“You Got Soul”  A budget label release of soul covers from 1970  Avenue Records (UK). 

Track Listing:  You Got Soul / Heard It Through The Grapevine / Dancing In The Streets / Private Number / What Does It Take / Love Is Blue – I Can Sing A Rainbow / Tracks Of My Tears / I’ll Pick A Rose For My Rose / Harlem Suffle / Stop Her On Sight / Too Busy Thinking About My Baby / Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday

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.

November 23rd marks the auspicious start to a shared personal project called LP Cover Lover.   Since this day in 2006, Tony and I have posted 3,415 covers from our collections for the whole world to see.   Now more than 50,000 visitors a month come to LPCoverLover.com and we’ve received more than 6,000 comments – some from friends and family of even of the most obscure performers listed; many from a few long-time followers; some informative and many very funny.   We haven’t even scratched the surface of the records lined up to post, so we hope that you’ll continue to check in on us; maybe spin the wheel-of-fortune to see what comes up (it may be a sign!), enjoy the ever-growing Chicks Dig Records gallery or take a (another) quick peek at the lovely girls modeling our T-shirts (on sale now for only $20, shipping included … the shirt not the girl!); and, if you’d like, send us a note.   We’d love to hear from you.

Tony Valenti (aka, LP Cover Lover co-founder)   Now if I could just find a Matthew Glass record!   (Notice the $750.00 price tag on this baby.)

The Brazilian Bitles   Polydor Records

“Today’s Top Hits” by the HOMESTEAD (?) on Homestead Records (of course) 1979   Featuring bad recreations of chart toppers of the day, like Randy Newman’s “Short People,” one of the greatest politically incorrect songs of all time.

The Rutles “A Hard Day’s Rut”   Parlourphone Records   A Rutles bootleg (if a parody band can have such a thing)   Originally created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes as a fictional band to be featured as part of various 1970s television programming, the group evolved into a real band that recorded and toured, debuted in the States on a couple of Saturday Night Live programs in 1975 and 1976 and was the subject of a mockumentary film “All You Need is Cash”.   The band included “Nasty” (Innes); “Stig” (Rikki Fataar); “Dirk” (Idle); and “Barry” (John Halsey).

Antony Villa   “Superstar from the Far East Sings a Special Tribute to Elvis”

Emil Nargi IS Elvis   “It’s Now or Never”   There are so many records by Elvis impersonators you can’t imagine.   Each one stranger than the last.   Emil looks like he could be one of the little dolls or porceline statuettes that my Grandma Loretta kept in a glass case.

Tribute to the Rolling Stones (Sung by The Winstons).