Reid Miles (1956)

Patterns in Jazz by Gil Melle, Blue Note 12" LP 1517, 1956, cover design by Reid Miles

I know. I can hear it now. The last thing the internet needs is another blog post singing the praises of Reid Miles and his 12-year stint (1955 through 1967) as the principle LP artwork designer for Blue Note Records! Right? Well, of course one cannot laud Miles enough: his work for the New York jazz label was a masterful high-water mark of mid-century modernist design. But there was certainly more to  this well-known figure whose full story has remained remarkably illusive.

Mobley's Message by Hank Mobley, Prestige 12" LP 7061, 1956, cover design by Reid Miles

Born in Chicago on the 4th of July in 1927, Miles actually grew up on the West Coast of California. After the stock market crash of '29, his family moved out west as so many other families did during the Great Depression and ended up in Long Beach. A marital split left Miles in the care of his mother who supported he and his younger sister by working in a cannery in San Pedro. Most of his youth is undocumented, although it is known that Miles joined the U.S. Navy near the end of the Second World War, serving as a chauffeur. Upon his discharge he returned to Los Angeles and, according to Wayne Adams who would later assist Miles in the 1980s, chased after a girl and wound up enrolled in the Chouinard Art Institute. Chouinard was then located in MacArthur Park and would merge with the LA Conservatory of Music to form CalArts in 1961. Other Chouinard alumni, whose names will be familiar to regular readers of this blog, include graphic designer S. Neil Fujita and pop artist Ed Ruscha. Rushca and Miles almost certainly never crossed paths that the school as the former did not enroll until the mid-1950s. However, it is very likely that Fujita and Miles met at Chouinard as both attended the school around the same time - a very interesting idea considering how Fujita would later find him on the East Coast designing LP covers for Columbia Records a few years after studying in LA.

Herbie Nichols Trio by Herbie Nichols, Blue Note 12" LP 1519, 1956, cover design by Reid Miles

The person at Chouinard with whom Miles most definitely came into contact was the eventual head of the basic design program, Bill Moore. Moore is something of a West Coast design/art/animation legend who influenced generations of students over the course of nearly 40 years at Chouinard and CalArts. He is the thread the ties together such disparate names as Reid Miles, Ed Ruscha, Tim Burton, and Brad Bird - all of whom studied with Moore. Miles apparently had very little influences in his design life, but Moore was one of them and an early one at that.

Olio by Thad Jones, Prestige 12" LP 7084, 1956, cover design by Reid Miles

Leaving Chouinard before completing the courses required for graduation, Reid Miles made a bee line for New York City, scoring a job with designer John Hermansader. The timing was certainly right as Hermansader, through his friend and fellow designer Paul Bacon, began working with Blue Note Records in 1953 not too long after Miles arrived on the scene. Here is where the story gets a little hazy. While it is known that Miles worked on the Blue Note account, it is not known how much of the early (1953-1955) work was done by Hermansader, how much was done by Miles, and how much was a collaboration. May we indulge in some speculation? Based on the collective body of work Hermansader provided for Blue Note, he quite feasibly could have been another big influence on Miles.
Blue Note historians tend to downplay Hermansader's contributions, but his other surviving examples of visual art clearly indicate a notable talent. The raw materials are there in the work which Miles would develop into an art by the end of the decade, but the question remains just how much input Miles had into the Blue Note designs early on. Unfortunately, neither man is alive today to discuss and the period is poorly documented. At any rate, Miles - who would develop a history of transience - left Hermansader in 1955 for a job with Esquire magazine doing the layout and paste-up work. However, whatever his contributions were to Hermansader's Blue Note account, they were significant enough to catch the attention of the label's owners Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff who asked him to take a lead role in the design of 12-inch Long Playing records, the format that by mid-decade had emerged as the preferred format of most jazz releases industry-wide. Esquire was apparently well-aware of this arrangement and allowed Miles to moonlight - which usually meant working on 3 or so Blue Note LP covers on his Saturday off from the magazine, being paid $50 a job/cover. Later interviews would reveal Miles to be would could be termed a workaholic, in that to him his work was his life and the absence of former made the latter unbearable at times.

J.R. Monterose, Blue Note 12" LP 1536, 1956, cover design by Reid Miles

Contributing to an even more hazy story is the fact that a year after this transition and for a time space of nearly 2 years, Miles was also contributing 12" LP jacket designs to Blue Note's de facto, if not friendly rival Prestige Records. From 1956 until 1957, his name graced the jackets of nearly a dozen discs. Interestingly, this work is seldom cited by design aficionados, although there are some excellent covers that easily rival his contemporaneous work for Blue Note. There are definitely some similarities between the covers and one can see his style developing which each subsequent release. So here is one artist, simultaneously providing the visuals for some of the important modern jazz music recorded of its time (or any time for that matter). And, of course, Miles was famously not a fan of jazz, preferring classical. But this period is interesting, mainly as it is of such high quality and yet overlooked by most design fans.

