I have a deep fondness for what’s known as Swiss style.
This was a trend in graphic design which is based on what was known as International Typographic Style, developed in the 1930s and popular through the 1950s. Swiss style took this and adapted the attributes and movement of the text into grid structures and asymmetrical balance. In the end, you get strikingly simple designs that have unparalleled communicative clarity, and what’s referred to as “visual grammar.”
Swiss style is what you often find on jazz album covers of the 1950s and 60s. Album art really didn’t exist before the 1940s, and was introduced by artist Alex Steinweiss, the art director at Columbia Records. Suddenly, records were not only purchased because of what they sounded like — but also how they looked. They became works of art in two ways — sonically and visually. Steinweiss’ album covers dominated the market in the 1940s. For example, the Columbia pressing of Bruno Walter conducting Beethoven’s Eroica sold nearly 900% better with Steinweiss’s cover, compared to the original 1941 sleeve. Other incredible album artwork designers from the golden era of Swiss style include Reid Miles, Jim Flora, David Stone Martin, Rudolph de Harak and a young Andy Warhol.
This was the era of McCarthyism when intense anti-Communist suspicions and accusations (with persecution led by U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy) led to many mainstream artists — actors, musicians, writers, directors, etc. — being blacklisted. This is what happened to Hollywood director and screenwriter Lester Koenig. Forced out of work, he decided to leverage the many contacts he’d made with Hollywood composers and musicians, and start his own record company — first, a Dixieland label called Good Time Jazz, and then two years later in 1951, the modern-jazz label Contemporary Records.
Contemporary embraced all that’s good about albums. Koenig was a perfectionist. First off, he had fantastic musicians including Ornette Coleman, Phineas Newborn, Shelly Manne and Art Pepper. He also managed to offer the highest-quality recordings thanks to engineers Roy DuNann — a bonafide genius whose name should be as famous as Rudy Van Gelder, Alan Parsons or Geoff Emerick. But his recordings are primarily only exalted by audiophiles. You’ll hardly find any references to him — even in books about jazz recording.
Part of the reason they sound so good, is DuNann possessed natural ability and golden ears. He also cut his teeth as an engineer for Capitol Records, where he was called upon to help design their famous studio. DuNann’s body of work during his time as engineer and studio manager at Capitol, from 1947 to 1956 included recording and mixing Nat “King” Cole, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peggy Lee, Kay Starr, Jo Stafford and Stan Kenton.
Mostly, he never received a credit for any of it. And as Capitol sold more and more records, more and more often he would have an executive watching over his shoulder. And that’s why he split to work for Koenig.
At Contemporary, the space he used for recording at their pioneering stereo facility on Melrose Place was the label’s shipping room — surrounded by shelves and shelves of records. And that brings us to the other aspect that distinguished Contemporary Records from its peers — those completed records in their striking sleeves.
Contemporary adhered to Swiss style. The artwork was incredible. Koenig had top-notch artists including designer Robert Guidi, illustrator Irene Trivas and his own wife at the time, artist Catharine Anliss Heerman.
The pair were married in L.A. on the eve of Christmas Eve, 1948 just as Koenig was transitioning to being a label boss. Heerman was the daughter of famous actress Sarah Yeiser Mason, who was 26 when Catharine was born on Feb. 5, 1922 in New York City. Koenig and Heerman had two kids, John (1950) and Victoria (1951) and divorced in 1954, right when she was at the peak of her career as one of Contemporary’s star album designers. She did three covers — Shelly Manne’s Vol. 2 in 1954, Lennie Niehaus’ The Octet #2, and Lionel Hampton’s Lionel Hampton (both in 1955). Her artwork doesn’t show up on an album cover again until 1980 when one of her paintings appears as the background image on the cover of Cables’ Vision by George Cables. Her next and final album cover came in 1982 when another of her paintings was used as the background image for Bobby Hutcherson’s Solo/Quartet record. Both of these ’80s releases were on Contemporary Records, but by then, her ex-husband was no longer at the helm. Koenig died of a heart attack at age 59 in 1977.
