Books

"Must read Best Books of 2020" Financial Times

‘Cuba: Music and Revolution: Original Album Cover Art of Cuban Music: Record Sleeve Designs of Revolutionary Cuba 1959-90 ’ is a stunning new deluxe 250-page large format hardback book compiled and edited by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records) that features many 100s of stunning and unique Cuban record sleeve designs made since the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1959. These album covers have rarely been seen (nor heard) outside of Cuba and show a rich previously hidden history of both music and design.

‘Cuba: Music and Revolution’ is the first ever book about Cuban record sleeve design and has been five years in the making, made in full co-operation with the Cuban government. The record sleeve designs reflect both the rich cultural Latin musical legacy of Cuba, as well as the political and aesthetic influence of revolutionary Communism, which manifests itself both in the music created on the island and the artwork of the designs included here.

Cuban music is the source of much Latin music in the 20th century. Salsa, the all-encompassing Latin music that came out of New York in the 1970s, and soon spread across Colombia, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere, owes all of its success to the Cuban music on which it is fundamentally based.

These record sleeves help document the dramatic change in Cuba’s identity from that of 1950s tourist paradise to socialist state. Following the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the United States imposed a trade embargo which exists to this day, and as a consequence the many 100s of Cuban records featured here have rarely been seen outside of Cuba.

The book is edited and compiled by Gilles Peterson, BBC broadcaster, record label owner, DJ, record collector, founder of Worldwide FM and Stuart Baker, founder of Soul Jazz Records. Together they have edited two earlier critically-acclaimed music and design books ‘Freedom, Rhythm and Sound – Revolutionary Jazz Cover Art 1965-83’ and ‘Bossa Nova and The Rise of Brazilian Music in the 1960s’.

In conjunction with the deluxe book, Soul Jazz Records will be releasing an album also compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker, charting the rise of Cuban music in the 1970s and featuring many of the artists who appear in this book.

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Out everywhere now or direct from us right now here!

*Paying for this by PAYPAL? Don't! Paypal will not let you buy this amazing book about Cuban music - use Mastercard, Visa etc*

BACK IN PRINT!!! The ESSENTIAL book about Voguing featuring 200+ photographs, interviews and text on the LEGENDS of the House Ballroom Scene of New York City 1989-92.

Introductory essay is by Tim Lawrence, author of the seminal music books: 'Life and Death on The New York Dance Floor',‘Love Saves the Day: A History of American dance music culture, 1970-79’ and ‘Hold on to your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-92’.

Voguing came out of the extraordinary house ballroom scene that emerged in Harlem, New York in the 1980s where men competed against one another for their dancing skills, the realness of their drag and their ability to walk on a catwalk runway like a model.

These wild years of voguing and the house ballroom scene are vividly captured at its height in hundreds of amazing, previously unpublished photographs. A visual riot of fashion, gender, polysexuality and subversive style, Voguing and the House Ballroom Scene of New York 1989-92 is also a fascinating and timely document on sexuality and race.

In 2018 a new American TV drama series, Ryan Murphy's POSE premiered, set in the Voguing and House Ballroom world.

Photographer Chantal Regnault lived in New York between 1989-92, photographing the hidden and underground Voguing and House Ballroom Scene at its height – the book features the dancers Willi Ninja, Jose and Luis Xtravaganza (who all worked with Madonna) – LEGENDARY ‘mothers’ of the gay and transgender world – Avis Pendavis, Peppa LaBeija, Carmen Xtravaganza, Dorian Corey, Paris Dupree and more.

SELECT REVIEWS:

"Photographer Chantal Regnault immersed herself in the Voguing scene with passion, accumulating a treasure trove of unpublished photographs now gathered in this book. A beautiful subversive and rare document but also a sociological testimony of a musical movement undeniably linked to sexual and cultural identity." PARIS VOGUE

"Fabulous images documenting the phenomenon of Voguing in New York's house ballrooms in the 1980s and early 90s" THE GUARDIAN

"An amazing insight into the roots of music, polysexuality and subversive style that defined a party era." EVENING STANDARD

"This photography book captures all the fierce shade-throwing, catwalk-walking competition of gay ballroom culture in the 1980s ... 10,10,10." GAY TIMES

Read Quietus feature here

Read Guardian interview with Chantal Regnault here

See Guardian photo gallery here

200 page deluxe 24x30cm flexibound book,

New 10th anniversary edition on Soul Jazz Books/Soul Jazz Records of this now classic large format deluxe book - the definitive photography book and essential guide to Jamaican Dancehall in the 1980s featuring 100s and 100s of amazing photographs - all with accompanying text, interviews and biographies.

