Sometimes we were amazed by the kind of work we were allowed to do. But that’s the way it sometimes is when one is in at the beginning of something bigger than one imagined.
During Fred/Alan’s first year, we’d been introduced to our first –eventually one of our very best– client, Josh Sapan, Showtime’s head of marketing. We got along instantly and started a 10 year relationship that had us doing everything from music festival promotion (”Showtime’s Got Rock!!!”) to direct response subscription campaigns.
All New Yorkers –and Americans of all stripes– of a certain age have a great feeling about Jackie Gleason’s Honeymooners. Their catch phrases (“To the mooooonnnn Alice!!!”), blue collar everyman families in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, the cold water flats, and of course, the indelible characters made it a must watch show for the whole family, as TV used to bill itself. So, when actor/writer Jackie Gleason dusted off dozens of kinescoped comedy sketches done over the years, Showtime stepped up and presented them towards the end of 1984. They asked Fred/Alan, who had done some nice work for Showtime, but also –really!– had our offices in Gleason’s old Honeymooners production offices.
Fred/Alan put a total New Yawk team to promote the series. Steve Stein aka Steinski from lower Manhattan was a friend and collaborator with our go-to sound engineer, Queens born Doug DeFranco (Double Dee). Aside from being a early hip-hop, white “mastermix” champ, Steve made his day-living writing advertising. He loved music as much as we did, but also understood the arts of persuasion.
Eugene Pitt was the leader of The Jive 5, a local quintet of doo-wop/soul singers who’d had some regional success. He was also a smart composer and had done a nice a cappella job for us on a couple of spots for the Playboy Channel, so we thought we’d try again with Brooklyn’s own Honeymooners. (The Jive 5 went on to the biggest fame in their careers later that year when we convinced Nickelodeon that these folks needed to be the “sound of Nickelodeon.” Another coup for us, and mostly for them.)
You can hear the first couple of spots what a fantastic job Eugene and Steve did for Showtime (and the “normal subscribe to Showtime” spots follow).
And like I said up top, the fact that Josh let us use five virtually unknown doo-wop singers who composed their own celebration of a 25 year old, black & white sitcom, says something special. At least it did –and does!– mean something to us.
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Showtime: The Honeymooners The Lost Episodes 1984 Client:Josh Sapan
Not all of the branding work Fred/Alan did was visible or famous, but we weren’t any less proud of it. The 1988 assignment to redesign The Movie Channel was one of those.
Fred started his career in May 1980 at The Movie Channel, then owned by Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Company (aka WASEC, the precursor to MTV Networks and Viacom), more on that below. We both left in April 1983 to start Fred/Alan, and later that year Showtime acquired The Movie Channel (whew!). A few years later, new management imported from HBO decided to put muscle behind The Movie Channel. In the meantime, Showtime had become a major Fred/Alan client and our reputation in developing brands and trademarks got us the assignment.
The Eyes Have It As he would a couple years later with HA!, Noel Frankel, our creative director, would adapt his prodigious design skills to our “changing logo” perspective and created a logo that would zero in on the soul of all people, their eyes. It was a hard sell at first –what? no cool, zapping colors like you did at MTV?– but eventually the team came aboard. Noel had succeeded in creating one of our most compelling –if not most popular– logos.
Our friends at Charlex had by then done several years of great productions for us at Nickelodeon, Myers’s Rum, and HA!, and we worked well with their emotional approach to video. Almost unique among “motion graphics” and visual effects companies, co-founder Alex Weil understood it wasn’t all about floating type. He instantly groked the eyes and worked creative magic with our team.
The Movie Channel 1981
The 1988 TMC project contrasted mightily with the first one we did for the channel back in the day. While we had already had a instinctual “yes!” about how to brand MTV, for a variety of reasons The Movie Channel initially escaped us. Though this project was started long before our MTV work, it wasn’t finished until the very last day of the year. And we didn’t know if we wanted them to be promos (with voiceover, like a short commercial) or just a tasty, fresh, appropriate visual. They turned out to be camels where they felt like “a horse created by committee.” But we were our own committee.
