Joe Farrell - Canned Funk, 1975 Back at Christmas Mrs. Dog got me a coffee table book called "The Color of Jazz." It features album art from jazz albums released from the late 1950s through the early 1970s. All of these covers are photographs of a guy named Pete Turner.
Turner did most of his album artwork during this period for a now defunct jazz record label, CTI, run by Creed Taylor. And not only is it classic artwork but in many cases it's classic jazz music as well.
I had a number of the albums featured in the book but there was a whole lot of which I was completely unfamiliar. So I went on a mission to discover the music behind the photographs. And yesterday I found one of the remaining ones I have not located, Wes Montgomery's Road Song. Upon finding it I decided since we regularly discuss music and the lack thereof (American Dildo) on here, it might be nice to open the discussion (or the lack thereof) to album art too.
So starting today I will post from time to time album art starting with the contents of The Color of Jazz with as much information as I can find about the picture and album. And since outstanding artwork is by no means limited to jazz we can branch out into all kinds of music with no regard for how good the music is but focus on the uniqueness of the artwork instead.
The cover photo is Joe Farrell's Canned Funk, the last of 5 albums he did for CTI. Below is Milt Jackson's Olinga album from 1974 also his last album on the CTI label.
3 comments:
that canned funk art is incredible. i love stuff like that. did you look for or find anything on the meaning of it, if any? I'm guessing his female is watching him too closely.
You will see more eyeballs in later posts. Turner bought a box full of prosthetic glass eyeballs (like Sammy Davis Jr. had) at some liquidation sale and then continued to use them off and on in his photography for years.
Here's what he says about the Canned Funk album cover: "I still had a couple of these false eyes that I had used before. I kept wanting to place one where it would be shocking, in something that you could open up like a jar or a can. After playing around with it, I got the idea of opening a can of peaches, and the eyeball fit right in."
The title of the picture is "Eye to Eye."
In case anybody cares, here's a link to a podcast I found shortly after I posted this article. It gives you a little more perspective on Pete Turner and his artwork.
http://podcast.eastmanhouse.org/pete-turner-empowered-by-color/
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