Saskatchewan 75

I've been mostly underwhelmed by the series (though the Rollins Village Vanguard set was great), but this is a good list. Particularly excited to see Big John Patton, Larry Young and Andrew Hill titles. Hopefully, the latter doesn't have the warbling piano issue that the Black Fire Tone Poet had.

According to Ralph Towner, the band showed up at the photo shoot to find Elvin passed out after a bender. "So, what do they do? They put this picture of the four of us on the cover and put this big smiling picture of Elvin’s face on it like a sticker glued on top with these drumsticks around it. The art director was so bad." Innerviews: Ralph Towner - Unfolding Stories

And some prefer smart phone calculators to slide rules....

This is not the "gotcha" you think it is. Fetishizing original (poor) design choices is not the same. The fact will always remain that they chose to put out archival recordings from an era with classic artwork on the covers in a way that made not the slightest nod toward the era of music it was mining. Did Cuscuna ever say why those covers were used? I always presumed that for a label that was barely an afterthought, they said OK, put out these recordings but we aren't paying shit for the rest of it.