We came up with “marketing propositions” (aka promises) the same as we did for MTV and eventually Nickelodeon, but the essence of the first all-movie cable channel just escaped us. We worked with one of our favorite producers, Jerry Lieberman in New York, for a friendly, fun hand drawn animation style, and great illustrators like Frank Olinsky and Susan Rivor, but… well, you can’t hit it out of the park every time.
The Movie Channel 1981 Creative director: Fred Seibert Illustration: Frank Olinksky, Susan Rivoir, and others Logo design: Alan Peckolick Producer: Alan Goodman Production company: Jerry Lieberman Productions, New York
My favorite was this set of on-air spots from 1990, What is Funny?! I liked them so much that after Bill came to Hollywood to work for me in the cartoon business, eight years later I asked him (and partner Vincent Waller) to recast the idea as a cartoon for Nickelodeon.
Part 2.2 – The Nickelodeon Brand (Click here for Part 2.1 and Part 2.3)
Dateline: New York, 1984
When we last left off, Fred/Alan had gotten the assignment to “fix Nickelodeon’s ratings.” Maybe that would seem easy, since Nickelodeon had no ratings to speak of, so things could only get better. But in a world where the average American home had only two channels of television, and now cable homes had 30, and by the way, there had never been a network completely devoted to kids, and not for nothing, there was no marketing money, how the hell were we going to fix the ratings?!
Experience in both crowded radio markets and cable TV (with MTV) told us that for Nickelodeon (or any cable network) to break through, not only did the programming have to be good, but the network would need to tell a story…and tell it well…and often. A great story, well told, could not only make viewers fall in love in our channel, but it just might get them share the story with friends, building up a bigger loyal viewership.
We suggested to the management group that Nickelodeon needed to become like a club. Not just any club, but the most wonderful kids club ever.
We needed to break down the issues to their component parts and tackle each of them one at a time. But, of course, Nick was part of a corporation and corporations always wanted solutions quickly. If the problems weren’t solved in a timely fashion –after all, time is always money– the parent company was going to shut Nickelodeon down.
Here’s what was known.
• Nickelodeon was on 14 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. That’s 700% than all the kids shows on network television.
• Gerry Laybourne, now head of the channel, had instituted an innovative pre-research system, which let them know that kids really liked all their shows a lot.
• However, only two shows (out of at least 20) got any rating at all, the others had unmeasurable audiences.
• 44% of all cable homes in the United States tuned into Nick at least once a week. They tuned out in less than six minutes.
• Gerry told us that the meager amount of promotion they did daily emphasized that Nickelodeon was FUN! The problem, she said, is that they weren’t.
And here’s what we started to do.
• First thing, we banned the word ‘fun.’ We told Gerry that we had to be fun, not say it. And without the word, the producers would have to be good enough to make it come true. That required hiring promotion writers who were clever and could produce promotion on a small budget.
• We convinced them to hire Scott Webb, who’d worked with us at The Movie Channel. (He eventually became the worldwide Creative Director of Nickelodeon.) Scott was skilled, talented, and fun.
• Alan immediately went to work construct a “clock,” which was a schedule of how two minutes and 20 seconds of promotion an hour would work on all 98 hours of weekly programming. That’s 588 promotional spots a week, an increase of about 150% for Nickelodeon.
• We set to work on developing a set of brand promises for the channel, which would be the skeleton around which all our promotions would be built. Even a traditional “tune in” promotion (’watch this show on this day at this time’) would weave in the branding promise. Two birds with one stone.
We set about interviewing Gerry and the head of programming Debby Beece, to get at the essence of their vision for Nickelodeon. Along with information they’d gained from experience and focus group research, and the brainstorming of hundreds of good ideas, we were able to boil Nick down to four critical points.
OK, so its June of 1984. Nickelodeon is…
1) The First Kid’s Network: Being first is always good. Better than good.
2) The Only Kid’s Network: It was 1984. What other TV company would waste their time with only kids? Even Disney said it was for the “whole family.” Gerry and Debby knew that with more than one television set in a household, kids wanted to watch different things than adults, and no amount of marketing spin would change that.
