During The Last half decade, LP manufacturers did a lot to pep up the product – outside as well as in. They called on top-notch artists and designers to turn out genuinely jazzy jacket art (we reproduced a batch of the better efforts in May 1956) that helped sales to soar. They also turned to a discovery made by the paperback publishers before them: that a seasoning of sex on covers could jack up the sales curve still higher.
Playing a fast game of one-up-womanship, cagey record manufacturers quickly outstripped the paperback boys at their own game – so much so that today's well-stocked record dealer disarmingly displays more nudes than the Louvre. As a matter of piquant fact, several of Playboy's Playmates of the past have put in recent appearances as LP lovelies (June Blair, Dawn Richard, Alice Denham, Jayne Mansfield), with wide-open arms and blouses to match.
Like a lot of paperback art, sexy LP jackets often bear little relationship to what's going on inside. Thus, to illustrate the Mendelssohn Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in A Flat Major, two filmy-gowned fillies are perched atop two pianos. On another LP, Debussy's drowsy little Reflets dans I'Eau carries a fetching photo of a frolicsome femme – sans souci, sans panties. Firmly eschewing any hint of false pretense, another record manufacturer chooses to come straight to the point: he pictures a bare-bottomed blonde lolling in a hammock beneath a no-nonsense I'm in the Nude for Love. Inside, the songs are sweet and syrupy. A Steve Allen disc, Tonight at Midnight, shows off Steve's sugary piano and orchestra, plus a sugary brunette clad in blue moonbeams.
Provocative packaging such as this is employed not simply by the small independent labels, as you might expect. Such solid and conservative giants as Capitol, London and RCA Victor have released a covey of LPs featuring pensive and/or perky pretties – in mostly birthday duds. Bona fide music lovers everywhere seem to love them.
