Alex Steinweiss, Inventor of Artist Album Cover, Dead at 94

Posted on Jul 20th 2011 5:00PM by Theo Spielberg
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William P. Gottlieb/Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress

Alex Steinweiss, the man credited with creating the artistic album cover, passed away Sunday, July 17, in Sarasota, Fla. According to the New York Times, he was 94 years old.

Steinweiss was born March 24, 1917, in Brooklyn, N.Y., to Eastern European parents. His father, a women's shoe designer from Warsaw, and his mother a seamstress from Latvia, relocated to the Lower East Side of Manhattan before finally settling in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn. After graduating high school, Steinweiss merited a scholarship at Parson's School of Design on the strength of his portfolio.

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In 1939, at the age of 23, he was hired by Columbia Records to design advertisements as their first graphic designer and art director. At the time, record covers were largely unadorned, and in the rare cases when they were decorated, the art was not original. "The way records were sold was ridiculous," said Mr. Steinweiss in a 1990 interview. "The covers were brown, tan or green paper. They were not attractive, and lacked sales appeal."

After convincing executives to let him design the covers to 78rpm records, Steinweiss was on his way to revolutionizing the music industry. His first record cover, for a collection of songs by Rodgers and Hart, featured a photograph of a theater marquee with the name of the album shown in lights. Newsweek reported that after Steinweiss designed the cover for Bruno Walter's recording of Beethoven's "Eroica" symphony sales "increased 895%."

Steinweiss continued to design album covers for albums including George Gershwin's 'Rhapsody In Blue' until 1972 when at the age of 55 he left the music business and moved to Sarasota with his wife. He is survived by his son Leslie, his daughter, Hazel, six grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

An Overview of Alex Steinweiss' Life

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