Folk, Blues & Beyond by Davy Graham

This is definitely an example of an album I would not have been aware of were it not for my father. The fact that he had had a radio show on an RAF base that he named after it slipped out in conversation in the way you often hear of your parents past. It comes from a time when the back cover was a story and piece of literature in itself. There is wonderful commentary about each song and the back cover literally speaks for itself.

My interest in Graham was piqued by the fact that he had written Angi, later played by Bert Jansch and Paul Simon. Always in the shadows, including extended periods in retirement, a few years before his death I was surprised to learn that he was playing in a small club down the road from where I lived in Crouch End, London at the time. I duly went along and saw a man who can only have been a shadow of his former self. Almost toothless, which must have affected his singing, but I don't recall this, or indeed whether he sang at all. I think I was just amazed that someone who had been so influential* was yards away from me playing in a tiny venue, well passed his prime, but still doing what he loved.

*he is credited with introducing the DADGAD guitar tuning to the English folk scene, which was subsequently used by John Renbourn, Bert Jansch and Jimmy Page.

Surf's Up / Pet Sounds / Best Of by The Beach Boys

This selection of back covers by The Beach Boys are all a little drab in contrast to the front covers of two of them. The front of the third, Surf's Up, has been described as their most 'un-Beach Boys' cover. It is a painting based on the sculpture End of the Trail, by James Earle Fraser, which honours the struggle of the Native Americans (I had wrongly assumed it depicted an image of Don Quixote I half-remembered). As The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit points out, Surf's Up saw "[n]o more songs about girls, cars, or surfing" but a "new world-conscious Beach Boys attitude...duly reflected in the choice of album art". The back cover of Surf's Up continues the theme and is dark to the point of almost consuming the black font of the song titles.

Pet Sounds and Best Of (released only two months later) stick to a familiar formula; the band shown in lighter mood on the back cover, with the latter not missing the opportunity for a bit of advertising too.
.
Researching these back covers I stumbled across Malcom C. Searle's excellent and marvellously in-depth Back Through the Opera Glass website dedicated to the artwork of The Beach Boys. It is worth reproducng what he says about the back covers of Pet Sounds and Surf's Up in full:

"For the rear of the Pet Sounds album sleeve Capitol Records chose to put together a collage of frames highlighting the importance of the group as they liked to see them. The candy-striped shirts were back in evidence, guitars in hand, mixed in with a number of stills taken during the Japanese leg of their recent concert tour. This was almost suggesting that this was their way of showing that the album was their boys together … not merely a frontage for Brian’s strong-minded dominance of the music within.

Whilst Brian had been recording the instrumental tracks for the new album, using Los Angeles’ finest collection of studio session musicians, and prior to the boys laying down the vocals, the remaining five-piece band had been performing a 15-date tour of Japan, followed by a one-off return journey show, on Saturday 29th January, in Honolulu. Eleven of the fifteen pictures that graced the rear sleeve were taken during this tour, four of which featured Mike, Alan, Carl, Dennis and Bruce dressed out in traditional Japanese costume, pictured during a promotional visit to Kyoto's famous Samurai studios on January 10th. The remaining tour pictures featured the band on stage, dressed in traditional Beach Boy costume. Striped shirt and white pants, Capitol Records undoubtedly smiling silently in the background, although judging by the picture of Carl wearing a Hawaiian flower Lei around his neck they are taken from a variety of the shows from the tour. Japanese-based photographer and writer Dave Jampel is credited with being the man behind the lens for this series of pictures, and at least Bruce once again made the rear cover …

“I think that album is my favourite, and it drove me crazy that I couldn’t get my picture on the (front) cover because I was still signed to CBS, from the days when Terry Melcher and I were producing for them. I couldn’t get a clearance to be on the front cover, but I’m on the back … but I’m so proud just to have been able to sing on that record …” Bruce Johnston (Beach Boy)

