Artist of the Week- Thomas B. Allen.

' Illustrator Thomas B. Allen created a series of painterly, impressionistic album covers spotlighting icons of country, bluegrass, and jazz. He was born January 28, 1928, in Nashville, earning a scholarship to Vanderbilt University on the strength of his football prowess; he soon transferred to the Art Institute of Chicago, studying alongside future notables including Leon Golub, Robert Weaver, and Robert Andrew Parker. After a stint in the U.S. Marines, Allen began a freelance illustration career, accepting commissions from magazines including Seventeen, McCall's, and Sports Illustrated. While working for Esquire in 1959 he illustrated bluegrass great Earl Scruggs. The two became close friends, and in all Allen created 17 album covers for Scruggs and musical partner Lester Flatt, including 1961's indelible Foggy Mountain Banjo. Allenwent on to work regularly for CBS Records, then the premier label for graphic design. Art director Neil Fujita soon assigned him work on the first of many jazz album covers, Jimmy Rushing's The Jazz Odyssey of James Rushing, Esq. To complete the assignment Allen spent time with Rushing in the studio, photographing the musician at work, and from that point forward he took great pains to meet his subjects in person, feeling that human interaction made the finished work "more authentic." Allen's other significant contribution to music dates back to 1966 and the series of portraits he created for Whitney Balliett's jazz writing for The New Yorker. He also wrote and illustrated more than a dozen children's books, including Louise Borden's Good-bye, Charles Lindbergh: Based on a True Story and Judith Hendershot's In Coal Country, and in 1983 was named Hallmark Professor at the University of Kansas, later serving as chairman of the illustration department at the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, FL. He taught there until his death from complications following heart surgery on November 14, 2004. '

Ankeny, J.  Thomas B.Allen . Retrieved from http://www.allmusic.com/artist/thomas-b-allen-mn0001256259/biography.