'Dancehall' is an essential reference book for anyone interested in Reggae and captures a previously unseen era of musical culture, fashion and lifestyle in stunning, vibrant colour.

Dancehall is a culture that encompasses music, fashion, drugs, guns, art, community, technology, and more. Born in the 1950s out of the neighbourhood soundsystems of Kingston, Dancehall grew to its height in the 1980s before a massive influx of drugs and guns made the scene too dangerous for many. Today Dancehall remains at the centre of Jamaican musical and cultural life. From its roots in Kingston in the 1950s to its heyday in the 1980s, Dancehall conquered the globe spreading to the USA, UK, Canada, Japan, Europe and beyond.

In the early 1980s Jamaica was in the throws of political and gang violence - photographer Beth Lesser ventured where few other dared and this book is a never-before-seen record of the exciting, dangerous and vibrant world of Dancehall.

Living in Jamaica in the late 70s and early 80s she photographed and documented a cultural explosion as producers, singers, DJs and soundsystems who all made a living out of the slums of Kingston. With unprecedented access to the incredibly vibrant music scene during this period, Beth Lesser’s photographs are a unique way into a previously hidden part of Jamaican culture.

REVIEWS:

“Lesser’s book is a vibrant anthology of all that mattered; the soundsystems, singers, producers, singers and deejays” THE GUARDIAN

“This superb book of Beth Lesser’s photographs, supplemented by her emphatic text and wonderful candid interviews with many of the main players gives us a unique view straight to the heart of dancehall reggae.” Steve Barrow, author of THE ROUGH GUIDE TO REGGAE

“This book features Dancehall and all its luminaries, with a back-drop of bass bins, heat-hazed colour and excellent knitwear, plus interviews, biographies and diversions into the music’s development.” MOJO

"I love when I find a book that investigates a particular scene or sub-culture. Beth Lesser's Dancehall captures the Jamaican Dancehall culture of the 1980s with the same level of sincerity and curiosity that Brassai exhibited while capturing Paris nightlife in the 1930s. " THE SARTORIALIST

"One of the Great Photo Books. Without a doubt one of the most important books published about the history of post independent Jamaican music." AMAZON

Large format (12" x 12") plexi-bound deluxe book, 180 page, 100s of killer sleeves!

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Soul Jazz Records are proud to present this amazing collection of sleeves from the deepest, deepest jazz music ever - compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records).

This is a unique collection of cover artwork of revolutionary jazz music between 1965-83. 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 jazz artists finding new paths – both musical and economic.

Years before the D-I-Y cultural revolution of punk, 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.

Soul Jazz Records’ massive deluxe 400-page Punk 45s cover art book edited and compiled by Jon Savage (author of the seminal book on punk, England’s Dreaming) and Stuart Baker (founder of Soul Jazz Records).

The book includes introduction and text by Jon Savage, numerous interviews, features and articles from the likes of Richard Hell, Seymour Stein (Sire Records), Geoff Travis (Rough Trade), Peter Saville (Factory), Martin Mills (Beggars Banquet), Dave Robinson (Stiff Records), Richard H Kirk (Cabaret Voltaire), Martin Moscrop (A Certain Ratio) as well as exhaustive biographies, band line-ups and more to create an in-depth study of punk during its formative years.

This book features the original full-size singles cover art of hundreds of punk groups - everyone from the pre-punk roots of The Stooges, MC5 and New York Dolls on to punk's birth in New York (Ramones, Talking Heads, Voidoids, Dead Boys) and London (Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks) and then its rapid growth around the world. Included are hundreds and hundreds of rare, classic and stunning sleeves that collected together for the first time chart the rise of punk between the years 1976-1980.

Fantastic new deluxe large format hardback 12" x 12" book from Soul Jazz Books featuring 100 years of photography in the Caribbean.

From Calypso to Vodou, Communism to Reggae, Colonialism and the Slave Trade, Rum and Revolution, Industry and Tourism – over 100 years of photographing the Caribbean is captured in this book.

The image of the Caribbean is as much a creation of the outsider as it is the complex identity of its people – a melting pot of races created out of the participants of the 400 year slave trade – enforced Africans, indigenous Americans and their colonisers – French, Spanish, Dutch, English.

From luscious and tropical backdrop of tourism and hedonism, to colonial outpost and revolutionary threat within North America’s own backyard the identity of the Caribbean stands at this intersection of tourism, the detritus of the slave trade and tropicality.