Brian only appears in two pictures on the rear montage, uncomfortably alienated away from the antics of his fellow band members he is seen driving his car, leaning out of the window, sombrely dressed in black, whilst the more dominant pose sees him sitting at his piano, fingers poised over the chord structure of another great composition. It’s a strange sight seeing the sad, lone figure, the group mastermind, presenting his personal masterpiece, surrounded by shots of his smiling, laughing comrades …"

 And on the Ed Thrasher-designed Surf's Up (see also):

"For the reverse of the sleeve the deep blue and green hues that had framed Fraser’s front image re-appeared, this time as an ageing parchment (or maybe even tobacco leaf). The song titles were simply laid out from top to bottom, and nothing else was printed or featured that could remove the impact of the barren, desolate creation that was held up before the eye. It really was a most impressive, yet despairingly depressive sleeve to behold....

Overall, and despite the comparison to the bands precious releases for both Capitol and Warner’s, it is clearly apparent how this one sleeve epitomises the mood of the album held within. It deserves serious listening, serious appraisal … and it is indeed a serious offering."

The Band by The Band

"I'll be down to get you in a taxi honey

You'd better be ready around half past eight
Ah baby don't be late I want to be there when the band starts honey"

I had always been intrigued by the quote on the back cover. Was it from a film, was it made up...if I had looked closer, I would have seen from the footnote that it was actually a lyric taken from "Darktown Strutters' Ball", a song published over 50 years before The Band appropriated it. A jazz standard written by Shelton Brooks, it had been recorded many times, and by a wide variety of artsists including Fats Domino (his version seems to be the lyrics used by The Band), Fats Waller, Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin and the Beach Boys.

 The back cover continues the theme from the front; rustic, straightforward, not of its time. A reaction to the psychedelic and explicitly multicoloured music that preceded it; the quote from the early part of the century fits. No surprise that The Band's eponymous album was also dubbed the 'Brown Album'. The subjects and styles all looked backwards, but as Pitchfork put it, both The Band, and its predecessor Music From Big Pink, managed to "sound simultaneously experimental and traditional, irreverent and respectful...blues, folk, jazz, rock, funk, soul, r&b;, and country and western all synthesized into twin monuments to the American music they'd been playing for nearly a decade in clubs, roadhouses, and honkytonks."

A 1971 profile of the band in Melody Maker made a similar point: "Their second album was titled simply The Band, and was a masterpiece, shooting Robbie straight up into the forefront of contemporary composers. 'King Harvest' and 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down' reflect sure grasp of the feeling and scope of pan-American music, and the voices of Helm, Danko, and Manuel sounded as old as the hills. The instrumentation was more idiosyncratic than ever; accordion, mandolin, wheezing saxes and grunting tuba made telling appearances."

It was recorded in the pool house of a rented house in the Hollywood Hills once owned by Sammy Davies Jr. The equipment for recording therefore had to be shipped in. As John Simon, who co-engineered the album, recalled in an interview with Sound-on-Sound, "When we finally got all the equipment from Capitol together, we decided to hear what it sounded like. This was in the middle of the night, so we put on the most recent record that we liked, which was a Dr. John album that had a song with snatches of 'My Country Tis Of Thee' and 'America The Beautiful' in the chorus. Our wives were with us, and suddenly one of them ran in, saying, 'The cops are here! The cops are here!' We immediately went outside to see what was going on and it turned out that we'd also hooked the sound up to the outdoor pool speakers, so this patriotic song was just blasting through the Hollywood canyons."

The overlapping voices and the fact the most of band members regularly swapped instruments, gives the album a great feel and despite some overdubs, the basic tracks were indeed laid down as an ensemble. The organic way the voices and instruments intertwine, it can't help but qualify as a great 'feel' album.

Photography was by Elliott Landy (see also Allman Brothers feature), with the design by Bob Cato. The New York Times described Cato, art director and the vice president of creative services for CBS-Columbia Records, as "a ground-breaking graphic designer who helped turn the record album cover into an important form of contemporary art". It goes on to note that he "created or supervised some of the most memorable record-album covers of the 1960's. It was his idea to put the work of the underground illustrator R. Crumb on Janis Joplin's Cheap Thrills.'' He also designed the cover for Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits.

