Goin' on a Vinyl Hayride

I recently treated myself to a book that I know I'll turn to for inspiration again and again. Vinyl Hayride, by Paul Kingsbury, is a fantastic collection of country music album covers spanning the years 1947 through 1989.


How could a book featuring Webb Pierce and all this Nudie goodness on the front cover exist in the world without my owning a copy? Nonsense.

Here's my old pal Hank Thompson in 1953.


Doesn't Carl Smith look fine in his Nudie shirt? The world just lost him a few weeks ago.


The classic "Blood on the Saddle" by Tex Ritter has some fetching cover art, if I do say so.


The Great Jim Flora didn't just do big band and jazz album covers. Here he lends his signature style to Jimmie Driftwood's "The Battle of New Orleans". I'm still keeping an eye out for Flora record covers, but I haven't had much luck.


If I get my hands on whoever made Dolly cry here, I'll kick his ass all the way back to the Blue Ridge Mountains! Dolly's much too beautiful to be sad.


I honestly have no idea who Cliffie Stone is, but I would kill for his boots.


This last one gets me all choked up. When you combine classic country music, big hair, vintage aqua kitchenware, and crafty homemade lettering, well, you might as well just slap my mouth and take my checkbook.*


*I have no idea what this phrase means.

This Is Holly and her Second Jim Flora Album Cover

I found another Flora! You'll never guess where I dug up this little treasure. In my own record collection. Yes, folks, that's right. It's been under my nose this whole time! Mr. Sweetheart unearthed it and was so excited he woke me from a nap yesterday to show me. I remember giving a sleepy thumbs up, and then forgot about the whole thing until this morning, when I had to ask if it had all been a dream. You see, after my last Jim Flora post, a certain Benny Goodman record looked awfully familiar. I became certain that I had had my hands on that wonderful record sleeve before.
I went through a phase where I collected old records simply for the vintage cover art. I had an idea that I would frame and hang them, or craft something with the sleeves after I had melted the vinyl into bowls. Well, a few record bowls later, and after a brief experiment involving covering a dining room wall with record sleeves hung with thumb tacks that I promptly deemed too "college", we had amassed far too many albums that weren't being played and had to clean house. Now Mr. Sweetheart is a very talented musician and songwriter, and, having a great love for any and every kind of music, has become the chief archivist of our large music collection. Twice he has edited our vinyl collection by giving those albums we no longer need to a good home (hello, Nick!), each time with an admonishment from me to please let me look through the rejects first. Well, I never get around to it, and he goes ahead and gives them away, and I never miss them, because, well, I really don't need them. But this time...Well, let's just say I was not happy that I could not find a certain Benny Goodman album. He argued that I didn't like Benny Goodman, and I didn't even know who Jim Flora was five years ago when I bought that record, and I argued that maybe not, but I know fabulous design when I see it, and would never have parted with such a masterpiece of mid century artistic expression by "a post-nuclear Miro", one which "juxtaposes playfulness, absurdity and violence". Okay, so maybe it didn't go down exactly that way, but you get the idea. You can see why he deemed it an important enough find to wake me from my slumber. Neither of us ever thought to check the 45's (it's a double). We both remembered it as an LP. All's well that ends well, and I love my growing little Flora collection. But not as much as I love that man of mine.

I Found a Flora

Remember that GIANT box of records I scored at the estate sale? Guess what. I found an album cover by Jim Flora! Just who is this Jim Flora, you ask? James Flora was a prolific artist and illustrator, best known for his jazz and classical album covers of the late 1940's and the 1950's. I have been an admirer of his work for some time, but only recently had a name to which I could attribute these wild, vibrant, fantastic illustrations that would catch my eye as I ran across them from time to time. His stylized figures are prone to having an extra leg here, a third eye there, or an arm bent far beyond the limits of human anatomy. Since discovering Jim Flora and his art, I've had it in my mind to seek out any and all album covers I could find with that unmistakable beatnik style. These albums can go for big bucks on Ebay, even the less desirable ones fetching upwards of fifty or sixty dollars during a recent search. Now, mine's no Mambo For Cats (one of the most rare and coveted of these covers), hell, it's not even in great shape--the edges of the sleeve are reinforced with yellowed tape, but it's a little piece of affordable artwork by one of my favorite artists. So now the search continues for more of these small treasures hidden in musty cardboard boxes at estate sales and thrift stores. I'll keep you updated! Go check out this great Jim Flora blog by the authors of The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora and The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora, both of which are high on my wish list right now.