The first jazz record I ever bought, back when I was still in high school in 1983 (ouch!) was on the great Italian label Black Saint Records. The label still exists, but its true heyday was in the 70s and 80s, when it was the most consistent imprint for cutting-edge jazz from the US and Europe. Black Saint was also the first record company I had encountered that used the same iconic image as the 'a' side for all of its releases, placing all of the track info on side 'b.' The scanned label here technically comes from Ming, a classic 1980 album by the David Murray Octet, but the same image was (and may still be) present on all of their records. Thus, it's hardly a rare image, but it certainly was once synonymous with quality.
I owe quite a bit of my current level of appreciation of avant garde and free jazz to Black Saint and its "cousin" Soul Note. The David Murray Octet's "New Life" (1987) is still on heavy rotation in my music collection. Alas, all my BS/SN recordings are on CD, so the quality of the graphics is not as good as this scanned image. Thanks for the memories!
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