The Art of Jazz explores how the expressionism and spontaneity of jazz spilled onto its album art, posters, and promotional photography, and even inspired standalone works of fine art.
Alyn Shipton is an award-winning author and broadcaster, who has written about jazz for over twenty years for the Times in London and is a presenter/producer of jazz programs for BBC Radio. As well as being on the editorial board for the original The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz, and on the executive selection committee for the acclaimed revised edition, Jazz- The Smithsonian Collection, Shipton was consultant editor of the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. He has a lifelong interest in oral history, including editing the memoirs of Danny Barker, Doc Cheatham, and George Shearing. His monumental New History of Jazz was the Jazz Journalists' Association book of the year, and won Alyn the coveted Jazz Writer of the Year title at the British Jazz Awards. In 2003 he won the Willis Conover/Marian McPartland Award for lifetime achievement in jazz broadcasting. In 2010 he was named Jazz Broadcaster of the Year in the UK Parliamentary Jazz Awards. He lives in Oxford, UK, and rural France.
Musician Shipton gathers over 300 colorful images of jazz
paintings, studio photos, record covers, and posters in this
vibrant illustrated history. John Edward Hasse, a curator at the
Smithsonian Institution Museum of American History, writes in the
introduction: "Jazz appears most directly to the ear but also
engages the eye. Yet the visual dimension of jazz is often
overlooked." A detailed summary of early jazz follows-from the
brass bands of New Orleans and Louis Armstrong to Duke Ellington,
Bessie Smith, and Jelly Roll Morton-supported by a collection of
eye-popping photos (a soft-focus head shot of Peggy Lee in 1947;
Count Basie's orchestra squeezed together onstage at New York
City's Famous Door jazz club in 1938) and artwork (such as
Street Musicians, by Harlem-born abstract expressionist
painter Norman Lewis). Meanwhile, noted illustrators, designers,
and graphic artists such as Andy Warhol (who designed the cover of
RCA's 1955 album Count Basie), Verve Records' David Stone
Martin, and Blue Note's Reid Miles provided album cover designs for
bebop and modern jazz records. Other album cover images include
those of the ever-evolving Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and
21st-century jazz musicians, Kamasi Washington among them. This
indispensable work of the genre's art is perfect for jazz
aficionados.
-Publishers Weekly
Shipton, music historian and jazz radio host with the BBC, offers a
fascinating survey of how jazz influenced the art world. As he
states in his introduction, "the wider ramifications of jazz . . .
as syncopated music . . . rapidly transferred itself into the
visual and graphic arts." The text follows this process by
combining a survey of jazz history with a parallel look at artists
who illustrated jazz sheet music, posters, and, especially, album
covers, and who also incorporated jazz influences into their own
paintings and drawings. Modern jazz forms, from bebop through free
jazz and fusion, offered the most synchronicity for visual artists,
with Picasso, Warhol, Romare Bearden, and Jean-Michel Basquiat
among those whose art was used in jazz illustration or who created
specific work for album covers. Shipton is also strong on jazz
photography, calling out the use of iconic devices like
strategically placed microphones and curling cigarette smoke. Far
more than a showcase for striking album covers, this is a
remarkably insightful analysis of both art and jazz, showing
vividly how one form has fed the other.
-Booklist
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