l, active, vocal force in jazz over the past 50 years, memoirist Roach will add critical detail to the history of modern jazz and the business that produced it. "Loring Eutemey did covers when Mingus and I had our own company--Debut," he says. And he notes that for most of the companies, "it's our music keeping them going, not classical music. But you don't see black people working there, not even sweeping the floors. It's something that I'm always complaining about." Some musicians created their own cover art. Ornette Coleman, who has been painting for more than 30 years, did a painting around 1963 for the cover of the Blue Note release, "The Empty Foxhole." "I had written a poem at that time and decided to do a cover to express the poem which was entitled, 'The Empty Foxhole,'" Coleman recalls. The painting depicts how "bombing disrupts the ground." His other cover paintings include "Art of the Improvisers" and "Colors" on a recent album of the same name. The latter painting "looks like a figure but when you get close up, you see it's an abstraction. I did the painting when I was doing the record. When I looked at the painting I thought it would represent the quality of conditions in people's lives and also inner, spiritual, qualities." A poem and liner notes by Coleman are on the back. Ornette Coleman also sought work by other black visual artists for albums he recorded or produced. His 1978 album "Body Meta" has cover art by his Nigerian and Ethiopian artist friends, Zeke Oloruntoba and Elizabeth Atnafu. He produced an album by James Blood Ulmer, "Tales of Captain Black" with cover art by African American illustrator Shelby McPherson (who now lives in California) and an accompanying booklet containing drawings by Zeke and Sarah Penn. For his part, James Blood Ulmer bought a painting by Peter Bradley that he wanted to reproduce on the cover of one of his recordings but, according to Corrine Jennings, the company s...
