Filed Under: "music"

Peter Ceragioli Jr. was born this day in 1932. You may not recognize this West Coast jazz pianist, accordionist, and composer by his birth name. Beyond TV and film soundtrack cognoscenti, he’s probably obscure even by his stage name—Pete Jolly. The keyboardist was a child prodigy on accordion, as spaceagepop.com points out: When he was eight, he made his first broadcast appearance, billed as “The Boy Wonder Accordionist” on CBS Radio’s Hobby Lobby. The show’s…

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…

Bandleader/clarinetist Woodrow Charles “Woody” Herman (1913-1987) rendered by Flora in the June 1946 issue of Columbia Records Disc Digest. Flora used alternating-color patterns throughout his career (see examples here, here and here). Because he was partly color-blind, skin tints were irrelevant. Herman was born today 97 years ago (less than a year before Flora).

Flora created the Columbia Records new release monthly Coda in early 1943 and illustrated most issues thru 1945 (after which the journal morphed into Disc Digest). The March 1944 issue is one of Flora’s most satisfying on an artistic level. The cover (above) illustrates a Columbia Masterworks four-disc album (price: $4.50) of Igor Stravinsky conducting his own Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), described in Coda as “a ballet based on the paganistic…

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…

Illustration, Table of Contents pageColumbia Records Disc Digest, February 1946

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.

Detail from the Lord Buckley 10″ EP Hipsters, Flipsters, and Finger-Poppin’ Daddies, Knock Me Your Lobes, released on RCA Victor in 1955. Left to right: sports-fan centaur, polycephalic saxophonist, jubilant wench. Body count: three figures, eight legs, four heads. We issued a (very) limited edition print (10) of this iconic Flora cover in 2007. Copies of the original cover fetch beaucoups bucks on Ebay.

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…

Back in stock: letterpress-printed cards with cool 1940s and ’50s music and turntable illustrations by Flora. The cards were designed and printed by our friends at Yee-Haw Industrial Letterpress, in Knoxville. Packaged in sets of four: Dig You Later, Stardust Moon, Deluxe-O-Tone, and Trees.