Saturday, January 04, 2014
My favorite album cover
Here’s what I miss most about vinyl records – album covers. Often the album cover design and artwork would be far better than the contents of the album. I worked in a record store in high school and saw thousands of them. Many people contend that SGT. PEPPERS LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND was the best album cover ever. I disagree. It was pretty great but this is the one that knocked me out. I can’t pass a can of Reddi-Whip without thinking of it. The model, by the way, was Delores Erickson – now a successful artist living in Seattle. God, I wish I were the costumer on this photo shoot.
My two favorites: The Boston Pops' "Saturday Night Fiedler," with the conductor in the Travolta outfit, and Flatt & Scruggs doing the "Bonnie & Clyde" music carrying their instrument cases while wearing pinstripe suits and fedoras.
ReplyDeleteHere's a couple more photos from that shoot:
ReplyDeletehttp://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/2012/01/27/outtake-photos-from-the-sexiest-album-cover-of-the-1960s/
Whipped Cream deserves the top spot, but the cover for the Ohio Players' album, Honey should at least get an honorable mention.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many cases of diabetes could be traced back to these two records.
Vinyl rules!
ReplyDeleteOr ruled, past tense, I guess.
You guys are aware they started making records again, right?
ReplyDeleteI am outraged that you would print such a demeaning, sexist photo blah blah blah.....dammit, they just outsourced my manufactured outrage to China, so I have to stop now....
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid we had a Pontiac station wagon with factory 8-track cartridge player, the first year it was offered, 1967 - so most of the album covers I saw in that era were even smaller than those on CDs.
ReplyDelete(I still have about 100 functioning tapes, mostly from the early '70s - but the number of collectors keeping the 8-track flame alive, as it were, is going down fast, if the classifieds at 8-track Heaven are any indication; I look in there about every 3 months or so. There is one small fraction of collectors that may persist, judging from these ads: owners of show-condition cars from that era who who like to display their cars with the appropriate Ford-, Pontiac-, or Buick-branded 8-track cartridge protruding from the dashboard. These were anthologies that the carmakers would distribute to dealers, sometimes on a monthly basis as Pontiac did in '67 - mostly Columbia recording artists, I think.)
More about Delores. The record store they mention is about a mile from my house in Seattle, but she lives in Longview, where I worked in 2011 and about two hours south, not Seattle. http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2018926566_whippedcreamlady16m.html
ReplyDeleteIf you go into any kind of thrift store and rummage through a stack of albums you will no doubt with complete certainty find this album. It sold gazillions of copies, that's why.
ReplyDeleteI bought Jeff Beck's 'Guitar Shop' just for the cover.
ReplyDeleteI still have this album got it when it first came out.. nothing to play it on though. I still have a LOT of albums actually.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget Nancy Sinatra in a pink bikini on SUGAR. Duh-rool, duh-rool...
ReplyDeleteMitchell McLean: I used to be the record librarian for TM Productions, overseeing tens of thousands of albums and singles. The ones I had to keep shooing guys away from, aside from Ohio Players, were the import LPs by saxophonist Fausto Papetti. Apparently, there were no standards of decency in Italian record stores, so they featured full nudity.
ReplyDeleteGottacook: I also have a few hundred 8-tracks around here somewhere, along with a Realistic 8-Track recorder from Radio Shack, which I used to record National Lampoon Radio Hours off of FM. If you're interested in 8-tracks, you should check out the 8-Track Museum here in Dallas:
http://eighttrackmuseum.com/home.html
Ken, did you get the two CDs of Laura's that I mailed you? You can tell from those that we are trying to replicate the LP experience. The photos were taken by a woman who specializes in retro pinup photography, and the new one, "Necessary Evil," has a concept (dark or twisted love songs from the '30s to today). So we made it look like a film noir poster or pulp novel cover, with liner notes written in the style of a Raymond Chandler novel. We really hope that people will buy the CDs instead of downloading the MP3 versions, not just for the far superior sound quality but because without the cool packaging, you're losing out on half the experience. These kids today! They don't know what they're missing...etc. etc.
If memory serves me, there was a Roxy Music album cover back in the 70'a that by today's standards would be considered kiddie porn.
ReplyDeleteCadavra, I like to browse the local record collectors' shows, and that Nancy Sinatra album is always prominent in several displays. The price is usually about $10 for that cover (or $5 with album included).
ReplyDeleteThanks to your recent post, the linked article to a 2-yr. old Seattle Times piece has become the paper's most read story again. Check it out:
ReplyDeletehttp://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2018926566_whippedcreamlady16m.html
By the way, if you buy the current CD, there's a folded poster inside which is much bigger than the orig. album cover. However, there are the folds to deal with. Nevertheless, for those of us who lived the original, it's pretty nice!
Among the album covers/concepts I always thought were creative were the Stone's "Sticky Fingers" ('71) - featuring a crotch shot of Joe Dallesandro with a working zipper, and Alice Cooper's "School's Out" ('72) featuring a desk that opened to reveal the record encased in a (faux) pair of girl's panties. I was more preoccupied with the Stone's cover for some reason.
ReplyDeleteI went steady with Carly Simon's "No Secrets" cover for several years.
ReplyDeleteSoul Asylum spoofed this famous cover with their EP "Clam Dip and Other Delights." http://twintone.com/minies/88144.gif
ReplyDeleteThat album cover was even better than the underwear ads in the J.C Penney catalog!
ReplyDeleteMy clientele includes some amazing, stunning burlesque dancers/performers, and yeah... sometimes it's pretty damn awesome to be a costumer. Dress rehearsal for a new pair of tassel pasties is always a good time!
ReplyDeleteCheers, thanks a lot,
Storm