Blue Note

A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH BRUCE LUNDVALL


As the President of Blue Note, Bruce Lundvall will play a pivotal role in what you and I hear in the century ahead. Blue Note has the deepest catalog of this music and is guided by Lundvall, whom many see as a visionary, but as he will tell you, he's merely a fan. That is stark humility for a record executive in any era. The following is a candid conversation with the man that is leading Blue Note into the new millennium, unedited and in his own word.


FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.

BRUCE LUNDVALL: Well, I've been a jazz fan since I was about fourteen years old. When I graduated from college, the first label I went to, to try and get a job was Blue Note and of course, there was no opportunity at that point. This was 1957. I had most of the Blue Note records in my personal collection, being a big jazz fan. I finally a job in 1960, after I got out of the army with Columbia Records. It was in 1976 that I became the President of CBS Records US and during that time, I had the opportunity to actually sign quite a few jazz artists, including people like Dexter Gordon and Woody Shaw, McCoy Tyner, Max Roach, Return to Forever, Al Di Meola, Bob James, I mean going across the spectrum actually. I left CBS in 1982 and went to Elektra Records, where I was the President of Elektra and I also started a label called Elektra Musician, which was a jazz label. The first star that was signed to that label was very successful and that was Bobby McFerrin. There were others like Steps Ahead. I left there to come to Blue Note in July of 1984.


FJ: When you came on board with Blue Note, the label was in dismal condition.

BRUCE LUNDVALL: It was really inactive at that time. What happened is that Sphaskarmenon, who was the Chairman of EMI during those years, he and I had a private meeting and he said, "How would you like to come to Capitol Records and run Blue Note? It's been dormant for about a dozen years." So I jumped at the opportunity and I, finally, was able to get out of my contract at Elektra and I came here. I've been doing this now, well, it's going on fifteen years. So that was the beginning of my relationship with the label and of course, it's been a fifteen-year love affair.


FJ: What was the greatest challenge facing you when you initially took the reigns at the label?

BRUCE LUNDVALL: First of all, Fred, it was a different time and how do you fill those big shoes of Alfred Lion? He was still alive. He was retired and in very bad health, but he had created an absolute brilliant legacy. I think the idea was how do we, it's easy to reissue the back catalog, but how do we move forward with the same spirit and the same kind of integrity that he had when he founded the label. So that was the real challenge. The Blue Note label of the '90s is not Alfred Lion's old homegrown label of the '50s and '60s.


FJ: The current Blue Note rooster boasts artists, like Chucho Valdes, Cassandra Wilson, Kurt Elling, Patricia Barber, Don Byron, and Medeski, Martin, and Wood, that defy conventional categorization.

BRUCE LUNDVALL: Yes, I realized that times have really changed. The music has changed and I wanted the label to be a label of its time. To just go back and do what Alfred and Frank (Francis Wolff) had done and just have instrumentalists and so on, in a particular vein of music would be fine if I personally owned the label and I said, "This is what I like, therefore, this is what I'm going to record." But as a business and to keep the business going, you need to represent the music that represents the people today. So apart from the fact that catalog actually does that, I wanted to diversify the rooster. So very early on we signed, one of the very first signings was actually Stanley Jordan, who was a young guitarist who actually ended up selling about a half a million units around the world. You remember Stanley?


FJ: Who could forget his performance alongside Bruce Willis in BLIND DATE?

BRUCE LUNDVALL: He was our very first signing and he was a young, contemporary guitarist with a new style of playing and as it turned out, Alfred Lion thought he was one of the greatest artists he had ever heard. Alfred was still alive at that time and he said, "This is the kind of guy we would sign. He was an original." He was our first signing. When we first started the label, we brought back a lot of the original Blue Note artists like Kenny Burrell, McCoy Tyner, Tony Williams, Dexter Gordon, Stanley Turrentine, Jimmy Smith, and others. And then, as we began to look around at some of the young signings, one of the early signings we made was actually a vocalist, Dianne Reeves. That was in 1986. Alfred really didn't like vocalists, I guess, because he never signed any of them. He did an album with Sheila Jordon, but that was sort of it. Suddenly, we were signing vocalists to the rooster, which didn't really happen in the past. Dianne is very, very successful and she's been with us since that time and we're going forward with her. Later came Cassandra Wilson and Lena Horne and Holly Cole, etcetera, Kurt Elling. So we now have a very strong rooster of singers. And then we've moved into this so called, I guess you can call alternative jazz area, Medeski, Martin, and Wood and Charlie Hunter. People like Don Byron even defy categorization. I think we purposely, I really felt that we had to broaden the rooster to be current with what is going on in the music today. I think that if Alfred were alive, he would be doing the same thing, frankly.