In 1984, Contemporary was acquired by Fantasy, Inc., which kept things going and even signed legacy-appropriate artists like Frank Morgan, Carol Sloane, Terry Gibbs, Buddy DeFranco, Bud Shank, Chris Connor and the Art Farmer / Benny Golson Jazztet.
Heerman’s covers were based in Swiss style, but also incorporated script text. I have no idea why she stopped doing them, but suppose that it was related to the breakdown of her marriage and the responsibility of raising two kids. Her ex, Koenig, remarried in 1961 to jazz singer Joy Bryan, with whom he had two more kids. Heerman illustrated the cover of a course book for the New Arts Society, which was an L.A. arts collective which started up in 1967. The course book was called Looking At Modern Painting. NAS aimed to promote the production and dissemination of ideas “through pioneering exhibitions, symposia, workshops, concerts, performances, and publications.”
In 1970, Heerman wrote and illustrated a book in 1970 called Light In The Human Environment… as the Artist Sees It. The book was published by Sunbeam Lighting as a service to the design and architectural community, which described it as an exploration of “the profound interplay between light, art, and human experience, offering a unique perspective on the role of light as interpreted by artists.”
But she did no other album covers, and I think it’s a tremendous shame. Her work is brilliant. There aren’t even any photos of her to be found online, apart from a photo of her as a child with her actress mom.
Her artistic influence seems to have been reserved for those closest to her — offering art lessons to neighbourhood kids — as recalled in this charming except from a Smithsonian interview of conceptual artist Barbara Bloom by author and artist James McElhinney.
JAMES MCELHINNEY: So who provided you with guidance? Did you have, like, a mentor or an art teacher or…
BARBARA BLOOM: Other than school? Um, yes. Woman up the street from us was a woman named Catharine Heerman, who was an artist. I was friends with her kids.
JAMES MCELHINNEY: Hairman?
BARBARA BLOOM: Heerman. So it’s H—I think it’s H-E—I don’t know if it’s H-E-E-R-M-A-N or H-E-R-M-A-N, but Cathy Heerman. And her kids were friends of ours, Vicky Koenig and Johnny Koenig. They’re a story in themselves. She was married to Lester Koenig, who had been a producer. A producer. He worked with Billy Wilder and then he was blacklisted and started a jazz record label. And they were divorced. And I took art lessons with her. And she was wonderful. They had this really eccentric house for the time. The street was called Westgate, and they were the west gate of the farm that was there. And, um, you know, there were beehives living in the walls. And it was a trip. It was a trip, that place. I loved going there. And so we’d make things with her. And she showed us how to do stuff with gold leaf. Like, she’d throw this beautiful material, and I was gold-leafing my hand. It’s just these incredible materials. She’d have stacks of newsprint paper, and we’d grind sumi ink. And she’d have us — these little kids — she’d have us drawing lines, just standing there controlling the ink and drawing lines. She was wonderful. So, you know, a sense of some — she’s a painter.
JAMES MCELHINNEY: So it seems like she was stressing the process more than image.
BARBARA BLOOM: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely.
Catharine Heerman died on 4 April 2007, in Claremont, L.A., at the age of 85. She should have been famous.
Roy DuNann left Contemporary in the early 1960s, to work at a studio in Phoenix, where it would be easier for his asthmatic wife at the time to breathe. Sadly, the work he did there was predominantly for radio commercials. He was eventually lured back to L.A. to work for Herb Alpert and A&M, but not in a recording engineer role. He only repaired and maintained machines. His recording engineer period only lasted slightly more than a decade. Roy’s first wife died in the 1980s, so he decided to retire. He moved to Seattle to be close to his kids, and met and married his second wife in 1987. He died in 2014.
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Area Resident is an Ottawa-based journalist, recording artist, music collector and re-seller. Hear (and buy) his music on Bandcamp, email him HERE, follow him on Instagram and check him out on Discogs.
