I haven't brought you a doodle from a kiddie record in a while, so here's one for you. 50 All-Time Kiddie Favorites (Playhour Records TB-4) is a set of 12(!) 45RPM records, and this doodle is on the back of the box they came in. Pretty cool looking dragon I think. The signature in the lower right is Daniel, and the same artist did a paper cutout collage on the front.
According to Blogger, this is my 500th post! Hard to believe, but true. And since I don't have anything better to post, here's the sunset from this evening. Not the best sunset ever, but nice.
Here's a rare doodle from the fine folks over at Columbia. I don't know why, but they didn't put out as many of these doodles as most of the other major labels, or at least not as many that I've been able to find. This wonderfully stylized band shot is from The Brothers Four-The Brothers Four (Columbia CS 8197), their very first album. And the artist is someone we've heard from before, Bolognese, thought there's still no info out there that I can find.
I was lucky enough to catch my cat in mid-yawn again tonight. It's a wonder she was able to get her mouth closed again as this massive yawn surely dislocated her jaw. You saw her yawning once before, and earlier this week I showed you a reddish egret in a rather gross yawn. Must be something in the air...
Hooray! I reached 10,000 page loads today! It's a big deal for me, since this isn't exactly a porn site. Keep those folks comin' on in! In no way tied to this auspicious acheivement is a doodle from Alley Cat-Green Onions-Bill Justis Plays 12 Big Instrumental Hits (Smash MGS 27021). It just happened that I found this at the store today. I don't have any idea what this LP has to do with the college scene, but someone must have thought it appropriate.
There's a small pot of cactii out front where I work, and those things just grow and grow without any care at all. And now one of them is blooming. The little flowers you see are about 3/8" across, and the whole cactus is less than 3" in diameter. If you look close, you can see the different types of spines that densely cover the body. This isn't quite as attractive as the previous blooming cactus I shared with you, but I have high hopes.
Here's a doodle from one of those recurring doodle artists I know nothing about, Jo Grey II. This is from the flip side to The Melachrino Strings And Orchestra-More Music For Relaxation (RCA Victor LPM-2278, 1961). This is the fourth time you've seen Jo Grey on a doodle. You can see the earlier ones here, here and here. Not suprisingly, all of those appearances were on the RCA label, so perhaps Jo was a staff artist there. If you're still out there, Jo, we appreciate your work and would love to hear from you.
This record player & changer appears on the flipside of Just For Variety Vol. 3 (Capitol T946), a various artists collection of hip artists from the early sixties. Some of the names on here are Dean Martin, Les Baxter, Billy May, Nat King Cole, Stan Kenton, Les Paul & Mary Ford, The Four Freshmen, and a few second stringers. I'm not sure this really qualifies as a doodle, but I like it. It's probably one of the roughest pieces of art I've scanned and shared. Don't look too closely at it, you'll see what poor shape it's in, and I didn't do a wonderful job of restoring it. Many of the techniques I've learned over the past month didn't really help me here, so it was a lot of manual erasing and copying. But it's a nice little piece of art. I hope you enjoy it.
This shot is of the beach up at Fort DeSoto on Mullet Key in Pinellas County, Florida. This area is consistently voted as one of the top beaches in the country, often outranking beaches in Hawaii and Rhode Island.
This type of doodle is my favorite, and the reason I started posting doodles in the first place. A nice intricate detailed line drawing that adds something of interest to the whole package. This is from Hugo Winterhalter Goes... Continental (RCA Victor LSP-2482, 1962), and is signed RR, a set of initials that has turned up before (twice!). It's always cool when I find a great doodle like this in the store. It's a rare treat, and a welcome change from the usual copies of Thriller and Hotel California.
In the previous post, I shared a scan from a 78 RPM record sleeve, and here's a doodle from another sleeve of the same era. From Capitol Records in the early 1950's, these dancers were on the side of the sleeve entitled "Albums Designed For Dancing". Some of the albums listed include Big Band Bash by Billy May and His Orchestra, Houseparty Hop by Ray Anthony and His Orchestra, Mambo At The Mocambo by Chuy Reyes and His Orchestra, along with six LPs from the folks at Arthur Murray! The flip side to the sleeve is titled "Albums Of Unusual Interest", and features listings for records such as Top Banana by Phil Silvers, Legend Of The Sun Virgin and Voice Of The Xtabay by Yma Sumac, New Sound Volume II by Les Paul & Mary Ford, and Le Sacre du Savage and Music Out Of The Moon by Les Baxter. Unusual interest, indeed! Oddly enough, many of these releases are listed as being available on either 78, 33-1/3 or 45 RPM records. Unfortunately, I didn't get any of the records listed above. The sleeve came to me with a Doris Day record from Columbia in it. Ten Thousand Four Hundred Thirty Two Sheep from "The West Point Story". And it's a foxtrot!