FJ: Under your tenure, Blue Note has steadily been re-releasing its back catalog, titles like Ornette Coleman's THE EMPTY FOXHOLE, Wayne Shorter's ET CETERA, and Joe Henderson's IN 'N OUT. What has been the key to your success in bringing those deleted titles back into the hands of the public?

BRUCE LUNDVALL: We had a very rich legacy to start with so when I started, the first thing I did was I hired Michael Cuscuna as a consultant. Michael runs Mosaic Records, so he couldn't come on staff. So I hired him as a consultant and together, we began to put together the back catalog. This is even before CDs came into vogue. Our first reissues of back catalog were really just on LP in 1985. We started with 25 records, obviously, the ones that were the most viable, but also we tried to spread it among a number of different artists as well. We would have things like THE SIDEWINDER (Lee Morgan) and SONG FOR MY FATHER (Horace Silver) and THE AMAZING BUD POWELL and the Thelonious Monk record, and all of those were obvious staples that had to come out right at the very beginning. But then as we got into the CD era, we also, eventually, got into remastering and 24-bit digital, which gave us yet another opportunity to present these masters in the very, very best sound quality. So we've been doing this since we started Blue Note up again. We've released, oh, I suppose, five hundred titles so far. There's only a thousand masters in the Blue Note catalog, so we have a long way to go. What I should point out, Fred, is that it's not just Blue Note. We also have a responsibility for all jazz within the EMI family, which includes the Pacific Jazz label, which includes Roulette Records, which our English company bought. So it's all of the jazz on Roulette, which is a lot of Sarah Vaughan and Count Basie and so on. And then all of the Capitol jazz in the vault, we're responsible for as well. So through the decades, Capitol has had a number of important jazz records, BIRTH OF THE COOL by Miles Davis and many, many more, Nancy Wilson, etcetera. All that legacy comes out through the Blue Note group, through our jazz and classics division.


FJ: What percent of Blue Note's overall sales figures is made up of catalog material?

BRUCE LUNDVALL: Well, with all jazz labels, it's about fifty percent and that is certainly the case with Blue Note, so fifty percent of our revenue comes from the catalog.


FJ: How successful has The RVG (Rudy Van Gelder) Edition series been for Blue Note?

BRUCE LUNDVALL: Well, it was amazing actually, because even though the original CDs are still active in the catalog, people that are really interested in upgrading their sound and so on bought the RVGs. It was even more successful in Japan than it was here. Some titles selling as many as ten thousand copies.


FJ: And that translates to how many in terms of popular music sales?

BRUCE LUNDVALL: It would be, let's say a hundred thousand, a hundred and fifty thousand of a pop record. Ten thousand units of an old jazz record is pretty phenomenal. Ten thousand units of a new jazz record is sort of about average for a straight-ahead record.


FJ: The Blue Note New Directions tour was another unparalleled achievement for the label, presenting its young talent in an alternative forum.

BRUCE LUNDVALL: Well, what we did was, I kind of determined a few years ago that we needed to really sign some of the very new artists that were moving the music, I thought, moving the music forward because they were conceptually thinking ahead rather than thinking as retro kind of acts, retro kinds of artists. So we ended up signing people like Stefon Harris and Mark Shim and Jason Moran and of course, Osby (Greg Osby) was always with us and Osby was a real factor in helping to find some of these artists. What happened was we said, "Look, we're going to build a young following for this music, the artists that are really going to draw young people are going to be young artists themselves." We basically signed these artists, made individual albums with them, and then we got together with a company called Convergence Marketing, which is an outside company that specializes in doing sponsorships and that sort of thing. They got Camel cigarettes very interested in booking a tour. We decided that the idea would be let's put together a band of some of these young artists, put them all in the same group, and put them in front of people that are not jazz fans. And Camel cigarettes had a number of clubs throughout the country that they were sponsoring, I guess, and they were not jazz clubs at all. They put up a substantial amount of money to put this band out. We rehearsed the band and they toured all over the country, about thirty different venues that were not traditional jazz places at all and young people who were not jazz fans really turned onto them. So it was really an interesting thing. It shows that if people that have no knowledge of this music are hearing something that's really good, they pay attention and they dig it. It worked and then we have gone on to make a record with the group and that will come out in January.


FJ: As we close out the century, 1999 has been a good year for Blue Note. Give a brief year in review.

