On Impulse

Those of us who grew up listening to jazz in the '60s will never forget bringing home those spiffy LPs with the orange and black fold-out covers that promised some of the best music of the day. Their beautiful cover photographs sometimes led to an impulse purchase.

Impulse Records was founded in 1961 as a division of ABC-Paramount, under the direction of producer Creed Taylor. One of their first releases was Genius + Soul = Jazz by Ray Charles, a big hit. Shortly after that, they signed John Coltrane, who had over 20 Impulse releases and defined the label's image for most listeners. Ashley Kuhn's definitive history of the label is entitled The House That Trane Built.

After Coltrane's death in 1967, Impulse seemed to concentrate too heavily on avant-garde material and sales declined. Nevertheless, they hung on until 1977, releasing over 400 albums in all from such diverse artists as Duke Ellington, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Gabor Szabo and Pharoah Sanders. The label was revived less successfully in the late '80s and early '90s.

Impulse Records will be reactivated on July 15. It's first new release will be Viper's Drag, by New Orleans pianist and singer Henry Butler and trumpeter Steven Bernstein and the Hot 9. Here they do a slightly incomplete version of the New Orleans standard, "Iko Iko."

Forthcoming releases are anticipated by Charlie Haden, Jean-Luc Ponty, Kenny Barron, Madeleine Peyroux, Randy Weston and others. Some of these will be older recordings that were not previously released.

The label will be a division of Universal Music France and will be under the direction of Jean-Philippe Allard. Universal also owns Blue Note and Verve. Don't expect Impulse to release the kind of non-commercial material they featured in the '70s. “For me it's important that jazz is not a failure,” Mr. Allard said. “Without compromising the music, I want commercial success.”

This is the second historic jazz label to be revived recently, A little over a year ago, Sony began releasing jazz albums on the OKeh label. Recent examples include Bill Frisell's Big Sur and Jeff Ballard's Time's Tales.

You may also be interested in reading:

"If It's a Hit, It's OKeh"