Released in the fall of 1993, Cassandra Wilson’s recently reissued Blue Note debut, Blue Light ‘Til Dawn, made her a jazz superstar and marked a paradigm shift in vocal-jazz repertory. Essential to its success was Blue Note’s then-president Bruce Lundvall, whose reputation for generosity and facilitating creativity seemed to flout every known negative stereotype about record executives. In this excerpt from his new Lundvall biography, Playing by Ear (ArtistShare), Dan Ouellette details Wilson’s historic ascent at Blue Note.
One afternoon in the fall of 2012, Bruce Lundvall heads up to the SiriusXM satellite jazz radio studio at Columbus Circle, housed next door to the Jazz at Lincoln Center performing venues, to host his weekly Blue Note Records hour with Sirius Real Jazz program director Mark Ruffin.
