Blue Note Records is an American jazz record label owned by Universal Music Group and operated under Capitol Music Group. Established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis, it derived its name from the blue notes of jazz and the blues. Originally dedicated to recording traditional jazz and small group swing, the label began to switch its attention to modern jazz around 1947. From there, Blue Note grew to become one of the most prolific, influential and respected jazz labels of the mid-20th century, noted for its role in facilitating the development of hard bop, post-bop and avant-garde jazz, as well as for its iconic modernist art direction.
Maxwell Lemuel Roach was an American jazz drummer and composer. A pioneer of bebop, he worked in many other styles of music, and is generally considered one of the most important drummers in history. He worked with many famous jazz musicians, including Clifford Brown, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Abbey Lincoln, Dinah Washington, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, and Booker Little. He was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1992.
Jazz rap is a fusion of jazz and hip hop music, as well as an alternative hip hop subgenre, that developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. AllMusic writes that the genre "was an attempt to fuse African-American music of the past with a newly dominant form of the present, paying tribute to and reinvigorating the former while expanding the horizons of the latter." The rhythm was rooted in hip hop over which were placed repetitive phrases of jazz instrumentation: trumpet, double bass, etc. Groups involved in the formation of jazz rap included A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, De La Soul, Gang Starr, The Roots, Jungle Brothers, and Dream Warriors.
Hard bop is a subgenre of jazz that is an extension of bebop music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz that incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in saxophone and piano playing.
Milton Jackson, nicknamed "Bags", was an American jazz vibraphonist, usually thought of as a bebop player, although he performed in several jazz idioms. He is especially remembered for his cool swinging solos as a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet and his penchant for collaborating with hard bop and post-bop players.
Jerome Najee Rasheed, known professionally as Najee, is an American Jazz-Smooth Jazz saxophonist and flautist.
Leonard "Lenny" White III is an American jazz fusion drummer who was a member of the band Return to Forever led by Chick Corea in the 1970s. White has been called "one of the founding fathers of jazz fusion". He has won three Grammy awards, two nominations and one Latin Grammy.
Patrice Louise Rushen is an American jazz pianist and R&B singer. She is also a composer, record producer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and music director.
"Forget Me Nots" is a 1982 song co-written and performed by American R&B musician Patrice Rushen. It appears on her seventh album, Straight from the Heart. Making a radical shift in her music, Rushen would continue to harness the particular style of this record all through to her next album Now, released in 1984.
Doo-Bop is the last studio album by American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. It was recorded with hip hop producer Easy Mo Bee and released posthumously on June 30, 1992, by Warner Bros. Records. The album was received unfavorably by most critics, although it won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Instrumental Performance the following year.
Straight-ahead jazz is a genre of jazz that developed in the 1960s, with roots in the prior two decades. It omits the rock music and free jazz influences that began to appear in jazz during this period, instead preferring acoustic instruments, conventional piano comping, walking bass patterns, and swing- and bop-based drum rhythms.
Mark Howe Murphy was an American jazz singer based at various times in New York City, Los Angeles, London, and San Francisco. He recorded 51 albums under his own name during his lifetime and was principally known for his innovative vocal improvisations. He was the recipient of the 1996, 1997, 2000, and 2001 Down Beat magazine readers' jazz poll for Best Male Vocalist and was also nominated five times for the Grammy Award for Best Vocal Jazz Performance. He wrote lyrics to the jazz tunes "Stolen Moments" and "Red Clay".
"Oleo" is a hard bop composition by Sonny Rollins, written in 1954. Since then it has become a jazz standard, and has been played by numerous jazz artists, including Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans.
Prelusion is the debut album from jazz musician and later R&B recording artist Patrice Rushen. The first of three albums she would record with Prestige Records, the album was mainly Instrumental jazz which was her main focus as an artist before focusing on popular R & B recordings four years later after signing with Elektra Records. Released in 1974, the album showed great promise for Rushen in the Instrumental jazz genre with songs like "Haw-Right Now", "Shortie's Portion", and "Puttered Bopcorn".
Blue Trombone is an LP by J. J. Johnson. An early example of hard bop, the album features pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Max Roach. The album was released on Columbia Records in 1957 and was reissued on CD by Tristar in 1994.
Live at Montreux Jazz Festival is a live album by guitarist Carlos Santana and saxophonist Wayne Shorter that was released in 2005. The album is a record of their performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival on July 14, 1988.
Carmen Latretta Lundy is an American jazz singer. She has been performing for three decades, with a focus on original material.
J. J. Johnson's Jazz Quintets is a studio album by jazz trombonist J. J. Johnson, released by Savoy Records, containing material from three different recording sessions in 1946, 1947 and 1949. Material from the first two sessions had been previously released on two Savoy EPs, New Trends In Jazz, Vol. 11 and Birth of Bop, Vol. 3. The album was re-issued on CD in 1992, and again in 1994 on the Savoy Jazz label.
Reach Out! is an album by jazz saxophonist Hank Mobley recorded and released by the Blue Note label in 1968. It features performances by Mobley with trumpeter Woody Shaw, guitarist George Benson, pianist LaMont Johnson, bassist Bob Cranshaw, and drummer Billy Higgins.
A Place in Time is an album by trumpeter/composer Wallace Roney which was recorded in 2016 and released on the HighNote label.
