Description

A record built on odd time signatures got a cover that refuses to sit still. The front of Time Out is an abstract painting by S. Neil Fujita: loose curves, blobs and hooks in yellow, red, blue and black, scattered across the square like notes that have wandered off the staff. Nothing on it tells you this is a jazz album, and that was the point. It looked like the modern art hanging in galleries, which is how Columbia wanted its jazz to feel.

Fujita had an unusual path to the job. Born in Hawaii in 1921 to Japanese immigrants, he was held in the Heart Mountain internment camp in Wyoming during the Second World War, where he worked as art director of the camp newspaper, then enlisted and fought in Italy and France with the 442nd Infantry Regiment. Columbia hired him in 1954 to run its design department, and he became the first there to commission painters, photographers and illustrators for album covers. For a few records, including Time Out and Charles Mingus's Mingus Ah Um, he used his own abstract paintings.

Time Out was released on 14 December 1959 and became one of the best-selling jazz albums ever, carried by "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo à la Turk". Its sleeve travelled with it. An auction listing for Fujita's original artwork, from the Brubeck estate, called it "the likely distinction of having the most familiar cover art in jazz history." Fujita later designed the jackets of In Cold Blood and The Godfather, but this playful painting remains one of his best known images.

Credit

Cover painting by S. Neil Fujita