3) …on Everyday: Kids only programming was relegated to Saturday mornings, about four hours a week. And, it turned out that because kids wanted to watch TV every day, the most popular kids program was reruns of the action comedy series Starsky and Hutch, an adult show (with a lot of non-bloody violence and mayhem) which ran about 4pm everyday around the country.
4) …What *You* Want: “You” might be the best word in promotion. “You” is the kid who’s watching Nickelodeon. Gerry’s research regimen was set up to insure that the programming was pre-certified as wonderful by kids across the country. That was it wasn’t what executives and pressure groups in Washington decided what kids would want.
Alan’s clock assured us that each of the promise spots would get about 150 runs per week, or 7500 a year. If the creative was right and good, the kids would love the spots, absorb the promises, and in turn love Nickelodeon.
Next up was getting Scott, and eventually the whole promo team, to do their jobs.
Here’s a sneak peak of the first “modern” promise promo by Scott Webb in 1984:
…but it’s a great feeling to know that former colleagues continue to do well.
Chris Strand was a television producer working for the Fred/Alan and Chauncey Street production head Albie Hecht (who went on to great things himself). I always had the feeling –probably wrong headed– that Chris wondered what he was doing with such a group of lunatics. But, I’m probably giving us too much credit.
Chris at Fred/Alan, 1987.
Chris could always be counted on to do a fantastic job, getting the productions on track, no matter what any of us did to derail them. It’s no wonder he went on to a prolific and successful television career. Something that I found out today on Michael Smerconish’s SirusXM radio show, it was something Chris and Smerconish had dreamed about since junior high school. Yay!
Michael wasn’t going to be satisfied with an academic exercise. Starting in 1975, aided by Blue Note executive Charlie Lourie, he began to reissue the fruits of his labor, but new management stopped the series in it’s tracks. By 1981 Cuscuna and Lourie launched Mosaic Records, which would become the standard by which all jazz reissues would be judged from then on. Fred/Alan was thrilled to be a crucial part of their history (you can read some of the background here).
Aside from our personal interest in their music, we were impressed by Michael and Charlie’s thoroughly thought out ideas that would guide their label for decades to come. They were personal embodiment of what Fred/Alan would soon be calling media “brands” and we felt that the work we’d done in television could be translated into consumer products like the records Mosaic was releasing. So we were convinced that the same “promise” approach we used at MTV and Nickelodeon could be translated into the catalog approach we wanted to use for jazz reissues.
Why promise anything? Wouldn’t it be enough that Mosaic would be home to historic records from Sidney Bechet to Thelonious Monk, or Duke Ellington to Miles Davis, or Count Basie to Anthony Braxton? After all, what record label had ever kept a consistent perspective in the face of capitalism? Or any kind of company, for that matter?
Mosaic, that’s what. Fred had known Michael and Charlie for a decade, and if there was ever a business philosophy would stick, these two would have it. Fred/Alan signed on and did our deep dive into their beliefs and business so we could help them succeed.
When we first started the promise thing we were pretty much making it as we went along. By the time Mosaic came along (and Nickelodeon too; our first work for both of them was happening simultaneously) we’d pretty much firmed up our perspective.
Use simple, human language. Any person ought to be able to decipher what we were saying.
No slogans. When you’re making a promise, there’s no need to be overly clever.
Don’t worry about each promise being “unique.” There’s a tendency to search for the “unique selling propostion.” A company needs that special something, for sure. But, a brand is a collection of things the company believes in, and those attributes won’t be –can’t be– all unique.
Make promises you can actually keep. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But you’d be surprised (maybe not) how often a company wants to over hype things. There’s an assumption that no one would ever hold you to your word.
Make promises you can prove. What would be the point otherwise?
All the promises –taken together– should fully express the company. If you miss anything in the first go round, add a promise later. No one will hold a new guarantee against you.
As we look back on the first catalog created for Mosaic Records in 1984, it’s a true pleasure to realize how right we were to have faith in Michael and Charlie’s vision. Only the progress made from paper catalogs to internet ordering do their assurances deviate over the past three plus decades. Even their phone number is the same. How that for a “brand?”
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The Mosaic Records Promises (from Brochure #4, 1984)
What’s important to you is important to Mosaic.
