Filed Under: "record covers"

To sustain the classic Flora LP tradition of the 1940s and ’50s, I’ve long advocated restoring his art to record album covers. Aside from one or two knockoffs of existing Flora designs, the first new release to adapt Flora non-LP art was Do This! by Seattle’s Reptet, in 2006. The cover for the forthcoming Raymond Scott Quintet CD Ectoplasm (scheduled for February 2008 US release) was completed last May. Now comes the Quartet San Francisco’s…

Jim Flora Art LLC recently sold #100 of the Mambo For Cats limited edition screen print. As originally announced, the first 100 prints (of 200 produced) were sold for $150/ea., with the caveat that prices would be increased as stock was depleted. JFA is now releasing a block of 25 more prints at $175/ea. The 1955 illustration originally appeared on a 12″ x 12″ RCA Victor LP cover, but the print measures an outsized 20″…

In a design sense—and posthumously, anyway. Their professional paths nearly crossed: early in his career, composer-bandleader Raymond Scott recorded for Columbia Records but left the label in 1941, one year before Flora was hired by Columbia’s art department. I’ve long wanted to revive the Flora album cover tradition by adapting his art on new CDs. In 2006, Seattle’s Reptet released Do This!, whose cover was bedecked with a Flora three-eyed monster we call a “triclops.”…

It’s just weird that RCA Victor, releasing a 1955 narrative kiddie record of The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins by Dr. Seuss, would assign cover art to Flora instead of using Ted Geisel’s original figures. Probably a copyright permissions—or lack of them—issue. Still, it’s weird. You’d think the Seuss rights owners who gave RCA permission to use the literary work would object to another artist’s commercial portrayal of the classic illustrations. Flora’s great, but Seuss…

Above is a rare Flora mid-1950s cover. (Granted, not one of his more spectacular illustrations.) We don’t recall where we obtained this lo-res gif, but it’s the only proof we’ve ever seen of this 7″ EP’s existence. We’ve been trawling for it on eBay and thru online rare vinyl dealers for years, with no success. We’d like to own a copy. We don’t care about the condition of the disc—it can be scuffed, gouged, or…

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…

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…

Flora + cats + the mambo = a 1955 record cover that bags beaucoups bucks on eBay and nobody even cares if there’s a disc inside because they aren’t bidding for the music. We can’t sell you copies of this rare LP, but if you’d like a 20″ x 20″ limited edition, numbered, archival, acrylic silk-screen print of this iconic Flora design, click here. If you don’t want it on your wall, but prefer it…