Book Review: East Coasting: Cover Art of Prestige, Atlantic Riverside Records

Eastern covers

The best covers from three East Coast jazz labels. Blue Note, though, was clearly number one for cover design of this musical genre and Graham Marsh has two books to prove it (also available in one chunky paperback). Reid Miles designs for Blue Note, from 1956, more or less set the style for punchy, gritty graphic design and a lot of the covers in 'East coasting' seem also-rans in comparison to the work of Miles.

Too many covers in the book use the same formulae of a big photo and then the album title and artists name just dropped on top. Even the type only designs are unimaginative though Riverside and Atlantic did make an effort sometimes. The Prestige covers are quite inferior to the other two companies. Bob Weinstock, the label's owner took the photos and designed several covers in the book and he is clearly no designer or photographer, pages thirty-six and seven has five of his covers, looking no better than something student work produced at design college. Reid Miles did a few covers for Prestige and they are clearly the best of the label's work shown the book.

The last few pages show forty-three covers from other record companies including four on the Impulse label who had the benefit of designs by Robert Flynn of the Viceroy design studio and it's interesting to see five covers from Columbia who could afford to hire photographers like Jay Maisel, Eugene Smith, Roy De Carava and Dennis Stock to take excellent pictures of Monk and Davis.

I think the book is worth getting as a bit of nostalgia and reminder of the great jazz that came out of the East coast in the fifties and sixties.

East Coasting: Cover Art of Prestige, Atlantic Riverside Records is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

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