Important ArtistsReleasing records by Monk, Mulligan, or Mingus is easy. We like to try and go further, releasing some artists with less visibility. This way, we know Mosaic isn’t recycling artists, we recognizing them.
Complete Definitive CollectionsEvery Mosaic set is complete within its scope and, in almost every case, organized chronologically. All issued material, all unissued titles and all valid alternate takes are included.
These collections finally eliminate the need to accumulate various haphazard reissue compilations with overlapping material.
And, they eliminate the need to wait and see if some new side or two will turn up unexpectedly.
Guaranteed Pressings, and Printing Great record, lousy pressing – there’s nothing more frustrating. We’ve done everything we can to avoid the problems – a wonderful pressing plant, rice-paper liners, sturdy boxes – and to insure against any problems, we’ll guarantee the workmanship on all Mosaic’s sets. if you have any technical defects with the records or the booklets, just return them to us for replacement.
Beautiful Packaging, Rich in Information Photos from the era, comprehensive information on pertinent dates and artist, a special interview or essay – all of them add to the experience of the music for the life of the set. Mosaic makes it a point to include as much as can to interest, inform and enlighten. And to design it all in a way that’s pleasing to read and to own.
Limited Edition Pressings At the end of each album description in this catalog, you’ll find the words “Limited to ____ copies worldwide.” Once they are sold, we will never make them available again. Each set has our pledge of its authenticity, and will most certainly grown substantially in historical significance and financial value.
Value With he quality and completeness of presentation, the collector might expect to pay a great deal for the Mosaic collections. In fact, we’re pleased to be able to present them at the very price of $9.00 per disc.
Easy Ordering You can order by mail or by phone, with VISA or MasterCard or by check or money order in U.S. currency. If you want, we’ll insure your records, even send them airmail if you prefer it to our usual quick and safe U.P.S. (All ordering details are on the “Order Now” page.) We don’t think ordering should be the hard part, so call if you have any questions 203-327-7111.
We (Alan and Fred) have always been big photography fans and like a lot of other music nerds we were enamored with the jazz photographers like Roy DeCarava, Herman Leonard, William Gottlieb. And particularly Blue Note Records co-founder Francis “Frank” Wolff. Imagine how excited we were when Mosaic’s founders, Michael Cuscuna and Charlie Lourie –by far, our favorite friends and clients– told us that they had taken ownership of the entire Frank Wolff photography archive. After all, he’d shot virtually every Blue Note recording session from 1944 until 1967, even after they sold the company to Liberty Records in 1965!
Fred: “I had started doing a little collecting of jazz photography –probably due to our deep dive into Mosaic, and the shrinking size of CD covers– with non-vintage prints by Roy DeCrava, Bill Claxton, and Chuck Stewart. It occurred to me that a Frank Wolff archive would be a fantastic addition to body of jazz work starting to exhibit around the world.”
So we started bugging Mosaic Records to think about expanding their line from just their amazing, historically necessary box sets to amazing, historically necessary photographic history. In 1991, they started Mosaic Images, we created one of our nicest catalogs, and photography was a critical part of their business for 30 years.*
Now came the rigorous and joyous work of actually living up to the promise of a world class archive. Michael and Charlie selected three iconic photos featured on three classic Blue Notes, and did the deep dive research that helped make Mosaic famous. John Coltrane on “Blue Train,”Sonny Rollins on “Volume 2,” and Art Blakey on “The Big Beat.” One of the last analog “master printers”, Chuck Kelton’s Kelton Labs, was contracted for the limited edition prints. And since high priced photography was new to the mainstream jazz public, we also decided to release high quality, limited edition posters of the photographs at a lower price. Alan’s background as a journalist –with a unique sensitivity to artists and a pitch perfect writing talent– wrote the catalog copy and Jessica Wolf produced one of our most beautiful brochures, with printing and paper quality that gave readers the assurance that Mosaic Editions was all about quality.
Needless to say, things worked out beautifully, in all ways. Jazz fans from across the world responded overwhelmingly.
* Update: Mosaic’s photography business started with this catalog in 1991. The Francis Wolff archive was acquired by the Universal Music Group, the current owner of Blue Note Records, from Mosaic Records in 2022.
