Filed Under: "jazz"

Hand-lettered typography from cover of Charlie Barnet‘s 1955 compilation Redskin Romp 7″ EP (also released as a 12″ LP). Barnet (1913-1991) was a Swing Era bandleader and saxophonist whose first 78 rpm hit, “Cherokee,” released in 1939, inspired the Indian-themed title of this 33-1/3 rpm hi-fi retrospective. Above is a section of the full cover; that’s a non-lookalike caricature of Barnet in the lower left.

Jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman, as portrayed by Flora for the March 1952 issue of Columbia’s monthly Coda new release booklet. Goodman was a founding father of the mid-1930s jazz big band (“swing”) style—launched in force after he hired arranger Fletcher Henderson in 1935. As he matured, he performed and recorded classical repertoire; the above figures illustrated Coda’s preview of Goodman’s recording (with the American Art Quartet) of Mozart’s Quintet for Clarinet and Strings. Flora was…

Fletcher Henderson, tempera on paper, 1942, as reproduced in our third anthology, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora. In the 1920s, exploring ideas gleaned from orchestra leader Paul Whiteman, pianist Henderson created the template for what evolved into the jazz “swing” big bands of the 1930s. He was one of the most influential musicians/bandleaders of the 1920s, but others achieved greater and more lasting fame developing concepts pioneered by Henderson. Flora, a lifelong jazz…

Columbia Coda, April 1952, listing 7″ discs featuring recordings of legendary jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, born this date in 1903. The page is crowned with a Flora horn. At the time this circular was published, Beiderbecke would have been a relatively young age 49—if he hadn’t died 21 years before (which was 17 years before the introduction of the 7″ disc). We wrote about Bix @ 106, chronicling his enormous musical significance as well as…

Our Jim Flora “Plant You Now, Dig You Later” letterpress notecards are multi-purpose. One customer (whose name, forgive us, we’ve misplaced) had these 1950s jazz hepcats framed and sent us a snapshot. Others have used them as … notecards.

Nine Jim Flora illustrations, album covers, and details found their way into yesterday’s UK Telegraph Sunday jazz supplement (print edition). We were approached by one of the paper’s art directors two weeks ago and provided dozens of vintage Flora music images (several previously unpublished). Their selections give the finished layouts a visual syncopation. A pdf of the five pages can be downloaded here. (The pages will be online at Telegraph.co.uk shortly.)

Three jazz legends, stacked, in the July 1952 issue of Coda, Columbia’s new release monthly. From the top: Harry James (trumpet)Benny Goodman (clarinet)Art Tatum (piano) Each had a new LP that month: James with Soft Lights, Sweet Trumpet, Goodman’s Let’s Hear the Melody, and Art Tatum Concert. As art director, Flora launched Coda in 1943, and provided most illustrations for the (largely classical music) monthly until he was named Sales Promotion Manager in 1945. This…

Dummy pages, Gene Krupa and his Columbia recording orchestra, demo booklet, 1941, part of a series of homemade samples prepared by Flora for the Columbia Records art department. Most pages from the booklets (which earned the artist a job at Columbia) were reproduced in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora; three of the above four pages were omitted due to space constraints. We posted another unpublished page from the series here and more Flora…

Here are two tempera illustrations discovered in an early- to mid-1960s sketchpad in the Flora collection. The more refined of the two works has a title: Bessie Smith, presumably a vignette of the soulful, bawdy 1920s and ’30s Empress of the Blues. The pianist (great hat!) is unidentified, and we can’t vouch for the historical accuracy of Smith performing with her nipples exposed: The second work, pages away in the same sketchpad, is untitled but…

Acrylic on canvas, 1992. Irving Milfred “Miff” Mole was a legendary American jazz trombonist who first came to prominence in 1920s hot jazz. Tommy Dorsey called him “the Babe Ruth of the trombone.” Amid the painting’s colorful details, pay special attention to this great freakin’ tree:

A draft and a refinement of a common theme. This barrelhouse piano player was roughly rendered for a series of demo booklets the Cincinnati-based Flora crafted in 1941 as a job pitch: “Columbia Records was reissuing old jazz records without much fanfare,” the artist (and jazz aficionado) later wrote. “I had the temerity to make these small booklets to try to point out the error of their ways.” His temerity paid off. In early 1942…

Pen & ink sketch, early 1940s. The title likely derives from the song “I’m a Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas,” penned by Phil Baxter in the late 1920s. Dumas is a town in the northwest Texas Panhandle. The song was recorded by many country and jazz artists, including Louis Armstrong (in 1930), and was later a hit for singer-bandleader Phil Harris. Flora’s take is typically idiosyncratic and perhaps references the titular “ding dong” in the…