I got this book many years ago. And I’ve always loved it. It’s now just one of three or more books I have dedicated to this most excellent of jazz labels.
What special about this one – and there’s a second volume I’m keen to acquire as well – is the decent number of large reproductions of album covers, near enough full original size. Plus lots more at smaller sizes.
I’m thinking of buying a second copy of this first volume, purely for cutting out pages and framing a load of them. Indeed, I shall do so. Though I’d better put in an extra shift or two to raise the funds.
I’ve also decided to pick up a copy of the book pictured below. By the same editorial team. I very much look forward to perusing that, in dew coarse…
A bit of trivia for the discerning bop-cat? The trumpeter on the cover of California Cool is Jack Sheldon. I know Jack best through two sources/routes: as a talking head on Let’s Get Lost, reminiscing about Chet Baker (he’s great, an absolute card!), and as a featured musician on several sublime Tom Waits recordings, from the latter’s purplest of patches (mid ‘70s to early ‘80s).
The range of styles across the board is pretty huge. From ‘scenes’, such as the above, to the more typical ‘in session’ portraits, by Francis Wolff, often massively cropped by Reid Miles, such as Grant Green’s Idle Moments…
… to bold typographic or graphic stuff, such as these doozies…
Sadly these personal faves don’t feature:
Maybe they’re included in volume 2? R
Rather oddly, the second volume appears to have come out in several different editions. But hardly any of these are easily or economically available.
As if the incredible music were not in itself enough, we are truly blessed to have had the combined skills and passion of all at Blue Note. As well as the artists themselves, the vision and passion of guys like Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, is to be rightly commended and celebrated.
And then there were all the engine room guys, like Paul Bacon, in the earlier years, even (very briefly) Andy Warhol, and of course Reid Miles, the classical music lover whose visual genius has helped make classic Blue Note both a byword for sublime music, and a whole aesthetic, based around albums as total works of art.
Fabulous. Essential stuff!
FOOTNOTE:
Rather shockingly, it’s next to impossible to source a photo of Reid Miles. I can’t recall where I originally found the above image. But one website – see photo at bottom! – has a mis-attributed photo of Woody Allen!
Miles stopped working for Blue Note in 1967. And after that, their album cover design grew ever less uniquely stylish.