Paul Bacon (designer)

Paul Bacon ( * 1924 in Ossining, New York ) is an American author, art director, book illustrator, graphic designer, known also designed the album cover of the jazz label Blue Note and Riverside Records. Bacon was also active as a jazz singer next.

Life

Bacon grew up in the New York and from 1939 in Newark ( New Jersey ), where he attended the Newark Arts High School and even before the war worked at an advertising agency. After his military service in the Pacific, he moved to New York City; he came about his childhood friend LorIaine stone with Alfred Lion in contact. In the late 1940s he wrote columns for the magazine founded by Bill Gray The Record Changer, for which he later drew illustrations. Its first meeting was in 1945 an album of Erroll Garner.

The introduction of the 10 - inch and finally the 12- inch long-playing records since the late 1940s gave graphic designers as Bacon new job opportunities; he created the shells of the early Blue Note albums of the first traditional jazz by James P. Johnson, Sidney Bechet, Meade Lux Lewis, Vic Dickenson and Albert Ammons; followed 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 he published the first in the French magazine Jazz Hot 1948 essay high Priest of Be-Bop - the dedicated Inimitable Mr. Monk.

The cover illustrations of Bacon and John Herman vein in conjunction with the photographs by Francis Wolff influenced the shape of the early Blue Note releases, to the design of Reid Miles struck 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 followed until the early 1960s 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 in the design of the legendary Monk's Music Covers with pianist on the red wagon with ).

In his later years, Bacon was mainly active as a book cover illustrator. He worked for major New York publishers like Simon and Schuster and designed covers for books by Ernest Hemingway, Eric Ambler, William Golding, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller ( Catch-22 ), Kurt Vonnegut ( Slaughterhouse 5, or The Children's Crusade ), EL Doctorow, Ken Kesey, Michael Crichton and Philip Roth ( Portnoy's complaints ); total he designed over 7000 book jackets. In addition to his activities as a designer, art director and book illustrator Paul Bacon appeared since the late 40s to old age as a jazz singer ( in the style of Red McKenzie ) in New York jazz clubs and also submitted two swing albums for Jazzology. In its formation Paul Bacon & His Hot Combination Keith Ingham, Vince Giordano, James Chirillo and Bill Reynolds played.

According to AIGA ( American Institute of Graphic Art ), he is a genre - defining book designers of his time.

Disco Graphical Notes

• Swing Sing me a song ( Jazzology, 1996)
• Things Are Looking Up ( Jazzology, 2002)