{"id":5070,"date":"2015-05-21T10:05:40","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T10:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=5070"},"modified":"2015-05-21T10:05:40","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T10:05:40","slug":"jazz-loses-a-class-act-bruce-lundvall-who-revived-blue-note-records-dies-at-79","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2015\/05\/21\/jazz-loses-a-class-act-bruce-lundvall-who-revived-blue-note-records-dies-at-79\/","title":{"rendered":"Jazz Loses a Class Act: Bruce Lundvall, Who Revived Blue Note Records, Dies at 79"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20150521_Bruce2\"<\/a>
Photo by Noel Vasquez\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nTuesday night, I was saddened to hear of the passing of Bruce Lundvall<\/strong>, perhaps the last of the great jazz music-business executives, who, among his other credits, led Blue Note Records back from dormancy to a period of profoundly\u00a0influential activity.
\nBruce, who died on Tuesday at 79 from complications of Parkinson’s Disease, was a gentleman, a scholar, a true music lover and a friend whose stories kept me enraptured and taught me a great deal. He always looked dapper in his well-tailored suits and he lent positive meaning to the term “suit” as used by musicians.
\nIn an obituary in today’s New York Times<\/a>,\u00a0Nate Chinen summarizes Lundvall’s impressive half-century in the recording industry and gets it right with this comment:<\/p>\n

In an industry rife with egos and sharp elbows, Mr. Lundvall generated an unusual amount of good will.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m sure to write more about Bruce soon. For now, I’ll post again, below, this\u00a0excerpt from Bruce’s introduction to \u201cPlaying by Ear,\u201d\u00a0Dan Oulette’s Lundvall biography published by\u00a0ArtistShare<\/a>\u00a0last year. My\u00a0interview with Oulette about Lundvall and that project can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m 78 and I\u2019m still doing what I started doing in 1960. Why? I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s like the mob\u2014once you\u2019re in, you can\u2019t get out\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When I started out, it was the record business. Now it doesn\u2019t seem like it\u2019s a business at all. In the short term, we\u2019ve reached the end of a format, and the music business will become smaller. In the long term, there will be a new generation that will be exploring a different way of doing business, and I\u2019m not sure what that\u2019s going to look like.
\nThe information world is changing by the minute. The future of the music business is all tied up with that, so there will be major changes. Maybe there won\u2019t be record companies anymore. Already a lot of young people don\u2019t even know what a CD looks like\u2014let alone an LP. They receive their music from a cloud.
\nBut one thing is certain: There are still artists who have great things to say in every field, and you still need people to find the talent. In jazz, the music has become international so you have talented artists from everywhere who are important. There are more and more originals who deserve to be heard, and artist development needs to be kept alive.
\nIn the future we\u2019ll need people who have a passion for the music in addition to having intelligent computer skills to be able to spread the music, to get it heard. No one in the business is a star. We have to remember that we are the middlemen to get creative music to market, even when you have a young generation that believes the music should be free\u2014and treats it that way.
\nThose who are passionate need to seek out mentors who can help them bring the music into the future. They can\u2019t do it alone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tuesday night, I was saddened to hear of the passing of Bruce Lundvall, perhaps the last of the great jazz music-business executives, who, among his other credits, led Blue Note Records back from dormancy to a period of profoundly\u00a0influential activity. Bruce, who died on Tuesday at 79 from complications of Parkinson’s Disease, was a gentleman, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Jazz Loses a Class Act: Bruce Lundvall, Who Revived Blue Note Records, Dies at 79”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[93,94,284,12,14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5070"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}