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Mosaic Images Catalog written by Alan Goodman Production by Jessica Wolf
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You can read the scan of the original Mosaic Editions catalog above, or the entire text here. Aside from the gorgeous images, Alan does some of the first writing on the subject of Francis Wolff’s photography. It was just the beginning of his discovery by the photography and art communities –even the jazz fans– as a virtually unknown genius that was in our midsts.
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FRANCIS WOLFF PHOTOGRAPHED EVERY BLUE NOTE RECORDING SESSION FROM 1944 TO 1967.
Now for the first time you can see, own and display jazz history in the form of limited-edition, museum quality Francis Wolff photographs.
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ABOUT THE FRANCIS WOLFF COLLECTION
“Frank, you’re clicking on my record!” –Alfred Lion, during a Blue Note recording session, circa 1956
Nobody has ever documented an era more lovingly, or more thoroughly, than Blue Note founders Alfred Lion and Francis (Frank) Wolff. The era that they chronicled: the inception and rise of bebop in America.
Lion’s charge was the music. He recorded a staggering array of seminal jazz artists from 1939 through 1967.
Wolff’s contribution to history was more subtle but no less significant. Using a hand-held Leica or Rolleiflex camera, he too recorded every Blue Note artist for posterity. Yet Francis Wolff never considered himself an archivist. He took pictures simply because he loved doing it.
Even during the days of 78s in plain paper sleeves, before there appeared to be any use for his photographs, Wolff and his camera were a ubiquitous presence at every Blue Note session. Whether attempting to fade into the wallpaper, or blatantly seeing out the perfect combination of light, angle and expressions to capture an artist’s spirit, Francis Wolff never missed an opportunity to indulge his two passions in life … music and photography.
With the dawning of the LP, a new opportunity for graphic innovation arose, and 300 of Francis Wolff’s jazz photographs were artfully cropped, integrated with typography and given immortality as Blue Note album covers.
More than 5000 others went into a file drawer … never to see the light of day in any shape or form until Mosaic began publishing a few of them in its booklets.
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UNCOVERING A LOST TREASURE
Wolff began his career as a photographer, but once Blue Note was under way he found himself inundated with recording contracts, finances and the day-to-day operation of a thriving record label. Soon he considered himself a record executive first, a photographer only as a means of supplying Blue Note releases with cover art. The idea of exhibiting, or compiling a book of his unpublished photographs, was never given serious consideration.
With his death in 1971 Francis Wolff’s entire collection of priceless photographs went to his Blue Note partner and childhood friend, Alfred Lion. For years Lion couldn’t bear to go near them. It was only when Lion formed a warm friendship with the principals of Mosaic Records that anyone outside the original Blue Note family became aware of this treasure trove of Francis Wolff photographs still existed.
After Alfred Lion passed away, his wife, Ruth, turned the photographs over to Mosaic to organize and administrate. We at Mosaic spent days going through the wealth of visual images. Here were literally thousands of never-before-seen photographs of everyone from Ike Quebec and Sidney Bechet to John Coltrane and Andrew Hill.
The photographs most appropriate upcoming Mosaic reissues of Blue Note sessions have been set aside for that purpose. Many of the rest will eventually be published in a long-overdue hardcover collection. And three of the most striking and historically significant photographs are now being made available to jazz lovers and art collectors the world over in two limited edition configurations as the first offering by our new offshoot, Mosaic Editions.
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ABOUT THESE PHOTOGRAPHS
Each of the three classic Blue Note album cover photographs we’ve chose to launch Mosaic Editions with will be instantly recognizable, and have special significance, to every long-time collector of jazz recordings.
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THE COLTRANE LEGACY THAT GOT AWAY
Jazz lovers have wondered for over 30 years … what if John Coltrane had signed with Blue Note instead of Prestige? Well, it almost happened. Up at the Blue Note office to pick up some Sidney Bechet records, Coltrane was offered a recording deal by Alfred Lion … and he accepted! To clinch the oral agreement Lion paid Coltrane a small on-the-spot advance. But a short time later Coltrane was offered a firm written contract with Prestige, and he signed it. All might have been lost for Lion if Coltrane hadn’t volunteered to honor his commitment to Blue Note and record one album for the label.
