Phil Woods with Red Garland – Sugan album art
Don Schlitten was born in 1932 in the Bronx and attended Music and Art High School in Harlem. In 1955, he started his career as jazz record producer by co-founding Signal. After that label was sold in the late 1950s, he worked at Prestige Records throughout the 1960s, serving both as art director and recording director. In this time, he was in charge of hundreds of record covers, often providing the design as well as the photography himself. Schlitten subsequently founded Cobblestone (with Joe Fields of Muse) in 1972 and Xanadu in 1975.
The shown cover is for an album by Phil Woods with Red Garland, released in 1965 on Status Records, a budget label launched by Prestige the year before. Schlitten was a frequent customer of Photo-Lettering. For this release, he opted for Caruso Roxy, a bold animated typeface with flared stems and curly terminals that was released a few years before.
Don Schlitten died February 9, 2026, in Kingsbridge, New York. Rest in peace.