Quadrama by the Gil Melle Quartet, Prestige 12" LP 7097, 1956, cover design by Reid Miles

A third influence should be mentioned at this time. After Moore and possibly Hermansader, Miles other major influence of the time was known to be Saul Bass. Bass needs no significant introduction to readers of this weblog, but it is perhaps helpful to put him into historical perspective. At the time that Miles was accepting a job with Esquire and getting down to business in earnest with Blue Note and Prestige, Bass was gaining widespread notoriety first for his work on the posters and titles for Carmen Jones (1954) and even more so for The Man With The Golden Arm (1955). His greatest innovation was perhaps the liberation of type from the galley, finding new ways to communicate the written word that flew (sometimes, literally) in the face of convention. Of course, in the design world Bass is a true legend and this history books have been kind to the legacy he has left behind.

6 Pieces of Silver by the Horace Silver Quintet, Blue Note 12" LP 1539, 1956, cover design by Reid Miles

Reid Miles perhaps enjoyed his most lucrative years well after his run with Blue Note. Some time in the early-1960s he started focusing on photography. By mid-decade it was his main focus. Miles returned to Los Angeles in 1971 and within a few years established a style and clientele that made him quite successful by anyone's terms - although he retained a drive and passion for his work which lasted until his death in 1993. Miles occasionally returned to album covers during the second act of his career, but his style by then had changed so significantly that few people made the connection. Fortunately, his mid-'50s experiments are well documented and, hopefully, well preserved for the ages.

Eddie Diehl (2013)

Rarely does much time pass these days, before I find myself mourning the loss of yet another musical hero. We are truly witnessing the end of an era, as the last members of jazz music's great generation set exeunt for their big sleep. It's part of life, for sure, and certainly one of the pitfalls for those of us who admire so much the achievements of the 20th Century. Case in point: as I was sitting down to write this piece, I learned of the death of drummer Donald "Duck" Bailey. There isn't even an obituary posted, as I type these words, for the man who designed the template for modern jazz organ combo drumming and accompanied the master Jimmy Smith for years in clubs and on Blue Note LPs. Another one gone. May he rest in peace.

Donald Bailey (R.I.P.), photo c.1958 by Francis Wolff, Van Gelder Recording, Hackensack, NJ

And yet. And yet, I find myself actively (desperately?) looking these days for living, breathing, and thriving threads that connect back to where much of this begins for me. And in this spirit, I present Eddie Diehl. Who is Eddie Diehl? Well, for me that was just a name on a few random early-'60s Prestige jazz LPs by Brother Jack McDuff, Sonny Stitt, and Gene Ammons. Frankly, I never paid him much mind. I just figured he was another one of the cats like fellow guitarists Thornell Schwartz and Eddie McFadden. Forces to be reckoned with back in the day, for sure, but background voices perhaps somewhat doomed to obscurity, who may or may not have been given the proper respect of an obituary when that bell tolled.

Well, Here It Is... Eddie Diehl with Hank Jones, CD, 2006

But Eddie Diehl is alive and well and living in Poughkeepsie! Well, close enough at least. It turns out Eddie lived quite a storied life. Back when I was making music on the Hammond organ (1996-2007), I spent a lot of time absorbing the lessons to be learned in groves of those Smith Blue Notes and McDuff Prestige sides. But somehow I never quite grasped that Eddie was a regular member of McDuff's working group, arguably the finest jazz organ combo of its day, second only to Jimmy Smith's trio. Yes indeed, Diehl was Grant Green's replacement in late 1961 and stayed with McDuff (as the only white member of the combo, I should add) for nearly two years. His replacement? George Benson. Re-listening to Eddie's contributions to a disc like 1962's Brother Jack Meets The Boss, it is clear that Eddie was heavily influenced by bebop, but a working musician follows the money and Diehl spent much of the 1960s and 1970s working the organ rooms. By the end of the 1960s his discography all but sputtered out. 

Mr. Clean by Jack McDuff and Gene Ammons, January 23, 1962, Eddie Diehl on guitar 

Diehl moved upstate and re-focused his talents on luthiery, something that he now has a tremendous amount of notoriety for. But he never stopped playing. Occasional sessions would come up such as Al Haig's 1983 Manhattan Memories, but it was not until 2006 that Eddie had the opportunity to cut his first disc as a leader. Well, Here It Is gives you some indication of Eddie's self-effacing attitude, but it gives a better indication of what a lyrical, beautiful guitarist he is who obviously has spent more than a little time not only with his Charlie Christian and Charlie Parker records, but also with his George Van Eps books. 

