Photography
You are currently browsing the archive for the Photography category.
Jazz Royalty: The High Priest of Bop
Monk’s Moods The Thelonious Monk Trio Prestige Records (Holland) Dutch cover photo. Thelonious Monk piano, Gary Mapp or Percy Heath bass, Art Blakey or max Roach drums. Recorded in 1953
What the folk?
“Golden Folk Album” (Vol. 4) I think this is Korean but not sure. Great cover shot though!
No Fun
The Stooges Their debut album on Elektra Records (1969) Photo by Joel Brodsky Here’s “No Fun” to kick off side B.
Let it be
George Harrison “All Things Must Pass” Apple Records (1970) (I got my copy that year.) A triple album with the #1 hit “My Sweet Lord,” “Isn’t It A Pity,” and many other beautiful songs. Album design and photography: Tom Wilkes.
Wilkes was partner in a Long Beach advertising firm when he became art director for the 1967 Monterey International Pop Music Festival for which he created all of the graphics and print materials, including the festival’s psychedelic poster that was printed on foil stock. Music producer Lou Adler, who produced the landmark music festival with singer John Phillips, said Wilkes “caught the spirit of the time” with his festival graphics. The Monterey pop festival “catapulted” Wilkes’ career into the music industry, his daughter said, beginning as art director at A&M Records.
During his heyday, Wilkes designed or provided the art direction or graphic design for scores of album covers, including designing the covers for the Rolling Stones’ “Beggars Banquet,” Neil Young’s “Harvest,” Eric Clapton’s “Eric Clapton,” Joe Cocker’s “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” and George Harrison’s “Concert for Bangladesh” and “All things Must Pass.”
As he did with many of the albums, Wilkes also shot the cover photo of Joplin for her 1971 “Pearl” album, which shows the flamboyant singer lounging on a settee. (Their photo session was the night she overdosed.)
In 1973, Wilkes won a Grammy Award for best recording package for the Who’s rock opera “Tommy,” as performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Choir.
Wilkes passed away in 2009. He was 69 years old.
Blues cigar
Mississippi Fred McDowell “1904-1972” Photo by Baron Wolman Just Sunshine Records Recorded September 8-10, 1969 at Malaco Sound Recording Studios, in Jackson, Miss.; prod. by Tommy Couch; Fred McDowell, g, voc; Jerry Puckett, b; Darin Lancaster, dr Liner notes by Michael Cuscuna Mississippi Fred McDowell taught a young Bonnie Raitt the slide guitar and his recording of “You Gotta Move” was covered by the Rolling Stones on “Sticky Fingers.” There’s a nice story about Fred’s last live recording session on Oblivion Records You can buy a print of this cover shot at Wolfgang’s Vault
Cocksucker blues
“Exile On Main Street” The Rolling Stones Cover art design and photography by Robert Frank. Frank’s, 1958 publication of The Americans, a book of photographs with an introduction by Jack Kerouac, changed modern photography. In 1972, he directed “Cocksucker Blues,” an infamous, seldom-seen and much bootleged, cinema verite documentary of The Stones American Tour that year. In conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum’s current Robert Frank exhibit of The Americans, I attended a screening of CB. After years of having only a crappy VHS dupe, it was amazing to see the band misbehaving – and performing – on a clean print in the museum’s theater. And how strange to see this notorious, dirty, “underground” movie being celebrated and analyzed at the Met, the bastion of high art.