Blue Note Records

Blue Note Records is the American jazz label founded in New York in 1939 and now part of Universal Music Group. It is the parent brand behind a series of territorial jazz imprints launched with Universal’s regional operating companies, including Blue Note Africa, announced with Universal Music Group Africa on 6 April 2022, and Blue Note Records China, which the label’s own site describes as “the newly established jazz label under Universal Music Greater China”.

For this publication’s purposes the label matters less as a catalogue than as a credit. Blue Note Records appears as the label credit on releases whose sound-recording copyright is held by a Universal group company rather than by the imprint itself: the phonographic line on Nduduzo Makhathini’s albums uNomkhubulwane (7 June 2024) and The Myth We Choose (26 June 2026) reads “Blue Note Records” followed by a separate ownership credit naming UMG Recordings, Inc. The distinction between the label named on a record and the company that owns it runs through the label’s African releases in particular.

Don Was was named as the label’s President in its own April 2022 Blue Note Africa announcement. In the MusicBrainz rights registry the label is typed as an imprint, carries label code 133, is placed in New York and dated from 1939.