June 7, 2010

Anyone with even a passing interest in the 1960s art scene is familiar with the general vibe imparted by Andy Warhol, he of the mass-produced social commentary and self-satirizing emotional disconnect. He had to be kidding, right? An obviously intelligent man who conveys passion for his work and surroundings via whiney, monotone drones that sound like Zen haikus with the flavor chewed out of them is obviously toying with people to one degree or another. But it also appeared, as his fame and notoriety grew, that little Andy from Pittsburgh came to believe his own affectless affectations.

By the mid-1970s, if not a few years earlier, Warhol seemed distanced enough from such concepts as sentiment and simple human connection that he might have been played by an audio-animatronic double in a fright wig. Who’s to say that the guy who stood back and sipped a seltzer while watching a gaggle of glamour-pusses toot and screw themselves to death at Studio 54 was an actual person?

Hardly anyone ever saw Warhol eat, and, when he wasn’t gazing stone-faced at other people “having fun,” he worked practically non-stop in his studio. He also, by many accounts, used acquaintances and even longtime associates for his own gain, then discarded them like old pairs of socks.

Even Warhol’s celebrated underground movies were little more than extended documents of his many hangers-on slowly collapsing into emotional, sexual, and drug-addled heaps for the benefit of his remorseless camera. For someone whose art was so often intentionally amusing, he sure didn’t seem like much fun, and you have to figure personalized emotional revelations were few and far between when anyone else was looking.

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So it’s significantly odd that, early in his pre-MOMA career as a graphic illustrator, Warhol helped promote perhaps the most immediate and heart-on-its-sleeve of all art forms—modern jazz!

That’s right. Everyone knows, of course, that Warhol was behind the famous “banana” cover for the Velvet Underground’s killer debut album, “The Velvet Underground and Nico,” in 1967. But it turns out he had a lot of practice with that sort of thing long before he met Lou Reed and his uptown drug connection.

Back in the mid-to-late 1950s, Warhol produced a sequence of jazz album covers for RCA that stand with some of the better jazz-related illustrations of the period. I didn’t have a clue about any of this until several years ago, when I bought the minor-classic 1958 album, “Blue Lights,” by guitarist Kenny Burrell.

I was just sitting there looking at the cover while the album played and noticed, much to my surprise, Warhol’s signature just beneath the woman’s shoulder on the right-hand side. Wow! That piqued my interest, so I did some research and discovered several other Warhol-designed album covers.

The first of the bunch appears to be, although I could be wrong about the exact release sequence, this 1955 e.p. by none other than Count Basie, which may be the only reason on earth to mention Basie and Warhol in the same sentence.

1955 also saw Warhol designing the artwork for “I’m Still Swinging,” by Basie’s trumpeter, Joe Newman, and an L.P. by the legendary clarinet player, Artie Shaw.

Shaw, an inveterate womanizer with a genius I.Q. who was an utter snob about his brilliance, both on and off the bandstand, surely would have despised Warhol had he ever met him. It’s unlikely he did, but I’d give anything to see it. Andy might have ended up clubbed with a clarinet.

Then there’s, “Cool Gabriels” by a large group of trumpeters who got together to record a disc of duets. The most formidable talent of the bunch, Conte Candoli, would also lay down many first-rate tracks with the likes of Gerry Mulligan and Shelly Manne.

That’s kind of cute, actually. Sort of Christmasy.

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From a purely musical standpoint, though, the best Warhol-involved jazz album is surely this 1957 release by the lightning-quick tenor saxophonist, Johnny Griffin, who was still playing gorgeously up until his death in 2008 (you can listen to Griffin delivering the goods live with Thelonious Monk, right here.)

Dig that Hawaiian-print shirt!

I wonder if Warhol ever listened to any of this stuff on his cherrywood Magnavox hi-fi or if he was too busy injecting his sense of irony with growth hormones to bother. Johnny Griffin, after all, ain’t exactly a box of Brillo pads.

Paul Tatara