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Ugliest Album Covers


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With a line-up of Dave Burrell, William Parker and Sunny Murray, this is the best they can do with the cover art? When I first saw this CD, I almost made the mistake of thinking that it was some cheesy beach party album. Good thing I looked at twice and bought it because its actually really really good.

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Nothing new under the sun there, Shawn! :D

Take any number of 70s or 80s reissue LP's of 50s (or even earlier) music and what will you see? Early 50s Baker-Mulligan quartets endorsed by a bearded, long-haired viking (guess who? :D :D), any number of swing or mainstream musicians that looked well past the visual sell-by date compared to the music that predated the cover pics by at least 30 years, etc. etc. There was a French RCA reissue series (the one with the red and white spine) that was particularly bad in this respect.

Too bad in many cases they are clearly doing the musicians a big disservice as this kind of cover will not even reinforce their position as "elder statesmen of jazz" (which may have been their original intention - if any thinking went into the artwork at all). Picked up the "Hi Ho Trailus Boot Whip" reissue of Anita O'Day's 1947 Signature recordings on the Bob Thiele reissue label the other day. My, that pic of her in that garish 70s garb sure is not all that flattering ....

It's really odd why the reisue labels went to such great efforts to modernize covers for such a long time yet ended up with such clumsy results that are totally out of tune (literally...) with the musical contents ...

There can really be no excuse for this abomination.

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Ugly, incongruous... and back to front!

This is a pet peeve of mine. I mean, WTF, it isn't as if the album in question was obscure!! You could make a good case for this being the most famous jazz album of all time, and they can't be bothered to dig up the original cover? The corporate love for jazz boggles the mind.

They couldn't even bother to dig up the original master tape for that one, as I recall.

Fucking shameless.

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Someone tired of all those covers featuring preternaturally attractive fembots was shooting for a more natural beauty with this cover , but missed the mark and landed in uglyville .

GeneAmmonsonMoodsville.jpg

Is that K.D. Lang?

It's Patti Smith, in her dreams...

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