"Album Design By Sam Antupit", R.I.P

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snapcrotch

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Sam Antupit, 71, art director for more than 100 magazines, newspapers, books, and record albums, died on Saturday, April 5, 2003. The cause was heart failure.
"From the late 1960's to the 1980's, Mr. Antupit was among the most influential of editorial art directors, designing or consulting for many of the most significant American magazines. He developed vibrant typography that wed classic typefaces to modern layout, illustration, and photography. His more visually exuberant magazines, like Esquire, were conceived as interconnected streams of type and image, paced like cinematic storyboards..."
from New York Times, Wed. April 9, Obituaries, pg. A-15.
 
What an irony, just as we were saying goodbye (AOTW, SP-3031) to Creed Taylor's exquisite run of A&M 3000 series LPs -- all graced with Sam's two-line block upper case titles (top line: artist, 2nd line: album title). Usually a gatefold-centered Pete Turner cover photo with a generous margin of white bleeding to the edge. What a memorable signature. Herb and Creed hired the best when they contracted Sam Antupit. We hold a modern graphic design legacy when we hold those album covers.
 
Even if I didn't care for the rest of the A&M catalog,or the music contained in the A&M/CTI series,the A&M/CTI package was the best visual package of any label. BlueNote's? Well, my favorite cover of all time is a BlueNote-Eric Dolphy's OUT TO LUNCH. But as a complete series,Sam & Pete take the prize. Oddly enough,I recently found an interesting take on those covers. At our spring vinyl show,I found a 1984 GNP Crescendo release by Don Sebesky titled FULL CIRCLE. The cover painting is by Cym Sebesky( I do not know what relation this person is to Don)but the cover mimics Sam's design,down to the colon. Don,as you most of you know,worked on many a Creed Taylor project,starting with Wes Montgomery's BUMPIN' on Verve. The Sebesky painting by the way,is awful. The design is as striking as always. The music contained inside is pretty good. Mac
 
Yes, it is an exact replica of the Antupit design, layout, and block letter typography of artist/title. I kept looking for an A&M connection, but there was none. The artwork is, uhhh...naive. It is centered just as a Turner photo would, with white bleeding to the edges top, right, and bottom. The Don Sebesky music was good, but not great, so I let it slide. (If it'd been a Turner photo, I would've kept it.)
 
Verve's mid 60's LPs also had a similar layout--think of Getz/Gilberto, with that Albizu painting. And of course, the others in that same series. Even when I was all of five years old, that Getz/Gilberto cover was striking...a solid black border around an abstract painting splashed by many hues of orange, in a nice gatefold jacket. The Antupit A&Ms may have been in part inspired by those, but with the A&M/CTi design, the border was always consistently white, with the same typeface for the title, and the Pete Turner photograph.

That does bring to mind a reason why I have liked Verve over the years...their album cover art, even under different hands, was unique, and stood out from everything else. A&M also had an above-average art department. A little perk to go with the music. :)
 
In Verve's case the cost that little perk for the artwork and/or gatefold was passed on to the consumer. I distinctly remember my Mom complaining that the titles on my vinyl gift list all were a dollar higher than the usual albums in the rack. One Christmas I received THE BEST OF WES MONTGOMERY(VOL. 1) and Stan Getz' WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW,two Verve gatefolds,and eventually the "more expensive" comment was made. No matter what they cost,almost 40 years later,I still have them both in my collection(in fact,I was playing the Getz CD version this week,a favorite)so I guess the investment was worth the added cost. Mac
 
Whem ABC/Paramount gave him free reign in starting the Impulse jazz label, Creed Taylor brought the gatefold innovation to an immediate high standard. In every way (design, graphic type, and photography) Taylor created an unmatched brand image. To this day, there's nothing like those laminated covers and orange/black spines that scream out Impulse! from our record shelves. In 1962, MGM hired Taylor to run the Verve label, and the gatefold jacket became the standard cover there.
BTW: Bob Thiele did a superb job running the Impulse label until 1969, taking a major risk in recording so much of the emerging free jazz, esp. John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, and Pharoah Sanders. Also, the early Impulse albums by Oliver Nelson and Gil Evans are absolutely essential in any jazz collection.
 
I hate to mess with Jimac's fond memory of how his Mom shelled out a dollar more for his Verve LPs because they were gatefolds but...it was because they were in STEREO that the list price was a dollar more. Any retailer asking a dollar more for mono copies, saying"It's because they have a gatefold", was fleecing customers.
BTW, my fondest memories of buying Verve LPs in the late 60's-early 70's was when MGM began dumping overstocks of their jazz, pop, and soundtracks. I'd go to the local Woolworth's and scoop 15-20 albums for 57 cents each. Sure, they were mostly in mono, with either a clean punch hole or embossed 'X' in the lower left corners, but what a wealth of sounds!
 
Multi-tier pricing was not necessarily induced by packaging,but it was a factor. Atlantic's 8000 series(Ray Charles' pop recordings,Drifters,even the Sergio Mendes Brasil '65 LP),were $3.79 mono/44.79stereo list price(for a short time,stereo 1200 & 1300s were $5.98) for many years. Their 1200-1300-1400 series(most jazz rcordings like the MJQ,Herbie Mann and John Coltrane)were $4.79mono/$5.79stereo list price. Though I do not have absolute breakdowns for Verve's(wish I had an old Schwann hanging around here), I suspect that the blue label Verve's(Righteous Bros.,Zappa)may have been priced less than the black label,gatefold or not. Prestige was $4.98 list unless it was New Jazz label(8200 series) that wase $3.98 list till 1960. An interesting note,Argo, the jazz label from Chess,were $4.98, mono or stereo,for many years. Mac
 
Mac--I don't know if they still have them, but a local used vinyl shop, Encore Records (on Liberty in Ann Arbor) had literally a library of Schwann...going back to at least the early 60's. Unfortunately I was a young LP buyer long past the days of mono/stereo LPs for the most part, so I only remember LPs being $4.95 at the local Korvette's.

I wonder if our friend Tim Neely would remember anything about Verve pricing back then?

I'm looking for an extremely rare recording on Columbia. Tried ordering it thru GEMM, but the seller, alas, was that "Record Finder" outfit, who has a historically (or hysterically) low fill rate. Sure enough, they cancelled, couldn't find it. About par for the course. Any time I've ever e-mailed a want list to them, they never have taken the courtesy to reply back.

But I DO have a Shearing LP on the way that is reportedly M- condition. We'll see!
 
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