I've confessed my embarrassing ignorance when it comes to jazz music on this blog and in private conversations. Despite said lack of knowledge, my curiosity about and enjoyment of the music continue unabated. Thanks to helpful guidance from Dr. S., Al P., Andrew, jb, and others, I've come to appreciate many artists, performances, songs, and albums. In particular, Dr. S. has been doing a great job featuring the wonderful and diverse recontexting of the vaunted Blue Note catalog, The Blue Series of discs. In that spirit, we're featuring an overview of the eight releases in the delightful Blue Note Explosion series from 2006 and 2008.
As with a lot of my favorite series of compact discs, there was a promo sampler for radio stations and record stores. While I've never come across it IRL, there apparently was a promotional compact disc released ahead of the first wave of discs in 2006 titled Blue Note Explosion housed in a gatefold card sleeve. (That's my collage of the four covers of the 2006 releases above.)
The first thing that caught my eye was the cover art appears to be worn like on the Backbeats series. The faded disc wear and slightly damaged upper right-hand corner as well as the distress are illustrated intentionally. This is true of each of the eight releases, all of which follow certain design elements of classic original Blue Note album artwork. Another interesting feature of the cover art of the Blue Note Explosion series is found in the oval of the Blue Note logo. While the oval usually features the catalog number on classic Blue Note albums, here the oval contains the release date range of the tracks on most of the releases while others have empty ovals or no oval/logo at all.
Secondly, each Blue Note Explosion release features four to six artist names credited on the front cover in no particular order. The names represent the credited artist or band leader of each song though some of the names may very well have played on other sessions on the album.
The session players are listed in the liner notes along with the date of each recording session, songwriting credits, copyright info, and representative cover art of each of the albums the tracks originally appeared on. Without doing any research, it appears that Grant Green or perhaps Jay Jay Johnson would be the MVP session man on these compilations.
Each track also features a brief overview of the artist in the booklet. There is enough information provided to satisfy this listener's basic curiosity. As an example, I'm still sorting and learning the various signature sax sounds of the major and minor players so it's helpful to know who's blowing on each track. Each Blue Note Explosion release is a two-disc set housed in a single-width case that fits in with the rest of your CD collection. The spines on the case are the standard title, catalog #, and record label; in this case EMI, rather than Blue Note. The rear of each booklet contains images of the other three discs released in that year's flight and the interior artwork is color-matched to the cover's border. The flip side of the rear cover, usually hidden underneath the disc tray beneath the discs, features an image of a Blue Note Records sleeve. In addition to the artist and title tracklisting, the rear cover features the UPC, a smaller image of the album's cover art, and Dean Rudland's credit for compilation and sleevenotes. The design and aesthetic of the series are attributed to www.the-unknown.co.uk, who also handled the same job for the Backbeats series. All eight Blue Note Explosion covers can be found on this page of the unknown website.
As with a lot of my favorite series of compact discs, there was a promo sampler for radio stations and record stores. While I've never come across it IRL, there apparently was a promotional compact disc released ahead of the first wave of discs in 2006 titled Blue Note Explosion housed in a gatefold card sleeve. (That's my collage of the four covers of the 2006 releases above.)
Blue Note always reminds me of the late '80s, when I managed the CD departments at two locations for a Philly-based video chain that was attempting to make inroads into the music biz. I dealt with a lot of customers, obviously, including one - Roland - who was blind. He called every Tuesday to learn about the latest releases from Blue Note. Many were reissues of classic LPs, of course, and he'd spout off all the players for every song while sharing his thoughts on the albums themselves. (A few hours later, on her way home from work, his wife would stop by to pick up a few of the CDs.) I credit him, more than anyone, with sparking a desire to learn more about the jazz - though, like you, I'm still ignorant about much of it.
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