Eddie Diehl by Bart Thrall, 2010

Fortunately, Bart Thrall took it upon himself to film an extended interview with Eddie and share it with us all up on YouTube. Granted, it's not the most professional "movie" and could probably use the guiding hand of a good editor, but it is a soulful little piece that means a lot to those of us who dig hearing stories of what it was like to be on the road with Jack McDuff in the early 1960s. It also adds a lot to the legacy of Diehl and celebrates a living, breathing, and musically vibrant exponent of this music that is all but vanishing before our very eyes. 

Duke Ellington's Prelude To A Kiss performed by Eddie Diehl, 2010

Eddie talks about his 1934 D'Angelico Model A guitar

Charlie Parker (1920)

Charlie Parker, Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, July 1952 at Radio Recorders, Hollywood, photo by Esther Bubley

Today, Wednesday, August 29, 2012 marks the 92nd anniversary of the birth of the great Charlie Parker. Fortunately, there continues to be a tremendous amount of interest in (perhaps) the greatest modern jazz musician of the 20th Century.

Charlie Parker, Harry Babasin, Chet Baker, Helen Carr, Donn Trenner (at the piano, obscured), at The Tiffany Club, LA, May 1952, photo by William Claxton

I had planned on using the top photo of Bird in the recording studio for what was eventually released  as the first of Norman Granz' Jam Session LPs on Mercury Records, but this post covered the photo end of the topic much better than I could. By the way 4 sides were recorded that July day (actual date unknown) at Radio Recorders - and by sides I mean sides: each tune took up the entire side of a 33 1/3 RPM 12-inch disc.

I will also direct you to the above. This excellent 60-minute BBC documentary is both a great place to start for beginning Bird watchers as well as fans like myself who have already devoured a fair amount of info on the subject matter. Thanks to Marc over at JazzWax for originally bringing this to my attention. 

Finally, WKCR in New York is in the middle of their annual 72-hour back-to-back Lester Young/Charlie Parker birthday broadcast. If you jump now, you may still catch it. Otherwise, mark your calendars for next year, browse around their programming schedule, and maybe kick down a little cash if you can afford to do so.

High Society (1901-1959)

One of the pitfalls of learning about American jazz music of the 20th Century is that it is conducted in retrospection. In looking back, it's often difficult to see, hear, and feel the currents that propels the music forward. Also there is the historian's tendency to look for patterns and once establishing said patterns filing subject matter accordingly. Read enough jazz history books, for example, and one might walk around with the nothing that the Modern Jazz of the 1940s has nothing to do with the original Jazz music as created in New Orleans decades earlier. Of course this was not helped at all by the "modernists" versus the "moldy figs" debate during the bebop era. Hype for sure, but it does belie the American cultural tendency to always be looking for the next big thing, often at the expense of what came before. What I have here is a wonderful musical example something that flies in the face of that kind of thinking. Sit back, read on, and be sure to dig the sound clips.

In 1901, a fellow by the name of Porter Steele composed a song for marching band ensembles titled "High Society". Now at the turn of the last Century marching bands were some of the more popular bands of the day, performing everything from said marches to light classics. They were mainstream and ordinary folks dug them. Fair now. But down in New Orleans, a clarinetist and guitarist by the name of Alphonse Picou was instrumental a developing a new style of music, which later came to be known as jazz. Picou, a contemporary and sometime bandmate of the legendary Buddy Bolden, adopted Steele's "High Society" for this new sort of combo and improvised a clarinet line based on the piccolo part of Steele's composition. Picou was later cited as a big influence by such players as Johnny Dodds and Jimmy Noone and "High Society" might very well be his lasting contribution to music as we shall see. Unfortunately, there is no early recording available featuring this first adaptation.

The first jazz recording of "High Society Rag" (retitled) was on June 22, 1923 by Kid Oliver's Jazz Band. Although recorded in Chicago (for Okeh Records), it featured such NOLA stalwarts as Dodds and Louis Armstrong (cornet). In fact, it is safe to say that it is a fairly authentic recording of classic hot New Orleans jazz...

The arrangement supposedly is fairly close to Picou's adaptation most importantly Dodds clarinet line. In fact, dig the little riff he plays at about 2:17. Go ahead. Go back and listen again. Now the more astute heads among you may already recognize the riff. But let's move forward a few years...