The brilliantly conceived and executed music on Blue Train, along with the classic Francis Wolff photograph used for the cover, is the only evidence we have of what a Blue Note/Coltrane legacy might have sounded and looked like. The original photograph, taken on September 15, 1957, was severely cropped for the album cover. The photograph as released bu Mosaic Editions has never been shown to the public.
Edition limited to 50 numbered and authenticated custom-processed photographic prints and 3000 numbered photographic reproduction posters worldwide.
Poster dimension: 23 5/8” x 31 1/2”
Print dimension: 11” x 14”
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CAPTURING A COLOSSUS
In 1957 Sonny Rollins was a busy man at the top of his game. In addition to winding down his stint with Max Roach, he was playing in the Miles Davis group, forming his first band as a leader and recording the four Blue Note albums that would further establish his reputation as on of the all-time masters of the tenor saxophone.
It’s safe to assume that Francis Wolff was somewhat busy himself at the April 14, 1957, session for Sonny Rollins Vol. 2. Like all Blue Note sessions of that era, it took place in the living room-recording studio of optometrist-turned-engineer Rudy Van Gelder. And here, among the lamps and microphones, venetian blinds and patch cords, was Rollins leading Thelonious Monk, J.J. Johnson, Horace Silver, Paul Chambers and Art Blakey into jazz history. The pensive, moody shot of Sonny Rollins used for the album cover showed him in a relaxed moment, betweens takes, in Van Gelder’s house. It is unquestionable one of Francis Wolff’s masterpieces.
Edition limited to 50 numbered and authenticated custom-processed photographic prints and 3000 numbered photographic reproduction posters worldwide.
Poster dimension: 23 5/8” x 31 1/2”
Print dimension: 11” x 14”
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JUST A DRUMMER?
THE TRUTH ABOUT ART BLAKEY
Art Blakey never wrote a tune … yet there are scores of Blakey tunes. He didn’t play a melodic or chordal instrument … yet he brought life and shape to every tune and every sideman who passed through his Jazz Messengers. From his drums Art Blakey literally conducted the music, pacing the dynamics, controlling tension and release, and arranging each composition with just the right punctuation and drama. His sound reached beyond the drums to encompass every facet of the music that came from the the Jazz Messengers.
On March 6, 1960, Blakey’s recording career, which began with Blue Note in the late 40s, was riding high. After some 20 albums as a leader, he recorded with one of the greatest editions of the Jazz Messengers ever, featuring Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter and Bobby Timmons. As Frank Wolff’s lens peered though the drum set, Blakey’s infectious joy of playing was never more evident. Art Blakey was the happiest man alive when he was playing, and that photograph captured the magic. Cropped and tinted, it became the cover for The Big Beat, the album that introduced a legendary band as well as such jazz standards as “Dat Dere” and “Lester Left Town.” Mosaic’s photograph, untainted, embodies the essence of Art Blakey and the spirit of his music like nothing else.
Edition limited to 50 numbered and authenticated custom-processed photographic prints and 3000 numbered photographic reproduction posters worldwide.
Poster dimension: 23 5/8” x 31 1/2”
Print dimension: 11” x 14”
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THIS OFFERING
THE POSTER
To capture every nuance of Francis Wolff’s photographic originals, Mosaic Editions has gone to one of the premiere find arts presses in America, Eastern Press, the printer of choice to such prestigious and demanding organizations as the Smithsonian Institution, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Arts and the Japan Society.
The paper used for our photographic reproduction posters is heavyweight, Grade #1 coated, archival acid-free stock. Mosaic posters will not yellow or deteriorate during your lifetime … or even your grandchildren’s lifetime. The poster image is reproduced using a special scanned duotone process with the colors black and gray. Though more expensive than straight single-color reproduction, this process allows richer lights and shadings, giving the photographic image more “snap.” Each poster in our limited edition of 3000 is individually numbered and comes with a stamp of authenticity. The dimension: 23 5/8” x 31 1/2”. The price: $40.
