VMP Anthology: The Story of Blue Note Records

Vinyl Me, Please Anthology | Blue Note Records (coming soon)

"Introducing VMP Anthology: The Story of Blue Note Records — an immersive journey into the music & history of jazz's most legendary label. Featuring a secret podcast series, private fan community and six-album vinyl box set.

Over the course of six weeks, we’ll cover the various eras of jazz through the Blue Note artists and albums that shaped them.

To embark on this journey...
Vinyl Me, Please partnered with two of the most legendary listeners in jazz.

DON WAS,
President of Blue Note Records
BEN RATLIFF,
Grammy-nominated Jazz Writer


Join us and become a true student of jazz.

Early access discount sale begins 4/8. On sale to the public on 4/9. Only 1000 spots available."



Video Description:
"Introducing VMP Anthology: The Story Of Blue Note Records, an exclusive 6-week journey into the music & history of jazz's most legendary label. Featuring expert storytelling, a private fan community and a six-album vinyl box set, Vinyl Me, Please, Blue Note President Don Was & Grammy-nominated jazz critic, Ben Ratliff cover the various eras of jazz through the Blue Note artists and albums that shaped them -- Bebop, Hard Bop, Soul Jazz, Post Bop, Fusion, and The Jazz of Today.

Remastered from the original tapes by Kevin Gray & pressed at the legendary RTI, the albums will be delivered in pairs over the course of the six weeks along with associated content giving the context for each. Don and Andrew Winistorfer (VMP’s Editorial Director) will talk through each album -- its story, why it’s special and what it says about jazz--in each episode of a an exclusive four podcast series. In the end, fans will be left with a beautiful limited-edition vinyl box set and a deeper appreciation for Blue Note Records & their influence on jazz."


Records shown in preview video:
Wayne Shorter - The All Seeing Eye
Paul Chambers Sextet - Whims of Chambers
Wayne Shorter - Speak No Evil
Bobby Hutcherson - Dialogue
Sam Rivers - Contours
Dexter Gordon - Dexter Calling
Lou Donaldson - The Natural Soul
Bobby Hutcherson - Montara
Lou Donaldson - Here 'Tis
Lou Donaldson - Gravy Train
Ambrose Akinmusire - When the Heart Emerges Glistening
Wayne Shorter - Schizophrenia
Grant Green - Green Street
Joe Henderson - Mode for Joe
Horace Silver Quintet - Further Explorations by...
John Coltrane - Blue Train
Hank Mobley - Soul Station
Lee Morgan - The Cooker
Horace Silver - Horace Silver Trio and Art Blakey-Sabu

Presumably the "six album box set" will be chosen from those albums?

 

A staff member from VMP posted on their forum that on April 8th they'll announce the 6 titles,
but he did also say 5 of them are AAA, and one is more modern, from a digital source.
The suggestion is to sign up for the email to get the notice for the 8th, the info goes public on the 9th.

VMP Anthology

VMP Anthology

 

I'm guessing that's the Akinmusire, then? Great that 5 of them are going to be AAA.

There's a lot of overlap in that video with other series, mostly Music Matters, but one Tone Poet, which seems like it would be especially odd to include here, since it just came out. The MMs I could see, since they're mostly more expensive or OoP.

 

Very cool offering. Looking forward to the details.

 

The "true student of jazz" angle they're pushing seems a little weird...

It'll be interesting to see whether they lean toward "here are six classics you should definitely own" or "here are six deep cuts you probably don't have".

 

I'm optimistic this could be cool. They picked the right people to make them,
and they often use Stoughton for tip-on jackets, packaging is often done right.
My fingers are crossed for black vinyl, VMP does a lot of stuff on colour,
and that might be a deal-breaker for me.

 

Why? There is no difference if done correctly.

 

I'm antipathetic to colored vinyl in general as well. If done correctly, sure, no difference. But on multiple occasions, I've had problems with colored vinyl that the equivalent, simultaneous black pressing did not have, but my main beef is that colored vinyl usually makes it much harder to make out physical imperfections or surface debris.

 

VMP Staff said on Feb 26th: As we've said a couple times, all of ours will be reissues of albums that havent been reissued in forever/ever.

 

Thanks for the tip!

Combining the tips that one is digitally-sourced and never before on vinyl, seems like the Akinmusare's a definite, as it's otherwise a kinda left-field choice for the albums shown in the video. So with some discogs digging:

Almost certainly disqualified due to a recent AAA reissue:
Grant Green - Green Street (AP 45, MM 33)
Joe Henderson - Mode for Joe (MM 45)
John Coltrane - Blue Train (MM 45, MM 33)
Hank Mobley - Soul Station (MM 45, MM 33)
Sam Rivers - Contours (Tone Poet)
Wayne Shorter - Speak No Evil (MM 45, MM 33)

Maybe disqualified due to recentish AAA reissue or post-2000 BN mainline reissue:
Lou Donaldson - Here 'Tis (AP 45)
Dexter Gordon - Dexter Calling (AP 45, Classic Mono)
Paul Chambers Sextet - Whims of Chambers (AP 45 Mono)
Bobby Hutcherson - Dialogue (BN Mainline)
Horace Silver Quintet - Further Explorations by... (BN Mainline)
Lee Morgan - The Cooker (BN Mainline, AP Mono 33)
Wayne Shorter - The All Seeing Eye (BN Mainline)

