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.
It's Saturday night, so how about a party, and who better to play some party tunes than Les Paul? Well, maybe back in the fifties that was true. Judging from the jukebox in this doodle, Les was popular with the teenagers. This festive sketch is from Les Paul And Mary Ford-The Hit Makers! (Capitol T416).
How about a couple of little nautical themed doodles courtesy of Songs Of The Islands Interpreted By Lawrence Welk Featuring Buddy Merrill (Dot DLP 25251, 1959)? Pretty nice, eh? You'll notice that the pirate below is carrying a treasure chest full of Lawrence Welk records. Those were more valuable than grog in certain circles. These doodles are much more interesting than the last time I brought you Lawrence Welk.
Feel like a little Mexican tonight? No not tacos, I mean doodles! This is from David Carroll And His Orchestra-Mexico And 11 Other Great Hits (Mercury SR 60660). Gotta love it.
I wish I could think of something witty to say here. But I'm tired. And my stat counter hasn't worked since this morning around 8. Something else to try and fix...
From the inner sleeve to the Diamond Head Beachcombers LP below, here are some helpful hints from RCA Victor ("The Most Trusted Name In Sound") to give you "many years of trouble-free listening." Starting out above, you can see how to handle your records. You should palm them, like an NBA All-Star would plam a basketball, only without using your fingers. This is especially easy to do when picking the records up from your 6-disc changers that drops the records onto one another from a height of 4 inches.
Next, we see that we should keep the records in their sleeves. Thus they don't get any dust on them. This advice was rendered obsolete a few minutes later with the introduction of the miracle 317X! After that, it was OK to store your records in a chicken coop between plays.
This is still good advice. Always store your records near a water-filled vase. In the event of spillage, the water will help to remove the dust that accumulated if the above step was ignored.
After the water has spilled onto the records, use your socks to clean it off.
And lastly, keep an eye on that needle. It's very valuable, especially since it's larger than the diamond you gave your girlfriend for your engagement. Unless you opted for the cheap osmium needle. In that case, you may as well play this record on your old hand-cranked victrola.
Don't forget, you got some helpful record care tips before (twice)! And if you have eight questions about stereo, you'll find eight answers here. Also, you can Go Stereo here.
What?!? Two doodles in one day? It's like the good old days around here. Gotta strike while the iron is hot, I suppose, and I don't have anything better to do at the moment. This idyllic island scene is from The Diamond Head Beachcombers-Aloha From Hawaii (RCA Victor LSP-2059, 1959). And you even get a tag, Orchids From Hawaii. If the front cover were in better shape, I'd scan that in, too. Interesting shot of Diamond Head, with some long canoes in the water and a Northwest jet in the air, looking suspiciously like a cut-n-paste job, but what do I know about air travel in the fifties?
When you collect records, people often want to give you more. And sometimes the things they give you aren't exactly what you'd buy for yourself. Case in point: During my trip to Ohio, I was given a stack of records that included such hit artists as Herb Albert, The BeeGees and Three Dog Night. Oh, and this rather curious LP. This was the pride of the collection, the record I was guaranteed I didn't already have. Sure enough, they were correct. This is Johnny Bond and The Willis Bros. Featuring The Red River Valley Boys-The Return Of "The Singing Cowboy" (CMH Records CMH-6213, 1977). I bet you don't have it either.
I've been ignoring the fine folks over at Command for my doodles (with the exception of this Christmas doodle, which really isn't a doodle in the strictest sense of the word), but I've decided I need to right that wrong and start getting some of these excellent bits in here. So I'm starting with this great little sketch from an artist known only as Sandy from Pertinent Percussion Cha Cha's Starring Enoch Light And The Light Brigade (Command RS 814 SD, 1960). Those of you familiar with the Command Records label know about the eye-catching cover art they helped the label stand out on record shelves. They all had a certain style about them, looking more like modern art than album covers. The music on the inside was always well recorded, and technically perfect, if not a little dry. Enoch Light was the mastermind behind the label, and he wanted everything to be his way or no way. The record jackets were almost all large gatefolds, and the doodles all seem to be on the inside of those, along with many, many paragraphs of purple prose about the recorded contents. You'd have to read fast to take it all in before the record ended.
I had hoped to bring you some pictures of the damage from hurricane Wilma today, but there really wasn't too much damage around. The worst thing I could find was this sailboat that had been blown aground. Someone is going to have to spend a pretty penny to get her back in the water. As you can see, the sky was back to clear and blue less than twelve hours after Wilma made landfall less than 100 miles south of here. However, the wind was still blowing at better than 20 mph out on the beaches, so it felt like walking in a sandblaster at times. I tried to get a picture of all the sand blowing around, but they didn't come out very well. I did get plenty of sand in my new camera, though.
Here's another critter I stumbled across out on the flats. I don't know if it's a type of jellyfish, or a nudibrach, or what. But that blue color really made it stand out from the mud.
I was out trying to find something to do after the hurricane today, and I happened upon a large mud flat at low tide. So I put on my wetsuit booties and waded into the muck. One of the things I found was this little snail, climbing up the branch of a mangrove tree. There were hundreds of them, a couple on every branch, yet somehow I'd never seen them before. I've got to be more observant...
This is probably my least favorite of all my weekly calendar pictures. I like the idea of it, but the execution is poor. I should have found something else. This was a field in San Antonio, Florida, that had recently been cut for hay, then baled. I don't know why I don't like it. Not enough contrast, perhaps. It's just missing something...
Here's another critter I couaght while I was out and about today. This mama racoon was out prowling for garbage and handouts at South Lido Beach here in Sarasota. I followed her around for quite a while, which she didn't seem to mind. I suppose the racoons in that area are used to people. Someone stopped and warned me about rabies when they saw me following her around. That may be a problem, but I was keeping enough distance from her that I really wasn't worried about it.
Some days I just love my camera. This tight shot of a great blue heron was taken with my 300mm lens, it's handheld and it's sharp. I'm still getting used to having a lens so long I can't get good shots without a tripod. I'm thinking of getting a monopod, but then it's just one more thing to lug around. By the way, the shot above isn't cropped or anything. That's full frame, right out of the camera. There is tons of detail in the original that you probably can't see here, like the color and texture in the feathers. Not bad for a dingy, pre-hurricane day.
OK, I admit it, I've been slacking lately. This is my first post in three days, and my first doodle in over a week. So, sue me. I've been busy prepping for the upcoming Christmas season. Mark it on your calendars now, and come back often. It's going to be a huge blowout around here at Ernie (Not Bert). Trust me on this. In the meantime, here's another delightful dancing doodle from the guy that taught America how to dance. No, not Fred Astaire. I mean Arthur Murray. You saw a doodle from one of his earlier 10" LPs here, but this is from the 12" LP Arthur Murray's Music For Dancing-The Arthur Murray TV Dance Orchestra (RCA Victor LSP-1909, 1958). The rest of the back on this LP shows a number of dance steps, including, rather suprisingly, Rock 'N' Roll! But it's subtitled Swing, then it goes on to say something about The Triple Lindy. So I don't think Elvis and his pelvis had made too big of an impression on Mr. Murray yet.
Another week, another picture from the calendar. This week is a close-up of some flowers in my mother's back yard. Hope ya like 'em.
Where was this LP when I was in college? I slept a lot, but I guess that was all wasted time. This is Learn While You Sleep (Knight Education PLP 06). Could these folks still be in business?
