It was in Berlin, Germany in the mid-1920s that teenager Alfred Lion noticed a concert poster for an American jazz artist performing locally and within just a few years found himself working on the docks of New York and sleeping in Central Park just to be closer to the music he loved.
By 1938, with a small cadre of artists, Lion started Blue Note Records.
By 1956, as the premiere jazz recording label, commercial artist Reid Miles (an avid jazz fan himself) joined the Blue Note to become the label’s senior album cover designer and over the next 11 years, created some of the most iconic covers in music history.
(This is an excerpt from Part I of XII of “Postmodern Suicide,” a lecture covering the roots of postmodernism in philosophy, music, and design through its peak with the work of designer Peter Saville and the suicide of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis in 1980.)
by Eric Mathias | filed Analog, Entertainment, Experiential, Interactive, Music, Print
Tagged: Alfred Lion, American jazz, Berlin, Blue Note Records, Central Park, Germany, Graham Marsh, Ian Curtis, Joy Division, New York, Peter Saville, postmodernism, Reid Miles