Everyone knows about The Velvet Underground & Nico cover or the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers, but Warhol actually designed more than 50 album covers over the course of his career.
A few years ago one might have been able to pick up a used copy of some of these albums for a few bucks, but since the publication of Paul Marechal's 2008 book Andy Warhol: The Record Covers (1949-1987), and the 2009 Warhol Live exhibition—the first ever comprehensive retrospective of Andy Warhol's album cover artwork—original copies have been known to change hands for thousands of dollars. For the most part (3 out of the 4 albums in each boxhave never been reissued on vinyl, and a few have also never been issued on CD, making this box set your only chance to own these Warhols.
The four jazz albums collected in this box all come from that very exciting time in Warhol's career (1956-1958when he, in addition to being a successful commercial designer, was also an up and coming fine artist. Through these covers, we can also see the evolution of Warhol's blotted ink style, which would become a hallmark of his later work. The flowers on Johnny Griffin's The Congregation, on the other hand, are an early example of his Flowers prints of the following decade. The calligraphic writing employed on some of the albums was done by Warhol's mother. Her distinct handwriting would grace many of her son's works over the years. Featuring: Artie Shaw Both Feet In The Groove (1956), Johnny Griffin The Congregation (1957), Moondog The Story Of Moondog (1957and Kenny Burrell Blue Light (1958)
