Covering the jazz age - a 20th-century art form

Associated media

Jazz Covers

By Joaquin Paulo, edited by Julius Wiedermann

The record album sleeve is surely one of the great popular art forms of the mid-twentieth century: so much eye-candy, such potential for visual obesity. It’s neither knowing to suggest that we all have our favourites, nor that their appearance can feed the life-histories of entire generations, and not just those of music lovers. By the mid-1960s those 12-inch laminated square card covers, ever-changing in record shop displays, proved to be representative of their time: statements of taste, ownership, opinion, observed on shelves, floors, tables or just carried under the arm. They sent an array of signals, messages, statements that no CD jewel case has ever truly replicated… and Jazz records? Why, these were amongst the ambassadors of sleeve design.

As a medium or an idiom, Jazz may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but combine the words ‘jazz’, ‘album’ and ‘sleeve’, and there’s a strong chance that the coloured overlays of Blue Note covers, the severe magnetism of the gatefold designs of the Prestige and Impulse labels, and the stylish photography of Verve may all somewhere come to mind, and that’s just for starters. Examples of these and many more are brought together in Jazz Covers, first and foremost a luxury item, and one with significant potential to open up many other avenues of enquiry.

In its present form Jazz Covers is the reincarnation of a 2008 Taschen book of the same name, then only truly accessible in the USA: unsurprisingly, as 99% of its content is devoted to the recorded exploits of American jazz musicians. Now, that single 2008 US volume has become two European hardback volumes (the new text is trilingual, in English, French and German), presented for UK audiences in one mighty slip-case,got up to look like part of a shelf of jazz records (30.5 x 31 x 7 cms). One senses four years of research and development here: it is hard to think that both these books could be sandwiched between a single pair of boards without serious structural defects affecting both book and reader. The refashioned volumes are packed with excellent reproductions of album covers created between the 1940s and the 1990s, most of which are shown at full size.

There is no chronology: each book is organized in alphabetical order according to jazz artist, A–K and then L–Z, and, where they are available, the creative details of each cover are given. Name the labels and most are here: Atlantic, Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside, and many others. The overall problem with this arrangement is that although this wealth of visual material is a fabulous resource for students and practitioners of graphic design, it is the tip of the iceberg and really should offer more anecdote and historical analysis. There isn’t nearly enough information on the labels, their management, changing attitudes to typography and photography, to the use of liner notes, hand-drawn lettering, or to art direction and artistic interaction with the artists, and, like any list of lists, no one interview can represent unstated views.

Notwithstanding the book’s 60-year timeframe, and the undoubted pleasure to be gained from the return of such inventive creativity to your lap, the overall sum of the collected parts ought really to contain greater impact and depth. The books most important advantage is that any reader wanting to hear music by an artist whose records they appear to have missed can now seek examples online. The old adage about wanting a job done and doing it oneself may be pertinent here.

The selection of the visual material in Jazz Covers is the result of author and editor having sought the views of people they respect. No harm there, and it isn’t too arbitrary, but the process results in the sort of subjective list that we’re accustomed to finding in music magazines, not least because most readers won’t know who the selectors are. And it has to be said that, though the book’s illustrations are extensive, the American weighting means that the book’s contents do not truly represent the genre.

A particularly unfortunate omission is the range of ECM album covers, not least because that label has gained such prominence as a key European recording outlet since the later 1970s, and because it is able to trade on a recognizable cover style, capable of transference to tape and CD. There is no textual material to explain this: instead, readers are offered six interview transcripts with American jazz personalities, three per volume. Although these are informative, first, they only go so far, and, second, their throwaway remarks are too often left to wither, when they might very reasonably have been developed.

British sleeve readers of a certain age will certainly know of Rudy van Gelder and Creed Taylor, and may often associate their names with the seminal designs that make these volumes beautiful, bizarre and extraordinary, but some of their statements actually raise questions and issues that go undiscussed. More attention to these might have helped to explain the changing face in US jazz, but the moment has passed, and Paulo’s failure to include supplementary information or to pick up on tantalizing loose ends is a matter for some regret.

 Though the interviewees and their texts develop the history of American jazz, and of its perception in the eyes of record buyers, they do little to underpin the subject, especially when so many unusual examples are to hand. If this is confusing, no matter: the book is definitely worth examination, and Christmas is coming… it is a mixture of the beautiful, the grotesque and too many missed opportunities, but there is much room for useful reminiscence and speculation.

Jazz Covers  by Joaquin Paulo, edited by Julius Wiedermann, is published by Taschen, 2012. 560 pp. across two volumes; 650 colour and mono illus, £34.99 for two hardback volumes in a slip case. ISBN 978-3-8365-2406-3