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Introduction

We have been selling jazz records in many years, most recently on the Internet for 10 years. To celebrate this anniversary, we have opened our archive to show the images of some of the rare and beautiful albums we have offered over the years.

It is intended as a tribute to the labels and to the artists, designers and photographers, who created the album covers.

The covers are sorted by labels (USA) or by countries (Europe). You´ll also find some notes about labels, designers, photograpers, and the music itself in a historical perspec-
tive.

In order to complete the picture of the jazz recordings in a country or by a specific label, we have added some significant or rare albums from private collections that we have not been able to offer by Birka Jazz. Thanks to Harald Hult, Pär Melcherson and others.

So, this is just an archive of images. Not records for sale. Some of them should be found in our store, others hopefully will coming up for sale again in the future!

Until then, just enjoy the beautiful covers. Scroll down or use the links below.

We also would like to recommend a feature called "Klassiska skivomslag" (Classic album covers) which is running as a series on the Swedish web magazine DIGJAZZ.se

            

Digjazz is run by the writer and acclaimed jazz photographer Gunnar Holmberg. The album cover series contains a variety of classic jazz covers and also features such as Charlie Parker Special and Andy Warhol Special. The series is created by Torbjörn Sörhuus, the founder and manager of Birka Jazz. New covers are added continuosly, along with comments (in Swedish).

         
            Torbjörn Sörhuus

Also this Birka Jazz Archive is a work in progress. Each section will hopefully be expended step by step with more images and texts.

A list of resources used in preparing this website is included at the end




Table of Contents




US LABELS

Columbia

Clef, Norgran and Verve

-  David Stone Martin

Blue Note 10" LPs

-  1500 series

-  4000 series

Prestige and New Jazz

Riverside and Jazzland

Pacific Jazz and World Pacific

Contemporary

Dial

Savoy

Atlantic

Mercury and EmArcy

Bethlehem

Debut

United Artists and Candid

Roost, Roulette and Storyville

Argo and Cadet

ESP-Disk

ABC-Paramount and Impulse

RCA Victor

Decca

Capitol

Various US labels


EUROPEAN LABELS

Sweden 1950s

-  1960s

-  1970s

-  Swedish jazz abroad

Denmark

Norway

Finland

France

England

Germany

Italy

Holland

Eastern Europe


OTHER COUNTRIES

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COLUMBIA -
and the pioneers of cover design

COLUMBIA RECORDS is the oldest surviving trademark in the record business, dating back to 1880s. The label's first jazz recording were made by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917.

         

Columbia was an American company until mid 1920s, when it was purchased by its own former subsidiary in England, the English Columbia. Later, in the 1930s, the English Columbia formed EMI and was forced to sell its American operations back to the US. In the late 1930s the American Columbia Records was sold to CBS, Columbia Broadcasting System.

It is the albums from the American Columbia that are displayed on this page. Albums from Columbia in England, and other countries, will be find on the pages for European labels.

During the 1950s, Columbia´s US recordings were distributed in Europe on the Philips label. From the early 1960s the US Columbia albums were labelled as CBS recordings when sold in Europe.

Columbia pioneered in many fields of the recording business. Also in the field of album cover design. In 1939 the company employed Alex Steinweiss as art director. He becomes the man who invented the album cover.

ALEX STEINWEISS created the first illustrated cover for an album of 78 rpm records. Before that, the albums were sold in plain brown sleeves, with a cardboard outer jacket and just the name of the artist stamped on the front. They looked like tombstones, Alex Steinweiss said. Below his very first cover, a Rodgers & Hart collection from 1939.

   

The practice of illustrated albums was soon adapted by the other big American labels. Steinweiss continued to work for Columbia during the 1940s and created many covers for 78 rpm albums.

In 1948 Steinweiss also developed the packaging for the new 33 r.p.m. records that Columbia was developing. His design of thin cardboard, covered with printed paper, soon become the industry standard.

Columbia's first LP in 1948 was "The Voice of Frank Sinatra" which had the catalog number CL 6001. It seems to be the first pop/jazz LP ever (picture below).


