Bill’s Favorite Blue Note albums.

The first Blue Note album I bought was a compilation. “Blue Note’s Three Decades of Jazz Vol 1 1949-1959”. Just look at the names on here. Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Clifford Brown, Milt Jackson, Miles Davis, Jimmy Smith with Kenny Burrell, Bud Powell, Horace Silver, Lou Donaldson, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Sonny Clark, Jay Jay Johnson. You might think of this album as my Rosetta Stone. I got this record towards the end of high school.

Thinking back just a few years earlier, the first live music concert I went to was Herman’s Hermits in the summer of 1965. That same summer I got my first electric guitar. I was dreaming of music. Things were happening so fast. My mind was expanding. Within the next very few years I went to see Bob Dylan, James Brown, Ravi Shankar, Jimi Hendrix, Thelonious Monk, Charles Lloyd, and dozens of other concerts. Back then the Denver public school system had a music program. I believe it still does thankfully. I took it for granted. Not every school has one these days. Starting in forth grade you could choose an instrument. With my father’s encouragement, I decided on clarinet and stuck with it all the way through high school and into college, playing in concert bands, marching bands, orchestras, and smaller chamber groups. I also got a guitar and that turned out to be where my heart was (is). My high school band director, Vincent Tagliavore, knew that I also played guitar. The all school talent show was coming up. There were some girls doing a dance routine to Wes Montgomery’s recording of “Bumpin on Sunset”. Mr. Tagliavore thought it would be cooler to have live music. He gave me the record and asked if I could learn the song. I’d never heard of Wes Montgomery. My mind was blown. I did my best to get it together. The talent show was a success. This is what opened the door. I immediately went out and started buying records. Back then at Woolworths and Walgreens you could find Riverside and Blue Note “cut outs” for less than a dollar. The first Wes record I bought was “The Wes Montgomery Trio” on Riverside. Around the same time I bought Lee Morgan’s “A Search for the New Land” on Blue Note. On this album are the very first notes I ever heard of Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Grant Green, Billy Higgins, and Reggie Workman. Next was Sam Rivers “Fuchsia Swing Song”. The first notes I ever heard from Sam, Jaki Byard, and Tony Williams. This was before I had even heard Tony with Miles. I soon got his first album “Lifetime”. This is also where I started noticing Ron Carter showing up on what seemed like every other album I was getting. He was on that first Wes Montgomery song I had learned for the talent show. “Bumpin on Sunset”.

My musical brother and best friend at the time was Keary Nitta. We listened to all these albums together. We sat next to each other in the clarinet section of the concert band. In that school band with us were Philip Bailey, who was in the percussion section, Andrew Wolfolk played tenor saxophone, and Larry Dunn played baritone horn. You may have heard they all went on just a few years later to join a group called Earth Wind and Fire. Keary played tenor saxophone and I played guitar in a group called the Soul Merchants. We played for parties and dances and stuff on the weekends. We even played for the fall homecoming dance. That seemed like kind of a big deal at the time.

Keary and I had heard that Sonny Rollins was really great so we went together to the record store to buy one of his albums. Sonny Rollins. “Live at the Village Vanguard” on Blue Note. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it at the time, but as my understanding of the music grew, this has become one of the absolutely most essential albums for me. What to strive for. Here are some other Blue Note albums I found back then around that same time. McCoy Tyner “The Real McCoy”. Wayne Shorter “Adams Apple”, “JuJu”. Herbie Hancock “Speak Like a Child”, “Empyrean Isles”. Joe Henderson “Inner Urge”. Larry Young “Unity”. Thelonious Monk “The Genius of Modern Music”. (Volumes 1 and 2). Whew. And ....this list could just go on and on and on.

The first Downbeat magazine I bought had Charles Lloyd on the cover. My friend Keary thought Charles’ wire framed glasses looked really cool so he went out and got some. We also wanted to hear what the music sounded like, so in January 1969 we went to the Denver Auditorium Theater to hear Charles with Keith Jarrett on piano, Ron McClure on bass, and Paul Motian on drums. Not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that some years later I would have the chance to actually meet and play with some of these extraordinary people and be recording for Blue Note Records. What a trip.