Filed Under: "instruments"

Cover, Columbia-Okeh Popular Records new release monthly, March 1943. (The sepia tint is an aging artifact.) Flora had designed these foldout booklets — covers and interiors — over the second half of 1942. Columbia appointed Flora art director, succeeding Alex Steinweiss, in late 1943, and he continued illustrating these monthlies through 1944. Three full 1942 spreads were reproduced in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora.

Cover artwork (typography removed) of Sidney Bechet 78 rpm set (Columbia C-173), 1948. Flora had a particular fondness for early New Orleans jazz, especially the recordings of legendary soprano saxophonist/clarinetist Bechet (1897-1959).

Our friend Takashi Okada of Tokyo has become the pre-eminent Floraphile in Japan. Besides being an avid customer of Jim Flora fine art prints, Takashi recently designed the Daisy Holiday CD package, which adapts Flora’s 1947 Green Mansions resort brochure illustration (licensed from the Flora estate). Additional Flora elements appear on the jewel case inlay and in the booklet. Here’s a Tokyo record store display flush with Flora. If you don’t live in that part…

Detail, Green Mansions resort brochure, 1947Full work reproduced in The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora

My article about Flora which appeared in the August 2007 issue of Juxtapoz is now posted at JimFlora.com. Two footnotes:1) Typos and lamentable editorial “improvements” in the print version have been emended;2) Since the Flora works which illustrated the print version are already prominently displayed elsewhere on the site, I substituted new (and in some cases previously uncirculated) images.

Sketches for RCA Victor LP cover, 1955; final design below:

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

Jim Flora Art LLC just launched the latest in our line of upper body haute couture: the Jim Flora “Happy Horns” t-shirt. The illustration—a jazz buff making cozy with a clarinet and sax—originally appeared on a 1942 record shop retail banner showcasing “Columbia Album Favorites.” Our previous shirts were digitally printed. The “Horn Buddies” shirt is our first silk-screened piece of fashionwear. We also modified a previous shirt: the “Hot Notes” design (featuring a 1941…

untitled illustration, business card, 1950s

Almost. The Flora pretzel-ized trumpet that graces the cover of this rare RCA Victor Living Stereo “cartridge magazine” originally appeared in 1958 on the back cover of the LP Portrait of Shorty Rogers. The illustration was recycled by RCA Victor’s art department on this 1960 Esquivel package, whose format was the (failed) forerunner of the cassette. The LP version of this classic album by the Mexican maestro had a completely different photographic cover. RCA also…

Holly of Sweetheartville, a self-described “bitch kitty on wheels,” finds a vintage Flora cover in—well, you’ll never guess where. She also observes that “covering a dining room wall with record sleeves hung with thumb tacks [is] too college.” Perhaps decoratistas can agree on a Flora exemption. UPDATE (02 MAY 07): Mr. Hall wonders if we’re “making fun of [Mrs. Hall] in some way.” No way!

‘Tis the season to Pete Jolly! A new silk-screen print has been introduced to our growing line of iconic Jim Flora merch—the artist’s swirly 1955 RCA Victor EP cover for the Pete Jolly Duo. This sleeve rarely turns up on eBay, and Floraphiles have been known to liquidate 401(k)’s to own battered copies. We don’t know much about pianist Jolly or his bassist, but apparently they couldn’t quit bopping long enough to sit still for…