BLUE NOTE FOR A CRITICT

BLUE NOTES OF A CRITIC

by Norman Warwick

Well when I first heard Ella Fitzgerald I recognised how great she was without being told, and certainly didn´t need to be told in advance that Sarah Vaughan was stunning or that Cleo Laine, too, belonged in such elite company.

When I played Blue Moon on the Karla Harris album (left) I knew I was justified in proclaiming her status. She had turned a song, Blue Moon, from blues to Americana and then to jazz and back again, (almost as if following her art down sidetracks and detours).

Nevertheless, I am nowhere near a Steve Bewick (right) or an Alan Lawless when it comes to jazz knowledge or experience,…..I´d back my judgement any time but I´m not sure I could always articulate my argument. Experts like Steve Bewick, and Alan Lawless and Gary Heywood Everett can talk about the Brubecks and the Biederdecks and the be bop and the Blue Note till they can all swing on a star, and so, too, could the late David Woonton at Rochdale Music Society and I am so far behind them that I decided Blue Note might be a very good place for me to start reading up on Jazz so I slipped that phrase in to grease my search engine.

We have reviewed and interviewed Karla Harris on these pages over the last few months.

These articles remain available amongst almost 850 articles in our easy to negotiate archives, that also include many other jazz related features.

Simply type in the name of the artist you are looking for into our search box at the foot of our listed articles

It was the google search did the job for me when I looked for more information Richard Havers and his book. , and up came

https://www.powells.com/browse-book-genres/music

which points us in the direction of a virtual library full of books on Music by Musicians for Music Lovers.

WE´RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BOOKSHELF for book number 6

BLUE NOTE : UNCOMPROMISING EXPRESSION by Richard Havers

Tracings the evolution of jazz from the boogie-woogie and swing of the 1930s, through bebop, funk, and fusion, to the eclectic mix Blue Note releases today, this landmark publication tells the story of an influential jazz institution and commemorates Blue Note’s momentous contribution to modern music and style. Practically all of the jazz greats passed through Blue Note’s doors, including Miles Davis, Sidney Bechet, Art Blakey, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Ornette Coleman, Donald Byrd, and Jimmy Smith. Blue Note is not only known as the purveyor of extraordinary jazz but is also famous as an arbiter of cool. The photography of cofounder Francis Wolff and the cover designs of Reid Miles helped create a look that was an integral part of the label’s genius. A highly illustrated volume, Blue Note features the very best photographs, covers, and ephemera from the archives, including never-before-published material, and and documents a ground-breaking era in American culture.

Price                                                 $50.00  $46.50

Publisher                                         Thames & Hudson

Publish Date                                    June 14, 2022

Pages                                                400

Dimensions                            8.45 X 10.91 X 1.34 inches | 3.81 pounds

Language                                         English

Type                                                 Paperback

EAN/UPC                                        780500296516

Richard Havers (right) spent twenty years working in the airline industry before deciding to pursue his passion for writing. His books include Bill Wyman’s Blues Odyssey, Rolling with the Stones, co-written with Bill Wyman; Sinatra, an illustrated biography of Frank Sinatra. Havers was a British music author, journalist, consultant, and broadcaster. He was the author of over fifty books, including Rolling Stones 50 and Verve: The Sound of AmericaSadly, on the day I first learned of this book and its author I saw at the on-line site ofhttps://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/memory-richard-havers/ that Richard Havers had only very recently passed away.

An obviously heartfelt tribute to him, and indeed a very interesting one, had been posted by Paul Sexton under the headline of

photo AN INDELIBLE BYLINE: by Paul Sexton

IN FOND MEMORY OF RICHARD HAVERS.

A tribute to the author, journalist, broadcaster and former uDiscover Music editor-in-chief.

Any attempt to do justice to the prodigious output of Richard Havers since he decided to follow his passion and become a self-employed writer in the early 1990s is a challenge in itself.

The uDiscover Music team, and his countless friends across the music business and far beyond, were united in a huge sense of loss after the author, journalist, broadcaster and uDiscover Music editor-in-chief passed away on December 31, 2017. He died in Minehead Hospital in Somerset at the age of 66, and had been suffering from cancer. 

