Paul Bacon
Paul Bacon (born December 25, 1923 in Ossining , Westchester County , New York, † June 8, 2015 in Beacon , New York) was an American author, art director , book illustrator , graphic designer , best known for the album covers he designed Jazz label Blue Note and Riverside Records . Bacon was also active as a jazz singer .
Life
Bacon grew up in the New York area and from 1939 in Newark (New Jersey) , where he attended Newark Arts High School and worked for an advertising agency before the war broke out. After his military service in the Pacific, he moved to New York City; he came into contact with Alfred Lion through his childhood friend LorIaine Stein . In the late 1940s he wrote columns for The Record Changer magazine, founded by Bill Grauer , for which he later also drew illustrations. His first review was an Erroll Garner album in 1945 .
The introduction of the 10-inch and eventually the 12-inch long-playing records in the late 1940s gave graphic designers like Bacon new opportunities to work; he created the covers of the early Blue Note albums, initially of traditional jazz by James P. Johnson , Sidney Bechet , Meade Lux Lewis , Vic Dickenson and Albert Ammons ; This was followed by cover graphics for albums of modern jazz with Bud Powell ( The Amazing Bud Powell ) , Miles Davis , Fats Navarro (Memorial Album) , James Moody and His Modernists , Milt Jackson (Wizard of the Vibes) , Dizzy Gillespie (Horns of Plenty) , Gil Mellé and Thelonious Monk ( Genius of Modern Music ) , whom he met in 1948 and dedicated to him the essay High Priest of Be-Bop - The Inimitable Mr. Monk , first published in 1948 in the French magazine Jazz Hot .
The cover illustrations by Bacon and John Hermansader in conjunction with the photographs by Francis Wolff shaped the shape of the early Blue Note publications until the design of Reid Miles took a new direction. From 1954, Bacon designed album covers for Riverside Records ; his first work for Grauer and Orrin Keepnews was Randy Weston's Cole Porter in a Modern Mood . For Riverside, cover illustrations for LPs by Bill Evans ( Everybody Digs Bill Evans ) , Sonny Rollins ( The Sound of Sonny and Freedom Suite ), Chet Baker Sings, Another Side of Benny Golson and again Thelonious Monk (Bacon worked with the photographer Paul Weller and the art director Harris Lewine on the design of the legendary Monk's Music cover with the pianist on the red wagon).
In his later years, Bacon was mainly active as a book cover illustrator. He worked for major New York publishers such as Simon and Schuster and designed covers for books by Ernest Hemingway , Eric Ambler , William Golding , Norman Mailer , Joseph Heller ( Catch-22 ) , Kurt Vonnegut ( Schlachthof 5 or Der Kinderkreuzzug ) , EL Doctorow , Ken Kesey , Michael Crichton, or Philip Roth ( Portnoy's Complaints ) ; In total, he designed over 7,000 dust jackets.
In addition to his activities as a designer, art director and book illustrator, Paul Bacon performed as a jazz singer (in the style of Red McKenzie ) in New York jazz clubs from the late 1940s to old age and also produced two swing albums for Jazzology. Keith Ingham , Vince Giordano , James Chirillo and Bill Reynolds played in his formation Paul Bacon & His Hot Combination . He performed regularly on Tuesday evenings for twenty years as a singer and on the kazoo with the New Orleans jazz band Stanly's Washboard Kings at the Cajun pub in New York City.
According to a statement by the AIGA ( American Institute of Graphic Art ) , he is considered one of the genre-defining book designers of his time.
Discographic notes
- Swing me a Sing Song (Jazzology, 1996)
- Things Are Looking Up (Jazzology, 2002)
Web links
- Lang interview with Paul Bacon at Jazzwax about his biography (accessed June 11, 2015)
- Biographical portrait at solothurnli (accessed July 17, 2010)
- Images of the Blue Note cover designed by Bacon at Birkajazz (accessed July 17, 2010)
- Images of the Riverside Records cover designed by Bacon at Birkajazz (accessed July 17, 2010)
- Short biography and discography at Allmusic
Individual evidence
- ^ Obituary in The New York Times
- ↑ a b c Biographical portrait with images from Jazzwax (accessed on July 17, 2010)
- ↑ a b Biographical portrait at solothurnli (accessed on July 16, 2010)
- ↑ James Victore on Paul Bacon , accessed June 11, 2015.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bacon, Paul |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American graphic artist and author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 25, 1923 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Ossining , New York |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 8, 2015 |
| Place of death | Beacon , New York |