Very early in his career, Creed Taylor recognized that consumers were more likely to judge a record by its cover than its content, particularly if a listener was unfamiliar with the artist or his or her music. In the mid-fifties, only classical records benefitted by luxurious full-color covers. They were like magazines, in that they suggested the degree of craftsmanship, sophistication and quality found within.
On the other hand, most jazz records of the time – notably those records on Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside and those Taylor made at Bethlehem – were color-tinted black-and-white shots of the artists. By the time of Creed Taylor’s arrival at the deep-pocketed ABC-Paramount, he insisted on full-color photography for his albums, not just photos of the artist, but depictions of the album’s title or the mood and meaning the music was meant to project.
He argued that his music only stood out in the crowd if the album jacket did. Of course, he was right. People started noticing – notably with the Lambert, Hendricks and Ross record Sing a Song of Basie – and Creed Taylor’s records began selling well. His vision of jazz as art that should be heard and seen is an early – and successful – example of what now known as packaging. “I have always felt,” Taylor said, “that album covers should look as good as those art books that are often seen on the same coffee tables.”1
One person who certainly noticed what Creed Taylor was up to was the fledgling photographer Pete Turner (1934-2017). One day in 1958, the photographer took a portfolio of photos to Creed Taylor’s office in the Paramount building. Taylor was immediately impressed. At the time, Taylor was working on an album called The Sound of New York, what Taylor called “an exercise in stereo” recording, which had a lot of traffic and city noise on it. Among the photos Turner showed Taylor that day was the photographer’s series “The Lights of New York” (1957).
According to Turner, “Creed could not get over the quiet feeling he got when he saw them.” Taylor thought one of the photos would be perfect for his New York album. Says Turner, “(h)e thought it would be exciting to do a quiet cover for his album. With Creed, everything was contrasts.”2 Two additional albums, both nominally credited to the “Creed Taylor Orchestra,” The Best of the Barrack Ballads (1959) and Lonelyville – “The Nervous Beat” (1960), also featured Pete Turner covers.
Turner is hailed as a magician of colors and has produced many distinctive and memorable photographs for magazines (Esquire, OMNI, Look, Holiday, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated), advertisers (Bacardi, General Motors, BMW Motorcycles, Canadian Club, AT&T and Volkswagen, among many others), books (“The Great Cities: Moscow”) and book covers.
He discovered the camera at age eleven and, as arts writer Owen Edwards put it, “fell hopelessly in love with its curious but dependable chemistry, and – happy little nerd – plunged into the magic and has never really surfaced since.”3 He studied photography at the Rochester Institute of Art, where he graduated in 1956, and continued honing his skills while in the Army, running the color print lab at the Army Pictorial Center in Long Island City.
He also studied art and was greatly influenced by René Magritte and Yves Tanguy, two twentieth-century artists who were part of the Surrealist group in Europe. Throughout his career, color has been a constant.
“Color is what attracts me to a scene,” said Turner. “But there has to be more than color—there has to be content. Some photographers will tell you, if you’re in trouble, go for color; meaning if you can’t find content, let the color carry the load. But once you get to a certain level, you [have to] get back into content.”4
The Airstream Trailer Company gave Turner his first paying job, sending the photographer to Africa to record a six-month Airstream adventure from Capetown to Cairo. This proved to be the first of Turner’s fruitfully photographic forays to Africa – and the first of his many panoramic tours across the globe. Turner has photographed exotic locations and events throughout the world and captured many actors, musicians, models, politicians, royalty and American presidents with his own way of seeing.
During his lifetime, Turner published three monographs: “Pete Turner Photographs”(1987), “African Journey” (2001) and “The Color of Jazz” (2006). Pete Turner’s work can now be seen in several museums throughout the world, while he maintains a permanent exhibition at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York.
It goes without saying, though, that Pete Turner is best known for his iconic album covers, many of them for Creed Taylor’s productions. When Creed Taylor created the Impulse label, he insisted that everything be “top-notch.”5 He brought in Turner, who he called “the father of 35-millimeter color,”6 to do the photos for John Coltrane’s Africa/Brass (1961) and both versions of Oliver Nelson’s The Blues and the Abstract Truth (1961).
So distinctive were these photos, that Turner continued doing covers for Impulse even after Taylor left for Verve, notably lensing several iconic Coltrane covers and Quincy Jones’ haunting visage on The Quintessence (1962).
But that didn’t stop Turner from working with Taylor at Verve on covers for Lee Konitz’s Motion (1961), Dizzy Gillespie’s Perceptions (1961), The Bob Brookmeyer 4’s 7 X Wilder (1961), two albums by Cal Tjader, and, most notably, Stan Getz’s Focus (1961).
After these early Verve releases, Turner’s attention and efforts were elsewhere, though he also contributed especially memorable covers to Dave Pike’s Pike’s Peak (1962) and Oscar Peterson’s Night Train (1963). Turner also photographed Gary McFarland for Point of Departure (1964) and the Creed Taylor-produced Soft Samba Strings (1967).
When Creed Taylor began fashioning the look of his A&M/CTI records, he wanted Pete Turner – and only Pete Turner – to photograph the covers. Indeed, Pete Turner photographed all but one of the A&M/CTI covers (The Other Side Of Abbey Road) and back-sleeve artist photos. Taylor also wanted a bold, consistent look to each of the records. For this, he relied on designer Sam Antupit.
Endnotes:
- Turner, Pete, The Color of Jazz (New York: Rizzoli, 2006), p. 143. ↩︎
- Turner, 2006, p. 144. ↩︎
- Turner, Pete, Photographs (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1987), p. 11. ↩︎
- Nikon – “Pete Turner: Master of Color Photography”: https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/a/ideas-and-inspiration/pete-turner-master-of-color-photography.html (accessed May 1, 2026). ↩︎
- Creed Taylor as told to by Ashley Kahn, First Impulse: The Creed Taylor Collection 50th Anniversary (Verve/Hip-o Select, 2011), p. 26. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