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The all-American outdoor girl lends
zest to Contemporary's piano jazz LP.
have at least one LP purchased from an LP record club
or one of those gigantic "we-really-stock-everything"
record stores. In any case, it is incontestable that there
are many more places where records can be bought today.
Most of these outlets, together with many of the
conventional shops, nowadays no longer offer what
once was standard-auditioning booths. Thus we rely
more and more upon reviewer recommendations, radio
and TV programming, plus in-the-store (01' in-the-record-club-brochure)
suggestions to guide our buying
choice. Of these factors, some manufacturers rate the
"sight-impulse" in the store as the commanding influence.
Against that background, and recalling the brilliant
arenas the stores have now become in the war to ensnare
our fancy, a fairly clinical "browse" among current
techniques may arm us somewhat better to resume
our original mission-the search for rewarding experience
in sound.
While the record firms protest that the contents of a
record clearly exceed the cover in importance, who re-
Period prefers the sultry Oriental touch
to showcase its Tchaikovsky concertos.
calls the recent television interview in which one of the
leading popular singers of the day confessed having
spent more time posing for the cover pictures of her
album than doing the actual recording? Here we might
note, in addition to the gradual demise of the record
shop audition booth, the sharp increase in the number
of factory sealed LPs, which cannot be opened for
sample listening, thus make the record cover an even
more crucial sales factor.
That the art of producing attention-getting covers
has been raised to such a high degree of competitive
finesse does not imply much agreement within the
record industry on the subject. A panoramic scanning
of any record store reveals the sharp differences of
attitude between the various companies with respect
to what is considered a good cover "sell." However,
the record cover product as a whole can be broken
down into four or five categories about as follows:
Mood or Atmosphere; Design (mostly "modern"); Personality;
and - inevitably -C heesecake.
"Mood" covers generally depict a good listening con-
The four albums across these two pages illustrate the
problem besetting a company with a very popular artist.
Variations run from cheesecake to personality.
A multi-color abstraction won the Canon Camera contest
for A. M. Baunach. RCA Victor released the album.
Thousands entered this strictly photo contest for best cover.
JULY 1958 19