20 years ago, Norah Jones’ success saved the Blue Note jazz label. – Culture

It’s been twenty years since then 22-year-old singer-songwriter Norah Jones rescued the coolest jazz label of all time, Blue Note Records, with the downright uncool album Come Away With Me, now in an anniversary edition. At that time, the parent company had considered banishing the label to the archive, which is not only the home of Thelonious MonkHerbie Hancock and Lee Morgan, but also those with his record covers with photos by Francis Wolff and drawings by Andy Warhol Imagery of cool had coined. But then Jones sold three million albums in the first year (almost 30 now), eight Grammys, 20 number ones worldwide and a real hit single with “Don’t Know Why”. When she met for an interview in the Blue Note office, the furniture movers were there because the company was allowed to move into more stylish rooms.

Now you can admit it. Man (i.e. me) thought the album was awful. But then you (me) was still young, cool and a citizen of the notoriously sarcastic city of New York. To recap, anecdotally, Norah Jones headlined a festival on Manhattan’s southern tip that summer. Robbie Williams played in the opening act. And then, after an hour of Sinatra-like full throttle, Jones came along with her sad piano chords and incredibly melancholy breathy voice that blew across New York Bay like a silk scarf. After a few bars someone said: “Oh man. That makes me want to slit my wrists.” hahaha I agree.

Times are different now. Nobody jokes about mental illness anymore. I’m old, uncool and a citizen of the notoriously friendly city of Munich. And Norah Jones? Used as a songwriter better and better, is still charting and has changed a lot more than her record company’s balance sheet. This becomes clear when you listen to the anniversary edition of “Come Away With Me” again as a document of the history of mentality.

Half a year after the September 11 attacks, she was struck by a zeitgeist

Twenty years ago she was the first to repeatedly emphasize that none of this was jazz anyway, even if she would have liked to become a jazz singer. “Why would I sing standards? Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington did it much better,” she said between the moving boxes at Blue Note at the time. Formally, she was right. On the album it breathes and pearls and glides along, only nothing swings, nothing grooves, and on the scale of cool, which is open to the top, this is clearly in the minus range.

In retrospect, it’s much more understandable why “Come Away With Me” became the “favorite record of a generation”, as the anniversary press text now claims. You shouldn’t confuse them with the youth of that time. Above all, Norah Jones had found a way to appeal to the target group of over 40-year-olds, for whom there was hardly any current pop music at the time. But that was mainly the age cohort who – as the then Blue Note boss Bruce Lundvall quipped – “hasn’t yet figured out how to steal music from the Internet”. Hence the sales.

And Duke Ellington’s dogma “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Aint’t Got That Swing)” is also from 1931. Ellington himself had long since dissolved that. He formulated the actual credo of jazz when, in an interview with the MusicJournal 1962 said: “There are just two kinds of music. Good music and the other kind.” How good Jones was in 2002, lead on the anniversary edition especially the demo tapes, a discovery of the caliber of a “lost album”. Do you (I) have to revise the judgment from back then? In any case.

Sometimes she sings solo, sometimes in a small, acoustic cast with a clarity and emotionality that remains unusual. The way it worked had a lot more to do with jazz than with the overproduced pop of the time (Eminem, nickelback and Avril Lavigne dominated the charts at the time). In the spirit of Ellington, she found a way to turn blues, folk, country, pop and jazz into thoroughly American music that was not wide-legged and cool, but rather vulnerable and melancholic. Half a year after the 9/11 attacks, she hit a zeitgeist that continues to this day. And last but not least in the program of blue note reflects.

Swing and cool are now only two of the many blueprints of jazz there. Few have understood this as well as new Blue Note boss Don Was, who was a rock star in his past life. You just have to listen to the spring’s new releases. There is Emmanuel Wilkins, who on “The 7th Hand” explores a deep spirituality he experienced as a child in the African American churches. the exbathroom plus-Pianist Ethan Iverson cultivates an understanding of aesthetics on “Every Note Is True” that is more rooted in the grand gestures of film music. Vibraphonist Joel Ross celebrates his gift for composition on “The Parable of the Poet” with an opulence reminiscent of Charles Mingus. The pianist Gerald Clayton finds himself in the chamber music reduction on “Bells On Sand”. Trombone Shorty, in turn, translates the dance-crazy music of his hometown New Orleans in a present between marching band, funk and rock. In June, saxophonist Charles Lloyd will release the trio album “Chapel” with guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Thomas Morgan, in which they devote themselves to the anthems of music. No, it’s not cool at all. But if you are looking for the golden early years of Blue Note, you can still watch the wonderful documentary in the 3sat media library until the end of May “It Must Swing!” watch. Or listen to the many re-releases Don Was is putting out. With great passion and swing in all its nuances. Ultra cool.