On October 23, 1957, Johnny Griffin walked into Rudy Van Gelder's Hackensack studio with Sonny Clark, Paul Chambers and a Philadelphia drummer named Kenny Dennis, who by uDiscover's account was making his recording debut. Griffin had left Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers months earlier, and he had just cut a Riverside date as a sideman on Wilbur Ware's The Chicago Sound, where he first took on John Jenkins's "Latin Quarter"; here he recorded it again for Blue Note. The session became The Congregation, and it turned out to be his last for the label. The sleeve is the odd part: Reid Miles had a then-unknown commercial illustrator named Andy Warhol turn a photograph of Griffin into the cover art. Released in March 1958 as BLP 1580, it is one of Warhol's early jazz-sleeve commissions, tucked inside a bop classic.
Johnny Griffin performing in July 2007, decades after The Congregation. (Photo: Tom Beetz, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Sources: The Congregation (Johnny Griffin album), Wikipedia , 'The Congregation': How Johnny Griffin Preached A Hard Bop Sermon, uDiscover Music , Reid Miles & Andy Warhol: Johnny Griffin, The Congregation, Blue Note 1580 (1958), Warhol Cover Art
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