In 1982, the Japanese label King Records – which has manufactured and distributed CTI-related product in Japan since 1970, and continues to do so to this day – launched a provocative set of compilations in what it called the “Super Fusion 1900” series.
The series comprised 16 records and totally eschewed the usual “Best Of” or “Greatest Hits” appellations, in favor of eponymously-titled discs (i.e., the Patti Austin compilation was simply titled Patti Austin). Included in the series were compilations by artists on such King subsidiaries as Blue Note/Liberty, CTI and the Japanese Electric Bird label.
The Liberty sets here included those by Ronnie Laws and two by Earl Klugh, while CTI was represented with compilations by Patti Austin, Hubert Laws, Deodato, George Benson, Jim Hall, Ron Carter and Lalo Schifrin.
The Electric Bird label gets in sets by such Japanese artists as saxophonist Toshiyuki Honda, guitarists Katsutoshi Morizono and Yoshiaki Masuo and pianist Mikio Masuda, as well as two by the American pianist, arranger and composer David Matthews – who, coincidentally, now resides in Japan.
II.
The single-sleeve album jackets in the Super Fusion 1900 series sport a remarkably similar cover design: all feature a distinctive white border (or frame). Despite the differences in typography and photo size, each of the 16 covers frame evocative, experimental photos by renowned photographer Pete Turner (1934-2017).
While Turner was a commercial photographer, whose work was regularly featured in magazines, advertising, book covers and the Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) film poster, it was probably his work on album covers – particularly for the CTI label – that he is best known (Turner also did the 1978 Steely Dan release Greatest Hits and Weather Report’s 1980 album Night Passage).
Turner had been unaware that his work had graced these King covers, which means that King had likely used a stock-photo organization to secure the rights to these photos. That in of itself was fairly unusual. Indeed, throughout the seventies, when King put together Japanese-only compilations for the CTI label, they often sought (often uncredited) cover photos that looked like a Pete Turner photo, but were not Pete Turner photos.1
In preparing Turner’s book, The Color of Jazz (2006), I alerted the photographer to the existence of these records. Since he’d never even seen or heard of these discs before, I gladly sent him the six of these records I had at the time. He wound up including two of these in the book: Lalo Schifrin (“Spheres” – 1972) and Honda Toshiyuki (“The Baby in the Cube” – 1974).
III.
These records have always been hard to come by outside of Japan, and very few are even known by the fans of the American artists involved here. My concern here is not to comment on the music, but, rather, to remark upon – at least where I am able – the images on the individual record covers.
It’s also a convenient way to introduce fans of the photographer and the artists outside of Japan to this remarkable series of records, representing a different aspect of Turner’s work. These albums balance some of Turner’s more traditional work (like many of the CTI albums) with his more composite, experimental images (as first seen on an album such as George Benson’s 1969 disc “The Shape of Things to Come”).
Since the albums are merely named for the artist whom they represent and none contain the artists’ portrait, these cover images tend to be randomly applied, without any particular meaning attached. (They were also applied without the photographer’s knowledge and, therefore, input.)
Therefore, there is nothing suggestive or symbolic, as in Pikes Peak (“Rolling Ball”) or Road Song (“Road Song”); nothing evocative, as in Wave (“Giraffe”) or Sunflower (“Necking”); no irony, as in Summertime (“Icicles”) ; and no literal harmony, as in Night Train (“Night Train”) or Fingers (“Dyer’s Hands”).
Patti Austin: While this is not the photograph titled “Woman” (California, 19742) that is meant to accompany the “Man” shot (as featured on the 1975 CTI album by Freddie Hubbard titled Polar AC), it comes from the same 1974 series. This photo was also featured on the cover of the September/October 1978 issue of Zoom magazine.
Other photos from this series could be seen on two album covers from 1978: jazz guitarist Jimmy Ponder’s All Things Beautiful (LRC – although the model’s hair seems to be different) and French bandleader Christopher John’s Super Disco (MFP).
The actual “Woman” photograph was finally used on the previously unissued A&M/CTI record California Soul by the Brazilian group Tamba 4, which was released as part of the 2019 Record Store Day event. There, the photo is reversed (the woman in Turner’s original is bending toward the right) and her otherwise noticeable pubic hair has been removed.
Hubert Laws: “Ngorongoro crater; Tanganika” (Tanzania, 1959). This photo was featured in Pete Turner’s “African Journey” (2000). “These two rhinos,” he said there, “always symbolized Noah’s Ark for me.”
Deodato: (“Pyramid,” Cairo, 1964 or 19753). “The idea came from Allan Porter, an editor for Holiday magazine at the time,” Turner wrote in “Photographs.” “He had assigned me to do a story on Egypt. He reminded me that there was an eye over the pyramid on the dollar bill, but suggested that no one had put a moon over the pyramid. After seeing crescent moon shapes on various buildings and churches in Egypt, I decided to wait for the crescent moon’s precise one-eighth circle shape. The colors…are from the lights projected at night during a sound and light show for tourists.” This image will no doubt remind admirers of the 1974 Milt Jackson album Olinga, whose cover features Turner’s “Blue Sphinx and Red Pyramid.”
David Matthews N.Y. Connection: Both of these covers seem to be variations from Turner’s “The Plains of Forever” series (1981). In the book “Photographs” (1986), Turner states that the series was limited to the four photos featured in that book. But the two David Matthews records in the Super Fusion 1900 series are clearly aligned toward that series.
