Filed Under: "Columbia Records"

Illustration, Coda, March 1944, for Columbia Records release By the Sleepy Lagoon, by Eric Coates conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra—available on a 12″ platter for the princely price of one buck.

When composer-arranger Bill Finegan passed away last week at the age of 91, a New York Times writer (on the recommendation of a mutual friend and Flora admirer) contacted me for some background on the music legend. I confessed that, in all honesty, I knew less about what Finegan did for Glenn Miller, Nelson Riddle, and Tommy Dorsey than I do about what Jim Flora did for Bill Finegan. Flora gave Finegan two right arms,…

A Tribute to Alex Steinweiss, The Creator of the Album Cover, opens today at the Robert Berman Gallery in Santa Monica. In 1939, during the era of 78 rpm discs, Steinweiss revolutionized how record albums were sold by inventing the illustrated album jacket. At the time he worked for Columbia Records, a struggling label based in Bridgeport, CT. Previously albums were shelved in shops with only the spine lettering exposed. Steinweiss’s vivacious color illustrations inspired…

Detail, March 1943 Columbia-Okeh Popular Recordsmonthly flyer; panel: Harry James

Detail, March 1943 Columbia-Okeh Popular Records monthly flyer panel: Okeh Country Dance, Folk Songs, and Blues

Now, as it did in 1943 when Flora provided this illustration for a Columbia Records magazine ad:The smiley flora has antecedents: Title page, Pip Pap Po, print from woodcut, Little Man Press (Cincinnati), 1940

Detail, 1943 magazine ad for Columbia Records saxophonist Horace Heidt. First line of ad: “Did you ever see a magician pull a gnu out of an old coffee pot?” Merlin knows that the dung of the wildebeest reduces the bean’s natural acidity, resulting in a more savory brew. Just like Kopi Luwak.

Bet your moose can’t toot his own horn! Know why? Three reasons: 1) You didn’t sign him up for lessons;2) Clumsy, cloven hooves—can’t work keys; and,3) He’s not a Floramoose! Detail from December 1942 Columbia-Okeh new release monthly. Complete booklet featured in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora.

The music business is infested with characters who are unpleasant — few more so than Courtney T. Edison, a.k.a. “The Old Codger,” who occasionally hosts radio programs at WFMU. He plays nothing but 78 rpm records—”Like they’re goin’ outta style,” he asserts, with a spray of saliva. The Codge is a nasty piece of work—an ornery, crusty, useless, misanthropic, cigar-chomping anachronism. How old? Allegedly between 116 and—well, at his age they mark birthdays by the…

Year Zero in the Flora Revival was 1992 when Michael Bartalos cold-called the 78-year-old artist to ask about his 1940s and ’50s album cover illustrations, which evoked a mothballed era to the robust, productive retiree. Recalling Mike’s curiosity, Flora later said, “I felt like a fossil that had just been dug up.” Thus began the archaeology, which continues to unearth ancient marvels. The above flashbulb-bleached vignette was snapped at A-D Gallery in June 1943 during…

Another early jazz legend revisited by Flora in his later years was New Orleans trombonist Kid Ory, composer of “Muskrat Ramble.” Among Ory’s bullet points: around 1918 he had the prescience to hire a promising teen trumpeter just starting a music career: Louis Armstrong. Here’s Flora’s classic 1947 Columbia Records 78 rpm album cover: Forty-six years later, Flora portrayed Ory shouldering a musical blowtorch: The above unpublished 1993 pen and ink rendering was actually the…

On one of his earliest album covers for Columbia Records, Flora, with typical anatomical perversity, endowed jazz drummer Gene Krupa with four legs and five arms, the better to swat a Mattel-sized trap set amid a lemon meringue backdrop. Krupa’s face also got a makeover—the red and black checkerboard skin tint was Flora’s way of proclaiming, “I can’t do likeness!” (The cover was featured in The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora.) FF to the early…