From an unlikely time in recent history comes this 78 RPM record sleeve. On the left is an advertisement for Yma Sumac-The Voice Of The Xtabay, a classic of exotica, and on the right, an ad for Arthur Murray's Music For Dancing. A very curious combination. But if you stop and think about it these two do have some common ground. Yma's LP was produced and in many ways created by Les Baxter, and Les Baxter led the orchestra on many of the Arthur Murray LPs. So there you have it. Maybe it's not as far out there as you first imagined. For the curious, the 10" 78 RPM record in this sleeve was something by Dean Martin on Capitol. But it was broken in two places, so I just bought the sleeve.
I love doodles of musical instruments, and these fanciful instruments are really, really out there. From the LP An Evening With PDQ Bach-Peter Schickle Town Hall Concert (Vanguard VSD-79195, 1965), these doodles represent some of the fanciful instruments used by the fanciful Mr. Bach. I never did get the whole joke with PDQ Bach. I suppose I'm not highbrow enough. Oh, well. These doodles are all signed by Jules Maidoff, who appears to have done a lot of album design before he ran off and became a serious artist. The doodles are all named, by the way. The one up top is The Hardart, the one below is The Double Reed Slide Music Stand, and the one at the bottom is The Left-Handed Sewer Flute. There are some more, similar musical instruments on the cover, so if you're interested in such things, by all means track this release down.
Here's a slightly holy doodle to offset all the rampant devil worship going on out there tonight. Well, maybe not, but here's the doodle anyway. This is from The Roger Wagner Chorale-House Of The Lord (Capitol P8365), and is a take off from an actual photograph of a similar scene on the front cover.
If you're bobbing for apples this Halloween night, don't forget to share. The furry little creatures will thank you.
I suppose if you shoot long enough and hard enough, you're bound to catch a bird in mid-yawn. But I never expected this!
You know how I love my doodles around here, so imagine my suprise when I turned over an LP by Xavier Cugat, and found this picture of him sketching a doodle of himself! I previously brought you a self-sketched doodle of Xavier here, but I don't think it's the same doodle you can see him drawing in this picture. I'll have to keep hunting for that one. This photo is from the flip side of Cugat's Favorites (Mercury MG 20065).
I thought this was a pretty neat shot. It's waves washing up on the beach, but shot with a really long lens, so everything is greatly foreshortened, and the foreground and background are really out-of-focus. The foreground is especially cool to me, because it gets that sparkly look to it, from the light reflecting off the grains of sand. Maybe I'm just easily ammused...
You might think this is somebody's escaped pet, but it's not. These guys grow wild around here. They aren't native, but they've formed a stable wild population over the years from various escapees and releases. This is a Quaker Parrot, and I shot him in a sea grape tree out on Nokomis Beach near the North Jetty. There was a whole flock of them in the tree eating the sea grapes and making a racket. Only rarely would one come out into the sun where I could get a picture, and this is the best one I got. I wish he had a little better light on his face, but in this case I have to take what I can get.
I promised more doodles from the Command back catalog, and I intend to make good on that promise. Here are some musical instruments from Terry Snyder And The All Stars-Persuasive Persussion Volume 2 (Command RS 808SD, 1959). I'm sure these are but a small sample of the many instruments that go into making an LP when Enoch Light is around.
We had a Mexican doodle yesterday, so how about a Spanish doodle tonight? This is from Carlos Montoya And His Guitar With Rhythm Accompaniment-From St. Louis To Seville (RCA Victor LPM-1986, 1959). The doodle is signed Andrea. And from the front of the LP, we get the tag "Flamenco With Jazz". Not a bad find.
Do not adjust your set, it's supposed to look like that. This week's calendar picture is a rock under water. I think I took this from on the causeway on the soutside of the Sunshine Skyway. I liked the orange rock and the green seaweed. The water being nice and clear that day didn't hurt anything either.