   


Surprisingly this first LP does not have a pictorial cover, in spite of the fact that such a cover already exists. The LP was a reissue of a 78 album from 1946, which had a nice color cover (see large picture to the right).

Alex Steinweiss left Columbia in the early 1950s. But he continued to be much in demand as an album cover designer, especially for classic music. He worked during the 1950s for labels such as Decca, London and Everest. Later he concentrated on graphics for posters, magazine covers and packaging design.

Steinweiss was from beginning inspired by the European poster artists. His stylized images, with playful typography and eye-catching illustrations, have all the qualities of the great posters from the 1930s. Later he was attracted by the work of abstract artists such as Klee, Kandinsky and Mondrian.

         

JIM FLORA was recruited by Alex Steinweiss to Columbia in 1942 to handle the label's jazz covers. Unlike Steinweiss, a classical-music buff, Jim Flora was a great jazz fan.

All through the 1940s he devised brightly-coloured covers with caricatural and even naive graphics. His illustrations were influenced by the European modern painters as well as pre-Colombian art, given it a comic book twist.

He left the label in 1950. In 1954 he was hired by Bob Jones who was a former colleague from Columbia, now art director at RCA Victor. Flora came to produce some of his most oustanding works during the two years he was working for RCA Victor.

See the RCA Victor page



   
   Alex Steinweiss at Columbia in 1939

   
   Jim Flora early 1940s



         

COLUMBIA and EPIC
in the 1950s

NEIL FUJITA became one of the post-Steinweiss designers at Columbia who developed the company´s album look. He was recruited by Rudolph de Harek, who was Columbia´s art director in the beginning of 1950s.

Both de Harek and Fujita preferred a style which featured photography before illustrations. From mid 1950s Fujita was the art director. He was inspired of labels like Blue Note and Prestige and added a new, more hard-edged, attitude to Columbia.

He created many covers by himself, but also employed freelance designers and photographer such as Burt Goldblatt, William Claxton, Richard Avedon and Ben Shahn.

         

EPIC RECORDS was started in 1954 by CBC as a sister to Columbia. It became an important label for jazz and classical music the first ten years, before it went over to pop music.

Epic is known for its fine cover designs in the mid 1950s. Some of them were created by Ivan Chermayeff and his famous design studio in New York. Unfortunately much of their work was not credited. But the high art value as well as they were playful and austere, indicates that they were designed by Chermayeff.


         

New ideas at Columbia in the 1960´s

BOB CATO took over from Neil Fujita in 1960 as art director at Columbia. He was a ground-breaking designer who helped turn the album cover into an important form of contemporary art in the 1960s.

He was born in 1923. In the 1940s he first studied under the Bahaus designer Lazlo Moholu-Nagy and then with the designer Alexey Brodovitch, who was the art director of Harper's Bazaar. Cato then became his assistant at the magazine.

He stayed at Columbia from 1960 to 1970. His paintings, collages and photos illustrated a variety of musical styles, from Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis to Leonard Bernstein, and he created or superwised some of the most memorable rock music covers of the decade.

In addition to his own creatings Bob Cato also employed some of the era's most influential painters, designers and photographers, including Andy Warhol, Robert Rauchenberg, Robert Crumb and Mati Klarwein.

JOHN BERG was appointed as Bob Cato's assistent at Columbia in 1961. He took over as art director in 1965 when Cato was promoted to vice president of the creative department. John Berg's career at Columbia ran on until 1985.

Together with Bob Cato he changed the scene for the art of album covers. He created numerous of famous rock and jazz album covers for artists such as Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Bruce Springsten, Santana, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk.

MATI KLARWEIN is connected with some of the most iconic Columbia album images of the 1960s and 1970s. His paintings on the covers for Miles Davis and Santana visualised theirs new mind-expanding music, and probably the covers today are even more recognizable than the music itself.

Otherwise Klarweins name and work remains unknown to many. But he was a prolific artist, painting many portraits and a wide variety of landscapes, as well as surreal and visionary art.

He was born in pre-war Germany and escaped with his Jewish parents to Palestine (Israel). In the 1950s he moved to Paris and has then been living, working and travelling around the world.

