Love and Understanding Hardcover by Don Schlitten

Product Details

• Publisher: Fantagraphics (2026-09-29)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 128 pages
• ISBN-13: 9798875000645
• Item Weight: 567.0 grams
• Dimensions: 0.0 x 0.0 x 0.0 cm

First ever collection of legendary jazz producer (Prestige, Xanadu, Muse) Don Schlitten’s photography featuring icons of jazz like Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins, Frank Sinatra, and more. Don Schlitten was working as a photographer and commercial artist in New York City when he co-founded Signal Records in 1955.  When Signal was folded into Prestige Records shortly thereafter, Bob Weinstock, head of Prestige, enlisted Don to produce music, photograph musicians, and design album covers. His name graces the album covers of over 400 records produced between the 1950s and 1980s, either as producer, photographer, or album designer, often all three.

This book features over 100 photos, personally selected by Don Schlitten as his personal best, many unseen, others familiar as album covers but given new context in their original format. Featuring icons of jazz like Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins, and Frank Sinatra, it also includes candid photos of such unsung giants of jazz as Booker Ervin, Eric Dolphy, Mal Waldron, Don Patterson, Etta Jones, and Sonny Criss and more.

The book includes a biographical essay written by jazz scribe Ted Panken with an introduction by the “Jazz Detective” himself, Zev Feldman. As an extra bonus, this book features an American Splendor comic strip that features Don educating Harvey Pekar, as well as a gallery of Don’s personal favorite top 30 album covers.

About the Author

Don Schlitten (1932-2026) Although he aspired to be a musician himself, he ultimately settled on becoming a commercial artist and attended Music and Art High School in Harlem.  His classmates included jazz pianist Freddie Redd and several founding members of Mad magazine.  He produced his first recording session in 1957 for former Charlie Parker bandmate Red Rodney in 1957.  From the late 1950s through the 1980s he produced and/or supervised over 300 albums in addition to photographing the artists and designing the album covers.

Zev Feldman is an internationally recognized, independent record producer and the Co-President of Resonance Records in Los Angeles. He is also a consulting producer of archival and historical recordings for Blue Note Records. Over the last 25 years he has worked for PolyGram, Universal Music Group, Rhino/Warner Music Group, Concord Music Group, among others. He won DownBeat magazine’s International Critics Poll for “Rising Star Producer” in 2016 for his work on a staggering 26 historical jazz recordings that year and was called “the Indiana Jones of jazz” by Stereophile magazine. In addition to his lauded work at Resonance, where he works closely with the estates of jazz icons such as Bill Evans and Wes Montgomery, he’s also involved with various other labels covering jazz, blues and rock including Elemental Music, Sunset Blvd Records, Real Gone Music, Reel To Real Recordings and others. Zev is one of the co-producers of 2017’s highly acclaimed Thelonious Monk discovery Les Liaisons Dangereuses on Sam and Saga Records and another highly lauded Monk discovery Palo Alto from 2020 on Impulse! Records.

Ted Panken is an American jazz journalist based in New York City. He has written extensively for publications including DownBeat, Jazziz, Jazz Times, the New York Daily News and jazz.com. From 1985 to 2008, he was a jazz radio DJ at Columbia University’s WKCR station. He has written more than 500 liner notes. In 2021, Panken won the Jazz Journalists Association's Book of the Year for Life in E Flat: The Autobiography of Phil Woods, which he co-authored with Phil Woods. In 2016, he received the Jazz Journalists Association's Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism award. In 2007, ASCAP gave the Deems Taylor Award for his Downbeat article "Smalls Universe.”