Plant and See by Plant and See

"The songs and the artwork are both compelling and unusual" Brendan Greaves (Paradise of Bachelors)

This back cover is as much about the label as it is about the album. I only heard about Plant and See having bought Hiss Golden Messenger's Poor Moon, a limited-run vinyl release. Both were put out by Paradise of Bachelors. It's also our first featured gatefold, with the front and back covers being inextricably linked. As it happens, the music inside is excellent. As Alastair McKay wrote in his Uncut review (see extended version here): "The album suffered because it was impossible to pigeonhole, though that is its strength too. The sound is built on Lowery’s swampy guitar, but flits between the sultry rock stylings of “Put Out My Fire” (like a jittery Hendrix, channelling tribal rhythms) and the sweet soul of “Henrietta”, with Lowery’s pained vocal floating over lush harmonies."

Paradise of Bachelors describe themselves as being "dedicated to documenting, curating, and releasing under-recognized musics of the American vernacular, with an emphasis on the South, broadly defined. In all our projects, we endeavor to commit ourselves to in-depth, detailed contextual research and the presentation thereof, to careful and compelling curation, and to respectful and mutually beneficial collaborations with artists and other partners. This is a mission."

The Plant and See release typifies what thay are about, and the accompanying press release is worth a read:

"Paradise of Bachelors is honored to celebrate the life and music of influential songwriter, singer, and guitarist Willie French Lowery (1944-2012) with the first-ever reissue of the sole eponymous album by his interracial swamp-psych band Plant and See. Originally released in 1969 on L.A. label White Whale—home of Jim Ford, the Turtles, and the Rockets—Plant and See is the strange fruit of disparate people, places, and players in dialogue. Its humid, storm-cloud guitars, ductile vocal harmonies, and intuitive, loose-limbed drumming are redolent of a specifically Southern syncretic musical identity and sense of place, testifying to the outstanding, colorblind musicianship of Lowery, African American drummer Forris Fulford, Latino bassist Ron Seiger, and Scotch-Irish vocalist and songwriter Carol Fitzgerald.

American Indian frontman Willie Lowery grew up in swamp-laced, tri-racial Robeson County, North Carolina, the state’s geographically largest, economically poorest, and most ethnically diverse county. Shaped by his own Lumbee Indian heritage as well as the influence of local African American and European American musical traditions, Lowery’s style developed into a powerful, singularly soulful sound that appealed to contemporary psych-rock audiences while directly addressing the concerns of his own Indian community. Plant and See represents his first major recorded work, following stints playing for the “hootchie-cootchie women” of a traveling carnival and the lite-psych group Corporate Image, as well as serving as Clyde McPhatter’s bandleader.

Plant and See was a short-lived incarnation; White Whale, already on the brink of dissolution, lacked the resources to effectively promote the album, which contravened the standard race, place, and genre-based markets of the day. Shortly after its release, the band regrouped as Lumbee, named in honor of Lowery’s tribe, the most populous East of the Mississippi. Lumbee’s 1970 album Overdose is, like Plant and See, a rare and highly collectable psychedelic classic; it attracted the attention of the Allman Brothers, whom Lumbee joined on tour in the early `70s. However, the mercurial Lowery quickly changed course, exploring ways to use the country, blues, and gospel idioms of his youth to articulate the history, politics, and cultural identity of the Lumbee people."

In an interview with Indian Country Today Media Network, Brendan Greaves of the label added more colour:

"As a label, we’re interested in telling stories of under-recognized musicians, musical artifacts, and communities, so it was critical to have the perspective of family and the Lumbee community to inform and contextualize this reissue...Plant and See was largely unknown except to dedicated psych-rock record collectors, White Whale label fanatics, and Willie’s family and friends. The songs and the artwork are both compelling and unusual, and we were thrilled to have the opportunity to reintroduce and share this remarkable document...The vinyl format pays respect to the original release, sounds better, and showcases the artwork at a proper scale...In my mind, Plant and See and Lumbee weren’t so much seminal or influential — in the grand scheme of things, not many heard them then or now — as they were representative of the best ways Southern music can synthesize various musical traditions and cultural perspectives (American Indian, African American, European American, etc.) into something new and powerful, both strange and strangely familiar."

