Graphic designer, album cover innovator, and commercial art icon Sadamitsu “S. Neil” Fujita died Saturday. He is among the three or four most important album cover artists of all time, someone who took ideas to abstraction and visual literacy to the mass market when he worked for Columbia and CBS Records in the 1950s. Fujita’s life is a fascinating story–born in Hawaii, he studied at Los Angeles’ Chouinard Art Institute (now Cal Arts) before being shipped to an internment camp in Wyoming in 1942 at the height of World War II. One year later, he enlisted in the army, where he eventually became a highly decorated translator.
And while that is a fascinating life unto itself–in 2008, Fujita chronicled his story in a memoir, Mouth of Reddish Water–what made him a name among jazz enthusiasts and design aesthetes came in the decade that followed. Before producing work as well-known as Dave Brubeck’s Time Out, Charles Mingus’ Ah Um, and Miles Davis’ ‘Round About Midnight, Fujita, was hired to counteract the breathtaking shaded photography and angularity that Blue Note was doing at the time. He brought modernist art to bop and compositional jazz and it was the perfect merging of one of jazz’s most evolutionary periods, with a visual language that actualized the sound. The cover of Time Out, in a way, sounds like Time Out. Fujita’s rounded ovals, halved geometry, and brushed oils were as vibrant and impishly enticing as Brubeck’s unusual time signatures–it sounded new, so it had to look new.
Likewise Miles’ ‘Round About Midnight, a doleful album beautifully rendered by a Marvin Koner photo that Fujita draped in red, and minimal typeface. Art Blakey’s The Jazz Messengers quintet also received the Fujita treatment with a cover that has been celebrated for its documentary feel–spotlighting each member, including a young Don Byrd and Horace Silver, implied a kind of murderer’s row of musicians without sacrificing the oblong constructions he favored. It doesn’t hurt that all of these albums are classics of the form, a lifejacket for any nascent jazz fan, dipping a toe.
It probably bears mentioning that Fujita went on to become of the most exciting graphic designers of his time, creating commercial iconography for books like The Godfather and In Cold Blood. His visual touch is everywhere now, in the same way that Saul Bass‘ movie posters and title sequences or Lee Clow‘s post-modern advertising genius have seamlessly entered the consciousness. Fujita gave us something we love, identifying an image with a sound, giving picture to feeling.
The “Mingus Ah Um” album is one of my favorite albums ever. The art was a great complement to the music.
Great tribute, Sean.
I will miss my Uncle Neil. He was a kind and gracious and had an amazing talent that , I’m glad, has passed on to his sons and grandchildren as well.
He was my father’s oldest brothers. My father also was an art director but a few years after my uncle’s time and era. there is a 16 year age gap between the two.
My mother told me in 1990 that Uncle Neil designed “The Godfather ” logo years ago when the book came out. I hadn’t seen those 2 films yet, but immediately saw them after she had told me.
I feel very proud and privileged I knew such an amazing man and his artwork will be forever in our hearts and minds.
Greg Fujita,
Los Angeles,CA
Dear Greg,
I had the pleasure of working with your uncle at Columbia Records as his assistant Art Director, and if fact, he and I opened an art studio when he left Columbia Records (first time). We were together for about a year, and then he went back to Columbia.
We were in close contact until his passing. We stayed with Neil and Martin in Southhold last year over one weekend. Both my wife and I miss him. BTY, I met my wife while she and I worked at Columbia Records, so he was a good friend to both of us.
I’m glad I had this opportunity to write and tell you of our close relationship.
Very sincerely, Ernie & Florence Socolov
Dear Neal,
I happened upon this tribute while reading some of my grandfather’s writings. He mentioned a fishing buddy by the name of your uncle. Sure enough, I looked at a photograph of my grandfather with other fishing buddies taken soon after the Second World War and it looks like your uncle is among them. They went to a fishing “camp” in New Brunswick, Canada – very rustic. My grandfather, F. O. Alexander, a cartoonist, said that your uncle was, “Not only a fine artist, but a good fisherman as well.” If you are interested in a copy of one or two photos of your uncle fishing in the North Woods, let me know.
All the best, John Simson
To All who knew Neil,
I met Neil in the mid-1990s. We used to work out together at a health and fitness center in Flanders, LI. I had the great opportunity of taking video of Niel while working on his exhibit, Seeing Is Feeling: American faces of the North Fork , that was shown at the William floyd Library in Greenport in 1999. it appears that there is very little of any motion picture footage of Niel throughout his career. The footage that I am producing as a documentary , titled MR. FUGITA, will be released in November. To you who knew my fine friend is welcomed to contact me, to participate in this production
recollecting your moments with Neil.
Art Burack- Burack Cinematic Ltd.