Blue Note Label Group president and CEO Bruce Lundvall delivers Berklee's Zafris Music Business Lecture.

By Jason Roeder
Berklee.edu Correspondent
March 26, 2007

Bruce Lundvall, president/CEO of the Blue Note Label Group, has worked in the music industry for more than 40 years.
Photo by Phil Farnsworth

In 1957, Bruce Lundvall, then a recent college graduate with nothing on his resumé besides his address and his degree, walked into the office of Blue Note Records in search of work. Blue Note was his very favorite label, and might there be some way he could contribute? No, actually, there wasn't. Blue Note at the time was the tiniest of operations: label cofounders Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff even stuffed records in the sleeves themselves. But needless to say, Lundvall, now president/CEO of the Blue Note Label Group, eventually found a way in, and he discussed his decades of experience in the music industry during his February presentation of the James G. Zafris, Jr., Distinguished Lecture for Music Business/Management. Lundvall has spent his professional life at various record labels, and said, even at 71, he has no plans to quit now. When the time finally comes to stop, it will be, well, obvious.

"I want to do this till I die," said Lundvall.

Lundvall's rosters over the years have included artists such as Dexter Gordon, Norah Jones, Wynton Marsalis, and Willie Nelson, but before he was running labels, he was supporting them. In the '40s, Lundvall was redeeming bottles at the local A&P and buying 78s of swing artists like Lionel Hampton and Benny Goodman. In high school, a friend of his lent him a Bud Powell record. He held onto it for a week, listening to it several times a day.

"I didn't want to give it back," Lundvall said, "and I became a bebopper."

With the help of a driver's license he borrowed from a friend and age-inflating suits and ties, Lundvall checked out players who would ultimately be enshrined in the canon of jazz: Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, Dizzy Gillespie, and many others. "The only good thing about being my age is that I no longer have to worry about dying young and I saw all these people," said Lundvall. But the self-described failed saxophonist knew that if he wanted to get into the music business, he wouldn't be doing it with an instrument. He went to college with the hope of getting a job at a label when he graduated; he didn't realize it at the time, but his very first day of freshman orientation was one of the most important he would have at school.

"We're standing outside being lectured by the seniors," Lundvall recalled, "and this guy starts to hum 'Night in Tunisia.' I turned to him and said, 'You like jazz?' He said, 'Yeah, do you?' We became friends from that day forward."

That classmate was Mike Berniker, who would go on to be a successful record producer and colleague. When Lundvall got out of the army, Berniker, who at the time was a trainee at Columbia Records, got his friend an initial interview that led to a meeting with Bill Gallagher, the head of marketing at the label. It had been years since Lundvall's disappointment at Blue Note, and he was ready to resume the job hunt. But his conversation with Gallagher only revived his frustration.

"The meeting lasted all of three minutes," Lundvall said. "He said, 'We'll get back to you kid,' at which point I walked the streets for two months."

Lundvall was about to take a job with another label—in fact, with lots of them. He had a job offer from a company that printed actual textbook labels. But before he accepted it, he wanted to give the record biz one last chance.

"I called Bill Gallagher from Grand Central Station," Lundvall said. "I said, 'I have a job offer, but I want to work for Columbia Records. I'll work for nothing if you'll pay my bus fare.' . . . He said, 'We'll get back to you tonight.' I thought, 'This will never happen.' I went home, and he called and said you start Monday morning at $85 a week. Happiest single day of my life was that day."

And that's saying a lot considering the fact that Lundvall went on to earn three Grammy nominations, serve as chair of the Recording Industry Association of America, and receive a presidential award from the National Association of Recording Merchandisers—not to mention a lifelong career of signing successful artists across genres. Though Lundvall jokes about his age, he signed his best-selling artist just a few years ago. An accountant at Columbia asked Lundvall to listen to a singer she knew. The girl was special, she assured him. A meeting was set up, and on a Friday, the accountant brought Norah Jones to his office. Lundvall says Jones was so shy, she could barely speak. But she brought quite a demo, and Lundvall acted immediately.

"I said, 'I'm signing you to Blue Note Records," Lundvall said. "Those kind of things never happen—but it did happen that day."

Naturally, Lundvall was in a great position to answer questions from the Berklee audience at the David Friend Recital Hall; after all, 43 years in the record business gives you lots of material. But when no one initially raised a hand, Lundvall took it upon himself to playfully puncture the shyness in the room.

"'My name is Ambrose Wolfinger,'" said Lundvall, addressing himself. "'What do you look for when you sign an artist?'" And then Lundvall answered his own question. "Wayne Shorter really had the proper way of phrasing what you do when you sign an artist. He said, 'Don't follow shadows; shadows follow you.' In other words, go for originals. . . . If you do it through a marketing standpoint—this sounds like so-and-so meets so-and-so—forget about it, not an original. Go with originality, go with people who have a vision and their own point of view. That, Mr. Wolfinger, is the answer."

The audience quickly overcame its inhibitions and kept the Q&A going. Lundvall, who recruited his friend Michael Cuscuna, head of Mosaic Records and a consulting producer, to help field questions, was asked how long he typically stuck with an artist before feeling obligated to cut ties. In his experience, said Lundvall, patience pays off.

"We've stayed with a lot of artists for a long time," said Lundvall. "Records that didn't sell in the early days for Alfred Lion are selling today. Thelonious Monk never sold any records for Alfred Lion. But [Lion] believed in him. Today, we sell a couple hundred thousand of the two Genius of Thelonious Monk records. If we're right about our signings now, we're building a catalog that 20 years from now still should have relevance and be able to sell again."

And who knows? Bruce Lundvall might be still at Blue Note to see for himself.

Lundvall, along with producer Michael Cuscuna, fields questions from Berklee faculty and students. Photo by Phil Farnsworth

Jason Roeder is an editor/writer in Berklee's Office of Communications.