Jazz album art

Jazz album covers by record labels such as Blue Note and Verve were pretty cool and well designed when they were originally released. However designer Jeff Rochester from America has recently picked some classic album covers like Blue Train by John Coltrane, Time Out by Dave Brubeck and Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and given them a reworking – Nice

Hard bop emerged in the 1950s, spearheaded by the likes of Horace Silver, Clifford Brown, Art Blakey, Jackie McLean and Sonny Rollins, who between them made some outstanding albums that still resonate loudly today

While Reid Miles’s signature is clearly on this cover, several sources also credit the design to Andy Warhol who worked on a few jazz covers in the 1950s during his career as a commercial artist. The disctinctive Warholian lettering is evidence that he played a role. But Warhol

In the world of jazz there is one artist collected the world over who has never played an instrument not even a note of music but has left his mark on the jazz culture. Illustrator David Stone Martin (1913 – 1992) was one of the most prolific and influential graphic designers of the postwar era, with his signature hand-sketched graphics with two or three primary colours, perfectly capturing the energy and spontaneity of the jazz idiom. For biographical notes on Martin see part 1. For earlier…

Now that I’m halfway vaccinated, with a Moderna cocktail swimming in my bloodstream, I can see the clouds somewhat parting. While my new "normal" won’t be anything like my old "normal," maybe I can get back to some of the things I love, like eating al fresco, playing croquet, and having youngsters scream in my face atop massive layers of guitar feedback while surrounded by a pile of sweaty humans. OK, so maybe I won’t be hitting the club anytime soon. But I wouldn’t mind sitt

David Stone Martin and his jazz album cover design. Notes and pictures from Birka Jazz Archive.

music + jazz