Art in North American 50’s music
Let’s go back to the 40’s, the 50’s, North America, record players, swing, blues, jazz... art. The origins of what we nowadays understand as "contemporary music" were marked in the artistic field by the established link between music and illustration; two areas that began to hold hands in order to never let go.
With this article I pretend to analyse album covers from an artistic point of view; understanding how vinyl format started to be a new canvas for the creativity of designers and artists.
There are some aspects in this subject that are well linked to the world of illustration; from the object’s packaging (whose format and characteristics suffered changes according to sociocultural and technological needs), to the generated images, in which we can focus in some aspects like the the processes and techniques used, the typography or the final arts.
Traveling back in time, we discover how the image had greater impact on the musical context during the 40’s and 50’s, leading to some new stylistic forms and to a wide iconography generated by the work of the artist. That’s the reason why we could consider this period as the starting point for the illustration of covers, with outstanding names like Alex Steinweiss, Neil Fujita, Jim Flora or David Stone Martin heading a long list of artists whose mission was based on illustrating Swing, Jazz, Blues and those new ways of making music that stirred up Northamerican's culture from the old New Orleans.
We find the origin of those art proposals on Columbia Records, when the young art director Alex Steinweiss had the revolutionary idea of designing an image for the cover of an album.
“The way they were selling these albums was ridiculous. The covers were just brown, tan or green paper. I said, “Who the hell’s going to buy this stuff? There’s no push to it. There’s no attractiveness. There’s no sales appeal.” So I told them I’d like to start designing covers.”
He proposed to replace those austere packagings with attractive images, with the aim of seducing the buyer, generating an aesthetic change that would serve as a premise for the musical piece.
“To my mind, this was no way to package something as beautiful as music ... I wanted people to look at the artwork and hear the music.”
It was in 1940, when Steinweiss decided to design the cover for the album “Smash Song Hits” by Richard Rodgers and the Imperial Orchestra; a photomontage on black background that caused a social revolution, not only for its innovative character but also for being the first illustrated record.
The sales of vinyls soared up to the 800% , so the revolution of illustrated albums would soon spread to other North American labels.
Another of the pioneers in this new art was Neil Fujita, which aim was to transform records into contemporary art pieces. He wanted the cover to be an introduction of the music that was inside of it, as he understood Jazz as a new way of abstraction that he represented by using colours, geometric shapes and surreal paintings inspired by artists such Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso or Paul Klee, among others.
Referring to illustration applied to records it is also essential to talk about Jim Flora and Davis Stone Martin.
Flora, who admired many Swing and Jazz artists such Benny Goodman or Louis Armstrong, quickly became famous due to his spontaneous, chaotic, transgressor and fresh style, full of quirky characters, deformations, post-cubist instruments, dynamism, tension and sarcasm.
And David Stone Martin, who designed more than 400 records, developed a visual style that we still recognise as the classic image of the the music atmosphere of the 50’s. A style that was defined but the representation of portraits of musicians, line drawings and handwritten titles. A sensibility and stylised aesthetics that soon was a true revolution in the graphics of the illustrated albums.
In conclusion, we see how what Steinweiss had devised was the beginning of a new art form and a new way of seeing, understanding and selling records that changed the course of the music industry forever, generating infinite graphic possibilities that would enrich the identity of the product.
A new way of visual communication!