BRUCE LUNDVALL: Well, a number of things happened. It was the sixtieth anniversary of the label. We were able to really tie in with an awful lot of outside opportunities to expand the visibility of the label. We did a supplement with Esquire Magazine in January. There was a twenty-page supplement and we booked every club in New York in January with a Blue Note jazz artist, so every jazz club in New York, virtually had, during the month of January this past year a week of Blue Note artists playing. That had never happened before and that was all publicized in this Esquire issue. Then, obviously, the New Directions tour was a very significant tour, in terms of presenting some of the young artists that have a new vision about where the music is going. I'm talking about the straight-ahead artists. It was important from that standpoint. Cassandra Wilson doing the TRAVELING MILES record, which became an extremely important record for her. It was the first record that she herself had produced. It became a worldwide hit for us. It was a year where Greg Osby really rose to a position to being one of the most absolutely influential leaders in this music, in terms of taking the music forward and the people that he surrounded himself with, Jason Moran, Stefon, and so on. They became young group of so called young lions, but a new breed of young lions. The critics are beginning to recognize that they are moving the music forward in a very fresh direction. Another new signing for us that was very important was Patricia Barber, from Chicago. She is on a small label called Premonition and we were able to do a distribution arrangement with her, I should say a licensing arrangement so she is now on Blue Note. I think among the young singers, she is certainly one of the fresh and original talents. Her career is just starting to really blossom and it was this year that was the pivotal year. Medeski, Martin, and Wood, this was the year for their first record on Blue Note (COMBUSTICATION) and it was a major success for us, another major, major success for us. Dianne Reeves was also noticed, although she's been on the label since '86, it was this year, the album, BRIDGES that really started to turn the tide for her in a major way. She become one of the hottest singers in the business now. She was a little bit taken for granted some time ago and she is certainly one of the best vocalists out there. This record is the one that really sparked the next phase of her career.


FJ: Preview the coming year for Blue Note. I know that Greg has done an album with Andrew Hill that is slated for release early next year.

BRUCE LUNDVALL: Well, I think in particular, the Osby record. Joe Lovano has done a record with a nonet, with a nine-piece group that is just extraordinary. That will be coming out in April. It's a real tribute to the beginnings of modern jazz on 52nd Street, but with a nine-piece group along the lines of a Tadd Dameron type of band with really wonderful arrangements. This is going to be an important landmark record. It's going to be a year also, where Gonzalo Rubalcaba, from Cuba, does a record of boleros, but in straight-ahead jazz style. This guy is really emerging as one of the geniuses of the piano. I'm very excited about his next project. Cassandra is planning a record. I don't want to tell you what it is, but she'll start recording it probably in the summer. It's a concept that will be pretty spectacular. It won't be out until probably 2001, I suppose, but she'll start recording it in the summer. There's a lot more. Ronny Jordan has been signed to the label and he's got a terrific record that will come out in February. He had a lot of success on his first record, than he was quiet for a while. But his new record, I have great hopes for it more on a commercial scale. It's also a very musical record along a Grant Green sort of direction, but for today. Dianne Reeves is going to be doing two records that I think are extremely important. The next one will be a live record with her present band, but with a lot of new material, followed by a very major record that she'll record in the fall with a large string orchestra, which will be a tribute to Sarah Vaughan. I think that's going to be a very special record for us.


FJ: You carry on the tradition of Alfred Lion by going out and actually hearing Blue Note artists play live, something that has eluded most record executives today.

BRUCE LUNDVALL: Well, I do it, Fred, because I have a passion for it. I don't do it just to show the flag. I live for this music. I always have. As long as I still have the energy, I'm going to be out there in the clubs, whenever our artists are appearing or whenever there is someone around that I think I ought to check out. The only way you can build a great rooster is with great artists. You can't do it with sound-a-likes. The more original talent you have, the stronger your company will really be. I think in ever respect, so you have to be out there looking and listening. I go out about two or three times a week. Brian Bacchus, I think, goes out every night of his life. Between Brian, myself, Tom Evered, the General Manager, Eli Wolf, the young A&R guy that we have here, we're pretty well covered in the clubs. And we go on the road to see people. The only way I signed Gonzalo was the go down to Havana a number of years ago. The only way we signed Patricia Barber was to go out to Chicago and hang out with her. This is true with a lot of different artists. We've gone all over the world to sign people.


FJ: It was quite a coup for Blue Note to sign Medeski, Martin, and Wood. I know they were being courted by a number of labels.

