While listening to Madlib Shades of Blue album last night, an album where he remixes the Blue Note catalog, Francis Woff’s photos popped into my head. Francis Wolff’s child hood friend Alfred Lion was one of the co-founders of Blue Note Reords and shortly after moving to the United States from Germany in 1939, Francis Wolff joined Blue Note and help run the company and stayed there for over 30 years. Before moving to the US, Wolf worked as a commercial photographer and continued shooting photos and documenting the recording sessions during his entire career at Blue Note.

I came across two great Flickr sets of Wolff’s photos that you can check out here. Keep reading to see a small selection of images, but make sure to visit the Flickr page and browse the images in full screen!

You can check out the full color set here and the full black and white set here!