King of the Delta Blues Singers by Robert Johnson

This album was released in 1961, a compilation of sixteen of Robert Johnson's recordings, thirteen previously unreleased. At the time, when there was a revival of interest in the genre, little detail was known about the lives of bluesmen who had recorded these songs in the 1930s. The back cover was still then a key source of what little information there was available on the featured recording artist. More academic biography and musical analysis than we are used to today. On this album the back cover spent a fair amount of its space just defining what constituted 'country blues'.

 

The notes on the back started:

"Robert Johnson is little, very little more than a name on aging index cards and a few dusty master records in the files of a phonograph company that no longer exists. A country blues singer from the Mississippi Delta that brought forth Son House, Charlie Patton, Bukka White, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson appeared and disappeared, in much the same fashion as a sheet of newspaper twisting and twirling down a dark and windy midnight street."

The album's Wikipedia entry notes the potential unreliability of the information: "At the time of its release very little scholarship had been done on Johnson's life, and the album liner notes contain some inaccuracies and false conclusions, and a speculative portrait of Johnson's personality. As the two surviving portraits of him were discovered a decade later, the cover painting depicts a faceless musician in field clothes."

It is easy see how intoxicating these albums must have been for new listeners, and how important the liner notes became, accurate or not.

Come 1971, a second compilation of recordings was released. With the unearthing of the first known photographs of Johnson still a year away, both back and front covers still had to resort to artistic interpretations. This time depicting the makeshift sessions in San Antonio, Texas in November 1936, recorded in the Gunter Hotel at 205 East Houston Street where the record company had rented Rooms 413 and 414. The former used as the control room while Johnson was playing in the latter.

The cover artwork was produced by Tom Wilson and, on the front, it depicts Johnson playing in Room 414. The back showed what is assumed to be Art Satherly (the record company's recording director) and Don Law (their A&R man) at their recording equipment in Room 413 and with a cable going under the door to Johnson's microphone. With effectively the whole of the 60s between volumes, the back cover had witnessed a material change. No lengthy essay (although still much was unknown about Johnson) and the introduction of some colour. What it did say was hard to argue with though:

"What you hold in your hands is a collection  of 16 songs by the greatest down-home blues singer of all time, Robert Johnson. This, the second volume of "King of the Delta Blues Singers," completes the release of Johnson's total recorded output.

Robert Johnson's influence on contemporary rock is just beginning to be felt. The Stones included one of the tunes from this collection (Love in Vain) on their "Let It Bleed" album....So if  you dig contemporary music, especially the blues, give a listen to Robert Johnson, the original master." (Jon Waxman)

Sources:  Gioia, Ted, 2008. Delta Blues. New York: W W Norton & Company Inc. Dixon, R M W and Godrich, J, 1970. Recording the Blues. London: Studio Vista Limited. http://www.tdblues.com/?p=526. The liner notes for Volume 1 reference The Country Blues by Sam Charters (Rhinehart 1959) and Blues Fell This Morning by Paul Oliver (Cassell, Ltd., 1960) as sources. With thanks to John Seaton.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles

Whilst being one of the most iconic album covers of all time, Sgt. Pepper suffers as a result. The Peter Blake designed image is one to which we are overexposed, arguably to the detriment of the enjoyment the music, or at least the frequency with which we return to it. That's my experience at least. It therefore benefits more than most from flipping over to the reverse side. It reminds us that The Beatles really were as progressive and as important as we are told they are, even if we might tire of their influence at times. They are also important in the history of back covers as they were first major band to print lyrics on the album sleeve (Dylan albums had had selections of his writings on the reverse before, but not his lyrics). That the lyrics were deemed important was noteworthy; 'pop' music was starting to be seen as a culturally significant, studied by academics and fans alike.

The American literary critic and professor of English Richard Poirier wrote, “Learning From the Beatles,” originally published in 1967, a essay on the cultural importance of the album.  As his New York Times obituary notes, the essay "lamented the lack of serious cultural criticism about rock ’n’ roll, it recognized the emergent interaction between “serious” and pop culture and recognized the revolution that the Beatles, their Britishness notwithstanding, had begun to effect in American cultural life."