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THE PRINT
For connoisseurs of fine photographic art we are also offering an extremely limited edition of 50 photographic print, each one individually processed to archival standards by Master Printer Chuck Kelton. This time-consuming processing regimen, previously employed by Mr. Kelton whole working with such photographers as Ansel Adams, involved a costly chemical washing process to neutralize all kids, and selenium toning to enhance the photographs natural tones. Each museum-worthy, customer-processed photographic print is numbers, and comes with stamp of authenticity signed by Mr. Kelton. The dimension: 11” x 14”. The price: $500.
These limited edition editions are numbered, authenticated and authorized by the estate of Alfred Lion. Order now. It is expected that this first-ever Mosaic Editions offering will sell out quickly. Be assured of owning a lasting monument to the jazz photography of Francis Wolff by placing your order today.
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ART FOR JAZZ’S SAKE
From the beginning, jazz lovers have come to expect, and take for granted, innovative and avant-garde photography, illustration and design on their record albums.
Maybe then it stands to reason that it too the art world, not the jazz world, to elevate the works fo William Claxton, Herman Leonard, William Gottlieb, Charles Peterson, Charles Stewart and Francis Wolff to new heights of status and monetary worth.
Well, what goes around comes around. In the past couple of years Mosaic has been receiving a growing number of requests from customers for more photographs like the ones we publish in our booklets. But unlike requests for music, we’ve been at a loss to where to send jazz lovers interested in high-quality jazz-related art.
When the entire body of Francis Wolff photographs became available to us, we had our answer. With the creation of Mosaic Editions, photographic reproduction posters and custom-processed photographic prints that abide by Mosaic uncompromising standards will allow those of us committed to jazz to satisfy and display our passion as never before.
[Signed]
Michael Cuscuna & Charlie Lourie
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MOSAIC EDITIONS PROMISES
1. Important Photographers Mosaic Editions posters and prints will concentrate on the handful of inspired photographers who defined the “look” of jazz for all time.
2. Historic Photographs of Major Jazz Artists Each Mosaic Editions reproduction represents a meaningful artist whose music helped shaped jazz history.
3. Powerful Visuals Those are exciting images that capture exactly what the photographer saw through the lens.
4. Impeccable Reproduction Mosaic is using the finest processor and printing press that our research has been able to turn up. Every Mosaic photographic reproduction poster and custom-processed photographic print is fully guaranteed to be of archival quality, to bring you pleasure throughout your lifetime.
5. Number Limited Editions Each Mosaic photographic reproduction poster is numbered and limited to an edition of 3000 worldwide. Custom-processed photographic prints are numbered, authenticated by the processor and limited to an edition of 50 worldwide.
6. Value The prices we charges are almost unheard of for appreciating works of art.
7. Unconditional Guarantee If for any reason you are not pleased with you Mosaic Editions poster or print, you may return it for a complete refund.
8. Easy Ordering Order by mail or phone or fax. Pay with VISA or MasterCard, check or money order in U.S. currency.
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“Few things in life are so uniquely original as to be instantly recognizable. There’s the singular look of a painting by Picasso, the one and only sound of a Stravinsky symphony or the unmistakeable mise-en-scene of a film by Renoir. And then there is Blue Note records.”
“A large part of the recognition factor was due to the outstanding photographs –intimate, elegant, mostly monochrome images of the jazz lions of the day– by a Berlin-born refugee from Nazi German named Francis Wolff.”
“Stylistically, Wolff’s photos are gracefully composed and full of shadow, his subjects’ faces often floating up out of an inky background.”
“Without harboring any preconceived visual concepts, he approached each session determined just to capture the best possible shot.”
“Wolff was a gifted photographer whose candid style belied a trained and disciplined eye. Neither a ‘decisive moment’ advocate like Cartier-Bresson nor a seeker of monumental photographic themes like Eugene Smith, Wolff’s talent lay in capturing his subjects’ personalities through subtleties: a telling expression or gesture that helped reveal the man behind the musician.”
“Over the years Wolff short … a body of work that can stand comparison of any collection of jazz photographs, yet his oeuvre was largely taken for granted during his lifetime, and Wolff received little recognition.”
“Finally, after too many years of languishing in obscurity, his photographic legacy will once more be brought into the public eye.”