The regions politics span a hot bed of ideas and radicalism – from Castro’s Cuba, communist thorn in the side of North America, to the violent right-wing dictatorship of Haiti’s Papa Doc in the 1960s; also from Michael Manley’s Jamaica in the 1970s to Eric Williams’ Trinidad in the 1960s.

Hundreds of fascinating and unique photographs span more than one hundred years of Caribbean history, culture and industry as well as the subsequent diaspora of its people to America, England, Canada and elsewhere.

FOREWORD BY PAUL GILROY. EDITED BY STUART BAKER.

Paul Gilroy is the author of The Black Atlantic (1993),There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack (1987), Black Britain - A Photographic History (2004) and more.

Stuart Baker is the founder of Soul Jazz Records.

FEATURES:

See Guardian newspaper cover story/4-page feature/gallery here

OUT NOW! New 400-page 12"x12" deluxe heavyweight book on Soul Jazz Records/Books.

Foreword by Tom Moulton and Nicky Siano (The Gallery).

Presented by Disco Patrick and Patrick Vogt.

Introduction and interviews by  Claes 'Discoguy' Widlund. 

This large-format deluxe hardback book features the amazing artwork of thousands of disco record cover designs from the 1970s up to the mid-1980s.

Together, the record cover designs gathered here create a unique visual history of disco culture. Featuring more than 2,000 album cover designs (including hundreds of full-size covers) as well as over 350 12-inch sleeves, this book is truly an encyclopedic document of disco music and the industry and culture attending it.

In addition to the visual documents from the era, the book includes interviews with a number of important disco figures such as Mel Cheren (West End Records), Henry Stone (TK Records), Ken Cayre (Salsoul), Marvin Schlachter (Prelude) and others, as well as histories, biographies and discographies of all the major disco record companies, plus sections on roller disco sleeves, disco instruction albums, 12-inch sleeves and a scrapbook of disco ads.

Among the many musicians featured here are Bohannon, James Brown, Jocelyn Brown, Cerrone, Dennis Coffey, Donna Summer, Chic, Fatback Band, Gino Soccio, Giorgio Moroder, Gloria Gaynor, Grace Jones, Isaac Hayes, Kool and the Gang, DC LaRue, Loleatta Holloway, MFSB, Ohio Players, Salsoul Orchestra and The Trammps.

This is the latest volume in Soul Jazz's deluxe series of books featuring full-size reproductions of record cover art designs. It is presented by Disco Patrick and Patrick Vogt, editors of the book Disco Patrick Presents: The Bootleg Guide to Disco Acetates, Funk, Rap and Disco Medleys.

See Independent newspaper four-page feature/gallery here.

Reggae Soundsystem 45! is a new stunning deluxe 500 page flexibound book that features over 1000  full size record label 45 rpm single designs that span the history of reggae music. 

The book is compiled by the renowned author and reggae expert Steve Barrow (Rough Guide to Reggae/Blood and Fire Records) and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records). Text by Steve Barrow and Noel Hawks.

As well as the stunning full-size 45 designs, this book is ram-jam filled with text on many of the records, artists, producers and record companies featured in the book.

The 45rpm 7” single is at the heart of reggae music, the main tool in which reggae music has been communicated to the public by the deejays in the dancehalls of Kingston, through to its dissemination worldwide, over the last 50+years. 

These unique label designs give us a hidden history of design that is raw, innovative and hip. Ever since the birth of the Jamaican music industry  through to the present day, these idiosyncratic label designs have helped illustrate, signify and energise the music that they accompany.

Reggae 45 Soundsystem is released to coincide with the publication of a second large format hardback 12x12" book, Reggae Soundsystem which features original album cover art of reggae, also published by Soul Jazz Books.

Reggae Soundsystem! is a new deluxe 200 page hard-back 12”x12” book featuring hundreds of stunning full size record cover designs that span the history of reggae music. 

The book is compiled by the celebrated author and reggae expert Steve Barrow (Rough Guide to Reggae/ Blood and Fire Records) and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records). 

Beginning in the 1950s, Jamaican music developed into one of the most important and influential music industries in the world. From its early Mento (Jamaican Calypso) beginnings through to the invention of Ska, Rocksteady, Roots, Dub and Dancehall, Jamaican music is also one of the richest and innovative veins in popular music.

This stunning hardback deluxe book looks at the endless visually creativity of  reggae record cover designs, iconic, classic, rare and unique artwork spanning sixty years of Jamaican sounds.

