“Kool for Katz”  Dick Katz, Piano  PYE Records (UK)  Love the jazz cover art from across the pond.   This could also be a Squeeze picture sleeve!

(37 votes, average: 3.95 out of 5)

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Herb Pomeroy  “Jazz in a Stable Sounds From the Boston Scene”  Esquire (UK)  (1955)  Originally released in the U.S. on Transition Records.

(41 votes, average: 4.15 out of 5)

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Woody Herman “Songs for Hip Lovers”  RCA (UK)  Check out the US release and see how the English recreated one of the great bachelor pad covers for their own version.  Can you spot the differences?

(40 votes, average: 3.98 out of 5)

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The Chet Baker Sextet  Music Records (Italy)  A Pacific Jazz Session from 1954 featuring Chet Baker (trumpet), Bob Brookmeyer (valve trombone), Bud Shank (baritone saxophone), Russ Freeman (piano), Carson Smith (bass), Shelly Manne (drums).  Stella by Starlight, I’m Glad There is You, Tommyhawk and Dot’s Groovy.   I’m a fan of this EP cover design by Gian G. Greguoli.    Nicely captures the reflective, romantic mood of the music.

(48 votes, average: 4.08 out of 5)

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The Elmo Hope Trio with Frank Butler and Jimmy Bond on HIFI Records (1960)  Here’s Barfly.

Pianist and composer Elmo Hope’s music might best be compared with that of Herbie Nichols. Both men shared some of Bud Powell’s intensity, Thelonious Monk’s inventive whimsy and, at times, hints of young Cecil Taylor’s realistic approach to the impossible. Over the years, both Nichols and Hope have achieved posthumous respect from an international jazz community which is itself marginalized. While Herbie Nichols could be said to have been ignored to death, Elmo Hope’s life and work were grievously complicated and ultimately extinguished (in 1967 at the age of 44) by the same narcotic plague that afflicted so many of his contemporaries.

Born in 1923, St. Elmo Sylvester Hope was the son of West Indian immigrants who settled in New York. He grew up with Bud Powell, studying J.S. Bach and dreaming of new concepts in modern music. Hope’s first recordings were with trumpeter Joe Morris, whose little R&B band boasted such innovative young minds as Johnny Griffin, Percy Heath and Philly Joe Jones. When in 1953 Alfred Lion gave Hope his first opportunity to record as a leader, he chose Heath and Jones to catalyze the eight tracks issued on New Faces, New Sounds.

Even as some of his music rippled with the restless energy of Herbie Nichols, Hope also made a point of composing and performing ritualistic reveries of profound and breathtaking slowness, sometimes drifting into a trance-like space where the listener may follow in order to contemplate the mysteries of life and death, of creativity and collective improvisation. Like Herbie Nichols, Elmo Hope imprinted everything he wrote and played with an indelibly personalized, harmonically advanced language.   (AllMusic)

(44 votes, average: 3.16 out of 5)

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“Music to Chase the Blues Away”  Michel Attenoux and his New Orleans Orchestra  (1956)  Felsted Records (UK)

(34 votes, average: 3.06 out of 5)

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A late career cover illustration from David Stone Martin (1981)  for the Flip Fhillips album “Flipenstein” on Progressive Records  The titles of the eight songs all have something to do with monsters of one sort or another.  Three standards — “Satin Takes a Holiday,” “Witchcraft” and “Ghost of a Chance” — are joined by five tunes written by Phillips; Vampire’s Dream,” “Dracula’s Dance,” “Ghoul of My Dreams,” “Hangman’s Noose” and “The Claw.”

(46 votes, average: 3.59 out of 5)

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Lucky Thompson and Friends  “Kinfolks Corner”  Rivoli Records (1966)  WITH TOMMY FLANAGAN  FRANK ANDERSON  WALLY RICHARDSON

(49 votes, average: 3.65 out of 5)

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Lester Young “The President”  Vogue Records  (France)  Pres with his famous pork pie hat and a drink in each hand.

(49 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)

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Dave Brubeck Trio  Fantasy Records   Dave Brubeck – Piano; Ron Crotty – Bass ; Cal Tjader – Drums & Vibes   Another great Arnold Roth illustration.  One of a handful of Brubeck covers done by AR for Fantasy.

(54 votes, average: 4.35 out of 5)

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