Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers / The Elmo Hope Quintet feat. Harold Land album art
Contributed by Florian Hardwig on Mar 4th, 2023. Artwork published in
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Designer Woody Woodward was into type-only album covers. We previously featured one such designs of his, made in 1963 for The De-Fenders, with Inserat-Grotesk.
The cover shown here is from the year before, for an album by Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers originally released in 1957. It’s combined with a session recorded by the Elmo Hope Quintet featuring saxophonist Harold Land in October 1957. Woodward used Grotesque No. 9 Italic and repeated the title five times, building a mesmerizing wall of type. You can listen to the music on the Internet Archive.
The track list on the back is set in News Gothic Bold, with Kaufmann Bold for the headings. The roman used for John William Hardy’s liner notes is a bit too small to identify.