Available for limited period at special discount price!

100% Absolutely essential! Super-deluxe 12x12" hardback 200 page plus, hundreds of classic Studio One sleeves including loads of killer rarities!

Introduction by Steve Barrow.

This is a seriously heavyweight guide to the great Studio One Records, Reggae's greatest ever record label. From the extensive introduction by Steve Barrow (Author of the Rough Guide to Reggae/Founder of Blood & Fire Records), through hundreds of full size classic sleeves to the clossing 'collector's section' featuring rare silkscreens, alternate sleeves and more, Cover Art of Studio One brings you the artwork from Sir Coxsone's greatest achievement.

Features classic and rare sleeves from Horace Andy, The Skatalites, Jackie Mittoo, Ken Boothe, Alton Ellis, Bob Marley and The Wailers, Toots and The Maytals, Dillinger, Sugar Minott, Lone Ranger and many, many, many more. A goldmine of design, and a who's who of Reggae.

Features on the book:

The Quietus (A Guide to Soul Jazz and Studio One)

The Independent

BBC London - Robert Elms Radio Show (Steve Barrow and Stuart Baker talk about Studio One)

Currently out of print!

This is the first ever collection of bossa nova record cover artwork, featuring stunning modernist and revolutionary designs that reflect the radical and exciting idealism of Brazil at the start of the 1960s.

Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records) bring you this amazing new deluxe hardback 12" x 12" book, 200 pages, 100s of stunning absolutely killer Bossa Nova sleeves from Brazil plus loads of historical, cultural and social text as well as biographies on loads of the artists!

 As Brazil developed into an urban society, with ‘apartment living’ and consumer goods, bossa nova projected an image that was modern, sophisticated and cool.

Bossa Nova music arrived in Brazil at the end of the 1950s with an optimism and modernism that parralleled the arrival of the new Brazilian president, Juscelino Kubitschek, who promised 'fifty years of progress in five' in his election campaign and announced the building of a new capital city, Brasilia, deep in the heartland of Brazil. The city was designed by Oscar Niemeyer, a man who had just designed a new musical theatre production in Rio of a play written by Vinicius de Moraes and with music written by Antonio Carlos Jobim. These two, along with the singer João Gilberto were about to make Bossa Nova, the first modernist Brazilian art form, the most succesful Brazilian export since coffee.

This book is a unique collection of the cover art of Brazilian bossa nova music, containing hundreds of record covers complete with a history of bossa nova, biographies and essays on many of the artists involved in the movement.

The book follows on from our previous cover art book on Jazz called Freedom, Rhythm and Sound, also edited by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker.

To coincide with the book, there is also a separate double-CD album, 'Bossa Nova and the Rise of Brazilian Music in the 1960s' also released on Soul Jazz Records.

Gilles Peterson is a respected BBC radio broadcaster and worldwide club DJ who has probably done more to promote Brazilian music in all its forms than anyone else over the last 20 years. Stuart Baker is founder of Soul Jazz Records, London.

Press here for Independent newspaper feature.

Press here for Guardian newspaper picture gallery.

Press here to read interview with Stuart Baker about the book for Jungle Drums magazine.

Press here to read Telegraph newspaper feature.

Currently out of print

“This book contains the most disturbing but exhilarating photographs you are ever likely to see" Bill Drummond

Soul Jazz Records' new photography book release is a fascinating combination of stunning photographs (by Leah Gordon), cultural, historical and anthropological text (with essays by Madison Smartt Bell, Don Cosentino, Myron Beasley, Richard Fleming and Kathy Smith) and unique oral histories.

Vodou, sex, death and revolution are key ingredients in the stunning themes and visual imagery of the street theatre of Kanaval in Jacmel, Haiti, where the men drag-up, wear diabolic cow horns, whip lassos and carry around dismembered doll parts. Light years away from the sanitized corporate-sponsored tourist parades of carnival throughout the world, this event is a vessel for everyday Haitians to shock and sexualize through masquerade, to mock local politicians, replay the slave revolt that gave birth to Haiti, the world’s first Black Republic, and to commune with the dead, with both personal and historical ancestors.

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“After the devastation of the 2010 earthquake, Carnival was cancelled in Haiti — no one can remember the last time that happened,if ever. Thank the Lord and the Lwa that we have Leah Gordon’s astounding new book — which shows us all the beauty and awe

of Haitian carnival and also teaches us, with its masterful photographs and prose, what that celebration means to Haiti and also to the human race.” Amy Wilentz (author of ‘The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier’)

These photographs were taken in Haiti between 1995 -2009, the year before the recent devastating earthquake in Haiti. A percentage of the profit from this book will go to Ciné Institute, teaching video skills in Jacmel and Brand Aid, rebuilfding the artisanal community in Jacmel.

