There is an unwritten rule in the community of Warhol covers collectors: one can never ever have enough copies and versions of Johnny Griffin’s excellent Blue Note album The Congregation. So, here we go again! I seemed somehow to have missed the 2011 release of […]
All posts filed under: Fifties
Warhol from Ads to Books and Back Again
Record albums with Andy Warhol cover art is not all I have been collecting of this artist the past twenty or so years, also books and magazines designed, illustrated or published by Warhol. It’s time to take these out of the bookshelves and boxes, and […]
Kenny Burrell and Andy Warhol: Tone Poet & Design Master
The re-issue of Kenny Burrell’s Blue Note 1543 album in the audiophile series Tone Poet finally got its release. At first it was planned for June, but boy, it was worth the wait. What a brilliant release this is, both in regards of music production […]
Funk Is My Religion: new record, old drawing
Funk Is My Religion is the title of an album by Swedish funk and jazztrombonist Nils Landgren, released with his band Funk Unit in July of 2021 on the German label ACT. The cover art is credited as “inspired by Andy Warhol (detail)”, but it […]
Designer Acy R. Lehman: the cool gabriels and the peelable banana
During my visit to the archives of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, two years ago, I noticed an interesting name on the purchase order for the cover art of the 1956 jazz album Cool Gabriels on RCA’s Groove label: A.R Lehman. To fans of […]
Reid Miles & (just a dash of) Julia Warhola: MONK, Prestige Records 7053 (1958)
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 (1958) and 2 (1961)
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 (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 in 1957 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 Earhole 