{"id":66072,"date":"2023-04-17T12:15:01","date_gmt":"2023-04-17T10:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grapheine.com\/graphic-design-en\/histoire-graphisme-pochette-disques-jazz-50s"},"modified":"2023-05-11T10:23:33","modified_gmt":"2023-05-11T08:23:33","slug":"history-record-covers-design-50s-jazz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/old.grapheine.com\/en\/history-of-graphic-design\/history-record-covers-design-50s-jazz","title":{"rendered":"History of record covers: the face of 50s jazz"},"content":{"rendered":"

The vinyl cover<\/strong> has marked not only an era, but the entire world of music. Seventy years after its creation and in the age of digital technology, it has been and still is a medium of choice for fans and collectors, and a preferred format of expression for artists and graphic designers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"history-record-covers-jazz-1950\"<\/h2>\n

The face of music and society on vinyl covers<\/h2>\n

Like book covers,<\/a> vinyl sleeves are graphic media that evolve with social and technological changes and thus illustrate the upheavals in society. Tracing the history of vinyl sleeves allows us to admire the beauty of an object that gives a face to music, and also to better understand 70 years of culture.<\/strong><\/p>\n

After bucolic landscapes and drawings to illustrate classical music, photography was used more and more from the 1950s onwards thanks to offset printing. Drawing and a certain unstructured graphic style will illustrate the exuberant energy of jazz, then psychedelia and the emerging rock of the 1960s, which will revive the handmade using photomontage and photocollage. Science fiction and space travel were in the spotlight in the 1970s with the birth of DTP and laser printing, before the disillusionment of the 1980s which heralded the commercialisation of a new technology, the CD, which signalled the decline of vinyl but not of the music sleeve!<\/strong> It is this history that we will trace in this series of articles. Enjoy your reading!<\/p>\n

The inventor of the modern record sleeve<\/h2>\n

Alex Steinweiss<\/strong> (1917-2011) was responsible for the first modern vinyl record sleeves<\/strong> as we know them today. In 1940, at the age of 28, he was a DA at Columbia Records and suggested replacing the brown paper surrounding the records (which looked like photo albums, hence the name) with a colourful illustration, so that \"people could look at the work and hear the music\"<\/strong>. In the industry, these covers were called \"tombstones\", in derision: that's how dull they were!<\/p>\n

\"alex-steinweiss-cover-pochette-vinyle\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The company gave Steinweiss a chance with these synaesthetic covers that tell the story of sound through images, and in a few months sales increased by 800%! Steinweiss' illustrative style is colourful, generally without perspective and with flat colours as a background<\/strong>, like in the advertisements of the poster king Jules Ch\u00e9ret<\/a>, with a hand-drawn typographic game that echoes the musical style of the album.<\/p>\n

A gothic typeface for German music, a handwritten one for classical music, a dancing round typeface or big bold letters for Latin or African rhythmic music...<\/p>\n

\"alex-steinweiss-pochettes-vinyles-cover\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Over several decades Steinweiss created thousands of vinyl sleeves for all kinds of music<\/strong>, for labels such as Columbia, Decca, London, or Everest. He also designed logos, advertising materials and his own typeface, Steinweiss Scrawl<\/a>. His bold graphics revolutionised the music industry.<\/p>\n

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Soon enough, the labels also obtained licences to use the works of modern artists such as Picasso<\/strong> (whose dove is printed directly on the record, in 1949, below) to illustrate albums. We'll come back to artistic collaborations later in the article. Let's talk about jazz first!<\/p>\n

\"picasso-paix-vinyle-paul-robeson-1949\"<\/a><\/p>\n

American Jazz Vinyl Covers<\/h2>\n

In 1942, Steinweiss hired illustrator<\/strong> James (Jim) Flora<\/a> at Columbia<\/strong>, who composed crazy, childlike and truly joyful illustrations to enhance jazz records. His energetic, colourful and vibrant universe gives life to a crazy and zany world that escapes reality, illustrating the lively effusion of post-war jazz<\/strong>. He will surely inspire the Shadocks (1968) and the jazz-loving alley cats in the Aristochats (1970).<\/p>\n

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Ten years later, photography replaced the illustrations<\/strong>. In the 1950s there were two styles of jazz in the United States: the intense, soulful, avant-garde Eastern style in New York and a cooler, more finely arranged Western style. These two styles can be visually differentiated on vinyl covers: Eastern jazz plays with typography and photos<\/strong>, in two-colour process with a coloured tint or in black and white, as seen on the Blue Note, Prestige or Riverside labels. In the West, there is much more colour<\/strong>, with photos in warm tones, typical of the Pacific coast.<\/p>\n

The sunshine of western jazz<\/h3>\n

It is William Claxton's<\/strong> photographs and arrangements that shape the face of western jazz covers, in which the musicians are portrayed in the open air, far from the dark concert halls or recording rooms, echoing the cinema<\/strong>. Chet Baker, for example, is seen playing trumpet on a yacht, or Sonny Rollins as a cowboy drawing not a gun but a saxophone. These out-of-studio covers helped spread the use of photography to showcase music groups.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The blue note label and its mythical jazz covers, in the East<\/h3>\n

The blue note label<\/a> is probably the best known label in the jazz world.<\/strong> It was founded in 1939 by two German-Jewish immigrants, Francis Wolff and Alfred Lion, who recorded the masters of hard bop, a genre of jazz mixed with gospel and rhythm & blues<\/em>. The recording features trumpets and percussion, but it is the covers that catch the eye.<\/p>\n

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Their layout was designed by Reid Miles<\/strong>, who became THE reference for jazz vinyl covers<\/strong> when he lent his graphic design talent to the Blue Note<\/em> label around 1955. Ironically, Miles was not a fan of jazz but of classical music, and it was surely his detachment from this style that gave him the distance to unravel its heart and echo it visually.<\/p>\n