Book 9 - Harry Freedman "Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots of Genius"

Harry Freedman "Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots of Genius" (Bloomsbury Continuum)






Although I have loved his music for many years, I didn't know a lot of the details of his life, so I learned a great deal here. Yet that is not what I will take away from this first reading, and this book will, I believe, reward many more readings. Cohen's songs move me, as they move a great number of people. There has never been any question about his religious and spiritual elements in the songs but for me that has always been a hazy kind of acknowledgement. In other words, I caught some of the more explicit references and could feel in my heart (soul?) some of the implicit ones, but I had no idea what specific stories and legends each song used and/or referred to. Now I have some idea of how he used those stories and beliefs to speak to his audience, even if we didn't know what foundational texts were involved.

Now that I better understand Cohen's life, and from a previous biography I read, I now mainly understand it from the inside out rather than the outside in. I would recommend this to fans of his but I would also recommend it to those who might like to learn how another person used his religious and spiritual knowledge to grapple with the world around him and then apply that insight to your own life and beliefs.

Book 10 - Graham Marsh and Glyn Callingham "The Cover Art of Blue Note Records: The Collection"

Graham Marsh and Glyn Callingham "The Cover Art of Blue Note Records: The Collection" (Collins & Brown)




Since I'm really into jazz these days, I come across a lot of LPs from the Blue Note label. I was already reading a book about the history of Blue Note and I recently came across this book by Graham Marsh and Glyn Callingham, The Cover Art of Blue Note Records. That is a book of 239 pages with little text and mainly photos, but a feast for the eyes for the enthusiast.

You understand that the photos are images of Blue Note record covers and there is a good reason for publishing such a book. That is the designer of the majority of those covers, Reid Miles (1927-1993). He was a graphic designer and photographer who was poached from Esquire magazine by Blue Note founders Francis Wolff and Alfred Lion. That was not without reason, because Miles would design more than 500 album covers for Blue Note. About Miles;

An avid classical music fan, he relied on Blue Note chief Alfred Lion to describe the mood and intent of each album. He then created an endless array of pin-sharp graphic designs, often combined with Francis Wolff's photographs, that over the next eleven years transcended mere commercial considerations, gave the distinctive Blue Note look and became an art form in its own right.

The book continues with some text about the history of Blue Note and the fact that the covers captured the spirit of the times so well. We even get separate chapters on the clothing seen in some designs, such as an 'Oxford button-down' shirt or 'Weejun loafers', which pianist Thelonious Monk would walk in.

What makes those covers so special? For me, this is mainly the use of color and typography. Some designs are clearly recognizable by large photos of the artist in blue, red or green. That sparing use of color gives the covers a certain atmosphere that I really like. Miles about color;

'It didn't mean you had to have full color – two colors didn't hurt that product at all. The few full colors I did were not as strong as the ones with black and white and red.'

Later he would tackle other subjects, such as his beautiful covers with cars, in which he stood out because of his special camera angle. He even considers the cover of the album A New Perspective by trumpeter Donald Byrd, with an eye-catching headlight of a Jaguar, to be his most successful design. The covers in which Miles indulges in typography - he was a graphic designer after all - also appeal to me, such as the cover of organist Larry Young with the album Unity. And organist with three other band members in a beautiful album in which, according to Young, 'everything fit'. With four orange dots in the letter U, Miles indicates exactly that in his design.

He no longer always uses photos with that typography, sometimes to the horror of Francis Wolff. Even if he only uses a bag on the cover of saxophonist Jackie McLean's album, Reid Miles says;

“Jackie Bag. Frank hated that…there was no photograph!'

Yet the confidence was so great that Reid could go ahead. He was not insensitive to the spirit of the times and just as we had album covers here with ladies on the front who had nothing to do with the music or artists (you know, the cover girls of Annie M.G. Schmidt), Miles also used Afro- American ladies to promote the goods.

An interesting part are the covers that Reid designed especially for the Japanese market. That was a large sales market so it was worth the investment. These covers were therefore not printed for global use and are now true collector's items.

It is a book that you quickly leaf through because of the many photos, but as an enthusiast I enjoyed it. I did miss the work of the period before Reid Miles, because I am certainly also a fan of the Blue Note covers designed by Paul Bacon, but they will probably turn up in a book somewhere.