Dugaree Doll  Mitch Miller and The Sandpipers  (1955)   “Matt,  I just saw your recent post of Dungaree Doll on Peter Pan Records, and thought that perhaps you might be interested in another version, another record company, another speed. This one’s a 6-inch 78 on yellow plastic.   Your site is simply the best time-killer-when-I’m-supposed-to-be-working that any human being has ever devised. ”    — Glenn

The first cover courtesy of Alex Steinweiss:  “Smash Song Hits by Rodgers & Hart”  Columbia Records

A sampling of Alex Steinweiss early album cover designs.

A Taschen book of Steinweiss covers and life of work.

Alex Steinweiss, 1947   Photo William P. Gottlieb

Described as the father of record cover design, Alex Steinweiss, died Sunday at the age of 94.  In 1939, after designing hundreds of packages, posters and catalogues for Columbia, Steinwiess convinced Columbia Records’ to let him “design” the first true record cover. Until then, 78s were sold in generic brown sleeves.   He designed over 850 album covers for Columbia, London, Decca, and Everest Records, developing a trademark style and influencing cover artists and designers throughout the remainder of the century.

I wonder what he would have thought of LP Cover Lover.

Columbia Records presents Danny Kaye   An album of four 78 RPM 10″ records   in a gatefold jacket.   (Circa 1953)   Includes eight songs:   C91-6The Fairy Pipers and The Babbitt and The Bromide. C91-2 Minnie the Moocher and Let’s Not Talk About Love C91-7 Eileen and Dinah C91-4 Anatole of Paris and Farming

Decca Records for Children   “Unbreakable DECCALITE”   Frank Luther “The Three Billygoat’s Gruff”

A rare example of illustrator Jim Flora’s work on this Columbia Records 78RPM 10″ record album, “Come to the Circus”

IKE QUEBEC   “TENOR SAX”   BLUE NOTE Set 102.   Ike Quebec (ts) Roger Ram Ramirez (p) Tiny Grimes (g) Milt Hinton (b) J.C. Heard (d)   WOR Studios, NYC, July 18, 1944   Songs include: Topsy/Cup-Mute Clayton/If I Had You/Hard Tack/Sweethearts on Parade/Dolores     Three 78 RPM Recordings – Record #’s 510, 515, 516.

These sides were released “for the jukebox market” in the late fifties as 45′s by Blue Note records and lead to new session work and some brilliant albums as a leader in 1961 -62.   His comeback was cut short by lung cancer in 1963.

James Moody BE BOP “Tomorrow’s Music Today”   Metronome Records (From Lp cover lover, Mika)

“Flick The Little Fire Engine”   MGM Records

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.