The Cat on a Hot Thin Groove

A visual feast of swingin' cartoons for jazz lovers. On the long road to becoming an Oscar-winning animation director, Gene Deitch became an intense jazz fan. At the age of 21, he discovered The Record Changer, a jazz collector's magazine filled with fanatical, scholarly, and purist essays about jazz as well as listings of hard to find jazz albums. Every jazz swinger in the 40s was called a cat (as in cool cat), derived from the West African word "Katta," a human), so Gene Deitch created a cartoon feature for the Record Changer titled " The Cat," which quickly became a fixture at the magazine.

He also started drawing the covers, which graced almost every issue from 1945 to 1951 along with the "The Cat." Deitch stylistically virtuoso images exquisitely embodied the essence of jazz and became a visual paean to the joy of collecting and appreciating jazz.