Wednesday, January 12, 2011

More JLH.. on Crown ..

These may not rank alongside JLH's best work, but they sure are rare.. so it's worth posting.. and frankly, i just love the covers..

Ceown records made a whole series with cover shots like this for  several of their artists.. Modern/RPM, actually, as Crown was a budget offshoot of Modern's.
Nevertheless, i have fond memories of the Crown records.. despite their exceptionally crappy sound.

Firstly, that was how you got all of B.B.. King's  early stuff on album.. and the stereo ones were even in colored vinyl..! ..Despite those being even noisier pressings.. i might add ;-(...
Other albums that used this type of cover design were at least an Elmore James one ..'All Night Blues' or something like that.. i cant exactly recall, and also a Howlin Wolf one ,.. also called 'Sings The Blues'

Also, there was a second series.. which I'll save for a future post.. that consisted of the FAZZIO art.. i think whoever 'Fazzio' was, he was a great artist, and i like his covers .. I'll post a couple i've photographed as soon as I can find the original photos.. and also one of his JLH ones.
Although i made a point of trying to photograph each album i managed to collect before I sold them, I dent get to all of them.. I did however make a point of doing all the Crown /Fazzio ones though.
 I'l post a JLH one in my next post and also put up a Fireballs cover on the side here...

 Anyways, this one is John Lee Hooker Sings The Blues.. 1960 Crown..here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you are interested I have 26 original Fazzio prototype albulm covers of Crown records. These are the Crown levynkansissaan artists made portraits, which were painted with the Fazzio nickname. These were also used as published by thr United Rock'nn'roll Hits of the 50's series. beachjake@ sbcglobal.net

Doccus Rockus Maximus said...

Well, I'm curious to know more..Actually, if they're prototypes they're probably a bit too rich for my blood, but have you thought of commissioning a small number of prints off of them , or are you allowed to?
I certainly like them though, at least the ones I've seen..