His photo montage for the first studio album by the Jazz Messengers documented Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Hank Mobley, Donald Byrd, and Doug Watkins amid the swells and lulls of performance. In addition to Mingus Ah Um, Fujita painted the covers for Time Out by The Dave Brubeck Quartet, Far Out, Near In by Johnny Eaton, and for Glenn Gould’s 1959 recording of piano sonatas by Berg, Schoenberg, and Krenek. Neil Fujita managed to encompass all of the outpourings of bebop: from the relaxed tempos of cool jazz and the blues and gospel-inspired flurries of hard bop, to the shifting patterns of the avant-garde and free jazz with its emotional peaks and stunning breakdowns. Together with his photo edits, through his designs for Columbia from the middle of the 1950s, S. The geometric shapes and blocks of mixed colour in his own pieces share less with the all-action canvases of Jackson Pollock, instead calling to mind Arshile Gorky and the Bauhaus-era style of Wassily Kandinsky. With a background in painting, Fujita stretched beyond the illustrative style previously adhered to by Steinweiss, introducing popular music to abstract expressionism. Many of his best-known album covers suggest the commonalities between modern jazz and modern art. ![]() Heading a team of designers at Columbia Records, Fujita strove to compete with some of the innovative cover art then coming out of the leading jazz label Blue Note. Previous design work at the label invariably passed through the hands of Alex Steinweiss, the pioneering figure in album cover art, who had become the first Art Director at Columbia back when he was appointed to the position in 1938.Īs Steinweiss branched out and began to work for other companies, Fujita was tasked with building on what he had created. Ayer & Son, where his experimental designs soon brought him to the attention of Columbia Records. The following year he enlisted with the 442nd Infantry Regiment, made up of Japanese-American volunteers, which by the end of World War II had become the most decorated unit in American military history.įujita completed his studies after the war, and joined the Philadelphia advertising agency N. He progressed to the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, but his studies were cut short in 1942, when in the aftermath to the attack on Pearl Harbor he was forced to relocate to an internment camp in Wyoming. Born in Waimea, Hawaii to Japanese parents, the young Sadamitsu Fujita adopted the name Neil while attending boarding school in Honolulu. The iconic cover art for Mingus Ah Um was designed by S. Mingus pays homage to Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, and the recently departed Lester Young, while ‘Fables of Faubus’ drew inspiration from the Little Rock Nine, with excised lyrics directed against the segregationist governor of Arkansas. Mingus Ah Um was released to critical acclaim on 14 September 1959, and has been referred to in The Penguin Guide to Jazz as ‘an extended tribute to ancestors’. Mingus gathered some of the members of his jazz workshop, a rotating group of familiar faces which on this occasion included John Handy on alto saxophone, Booker Ervin and Shafi Hadi on tenor, Horace Parlan on the piano, Dannie Richmond on drums, and Willie Dennis and Jimmy Knepper sharing trombone duties. The site was the celebrated Columbia 30th Street Studio in New York, where Miles Davis had just wrapped work on Kind of Blue, and which served as home base for so many of the greats of the jazz and blues, from Davis, Duke Ellington, and Thelonious Monk to Billie Holiday and Mahalia Jackson. Mingus Ah Um was recorded over two sessions on 5 and, as Mingus carved out his first album for Columbia Records. Rollins, Jr.From the buoyant gospel of ‘Better Git It In Your Soul’ and the mournful grace of ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ to the caustic protest song ‘Fables of Faubus’, on Mingus Ah Um the double bassist and redoubtable bandleader Charles Mingus produced one of his most diverse and accessible albums. " You Can't Judge a Book by the Cover" ( Willie Dixon) – 6:30." Parchman Farm" ( Mose Allison) – 3:06. ![]() Track listing Īll titles written and arranged by Appice, Bogert, Day and McCarty, except where noted. The track "Let Me Swim" loosely inspired the 1978 guitar solo " Eruption" composed by Eddie Van Halen. The eight tracks consist of six original songs by the band, plus covers of Mose Allison's version of blues standard " Parchman Farm", and Willie Dixon's " You Can't Judge a Book by the Cover". Cactus is the debut studio album by American hard rock band Cactus, released on July 1, 1970, by Atco Records.
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