BRUCE LUNDVALL: That took about a year. It started when I went down to New Orleans. I didn't know them personally. They happened to be playing down there. That was about three and a half years ago. We went down and just saw a set and just hung out with them for quite a few hours. Then we met with them in the office. Then we met with them again. I flew out to San Francisco to see them. I flew to LA to see them. Everyone was chasing them, but we were kind of there first making a commitment to them. I think that's why they came here. I think they saw, "Hey, these guys really love music. They have wanted us all along. Everyone else is throwing money at us." It is a competitive thing when it comes to that anyway. So I think they decided that this is the place they wanted to be.


FJ: As Blue Note embarks into the next millennium, what do you foresee as the greatest challenge for the label?

BRUCE LUNDVALL: I think the challenge really is to always stay ahead of the curve and to find the artists that are out there saying something new and to find them and commit to them long before they are going to really have commercial success. Someone like Jason Moran is a good example. Actually, Greg Osby turned me onto him and so did Stefon Harris. I had already signed James Hurt, another young guy with another tremendous creative drive and creative approach. But the first time I heard Jason, I said, "This guy is really interesting. He's very out, but a guy his age to be this original." So I kept an eye on him and I went back to see him again. The second time I saw him, I said, "Look, you have got to be on Blue Note." He said, "Really?" And I said, "Yeah, you're not going to sell any records because no one knows who you are, but after the first couple of records, people are going to start to really take notice."


FJ: And they certainly are. Jason is even better live.

BRUCE LUNDVALL: He's wonderful and he's completely fresh and he's got a great, original conception and he's going to be a major artist on the label. The same is true with Stefon. We found him early on and we made a commitment to him and we're going to continue to do that. The minute we start to get slack, that's when somebody else is going to step in and make the right move that we won't make. So you have to guard against that because the artist move the music forward, not a record company. We're middlemen. That's all we are. We have to identify the talent that we believe in and then support them. The artists make the music. So we are strictly middlemen. When somebody here becomes more important than the artist, they won't have a job here anymore. That's how I feel about it, including myself.


FJ: As a fan that is bringing the music to other fans, what do you foresee as the next challenge for the music?

BRUCE LUNDVALL: There are a lot of people that are saying that jazz is dying or jazz becoming a museum piece or something like that. Or where's the next Coltrane? Where's the next Charlie Parker? I really don't listen to that. For me, my glass is always half full and when you hear the level of playing that is going on and the commitment to the music by young musicians, by the people that I've just talked to you about, and people on other labels as well. You can name Brad Mehldau or Regina Carter, whoever you want to talk about, Lewis Nash. These are amazing musicians. Mark Turner and there are many, many more. You know that the music is alive and well. Now, why should someone come along like the next Coltrane and turn everything upside down? It may or may not happen. There is an awful lot of music out there preceding these young players that are out today, trying to create something new. You can't expect someone to come along and be the next tornado that will rip through. It will happen, but I don't even know if that's so important now. If you have a lot of young musicians and older musicians still coaching them, who are at the top of their game and seriously indebted to this music and moving the music ahead, I think you are going to have a very bright future. That's the challenge for everybody. The challenge is to be sure that these large conglomerate companies that we all work for remain loyal to the jazz department. The big danger, I think, I suppose, in terms of the large company is jazz is a very small part of their business and unless they support it as an art form, they can easily shut off the valves and say, "We're not making any money here, the hell with it. We're not making enough money so let's not have a jazz division anymore." There was a time when that attitude was prevalent. It isn't now.


FJ: Thank God. But it's still hard for a young jazz artist to get a deal. It's very hard.

BRUCE LUNDVALL: It's very hard. And there are lots of them without record deals. And even though there are a lot of small independent labels, it's still even hard on that level, so my view is that the music is very healthy and that we have to be very actively after the right artists and we have to give it a high level of visibility. I think also that our music could require a trade association and we've been talking about that as an industry now. The Country Music Association has done a great deal for country music. We need to have the same thing in jazz. A bunch of us has been meeting now for months to try and form a jazz trade association. I think that is going to happen in the year 2000. That's going to be important because that will help us, as an example, to put on a jazz Grammy show or to put some pressure on the Grammys to expand what they do for jazz on their television show, on the Grammy Awards Show.


FJ: Or to just get the music on television.

BRUCE LUNDVALL: Just get jazz on TV period. Or to open up more concert possibilities. It will be all of those kinds of things as a goal for this association once we get it up and running. So that is something that is going to be important for us to achieve in the year ahead.


Fred Jung is the Editor-In-Chief. Comments? Email him.