The fan interpretations were more far fetched, with the back cover thought to hold clues to the (conspiracy) theory that Paul McCartney had in fact been killed in a moped accident in 1966 and had subsequently been replaced by an actor. On the back cover McCartney has his back towards the camera and George Harrison appears to be pointing at the words "Wednesday morning at five o'clock as the day begins", which was supposed to have been the time of Paul's fatal accident.

Three years later, Let It Be was an altogether less colourful affair reflecting the album's 'back-to-basics' approach (less psychedelic and less studio wizardry). The back cover states this in black and white: "they performed live for many of the tracks; in comes warmth and the freshness of a live performance". Although some don't agree that this ethos was necessarily preserved by Phil Spector's production. The cover was designed by John Kosh with photography by Ethan Russell. The individual stark images are in contrast to the band photographs of Sgt Pepper, and as Todd Leopold put it, "Russell's photographs show four men trying to rescue their fading musical marriage." Russell is apparently also the only rock photographer to have shot album covers for The Beatles, The Rolling Stones (Get Yer Ya-Yas Out) and The Who (Who's Next and Quadrophenia).

 

Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul

For our second 'feel' album we could probably have chosen any Stax album. As Otis himself put it in a Rolling Stone interview: "At Stax the rule is: whatever you feel, play it. We cut everything together - horns, rhythm, and vocal. We'll do it three or four times, go back and listen to the results and pick the best one. If somebody doesn't like a line in a song, we'll go back and cut the whole song over. Until last year, we didn't even have a four-track tape recorder. You can't overdub on a one-track machine."

In the end we chose what Keith Richards called, "The album that soothes a broken heart".



It wasn't uncommon for the back cover to act as advertising, imploring the idle browser to buy and take an album home. Back covers weren't shy (because they had the space) to advertise more explicitly, promoting other albums by the artist too. Here they did both, showing covers of his three previous albums; The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads (1965), Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul (1965) and The Soul Album (1966).

As was typical, they tried to talk directly to the potential listener..."This dictionary, created especially for you, is the undeviating vocabulary of its author OTIS REDDING. Searching for something interesting to enjoy? Here...put this album on your turntable and listen to OTIS. If you should hear a word you don't understand, get your OTIS REDDING DICTIONARY OF SOUL and look it up!"

This was no doubt aimed the white audience Otis Redding had started to tap into. Released in October 1966, Dictionary of Soul was his fifth album and the last to be released before his death in December the following year. After the success of Otis Blue, Redding was increasingly attracting a crossover audience and in early 1966 he performed at the famous Whiskey A Go Go club on West Hollywood's Sunset Strip in front of a predominantly white audience, becoming one of the first soul artists to play in the western United States.

It certainly did its job on at least one member of the Stones.

Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim

I have mixed feelings about ‘100 Greatest‘ lists. At best: They can introduce you to new music or make you revisit music you already own but have neglected. At worst: They are unimaginative and lazy lists with the same old albums and artists always featuring (albeit, you may argue, for good reason). I'm still a sucker for them though...

Occasionally you can be surprised. Years ago I saw a list of the 100 ‘coolest’ albums. While the term is about as subjective as they come, quite a number of albums I had never heard of featured. Three stuck in my mind and this was one of them (the other two were No Other by Gene Clark and Pacific Ocean Blue by Dennis Wilson).

The back cover turns out to be by the 'King of Liner Notes', Stan Coryn. This comes from a time (and genre) when liner notes were feted for their literary qualities. For this album Coryn evocatively reports from one of the recording sessions. Among other liner notes, he wrote those for Lee Hazelwood, Dean Martin and Everly Brothers' albums. Even the back cover seems to exude an effortless cool.

