Post #493055 by bigbrotiki on Tue, Nov 10, 2009 9:33 AM

Indeed he is! And I was just looking at those fishes from Black Coral when I was searching for clip art for my CD booklet! I have always admired back cover art, and a little found its way into the BOT. I have never seen that amazing mystery girl back cover art from Hawaii Calls! Though I used the cover in Tiki Modern, I have a sales display copy of it, with a pop up Santa Claus and fold out stand in the back.
The master of clip art use is definitely Beachbum Berry, who must have made use of ALL Poly pop clip art out there (plus some amazing, matching original art by Kevin Kidney) in his three recipe books- but, just like in my case, he was looking for more clear line art, with less gray tones. So we went to find it in vintage books, (recipe books especially), insides of match covers, menus, and brochures- sometimes even backs of postcards:

Trader Vic's brochure

Old book -These two made it into my CD booklet

...BUT to include all these other sources here would blow this thread out of proportion, so back to LP Back Cover Art:

Here are two I used from the back of Milt Raskin's "KAPU" album:

Now these were obviously clipped from somewhere else and are simple line art. What Sabu is praising and asking about is more elaborate illustrative art, like this fantastic scene, from Yma Sumac's "Legend of the Jivaro":

The modern city exists right next to the head hunters in the jungle!:

I think that back in the day record companies had whole departments of graphic artists on staff that got paid to crank out this commercial art, it was throwaway stuff of which I doubt any originals were kept. Nowadays no one would wanna pay for such luxury --another good example for that loss of artistry are the elaborate matchbooks of the times.

Sabu, now you inspired me to find more such art --though there is very little left, your post 'covered' the best out there! :)
And I promise I will stick to LP art only.