Legendary jazz label Blue Note Records is celebrating its diamond (or gold, depending on tradition) anniversary with a 75th Anniversary Vinyl Initiative.
Beginning on Tuesday and continuing through October 2015, each month the label will release five remastered discs that it considers the essentials--clad in the original jackets and all.
As for which records made BN's diamond/gold list, well, it's been kind of a sore spot for some jazzists.
"You can't go wrong with that list, but yeah, it's arbitrary, so you're still going to miss a lot," said Don Was, president of Blue Note. "It was actually supposed to be 75 for the 75th year anniversary, but we couldn't agree on 75, so we had to expand it to 100."
Still, some critics bemoan that 100 isn't nearly enough.
And in a recent post on the New York Times' "Arts Beat" blog, Mr. Was confirms that it's "essentially impossible" to capture all the greats in the BN catalog.
Here's Was' Q&A with the Times' Larry Rother. Draw your own conclusions, Classicalites...
