Letterforms Study Group—7th session 9 May 2023: Record Album Covers

From left to right: Alex Tochilovsky, Marcos Baer, Jasmine Smalling, Scott Santoro, Hollis King, Sam Gold, Carrie Hamilton, and Tal Shub. Not pictured Abby Goldstein.

For the 7th session of the Letterforms Study group we returned to The Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design & Typography at Cooper Union, the site of our first two sessions. This time the focus was on record album covers, using covers from the Center’s collection as well as ones from my collection and that of participant Carrie Hamilton. The attendees were Marcos Baer, Sam Gold, Abby Goldstein, Carrie Hamilton, Scott Santoro, Tal Shub, and Jasmine Smalling. Our host was Alex Tochilovsky. Hollis King was our special guest.

Hollis was a student of mine at the School of Visual Arts in the 1980s. He was a graphic designer at GRP Records in the 1990s, later becoming the label’s creative director. After that he joined the Verve Music Group, a division of Universal Music Company. I did lettering work for him at both companies, contributing to CD covers for Diana Krall, Horace Silver, Aaron Neville, Gato Barbieri, and others. Hollis was nominated for a Grammy five times, though he never won.

For our study session Hollis brought the mock-up of a book he is working on that will document the album covers of Prestige Records. In the 1950s and early 1960s Prestige rivalled Blue Note Records for recording the best contemporary jazz.

Hollis King and Jasmine Smalling.

We focused on lettering and type in our examination of record album covers. Most of the albums we looked at were either jazz or rock with only a handful in the classical genre. Since we were relying heavily on the album covers in the Lubalin collection, we did not look at many iconic designs such as those by Alex Steinweiss for Columbia, Reid Miles for Blue Note, Paul Bacon for Riverside, David Stone Martin for Verve and Norgran, S. Neil Fujita for Columbia, and Jim Flora for Columbia and RCA. Instead, we looked at several delightful oddities (e.g. Cocktails Anyone? by the Don Creash Quintet [1958] or Fourtones by the Ohio State Jazz Ensemble [1978]) along with familiar designs that have become classic (e.g. American Beauty by the Grateful Dead).

Cocktails Anyone? by the Don Creash Quintet (Unique Records 1958).

Carrie Hamilton with her bag of album covers.

Jackie’s Bag by Jackie McLean (Blue Note Records 1960). Design by Reid Miles.

The Real McCoy by McCoy Tyner (Blue Note Records (1967). Design by Reid Miles.

Santana (Columbia Records 1969). Design by Lee Conklin.

John Barleycorn Must Die by Traffic (United Artists 1970). Design by Mike Sida.

Carrie brought some rock album covers from the 1970s and 1980s (e.g. Pinups by David Bowie [1973]) while I offered a mix of rock and jazz album covers from the 1950s through the early 1970s (a few Reid Miles designs along with albums by Santana, Traffic, Professor Longhair, Ornette Coleman, and Miles Davis). Among Miles’ voluminous output for Blue Note Records, the conceptual design of Jackie’s Bag is unusual. In contrast, the design for The Real McCoy is one of several in which Miles sliced up sans serif type to make a more compact and forceful design. I think it is his best effort in this vein. Lee Conklin’s design for Santana’s debut album is notable for its figure/ground optical illusion illustration. But I brought it for its psychedelic organic lettering. John Barleycorn Must Die is distinctive for its use of a 19th century Rustic typeface with letters made from tree branches. It is the antithesis of the Swiss typographic style so closely associated with the 1960s and 1970s.

After looking at the covers Carrie and I had brought, the group sifted through the album covers that Alex Tochilovsky and I had pulled in advance from the Lubalin Center collection. Among them were covers designed by Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar, Tony Di Spigna, Alvin Lustig, Henrietta Condak, and Milton Glaser.

Scott Santoro, Alex Tochilovsky, and Abby Goldstein looking at Santana and Abraxas (1970) album covers. The poster of Santana is from the latter.

Abby Goldstein, Marcos Baer, and Jasmine Smalling.

Some of the record album covers the group looked at. At the top is Songs of The Beatles by Sarah Vaughn (1981) with lettering by Tony Di Spigna. Underneath it is Vibrations by the Enoch Light Brigade (1962) with cover designed by Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar. John Jagel designed the fantastic cover for Ornette! by Ornette Coleman (Atlantic Records 1962) in the foreground.

Songs of the Beatles by Sarah Vaughn (Atlantic Records 1981). Lettering by Tony Di Spigna.

At the end of the study session, Hollis passed around print-outs from his Prestige Records book in progress. Everyone oohed and aahed over the designs, nearly all of them unfamiliar. My favorite was the one for Down East by Zoot Sims (1956) with a design by the jazz saxophonist and composer Gil Mellé using a photograph by Bob Weinstock, Prestige Records’ owner.

Hollis King showing proofs of Prestige Records album covers from a forthcoming book. To his left are Sam Gold and Carrie Hamilton. Visible on the table is New Orleans Piano by Professor Longhair (Atlantic Records 1972) with cover design by Stanislaw Zagorski.

Laser proof of album cover design for Down East by Zoot Sims (Prestige Records 1956). Original design by Gil Mellé; photograph by Bob Weinstock.

Along with looking at record album covers, the group riffled through some of the many books about album cover design in the Lubalin Center library. The books provided useful reference for several of the album covers we had been looking at, but many of them were not included. One such design is the cover of a 1972 Sammy Kaye album which is notable for its use of the always intriguing—but rarely seen—Calypso typeface designed by Roger Excoffon (Fonderie Olive 1958).

Brand New Recordings of Sammy Kaye Famous Creator of Swing and Sway (Project 3 Records 1972). Note the damage (or adjustment?) of the Y in Kaye.