As a friend and colleague for more than 30 years, I fondly recall countless conversations in which we compared notes on the mountainous workloads he took on with good grace, our respective deadlines, the lot of the freelance journalist, and life in general. Such chats came to take some planning, because you knew they could last for hours, starting with the pressing issues of the day and progressing to a detailed discussion of great Beach Boys B-sides, the glory days of Cream, or the under-appreciated artists on whom we had bonded from the beginning, be it Clifford T. Ward (left) or Chris Rainbow. 

Richard was respected throughout the industry not only for his all-embracing knowledge, but for the utterly unquenchable passion for music that informed such wisdom. A truly prolific writer, he leaves a vast bibliography to which he added only a few months before his death with the publication by Virgin Books last August of On Air In The Sixties. The official history of the Rolling Stones’ BBC recording sessions, it tied in with Polydor’s On Air album anthology.

This was the latest of many book and record projects with the band, with whom he developed a close bond, notably with Ronnie Wood and former Stone Bill Wyman. He co-wrote 2002’s Bill Wyman’s Blues Odyssey, which won the Blues Foundation’s Award For Literature; he also collaborated with Wyman on his 2003 tome Rolling With The Stones and 2006’s The Stones: A History In Cartoons.

The same year, Havers was the author of The Rolling Stones: In The Beginning, and he compiled and edited the band’s official anniversary book in 2012, Rolling Stones 50, also writing the sleeve notes for 2016’s Blue & Lonesome album. He was a trusted source at The Beatles’ Apple Corps organisation and a voice of authority in the fields of jazz and blues, writing such definitive tomes as Verve: The Sound of America and the 75th anniversary history of Blue Note, Uncompromising Expression.

As the jazz consultant to Universal Music, Richard compiled definitive, multi-disc compilations on such figureheads and personal passions as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nat King Cole. Another of his great musical devotions led to the much-lauded 2004 book Sinatra.

As a confidant of many famous personalities in music and further afield, Havers co-wrote autobiographies of Gary Barlow, Tony Visconti, television personality Len Goodman, and film and stage director Peter Glenville. Myriad other subjects to come under his microscope included the BBC during World War II, football, the Titanic, and the airline industry from which he came.

Born in Carshalton in Surrey, Richard was educated at Reigate Grammar School and joined British Caledonian Airways at the age of 18, based at Gatwick Airport. He wrote and produced endless advertising jingles, and after 16 years, moved to Continental Airlines. He first crossed paths with this writer in Havers’ role as a marketing executive: in the mid-1980s, Continental became an official sponsor of Rock Over London, a weekly British music show that I produced and later hosted for worldwide syndication. With his influence, the airline went on to sponsor music events such as Route 88, a country festival in London.

After leaving Continental in 1989, Richard began to hone his new reputation as an author and journalist, also writing for such publications as the Daily Telegraph, The Times and Record Collector. One particularly memorable collaboration came in 2011, when his relationship with the Louis Armstrong estate opened the door for me to make the BBC Radio 2 documentary Satchmo By Satchmo, using never-before-heard audio from the jazz legend’s personal audio diaries.

As the co-founder of uDiscover Music, Richard was the driving force in establishing it as a global source of information about music, designed to appeal in the same way that he saw music itself, cutting across all genres and generations. He frequently posted stories long into the night, fired with his trademark enthusiasm for the subject matter and this new way of sharing it.

Those of us who had the privilege of working with Richard saw the defiant positivity with which he approached his illness. The reaction to his passing spoke volumes for his contribution to our lives, and the work he leaves us – all over this site and in so many other places — will endure as his indelible byline.

Any attempt to do justice to the prodigious output of Richard Havers since he decided to follow his passion and become a self-employed writer in the early 1990s is a challenge in itself.

The uDiscover Music team, and his countless friends across the music business and far beyond, were united in a huge sense of loss after the author, journalist, broadcaster and uDiscover Music editor-in-chief passed away on December 31, 2017. He died in Minehead Hospital in Somerset at the age of 66, and had been suffering from cancer.