Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of record covers from the golden age of LPs


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February, 2009

Surreal killer

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The Recorded Detailman.. When YOU are really free to listen…

So there’s more to this than meets the eye (or ear).     Like Jackie Gleason famously tapping Salvador Dali for the cover of his easy listening pablum, this use of de Chirico-like artwork, is the inconcrous cover of a promotional record put out by ENZYPAN – an antacid and the “first thought in digestive disturbances”   From the back cover:   “Whether dyspepsia of functional, secretory or nervous origin; whether manifest by nausea and regurgitation, or by flatulence, gas pressure, irritable colon; whether accompanied by fermentative or putrefactive processes”

The music is “Le Tableau de L’Operation de la Taille”   (“The Table of a Bladder Operation” ) by French composer, Marin Marais (1656-1728).   The only musical description of a surgical operation.   This record,circa 1950, offers the first modern performance and first recording of this unusual composition.   It includes the recorded commentary of the composer’s original annotations announcing the phases of the progressing operation.   The performance is by the Dutch viola da gamba player, Carel Boomkamp, accompanied by the French harpsichordist, Denyse Gouarne.     One final note, this odd piece of medical and advertising history is a 10″ 78 RPM pressing on deep red vinyl.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (49 votes, average: 4.18 out of 5)
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The Court of King Momo

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“You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns, when they all did tricks for you”

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (35 votes, average: 3.31 out of 5)
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Poof is in the pudding

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Peter and Penelope Poof Have A Party “The Brightest, Most Hilarious and Sophisticated Album Ever Produced”   RIC Records   “Over 100 funny stories and jokes.   Over 30 limericks and wildly amusing naughty songs by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein III, by Noel Coward and Cole Porter, by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz, by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, Irving Berlin and by Jim Lowe too!”   Cover art by Wally Wood.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (43 votes, average: 4.02 out of 5)
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From the back shelf of my mind

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Tavernalar Krali HAYKO Kupa 4 Lusu Esliginde   DT Records   (I don’t know what I’m saying!)

WIN AN LP COVER LOVER T-SHIRT!   See the comments here.

We have a winner!   M. Ransom nailed it with:

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“The Most Mishige” Mickey Katz   Capitol Records

Actually the illustration looks like it was also taken directly from here.   And here’s a different album cover featuring the other chick!

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Anders Als Die Andern     Die Unverbesserlichen   Vogue Records

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (64 votes, average: 4.14 out of 5)
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Super bad

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“Super Talent”   An EP from Thailand on Four Track Records featuring Western soul hits of the day:   TIME IS TIGHT – BOOKER T. & THE MG’S / POPCORN – HOT BUTTER / THEME FROM SHAFT – ISAAC HAYES / ASHA RACH   – SHOCKING BLUE

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (39 votes, average: 3.59 out of 5)
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You can’t pick your family

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The Kaye Family Album on Hira Records.   Listen up: “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me”

Check out the source of this wonderful family find:   Forgotten Albums and get the whole story and more enchanting music from the album.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (40 votes, average: 3.58 out of 5)
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Greasers and gang bangers

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“Boppin’, “Rumble” and “Cadillacs Meet The Orioles”     Thanks to Lp cover lover, Joan for sending us these three compilations of fifties rock and roll and doo-op on Jubilee Records.     “Whoppers” and “Paragons Meet the Jesters are others in the series (look for future postings here.)

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1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (58 votes, average: 4.36 out of 5)
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Shot heard around the world

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Joe Cuba and The Joe Cuba Sextet   “Wanted Dead or Alive”   Tico Records   (1966)   Listen up: Bang-Bang

New York’s Latin music giant Joe Cuba died last week at age 78, after a long illness. As prolific as he was influential, Cuba was one of the main pioneers of the Latin soul movement in the 1960s and then became an elder in the salsa scene during the 1970s and beyond.

Born Gilberto Calderon in New York in 1931, and originally a conguerro, Cuba and his band were part of a pivotal generation of NY-raised Puerto Rican Americans (Nuyoricans) who helped define the city’s Latin music styles following the mambo-era of the 1960s.   Cuba gets an asterisk in popular music history for being the first salsa bandleader to record songs in English.

“Bang Bang” wasn’t the first Latin boogaloo song, but its success in 1966 all but officially inaugurated the boogaloo era — first in New York, then across the greater Afro-Cuban music world. The words to “Bang Bang” are largely nonsensical, a mix of Nuyorican food items (“lechon! lechon!”) and the shouts on the chorus (“beep beep! aaaaaah!”), but the whole package proved irresistible.   Latin, black and white audiences across America bought more than a million copies of the single, and the song became a standard.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (32 votes, average: 3.44 out of 5)
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Japanimation

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Brave Raideen (1976)

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (45 votes, average: 3.24 out of 5)
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How to handle a record

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1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (53 votes, average: 4.60 out of 5)
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