Take a look at this cover:
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The photo was taken by Hideki Fujii, who took this striking shot of model/actress Sayoko Yamaguchi. Anybody with the most remote sense of photography marvels at this one. How was this man able to get the sharp contrast of the dark background (and model's hair), and then the vivid, sharp reds and white. Mind you, this album came out in 1977, so there is no photoshop or digital manipulation. Sure, it got worked in the lab, but the work was analog, not digital.
It is one thing that I would say really was unfortunate when we moved to CD's (the format, for obvious reasons, did not suit such investments in covers). And, most albums came with liner notes, elaborate pieces of literature describing the album. If you don't mind, I here copy the liner notes for Miles Davis' KIND OF BLUE, usually acknowledged to be one of the top five jazz albums of all times (and jazz aficionados get into some heavy, heavy discussions when talking about that list). The notes were written by Bill Evans, another immortal of jazz:
Improvisation In Jazz
By Bill Evans
There is a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment.
Erasures or changes are impossible. These artists must practice a particular discipline, that of allowing the idea to express itself in communication with their hands in such a direct way that deliberation cannot interfere.
The resulting pictures lack the complex composition and textures of ordinary painting, but it is said that those who see will find something captured that escapes explanation. This conviction that direct deed is the most meaningful reflection, I believe, has prompted the evolution of the extremely severe and unique disciplines of the jazz or improvising musician.
Group improvisation is a further challenge. Aside from the weighty technical problem of collective coherent thinking, there is the very human, even social need for sympathy from all members to bend for the common result. This most difficult problem, I think, is beautifully met and solved on this recording.
As the painter needs his framework of parchment, the improvising musical group needs its framework in time. Miles Davis presents here frameworks which are exquisite in their simplicity and yet contain all that is necessary to stimulate performance with a sure reference to the primary conception.
Miles conceived these settings only hours before the recording dates and arrived with sketches which indicated to the group what was to be played. Therefore, you will hear something close to pure spontaneity in these performances. The group had never played these pieces prior to the recordings and I think without exception the first complete performance of each was a "take."
Although it is not uncommon for a jazz musician to be expected to improvise on new material at a recording session, the character of these pieces represents a particular challenge.
Briefly, the formal character of the five settings are: "So What" is a simple figure based on 16 measures of one scale, 8 of another and 8 more of the first, following a piano and bass introduction in free rhythmic style. "Freddie Freeloader" is a 12-measure blues form given new personality by effective melodic and rhythmic simplicity. "Blue In Green" is a l0-measure circular form following a 4-measure introduction, and played by soloists in various augmentation and diminution of time values. "All Blues" is a 6/8 12-measure blues form that produces its mood through only a few modal changes and Miles Davis' free melodic conception. "Flamenco Sketches" is a series of five scales, each to be played as long as the soloist wishes until he has completed the series.
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