Vinyl Hayride: Country Music Album Covers 1947-1989
Vinyl Hayride: Country Music Album Covers 1947-1989
Customer Review: A first in country covers
At last country music fans have their own cover art book. More than 250 are shown, in colour, either one or four to a page in this almost LP size book. Fortunately none of them are angled or overlapping each other. As the covers are arranged chronologically you can see how the big names and some one-hit wonders, were graphically presented by their record companies. Johnny Cash has ten covers from 1956 to 1985, Dolly Parton six from 1967 to 1987, Waylon Jennings six from 1966 to 1985.
Most of the covers before the Seventies follow the usual album design format, bland photo of the artist and some dull coloured typography, though there are some exceptions, for instance Porter Wagoner’s ‘Confessions of a Broken Man’ or ‘Skid Row Joe’. It took until the Seventies to get the whole package considered as one design element, like the Kinky Friedman’s ‘Lasso From El Passo’ (made to look like a Camel cigarette pack) or Dolly Parton’s ‘9 to 5 and Odd Jobs’. The covers shown from the Eighties mostly have well taken expressive photography combined with interesting graphics.
Country fans will enjoy seeing these historical covers, if only to see the ones they owned and possibly regret throwing out years ago. On page sixteen I came across a Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant album, ‘2 Guitars Country Style’, I had in the late Fifties and then junked years later but fortunately re-issued on CD. ‘Vinyl Hayride’ is the same large size as an expanding collection of books devoted to LP cover art and graphic designers will find it worth adding to their reference library.
***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click ‘customer images’ under the cover.
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