---

RESOURCES
used in preparing this website:


Åke Abrahamsson a.o.: Den gyllene cirkeln (Stockholm, Prisma 2002)

Clifford Allen, All About Jazz: The ESP-Disk Story

Peter Boothman: A story of jazz in Sydney

Miguel Bronfman, Janny Dierx: Jazz in Argentina

Jan Bruér: Guldår & krisår (Stockholm, Svenskt Visarkiv 2007)

Jan Bruér and Bengt Nyquist: Svensk Jazzhistoria, Vol. 6-10 (Caprice CD, booklets)

Jan Bruér and Lars Westin: Jazz - musik, människor, miljöer (Stockholm 1995)

Irwin Chusid: The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora (Seattle, Fantagraphics 2004)

William Claxton: Jazz West Coast (Hollywood, Richard Bock Prod. 1955)

Thomas Conrad, Stereophile: The Search for Roy DuNann

Richard Cook: Blue Note Records (London, Secker & Warburg 2001)

Cool Scandinavians: Danish jazz cover artwork 1950-1970 (Copenhagen, Re-Public 2007)

Håkan Lagher å Lasse Ermalm: Metronome Records: De legendariska åren (Stockholm, Premium 2007)

Michael Cuscuna a.o.: Blue Note Jazz Photography of Francis Wolff (New York, Universe 2000)

Manek Daver: David Stone Martin Jazz Graphics (Tokyo, Graphic-sha 1991)

Manek Daver: Jazz Album Covers. The Rare and the Beautiful (Tokyo 1994)

Nick de Ville: Album style and image in sleeve design (London, Mitchell Beazley 2003)

Klaus-Gotthard Fischer: Jazzin´ The Black Forest. The complete guide to Saba/MPS (Berlin, Crippled 1999)

Jazz Grafico, Exihition catalogue (Institut Valencia d´Art Modern 1999)

Angelynn Grant; Burt Goldblatt and Jim Flora - Interviews

Walter Hanlon: 1950s Jazz in London and Paris (London, Tempus 2008)

Steven Heller: Waxing Chromatic: An Interview with S. Neil Fujita  AIGA.org

Juha Henriksson: A short history of Finnish jazz

Mark Hudson: Groove is in their hearts (on ECM) guardian.co.uk

Ashley Kahn: The House That Trane Built, The Story of Impulse Records (London, Granta Books 2006)

Rick Kennedy and Randy McNutt: Little Labels - Big Sound (Indiana University Press 1999)

Erik Kjellberg: Svensk jazzhistoria (Stockholm, Norstedt 1985)

Eric Kohler: In the groove. Vintage record graphics 1940-1960 (San Francisco, Chronicle 1999)

Edward M. Komora: The Dial Recordings of Charlie Parker (Westport, Greenwood Press 1998)

Dietrich H. Kraner, Klaus Schulz: Jazz in Austria

Steinar Kristiansen and Bjørn Stendahl: Jazz in Norway Norwegian Jazz Base

David Liebman: Europe - its role in jazz

Graham Marsh, Glyn Callingham and Felix Cromey: The Cover Art of Blue Note (London, Collins & Brown 1991)

Graham Marsh and Glyn Callingham: California Cool (London, Collins & Brown 1992)

Graham Marsh and Glyn Callingham: East Coasting (London, Collins & Brown 1993)

Jennifer McKnight-Trontz & Alex Steinweiss: For the Record, The life and work of Alex Steinweiss (New York, Princeton 2000)

Naoki Mukoda: Jazzical Moods. Artwork of Excellent Jazz Labels (Tokyo, Bijutsu Shuppan-Sha 1993)

Nederlandse Jazzgeschiedenis: Neder-
lands Jazz Archief

Joaquim Paulo: Jazz Covers (Köln, Taschen 2008)

Polish Jazz - Freedom at Last Polishjazz.com

Petri Silas: Reflections on Finnish Jazz

David Taylor: British modern jazz

Uwe Weiler: The Debut Label (Norderstedt, Germany 1994)