The photograph on the back was taken by Ed Thrasher. His NY Times obituary noted his, "work proved integral to the success of many...albums and helped define the look of rock. His overall art direction included commissioning photographers, typographers and illustrators for albums including the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Are You Experienced,” Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks,” the Grateful Dead's “Anthem of the Sun,” the Doobie Brothers’ “Toulouse Street” and even Tiny Tim’s purposely cheesy “God Bless Tiny Tim.” An expressively moody self-portrait of Joni Mitchell appearing on the cover of her 1969 album “Clouds,” also started a small trend for musicians to create the art for their own records."

Buffalo Springfield Again by Buffalo Springfield

Back covers can often allow the band to display their influences and they don't come much more explicit that this. On their second album, released in 1967, Buffalo Springfield listed "friends, enemies and people we don't know from Adam for their influence and inspiration". 

 

Jimmy McDonough's Shakey credits the hand-lettered illustration to Henry Diltz, a musician (he was a founding member of the Modern Folk Quartet) and photographer. He was the official photographer for Woodstock and the Monterey Pop festivals and also co-founded Morrison Hotel Galleries, specialising in fine art music photography. The album itself only credits Eve Babitz for the cover illustration (who also designed album covers for Linda Ronstadt and The Byrds) and album design to Loring Eutemey (who designed many of Atlantic's covers for the likes of Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane).

In a band with strong personalities and individual songwriters (Neil Young, Stephen Stills and Richie Furay), the back cover is careful to list out specific roles, reflecting growing tension within the band and that they were often working separately. It probably also reflects music company desire, post-Beatlemania, to promote the separate personalities of each group member in order to broaden their appeal.

The credits also make apparent the lack of a consistent bass player. The original bass player, Bruce Palmer, was often absent due to drug charges and ultimately deported back to Canada. As Neil Young's hand-written liner notes for Decade, his 1977 compilation album recall: "Mr Soul: recorded by the original Springfield at Atlantic's New York studios after a gig at "Ondine's". Shortly after this Bruce Palmer, bassist, was busted and deported to Canada. Eventually we got him back to U.S. but made many records without him. Broke [Stephen] Stills' heart and mine too that he wasn't on all our records".

The credits for Young's "Mr Soul" note that it is "[r]espectfully dedicated to the ladies of The Whiskey A Go Go and the woman of Hollywood". There has been much debate over the meaning of the song, but this seems to acknowledge that somewhere in there are Young’s frustrations at the price of fame and the hollow female attention that it can engender...maybe.

Get Stoned by The Rolling Stones

A slight cheat this one, as the back cover, bar the track listing, is all but identical to the front. A recent charity shop purchase, it was bought for purely nostalgic reasons. Get Stoned was my first real contact with the Stones, discovered as I leafed through my father's record collection. At the time I can remember not liking the vocals much (out of tune to my young ears) and by being a little alarmed by the rather grotesque mould of Jagger's lips on the front. It has always been fascinating to me how our music tastes change (develop?) and particularly how reactions from early listens can be totally at odds with how we grow to feel about a singer/band/song. I had similar experiences on first listens to Bob Dylan and Neil Young, which I expect are not uncommon.  

 

A few years later, when looking to buy the record myself, I couldn't seem to find it and naively thought the provocative title had led to it being banded for such a brazen drug reference. As it turns out, Get Stoned offered a great intro to the band (up to Sticky Fingers) and has a number of tracks (Dandelion, 2000 Light Years from Home) rarely to appear on their other many compilations.

The Velvet Underground & Nico

This is just an example of a great album, the back cover of which I hadn't given much thought to until I started this blog. Most retellings of the Velvet Underground's debut album major on how poorly it did commercially on initial release and the back cover has a part to play in this story.

The album’s back cover features a photo of the group playing live with an image projected behind them. On the initial pressings the projected image was a still of actor Eric Emerson from a Warhol film, Chelsea Girls. Emerson had been arrested for drug possession and, desperate for money, claimed the still had been included on the album without his permission. The label recalled all copies of the album until the legal problems were settled (by which time the record had lost its modest commercial momentum), and the still was airbrushed out.

Back cover credits: Colour show photo by Hugo. Portraits by Paul Morrissey (director, alongside Andy Warhol, of the film Chelsea Girls).