The last cover to be discussed in this series of posts about Reid Miles and Andy Warhol, is that of the Thelonious Monk album on the Prestige label, with serial number PRLP 7053. The Reid Miles cover was issued in 1958. There is a lot […]
Reid Miles & Andy Warhol’s Mother: The Story Of Moondog, Prestige Records 7099 (1957)
In 1957 Reid Miles did the design for The Story Of Moondog, an album by the blind avant garde musician and street poet and performer Louis Hardin a.k.a. Moondog, who in New York was also known as the “Viking Of 6th Avenue” because of his […]
Reid Miles & Andy Warhol: Trombone by Three, Pres 16-4 (1957)
Reid Miles’ work for Blue Note was not exclusive. Because of his good understanding with label owners Lion and Wolff, he was also allowed to do design jobs for other labels. Miles designed some great covers for Prestige Records, among which three with Andy Warhol. […]
Reid Miles & Andy Warhol: Kenny Burrell, Blue Lights, Blue Note 1596 & 1597, Volume 1 and 2 (1958)
The third and last Miles-Warhol project for Blue Note Records is my favorite: Blue Lights, again by Kenny Burrell, and released in two separate volumes with a different color background. In the Fifties, records with a what now is familiarily called “cheese cake” photo on […]
Reid Miles & Andy Warhol: Johnny Griffin, The Congregation, Blue Note 1580 (1958)
The next Warhol-Miles cooperation for Blue Note records follows the same path as the Kenny Burrell album: in 1956 there was an album called Introducing Johnny Griffin, with a cover designed by Reid Miles and a photo of Griffin by Francis Wolff. So for the […]
Reid Miles & Andy Warhol: Kenny Burrell – Blue Note 1543 (1956-1957)
This is the first of six short posts I will write about the great album covers that art director Reid Miles and Andy Warhol created together between 1956 and 1958: three covers for Blue Note Records and three for Prestige Records. The first one for […]
Reid Miles and Warhol: the shoe, the nudes, the letterhead
“For me work is an upper, a great high. I have no personal life. I don’t want it.” Those could have easily been Andy Warhol’s words, but they were not. Its’ a quote from an interview with art director Reid Miles in People Magazine, in […]
“Andy and André”, a Viennese operetta in three acts
Although I have a copy of Warhol’s (in)famous Diaries for years already – including the two unofficial indexes of celebrity namedropping published by the magazines Spy and Face – I decided to also purchase a Kindle version. At a low price of $3.60, how can […]
Official Velvet Underground banana release on 7″
Over the years the iconic yellow banana Andy Warhol had created for the Velvet Underground’s debut LP, has found its way to the sleeve of several 7″ records for other bands, like Abwärts’ Sonderzug Zur Endstation, or the split single Banana Split by Hickey and […]
Green Paul Desmond covers in France and Italy
Two years after the release of Paul Desmond’s album Take Ten, its cover design was used on two other albums in Europe. Recordings for Bossa Antigua, the album that followed Take Ten, were made in the Summer of 1964, and the album was released in […]
George Avakian’s stunning production note on ‘Take Ten’
It has been more than a year since I last wrote on this blog, the last post being about my discovery of Andy Warhol’s involvement in the cover artwork design of Paul Desmond’s RCA jazz album Take Ten. So it’s about time to pick up […]
The bossa nova cover no one knew was a Warhol: Paul Desmond’s Take Ten
In September I travelled to Pittsburgh for events that were both deeply sad and joyful: the beautiful and touching memorial services for Matt Wrbican, the Warhol archivist who died in June at the age of 60, and the official launch of Matt’s new book A […]
