Inner Sleeve: Jason Jägel

John Coltrane – Olé (Atlantic 1962)
Design by Jagel and Slutzky Graphics

According to the credits, the cover for John Coltrane’s 1962 Atlantic album Olé was designed by ‘Jagel and Slutzky Graphics’. I have no idea who ‘Slutzky’ is, but ‘Jagel’ is John Jägel, my dear departed pop, and the story of this cover, and Slutzky, died with him in 2005. All I know is that in the early 1960s he was hired by Atlantic to design sleeves for three (or possibly four) of the label’s jazz releases. Born in 1929, John Jägel would have been just over 30 at the time. Olé, along with Ornette! by Ornette Coleman, are certified classic 60s jazz covers. (Another one of my true favourite sleeves is designer Jeff Jank’s black and white interpretation of Ornette! for Yesterdays Universe by Yesterdays New Quintet.)

A condition of paste-up design work – the standard before computers became the norm – is that it is on some level handmade, although the use of fonts often makes this fact not so apparent. In the case of Olé there are two teardrop shapes, each different and slightly irregular, that look distinctly handmade – cut paper, perhaps. Everything on the cover is placed just so. I can see my Dad’s eye for detail, as if it couldn’t go anywhere else. The way the type is laid out looks the way a Coltrane solo might sound – lyrical. The background has two, low contrast colours, oddly somewhere between earthtones and pastels. The intensity of the black, red and green text on top provides suitable counterpoint, the ‘African-ness’ of which I assume is coincidence, but we’ll never know for sure. Also in contrast to the background, the white teardrops I love could be notes, speech balloons or the wings of a white dove.

My Dad was a great colourist, despite being red-green colourblind. He had studied with colour wizard, and Bauhaus teacher, Josef Albers, taught colour theory, and absolutely had a big influence on my awareness of colour. His paintings from the mid- to late 1960s were related to the Hard Edge and Op Art movements of the time, which Josef Albers had greatly influenced, though in his own work my dad incorporated semi-hidden imagery like high-heel shoes and Mickey Mouse (the psychedelic Mickey Stripes Out is one title). Olé’s use of fat colour, skinny negative space lines and odd colour arrangements predates all of those paintings, as far as I know. Meanwhile, Olé is one of my favorite Coltrane records. My Dad played Monk, Miles and Coltrane and other classic jazz stuff when we were growing up. He’d gone to the Five Spot. He was a fan. Like me, he was not a musician, but a deadly passionate listener.

I used Olé as a guide/inspiration when making an uncommissioned cover painting for Young Jazz Rebels’ Slave Riot, a ‘side project’ of Madlib’s fictional quintet – a record that exists, but is not currently slated for release. The painting is a multilayered tribute: to my pop, to Olé, to Madlib, to the music of Slave Riot, to the group name and title; to the artistic act of tribute and the creation of fiction. Fiction is a product of the imagination, the alwayson, elusive sensory processor of being human. Josef Albers’s core teaching was ‘visualisation’, using the imagination to see what is not there and creating designs that spark instinctive visualisation. When the artist ignites their own imagination in the making of a work, the viewer or listener has the best chance of experiencing the same. The late J Dilla said he wanted his listeners to get the same feeling from his music as he got in the process of making it. Dudley Perkins says if it doesn’t give him chills in the making, it’s not worth doing. Artists like John Coltrane, and Madlib, have a sincerity that is undeniable. They fully commit to the experience of creation so that something larger than the self can come through them. “There is no picture he cannot paint to make it a walk through time,” says Dudley Perkins about Madlib, but something true of many artists, John Coltrane foremost. Take a walk through time, people, it’s worth it.
Jason Jägel is a graphic designer and has designed sleeves for the Stones Throw label and Madlib, including MF Doom’s Mm...Food?. An exhibition of his artwork runs at San Francisco’s Electric Works until 17 October. His book Seventy Three Funshine is out now published by RAM. www.jasonjagel.com