significant impact in the 1960s. Meanwhile, the label recorded more exploratory albums by Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, among others

Lion sold the label to Liberty in 1965 and retired in 1967. Wolff died in 1971. By now, more commercially-oriented music, including jazz-fusion, had started to be issued on the label, but in 1975, then-owners United Artists Records launched a reissue program of Blue Note's back catalog which lasted until 1980. The previous year, Blue Note became a label of Capitol Records.

Beginning in 1982, Blue Note sessions began appearing in box-sets from Mosaic Records (2) (co-owned by Michael Cuscuna). The label itself was relaunched as part of Capitol subsidiary Manhattan Records in 1985 and began making new recordings, re-releasing albums and previously unissued material from the Lion-Wolff era found by Cuscuna.

In 1989, Manhattan Records was discontinued and Blue Note became the division under which all of Capitol-EMI's jazz activities were organized (two years later, was revived for smooth jazz and pop-jazz releases).