Commercial art (3/5)

A disappointing book. First off, I thought the title was rather misleading, implying that somehow jazz had influenced lots of fine art folk. The better title (though unwieldy) would have been 'The commercial art of jazz'. There are a few examples of fine art though really only included because of the jazz genre in the title. Page thirty-three has Mondrian's stunning 'Broadway boogie woogie' painting, if he had called it 'Broadway grid' it probably wouldn't have been included. Likewise Van Doesburg's 'Composition in gray (ragtime)', is a very unjazz-like picture. Page thirty-one has a book cover with an illustration by Picasso titled 'Igor Stravinsky, ragtime', delete ragtime and it would have no connection to jazz.

Most of the images in the book are record covers and PR shots of musicians and some photos are no better than snaps. Regarding the photos, I really would have expected a few portfolio spreads of the leading jazz photographers, like William Claxton, Herman Leonard, Francis Wolff, showing their work minus the design aspect of a cover. Claxton had a fine portfolio of his work in the Japanese published 'Jazz West Coast: artwork of Pacific Jazz records' published in 1992. I found the most interesting part of the book the first few chapters that reveal a collection of historical sheet music covers and film posters, these are now so old that they are fascinating to look at. 

The author has written a comprehensive history of jazz with some unusual detours on some spreads, like jazz in Germany in the thirties, all-black movies, zoot suits, bebop fashion, Andy Warhol (he illustrated a few LP covers) South Africa, the art of ECM. All of them get plenty of images. There are several pages devoted to individual musicians like Django Reinhardt, Sidney Bechet, Chet Baker, Shorty Rogers, Ornette Coleman, John McLaughlin, Wynton Marsalis.

As the book is probably sixty percent visual I thought the material could have been better displayed, there is plenty of empty page space where photos and record covers could easily have been bigger without making the spreads look too cramped. Maybe a drop shadow on all the covers would have given them a dimensional feel on the pages. The design overall is very bland and lacks any visual sparkle.

Finally, for a book full of record covers the back page bibliography only lists Graham Marsh's cover art of Blue Note records, missing is Blue Note covers volume two (1997) and his other two books on cover art: 'California cool' (1992) and 'East coasting' (1993). Richard Havers book (2015) on Norman Grantz labels likewise is full of covers, especially the wonderful art of David Stone Martin.