5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Blue Note Records

This month, we look at the legacy of Blue Note Records, perhaps the best-known label in jazz, with its instantly recognizable blue-and-white vinyl center labels and decades-long run of landmark albums, some of which have become cornerstones in the genre.

Founded in 1939 by the German American record executive Alfred Lion and the writer Max Margulis, Blue Note began as a passion project for Lion, who visited the recently opened Café Society club to talk about recording music with the pianists Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons. Soon after, Lion paid the artists to play in a Manhattan studio, later pressing up the music from the session and releasing it as the first album ever on Blue Note Records.

Over the next decade, Blue Note would become the most prolific label in jazz, releasing albums from future legends like Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey and Bud Powell. Then the label hit its stride in the ’50s: Records from Lee Morgan, Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins and Lou Donaldson came in rapid succession, helping solidify Blue Note as the go-to label of the moment. Now, 86 years into its run, as a label still releasing straight-ahead jazz but also jazz-meets-hip-hop-and-funk, Blue Note truly needs no introduction.

Below, we asked 14 musicians and writers to name a favorite song to introduce someone to the Blue Note catalog. Listen to the playlists below the article, and don’t forget to leave your own picks in the comments.

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Wayne Shorter, “Speak No Evil”

Don Was, president of Blue Note Records

In February 1971, temperatures dropped below zero in Ann Arbor, Mich. I was a 19-year-old college dropout — draftable and without a car or job. My life was veering off track but there was one ritual that always provided comfort, direction and hope: turning down the lights and listening to Wayne Shorter’s Blue Note masterpiece, “Speak No Evil.”