Never on vinyl before:
Ambrose Akinmusire - When the Heart Emerges Glistening

What's left:
Lou Donaldson - The Natural Soul
Bobby Hutcherson - Montara
Lou Donaldson - Gravy Train
Wayne Shorter - Schizophrenia
Horace Silver - Horace Silver Trio and Art Blakey-Sabu

 

Do these qualify as spanning the many eras of BN history? The Blue Note website said:

Vinyl Me, Please x Blue Note 80 Series: A special partnership with the record club Vinyl Me, Please who will offer an exclusive Blue Note vinyl reissue series featuring six titles curated by Don Was that span the many eras of Blue Note history. Pre-order will begin in early 2019.

 

They range 1955 to 1975, plus 2011 for the Akinmusare, so it's a fairly wide range. The only catch is there are two Donaldson records, which seems unlikely. And of the reissued titles, the Chambers release's only modern reissue—audiophile, mainline, or otherwise—has been a mono one, so I think that ups its candidacy.

A user over on the VMP thread did some similar reissue digging and organized them this way:

Which seems like a solid guess to me, though I'm no era/style/genre expert.

 

I see two soul jazz and no bebop titles in that "What's left" shortlist, so it's probably not totally accurate. Seems a good guess, though; it could be pretty close to the mark.

 

There's no true stereo for Whims of Chambers. It was recorded solely to mono.

 

Now I'm seeing mention in a few places that Schizophrenia is playing in the teaser video, so odds on that one seem pretty safe. And the teaser page apparently shows a background image of Dexter Gordon, though I can't actually get any images to load on that page for some reason...

Doh! Of course.

 

It seems that the one mystery is what they will use for hard bop, since most of those titles have been recently reissued. Certainly the Chambers should be out for that reason (plus, it is not exactly one of the better sounding BNs of the period). I also wonder if "BN mainline" counts as "recently reissued" or not--they may be considering only audiophile reissues, rather than all of them. But that still doesn't open up many possibilities--the Horace Silver would be the second Silver title, so that leaves Lee Morgan's The Cooker. Senseabove listed that as having been an AP 33, but I believe it was never reissued by AP, but by Classic Records. Could it be that Classic Records has been out of business long enough now that they aren't being counted?

Overall, from the album covers presented, the ones I was most interested in were The All Seeing Eye and Dialogue. Seeing that neither is likely to be part of the series, it makes it easier for me to say no to this one (though Schizophrenia is also tempting, and I'm unfamiliar with these particular Hutcherson and Akinmusire titles).

 

I may have gotten which label did a reissue wrong on some of those. I was tabbing pretty quickly through them just to get a general sense of which ones would be possible, and mostly trying to differentiate between AAA reissues, whatever the label, and modern BN reissues, which I also would assume are more plausible for inclusion in this box. My main interest was narrowing down the list as much as possible so I could at least start sampling to see if the releases are something I'll be interested in.

Also, that breakdown of styles is entirely the user's, afaik, based on the comments about the selections being from a variety of eras. I don't think the official info has said anything about getting one of each stylistic evolution. So they could very well include two soul jazz titles and no hard bop.

 

Dude your deductive and reasoning powers are so on point

 

Understood--but didn't the breakdown appear in one of the press releases? From the beginning of this thread: "Introducing VMP Anthology: The Story Of Blue Note Records, an exclusive 6-week journey into the music & history of jazz's most legendary label. Featuring expert storytelling, a private fan community and a six-album vinyl box set, Vinyl Me, Please, Blue Note President Don Was & Grammy-nominated jazz critic, Ben Ratliff cover the various eras of jazz through the Blue Note artists and albums that shaped them -- Bebop, Hard Bop, Soul Jazz, Post Bop, Fusion, and The Jazz of Today. "

Would it be merely a coincidence that the press release mentions exactly six stylistic categories in relation to a series featuring six albums? In any case, I think it's very unlikely they'd leave out hard bop of all genres, or double up on soul jazz. But if my inference about The Cooker being the hard bop selection is correct, I wonder how it squares with another of the set's criteria, discussed in the video: the notion that each album represents the artist pushing the envelope in comparison to what they'd done on previous albums. Does The Cooker represent such a watershed for Lee Morgan? I never got that impression. Sane with Whims of Chambers. They seem like fairly typical sessions from the period.

 

Oh, hey, look at that Even though I copied and pasted it, I missed that they did indeed outline six eras there.

 

my interest is definitely piqued. as long as this consists of great stuff that doesn't overlap.

 

Any help on how to sign up and just get the BN box would be appreciated. Went to the website and it looks like it is a minimum of a three month membership...

 

Follow the link in the first post of this thread.

 

There's no way to sign up for the box set yet. Sign-up doesn't start until the 8th if you're on the email list, 9th if you're not. You can sign up for the email list at the bottom of this page:
Vinyl Me, Please Anthology | Blue Note Records (coming soon)

 

I'd be pretty darn happy with the "What's Left" because I have almost all the other ones that have reissued recently.