Reprinted with permission from Darkroom Photography Magazine
We had developed a theory at MTV, and the execution of that supposition –that in a crowded media world you need to tell your story, in any way you can, before you try and convince anyone about your programming– seemed to work like gangbusters, which set the stage and drove the marketing, promotion and programming vocabulary that the channel has used for the past 37 years (whew! Who knew? We figured that a “rock” based channel would be lucky to last five. Maybe we were right?).
(An aside: it never occurred to us that Fred/Alan ever be called upon again by anyone in television to work on a network again. In mid-1983, we’d left MTV Networks and set up Fred/Alan. Our former boss, Bob Pittman, signed us up right away as consultants for the company, not wanting our approach available on the open market [flattering, to say the least], and early the next year called and asked for our help with Nickelodeon.)
Quick facts: Nickelodeon had launched in 1979 out of Warner Cable’s interactive QUBE in Columbus, Ohio, and moved to New York with the formation of the new programming subsidiary Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Company (WASEC), the early name of MTV Networks. Initially, the channel worked on a PBS, no commercials model, as a lure to parents who’d hopefully also sign up with the company’s paid subscription service, The Movie Channel. The low-to-nonexistent ratings that came as a result of even lower programming investment didn’t really matter as Nick was seen as loss leader for the billions that would be made by a premium movie service (sorry, HBO won that war). By 1984, The Movie Channel had basically failed and was sold to Showtime, and Nickelodeon had lost today’s equivalent of a hundred million US dollars and something had to be done. The management was retired, and Bob Pittman’s success at MTV put him in line to take over. In turn, he called Fred/Alan.
“We’re putting ads on Nickelodeon. But only two shows (You Can’t Do That on Television and Mr. Wizard’s World) have any ratings whatsoever and everything else gets hash marks.” –the Nielsen words for zero– “We have to fix things fast or the company will shut it down.”
Let’s see. Programming head Gerry Laybourne, who suddenly been thrust into the role of channel boss, insisted to us that the programming was stuff that kids liked –she’d inaugurated an innovative testing methodology– so she couldn’t understand why they were rejecting most of it. We believed her, after all, what did we know about kids programming?
When it came to our strength –talking to audiences– we were flummoxed by how the channel had communicated to kids. Initially –and almost shockingly– their original channel branding was a mime. A mime!? Jeez Louise! The last management team scrapped him for something they thought of as contemporary television.
But here’s what we saw.
Nickelodeon was a word that meant nothing in the late 20th century, hadn’t meant anything to anyone since about 1915. Why was it a children’s TV channel?
Nickelodeon was hard to spell, even for an adult. Hard to say for a kid. Why was it a children’s TV channel?
The word nickelodeon was long and didn’t comfortably fit on a television screen. Why was it a TV channel name?
Nickelodeon kept promoting itself as “fun.” (See the promo at the bottom of this post.) The challenge was if you asked any kid, they didn’t agree that the channel was fun. Why didn’t kids like Nickelodeon?
The way the channel promoted itself on the air didn’t resonate with us either, and we were confused as to why they thought kids would like it.
You can be your own judge –there are a few contrarian nostalgics who wonder wherever did the ‘silver ball’ go– but to us this approach to network identification was hopelessly mired in traditional –old fashioned?– TV. A logo designed by a wonderful, old school, moonlighting broadcast designer, cold and impersonal. A jingle that had absolutely nothing to do with kids… and who liked advertising jingles anyway, with their chirpy singing, bouncy melodies, and instrumentation that would’ve seemed out of date in 1965.
The problem with Fred/Alan taking the Nickelodeon resurrection assignment was that we didn’t like kids’ TV in 1984 or the people who worked in kids’ TV, and, given our tender ages, we weren’t all that sure that we even like kids all that much.
And totally aside from the channel itself, what did Fred/Alan know about how to get ratings for a television channel? Honestly, not much. Alan had been in the record business, and Fred had been a junior promotion employee at an already successful radio station. Our work for MTV had probably been a fluke, in that the channel was a magic carpet ride ready to soar. With or without us, the world was ready and we probably could have everything wrong and it would have been a success.
What’s a young, almost broke company to do? Not this…
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