Tutu By Irving Penn

Steve Fairclough discovers the inside story of a stunning album cover shot by the legendary photographer, Irving Penn

- Irving Penn

In 1986 the trailblazing jazz trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis brought his music kicking and screaming into the modern age – using synthesizers, sampling and drum machines – with his first ever album for Warner Bros, Tutu. Aside from his music, the LP boasted an iconic black & white album cover shot by the legendary fashion, advertising and fine art photographer, Irving Penn.

Despite the newly found creative modernity of Davis’s music, the album’s artistic packaging was a hark back to the classic jazz album covers of the 1950s – a black & white portrait of the musician, their name, the LP’s title on the front and not much else. At the time the Tutu album was recorded, Davis was 60 years old and had sold his publishing rights to Warner Bros a year earlier – that’s why it was the first Miles Davis album release on Warner after Davis’s 30-year association with Columbia Records.

The shoot took place on 1 July 1986 in New York City. In a Vogue interview, headlined ‘The Stranger Behind the Camera’, from the magazine’s November 2004 issue, the late Irving Penn (who died in 2009) explained some of the back story behind the Tutu shoot. Miles Davis had shown up for the shoot with a hairdresser and his notoriously offhand attitude. Penn recalled, ‘I tried to talk to him when he walked in, but he completely ignored me.’ Once Davis had finished preening, he stepped in front of Penn’s camera.

Penn revealed, ‘“I bet you want me to take this shirt off” he [Davis] said.

FACT FILE

Miles Davis's Tutu