Variant chronology
1976 - US Blue Note BN-LA663-J2, stereo gatefold, flat label <- this copy
1976 - US Blue Note BN-EA663-L2/BN-CA663-L2, promotional edition
1976 - Germany Blue Note BN 84 560 XCT/BN-LA663-J2
1976 - Canada Blue Note BN-LA663-J2
1976 - Philippines Blue Note BN-LA663-J2
1976 - Japan Blue Note LNS-67116･17/BN-LA663-J2
1977 - Japan Blue Note GXH3001/2, reissue
1977 - Japan Blue Note GXH3001/2, promo reissue
The Album
Recorded on a single night at the Roxy Theatre on Sunset Strip in June 1976 (with Donald Byrd’s closing tracks taped weeks later in Central Park, New York), this double album was assembled as a showcase of the artists George Butler was steering Blue Note toward during the label’s United Artists ownership - fusion, soul-jazz and vocal pop rather than the hard-bop catalogue the imprint had built its name on in the 1950s and 60s. Carmen McRae, one of jazz’s great song stylists, brings a set built on standards and contemporary covers, including a reading of a Bill Withers song. Ronnie Laws and Earl Klugh, both rising names on Blue Note’s commercial roster, contribute airy, radio-friendly sets, Laws previewing “Always There,” one of the defining smooth-jazz-era singles. Alphonse Mouzon, better known as a fusion drummer, appears here fronting his own electric band as a singer-composer. Donald Byrd, whose own crossover albums had already reshaped the label’s commercial fortunes, closes the record with two of his best-known Mizell-penned grooves. Taken together, the album is less a single artistic statement than a document of Blue Note’s mid-1970s identity, pitched squarely at the FM and soul-jazz audience the label was courting at the time, and it stands as a time capsule of that transitional era rather than a canonical jazz recording.
The Label
The labels are flat (no deep groove), finished in the all-blue United Artists-era Blue Note design: a large dark “b” logo carrying a musical note at the upper right, the Blue Note wordmark beneath it, and rim text reading “BLUE NOTE RECORDS • MANUFACTURED BY UNITED ARTISTS MUSIC AND RECORDS GROUP, INC. • LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90028 • MADE IN U.S.A.” This b-logo/United Artists design came into use once Liberty/United Artists took direct control of Blue Note’s manufacturing in the early 1970s and stayed in production through the label’s 1979 sale to Capitol/EMI, placing this flat-label design within the standard US run for this catalogue number. The 1976 copyright line printed on every side fixes the earliest possible date for this copy at 1976; the flat label and catalogue number place it among the standard US stereo pressings of the title, with no finer stamper-generation distinction visible from the label itself.
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