Thought it was about time I posted a collection of my favourite Blue Note album covers, sourced from the extensive collection by Vintage Vangard http://www.gokudo.co.jp/Record/BlueNote1/index.htm
Thanks to Gilliom on Monsieur Bandit blog for posting this rather good video of animated Blue Note record covers http://monsieurbandit.blogspot.com/2010/06/jazz-covers-2-reid-miles.html
UPDATE: Thanks to Ralph Lichtensteiger ( http://posterous.com/people/KHs87Fyl6F ) for posting this great Reid Miles link: http://www.hardformat.org/the-designers/reid-miles2/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Note_Records - From Wikipedia: "Cover art - In 1956, Blue Note employed Reid Miles, an artist who worked for Esquire magazine. The cover art produced by Miles, often featuring Wolff's photographs of musicians in the studio, was as influential in the world of graphic design as the music within would be in the world of jazz. Under Miles, Blue Note was known for their striking and unusual album cover designs. Miles' graphical design was distinguished by its tinted black and white photographs, creative use of sans-serif typefaces, and restricted color palette (often black and white with a single color), and frequent use of solid rectangular bands of color or white, influenced by the Bauhaus school of design.Though Miles' work is closely associated with Blue Note, and has earned iconic status and frequent homage, Miles was only a casual jazz fan, according to Richard Cook; Blue Note gave him several copies of each of the many dozens of albums he designed, but Miles gave most to friends or sold them to second-hand record shops. A few mid-fifties album covers featured drawings by an as-yet-little-known Andy Warhol."