Gilles Peterson & Stuart Baker

• Large format (12" x 12") plexi-bound deluxe book

• 180 pageS

• 100s of killer sleeves!

Subtitled: Revolutionary Jazz Original Cover Art 1965-83. This heavyweight deluxe softback book is a unique collection of cover artwork of revolutionary jazz music between 1965-83, compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker, founder of Soul Jazz Records.

Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the civil rights movement of the 1960s loom large as self-determination, economic power and musical freedom led to revolutionary jazz artists finding new paths -- both musical and economic. Concurrent with the emergence of the counter culture and the underground rock movement in the 1960s and years before the D-I-Y cultural revolution of punk in the 1970s, Sun Ra, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and others 'took control' of their own work by recording, releasing and distributing their own music themselves.

The record sleeves of this era are as iconic and historically unique as the music itself and a striking reflection of the time; pre-desktop publishing, pre-internet these small-run (sometimes as low as 500 copies), self-made sleeves are graphically bold and radical. Freedom, Rhythm and Sound is the first ever collection of this fascinating goldmine of album art, which represents the first wave of inspired independent production within popular music.

Freedom, Rhythm and Sound includes a large introduction contextualising the music and artwork as well as features on many of the people involved. Alongside the musicians mentioned above these include Rashied Ali, Steve Reid, Mary Lou Williams, Horace Tapscott, Lloyd McNeil, Tribe, The Last Poets, The Pharoahs, Philip Cohran, Black Artists Group and many others.