“This book reveals a beautiful and strange world” Jeremy Deller, Turner Prize Artist

“This book is an adventure, full of horror, humour, sex, sensuality. The pictures have all the doubleness and capriciousness so typical of the Haitian psyche. Leah Gordon has been there again and again, year after year, digging almost forgotten details out, she has done her work. That’s what makes this book outstanding.” Jorgen Leth, Filmmaker

“This book contains the most disturbing but exhilarating photographs you are ever likely to see. One can only assume that Haiti is the most creative place on the globe. My advice is that you never go there in case you, in some small way, pollute their creativity with our bland western consumerist tastes. It is bad enough you are even holding the book. Buy it now and burn it before you have a chance to read it.” Bill Drummond

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From Don Consentino's text (extract):

"There’s a lot of weird shit going down during Kanaval in Jacmel, and not much of it has to do with Comus and Rex tossing “throw” to sequined revellers in New Orleans, or hot babes shaking their booties in Bahia, or all those belching, farting, goosing, pissing crowds Mikhail Bakhtin panted after on the Carnival streets of Renaissance Paris.   Forget all the conventional wisdom and all the conventional images of other peoples’ Carnivals to dig what’s happening way down south in Jacmel.  Make it a Naked Lunch moment.  Look at Leah Gordon’s photographs the way William Borroughs told you to look at the end of your fork before sliding that pronged sausage into your mouth.  See it in all its naked weirdness before you consume it."

From Richard Fleming's text (extract):

"In Jacmel, on Haiti’s south coast, an army of aggressive youths swagger down the street. Smeared from head to toe with a vile concoction of cane syrup and powdered charcoal, they dart at the crowd, snarling like wild, rabid animals. As if the throng lining the road hasn’t already recoiled enough at the fearful spectacle, they swing long hemp whips through the air in whistling arcs. Adorned with Beelzebub’s horns, these demonic metaphors for the experience of slavery look as if they have just emerged from the La Brea tar pits, or bathed in a fresh geyser of black crude oil. They are the lanceurs de corde, the “rope-throwers”." 

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To coincide with the release of this book, Soul Jazz are also releasing a CD: "Rara in Haiti; Street Music of Haiti", recorded in Port au Prince by Soul Jazz Records. To accompany the riotous carnival sounds on this CD there is also excellent text by Richard Fleming (author of 'Walking to Guantanamo') and the striking photography of Leah Gordon. For more information or to buy this CD go here.

Read reviews here:

Daily Telegraph

The Guardian

SORRY, OUT OF PRINT!

For anyone in the slightest bit interested in New York's vibrant art and music scenes in the 1980s, this is an essential book brought to you by Soul Jazz Records! “New York was a scary and legendary place and downtown was like a bohemian living museum, which was pretty thrilling for an aspiring artist and musician. It was all very new and exciting, at least for me and it was incredibly funky, the sleaze and poverty were everywhere.” DAVID BYRNE

This is a unique, luscious large format book from Soul Jazz Records and our first publication. New York Noise features amazing photographs of the New York music and art scene during the 1980s alongside text from some of the most important musicians and artists of the period. With hundreds of stunning photographs of everyone from Andy Warhol, Africa Bambaataa, Martin Rev, Richard Hell, Lou Reed, Keith Haring, Patti Smith, John Cage, Michael Stipe, Liquid Liquid, Julian Schnabel, Futura 2000, Madonna, Jean Michel Basquiat, ESG and many more the book is a who’s who of New York’s downtown scene during this period.. The book shows how Hip-Hop,Punk, No Wave, Free Jazz, Underground Dance and Experimental music scenes collided with the art world over a ten-year period and captures the vibrancy of this era when everyone in a band was also an artist, every artist was also a film-maker and every film-maker in a band. Accompanying text by the likes of David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, Cindy Sherman, Suicide, Liquid Liquid and many others brilliantly evoke the vibrant New York scene in its heydey and make this a unique product of great beauty and unlike anything else you have seen! With over 400 images, most of them previously unpublished, this is an essential document of a fascinating era in New York’s music and art scene – a must have for everyone! Hurry, limited quantities. This is a heavy book! Sorry about the postage if you are abroad - we are actually charging less than it actually costs us to ship. Reviews (and Galleries): The Times The Guardian The Telegraph