Classic Album Covers #2 - Ornette Coleman

This next cover isn't even one of Coleman's greatest records but both sides of the sleeve combine to sublime effect and the whole style marked a tipping point in jazz album design.

This sleeve was put together by Forlenza Venosa Associates - an ads, promo and music publishing company formed in 1966, when the former Columbia Records editor and art director Bob Venosa joined the fledgling Forlenza Associates. 

For the past decade, the style of the Blue Note label had been dictated by designer Reid Miles, who had interpreted a string of landmark titles literally with smart modernist designs and Francis Wolff's noir-ish, two-tone photography.

With Venosa on board, however, they began to introduce increasingly wild, Afro-psychedelic art to the label's album sleeves, no doubt encouraged by his time spent hanging out with Carlos Santana and Jimi Hendrix.

However, for a year or two in the late 1960s, they turned out a string of covers that bridged the gap between the monochrome mod classicism of the early Reid Miles sleeves and the crazier excesses of the post-1970 designs. 

Venosa worked on a number of classics, including Donald Byrd's Slow Drag, Lonnie Smith's Think!, Hank Mobley's Reach Out and Bobby Hutcherson's Total Eclipse, but for sheer atmosphere and timeless style, this wins it for me.

Classic Album Covers #1 - Terry Callier

As this blog has slowly transformed into a collection of the many influences I'm absorbing into the photography on Art Of The City, I thought I should finally start acknowledging my other biggest source of visual inspiration: album covers. I remember Paul Weller once saying something to the effect that he didn't have a favourite author and that when he was growing up that Lennon and McCartney were his favourite authors. In that same spirit, when I was growing up in a non-descript Midlands satellite town, photography and art galleries didn't really register but album and single sleeves proved a constant source of inspiration. I would identify with a great cover, trust a songwriter more for their artistic eye and often chance my luck on buying an album on the strength of the appearance alone. The covers mattered and they still do.

     This occasional series will dig through the photos and designs that I've loved for years or just recently discovered, from the strange oddities to the stylish classics. First up is this cover from Terry Callier's 1973 lost gem What Color Is Love. The music is a dream; a hazy, lovelorn mix of folk, jazz and soul. When the sax flies on the epic opener Dancing Girl, it cuts cleanly through the bluesy atmosphere like a finger through dust on a shelf. As one Amazon.com reviewer has put it so sweetly, "everything you think about the cover is revealed in song." Listen to the full album here...

Paris: The Jazz Century

I'm currently researching a piece about jazz in Paris for a travel magazine and in doing so I came across a great new exhibition. 

   Le Siècle du Jazz, or The Jazz Century, opened this week and features a host of 20th century art, design and memorabilia. They've got Matisse paintings, bebop-inspired illustrations and all manner of photographs from the era, not to mention sound recordings, a programme of concerts and beautiful vintage album covers. I'll give a more comprehensive update once I make it over to see it, but in the meantime the promise of more than 1,000 works, you can't go far wrong. Le Siècle du Jazz runs at the Musée du Quai Branly until 28 June.