The first of the David Matthews N.Y. Connection LPs (K19P-9134) does, however, seem to replicate the image Turner called “Earthrise” (1981). That particular image (above) was included as part of a feature on Pete Turner in the October 1982 issue of American Photographer magazine (pp. 54-55). The “Earthrise” image differs from the LP in that less of the “plains” are shown and the clouds in the “sphere” are whiter than the original image.
The “plains” imagery also factored in the image used for the cover of the 1978 CTI George Benson album Space. That cover features the same “starburst” Turner utilized for his Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) film poster (“Infinity Road”). Curiously, the “starburst” also factors on Turner’s “New Manscape” (Utah, 1969) that appears in the Photo monograph “Pete Turner: Les Grands Maitres de la Photo 7” (1982).
Honda Toshiyuki: (“The Baby in the Cube,” 1974). “The initial picture was for a Time magazine cover on declining birth rates,” Pete Turner wrote in his book The Color of Jazz (2006). “I had a model maker create this huge Plexiglass cube with blue in the background.”
“I knew I had the shot Time would use – with a baby sitting up – so I said let’s do something else. That’s a red billiard ball optically added. I turned the camera ninety degrees to create a weightless environment for the baby.”
Katsutoshi Morizono: (“Progressive Geometric Shapes,” New York, 1970). “A technically complex image,” wrote Turner in “Photographs,” “which on another level is very simple – geometry and the spectrum. My later work becomes more complex technically, but it is directed to achieving simpler goals.” Admirers will recognize similarities here to Turner’s “Shapes of Things to Come” (1969) and “Eye and the Shapes” (1970), the latter of which was used for Joe Farrell’s 1972 CTI record Moon Germs.
George Benson: “Stonehenge” (Great Britain, 1979 or 1980). “I deliberately arrived during full moon,” wrote Turner in his book “Photographs” (1986). “The day was unbelievably gorgeous and I got one one of those afterglows the you dream about. Then I looked behind me and saw that the moon was rising. I waited a few more hours until it was well above the horizon.”
“Stonehenge” – or “The Moon Over Stonehenge” – is also featured in both the French monograph “Pete Turner: Les Grands Maitres de la Photo 7” and the Italian monograph “I Grandi Fotografi: Pete Turner” (both 1982). In each case the monograph dates this image as 1980, while both the “Photographs” book and the Bruce Silverstein Gallery date this as 1979.4
Ron Carter: Turner has developed quite a number of images focusing on the Statue of Liberty, most notably the image titled “Liberty” (1962) that factors on the front cover of Freddie Hubbard’s 1970 CTI album Straight Life (a different Turner image appears on the back cover of that album). That image was also utilized for a 1980 Americards postcard, which is pictured below.
The Ron Carter image, however, appears to be a modified composite based on the straightforward 1978 Turner portrait “Statue of Liberty,” that appeared in the Italian monograph “I Grandi Fotografi: Pete Turner.”
For the record cover image, Turner seems to have blotted out the actual background of the original image, replacing the sky with an ominous red glow and obscuring the photo’s bottom half with blued-tinted cumulus clouds. The result makes the statue appear to burst out of the clouds as a beacon of hope.
Another Statue of Liberty image by Turner superimposes a blue-tinted nighttime shot of the Brooklyn Bridge atop the statue’s visage, replacing Lady Liberty’s crown (or diadem). This image, which suggests travel-oriented variation of “a bridge to liberty,” was used for flyers produced by United Airlines in the mid-eighties.
Still another Turner image features a composite of the 1964 “Liberty” image, with various views of the radiate-crown halo super-imposed over the statue. This image also appears in the opening pages of the aforementioned Italian monograph.
Lalo Schifrin: (“Spheres,” 1972). “We had been doing a casting for beauty products with nudes,” said Turner in The Color of Jazz, “and I noticed this girl had an incredible hourglass figure. I asked her to pose for me and reflected her in a mirrored surface – actually it’s a black Carrara glass – and we got this surreal image.” This image was included in the January 1973 Playboy magazine feature “Pete Turner’s Turn-Ons,” where he is quoted as saying, “This picture speaks for itself . . . I’m a staunch backside man.”
Endnotes:
- One example would be the 1976 Japanese edition of the Fire Into Music compilation (CTI GP -3037), which utilizes an uncredited Mitchell Funk image (http://www.mitchellfunkart.com/70sfolio5.html#, accessed on June 7, 2026). Funk, it should be remembered, also photographed several CTI covers, including Allan Holdsworth’s Velvet Darkness (1976) and Urbie Green’s Señor Blues (1977) as well as the reissue releases of Deodato’s 2001 (1977) and Beck & Sanborn (1979). ↩︎
- The Italian monograph “I Grandi Fotografi: Pete Turner” (Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri, 1982), with text contribution by Attilio Colombo, dates the “Woman” image as 1975. This is likely incorrect as the images from this series are dated 1974 elsewhere. ↩︎
- Curiously, the Photo monograph “Pete Turner: Les Grands Maitres de la Photo 7” (1982) dates this image – and its companion “Sphinx” – at 1975, which sounds right, given that the colorful lighting began in the seventies (this can be witnessed in the 1977 James Bond feature The Spy Who Loved Me). For the record, Photo also dubs these images as “Sphinx and Moon” and “Pyramid and Moon.” ↩︎
- https://brucesilverstein.com/artists/30-pete-turner/series/landscape/ (accessed on May 30, 2026). ↩︎