Saturday 6 August 2011

ALEX STEINWEISS: THE GUARDIAN OBITUARY

My obit of Alex Steinweiss, who was not only the father of record album cover design, but actually invented the cardboard record sleeve, is in today's Guardian. Coincidentally, I had done the obit of Neil Fujita, who was the heir to Steinweiss' pioneering at Columbia, for the same paper back in November; you can link to that here. You can really see the progression from one man to the other; Steinweiss' influence on Fujita is huge, but Fujita moves far more into both fine art and into use of the performers' images. It's also interesting to me that both men basically retired early to pursue painting, which I think was the way working on the canvas of the record cover made irresistible.

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