Phil Hays, an illustrator and teacher whose lush watercolor portraits of legendary blues artists such as Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday for LP covers defined a distinctive graphic style of album art in the 1970s, died Oct. 24 in Los Angeles. He was 74.
Mr. Hays, who lived alone, was found in his apartment, said a friend, illustrator James McMullan. The cause of death was not officially known, although he had been suffering from emphysema.
In the mid-1950s Mr. Hays was one of a young band of expressive and interpretative illustrators, including Robert Weaver, Jack Potter, Tom Allen and Robert Andrew Parker, who rather than paint or draw literal scenes based entirely on an author’s prose, interpreted texts with an eye toward expressive license.
“Phil’s favorite expression is `Why not?'” wrote Paul Davis, the poster artist and former student of Mr. Hays’ on the occasion of Mr. Hays being awarded the Society of Illustrators 2000 Distinguished Educators in the Arts award. “He welcomes experimentation and innovation.”
His editorial work appeared regularly in Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, McCall’s and Esquire, where he was given full and double-spread pages to tackle grand tableaus on various themes. One of his more notable advertising commissions was a very painterly-looking piece for Coca-Cola.
His rendering of Bessie Smith for Columbia Records in the early ’70s glows out of the darkness in what appears to be a drug haze, and his Jerry Lee Lewis appears to have stepped out of a seedy motel room.
“It was no accident that his most memorable portraits were of performers that lent themselves to Phil’s particular kind of visual decadent glamour,” McMullan said.
Mr. Hays also did two portraits of Muddy Waters, reproduced on both front and back covers of an album, which earned praise from his subject: “Muddy fell in love with his face, though wasn’t sure he liked the pink shirt,” said Paula Scher, who art-directed that and many other covers for Columbia Records.