1937 and Benny Goodman is the recently crowned "King of Swing". I am not going to spend my time arguing the validity of this title, but I will say that jazz music was reaching its commercial zenith in terms of mainstream popularity and "Swing" was on the tip of every music journalist's pen. Goodman was an extremely popular bandleader at the time both through live appearances and regular radio broadcasts. To his great credit (and perhaps discrediting American social values of the time), Goodman hired pianist Teddy Wilson in 1935 and thereby was the first significant white bandleader to appear in public with a mixed band. A year later he further challenged the color barrier by hiring Lionel Hampton in the vibraphone. Benny had chops, could swing - plus he had the drumming genius of Gene Krupa. Needless to say, it was a good band. Now dig this clip of Benny and the band in 1937 (introduced by Rudy Vallee!). Be sure to listen closely when Hampton comes in for his solo - about 52 seconds into the clip...

Did you hear it? Yep. "High Society" again. With a little more swing and sounding more than a little more modern. So with that in mind let's move forward another 8 years...

On November 26, 1945, Charlie Parker entered WOR Recording Studios in New York City to record his first session as a leader. It was later issued as Charlie Parker's Reboppers on the indie small group swing and bop specialist label Savoy. His contracted pianist, Bud Powell, was a no-show; he was having trouble with his horn; and his trumpeter (19-year-old Miles Davis) was struggling with the tunes. Any yet he managed to record not 1 but 3 widely acknowledged modern jazz classics on the session, one of which was something of a magnum opus and one of the most explosive examples of modern jazz improvisation captured on disc to that date - and was rarely equaled in the years after. Check out "KoKo" paying particular notice to Bird's alto at about 1:18...

HIGH SOCIETY! Yet again. From jazz to swing to bop. Where could we possibly go from here?

One of he biggest jukebox hits of 1947 was a double-sided modern jazz tenor battle featuring two of the music's more swinging Lester Young disciples. "The Chase" recorded in June by Dexter Gordon & Wardell Gray for Dial Records managed to interpolate the "High Society" riff we have been looking at into the the full melody of the song! Dexter also takes it about as far as anyone could in the opening bars of the his solo (yes, he solos first). It's a beautiful evocation of what Central Avenue in Los Angeles probably sounded like on a good night in the late-40s and a great way to end this post...

OK, not quite. Just to bring it all back home, let's go back to Alphonse Picou with this rare clip of him near the end of his life in 1959 playing - yes, you guessed it - his own solo on "High Society"....

Charlie Parker (1920-1955)

Charles Parker, Jr.

Born August 29, 1920

Kansas City, Kansas

On today, the 89th anniversary of Bird's birthday, there are so many Parker-related topics I could riff on, but I wanted to talk a little bit about Dial Records - a record label that inexorably linked with the great musician.

Dial Records was founded in Hollywood in 1946 by UCLA alumn, jazz enthusiast, ex-Merchant Marine, pulp fiction writer, and Tempo Music Shop proprietor Ross Russell. Much has been written in praise and critical of Russell - but the simple fact remains that he was responsible for recording some of the most well-known Charlie Parker performances on disc. Tempo was located at 5946 Hollywood Boulevard, between Gower and Bronson right in the heart of Hollywood (don't go looking for the building now, it's a car lot). After witnessing the now legendary Dizzy Gillespie-Charlie Parker performances at Billy Berg's in December 1945 and inspired in part by Milt Gabler's Commodore Records/Record Shop, Russell began the label in early 1946 with what was supposed to be a session from the Gillespie-Parker combo. 16 jazz sessions, nearly all focusing on modern sounds, were recorded through 1948. After that time Russell focused on 20th Century Classical music. Several years later (1953) he even released a few folk and calypso discs. In 1954 the label folded and he sold the jazz masters which have since been reissued countless times. Parker died the following year.

The label was financially backed by Marvin Freeman, an attorney Russell had befriended while both were students at UCLA. Freeman was also responsible for the label's name, taking it from The Dial literary review, an influential transcendentalist journal published from 1840 to 1929. His law expertise was instrumental in seeing that Bird ended up in Camarillo State Hospital rather than harsher incarceration after his notorious 1946 breakdown. Freeman sold his share of the label to Russell sometime in late 1946.

Proto-beat artist, Wally Berman, was responsible for the record label's distinct and remarkably modern design - although it did clearly echo the journal which gave the label it's name. Berman was a Tempo Music customer and designed company letterhead as well as the canary and sepia label. In addition to credits for all of the performers on the disc (not standard practice on 78 records), the label bore the legend "Contemporary American Music" which was a bold (albeit true) statement for a jazz record company in the mid-20th Century.

Three Little Bops (1957)

Happy Birthday Shorty Rogers!

Cartoon Credits Here