Albums Which Had Modified Artwork or Title

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Given all the discussion that has come about from Blue Note's "Basra" reissue, I got to thinking about CDs and LPs that have been re-titled, had new artwork or both. There are probably hundreds out there. I imagine the most famous is The Beatles "Yesterday and Today" when they originally tried to issue it with a picture of the Fab Four in butcher smocks and chunks of meat. Pretty wild.

Edit: I'll paste the Beatles cover in. Since my link seems to be broken,

I have Jimi Hendrix's "Electric Ladyland" on CD from Germany. When I bought it many years ago, I got it in and it had a bunch of nude women on the cover. This was not the cover I had when this was on vinyl!

The one that caught me off guard was Chet Baker's "The Playboys" which mutated into "Picture of Heath". I almost bought "Picture of Heath" because I thought it was a new reissue.

I wonder how many we could come up with?

Later,

Kevin

Edited February 18, 2005 by Kevin Bresnahan

[Chuck Nessa]

I have Jimi Hendrix's "Electric Ladyland" on CD from Germany. When I bought it many years ago, I got it in and it had a bunch of nude women on the cover. This was not the cover I had when this was on vinyl!

That was the original English cover. A different cover was designed for the US market.

[John B]

The Seattle grunge band Tad released an album called 8-Way Santa, with cover art taken from a photo they found in a thrift store:

(image heavily blurred due to subsequent lawsuit)

One of the people in the photo saw themselves on the cover and sued.

The record was withdrawn and reissued with a very different cover:

[Joe]

I'll see if I can find images, but some cases that come to mind:

Blind Faith

Mom's Apple Pie

The Simon and Garfunkel box set; on the cover, Paul Simon's burning cigarette was airbrushed out

MEET THE RESIDENTS

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Roger Waters, of Pink Floyd fame, put out a solo album in 1984 called "Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking". The cover has since been censored.

Later,

Kevin

[Brandon Burke]

I'm reminded of Negativland's U2 EP from 1991. I was working at a record store at the time and we all found this very funny. A matter of weeks later, we got a letter from SST demading that we cease sales of U2 and send all remaining copies back to the label. So of course we bought the whole lot of them for ourselves. I somehow lost mine over the years. Too bad because it's worth a lot of money now. Anyway, here's some info about it.

The Story...

This disc was released in August, 1991. Two weeks after the release, on 5 September 1991, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on behalf of Island Records and Warner/Chappell Music (the label and publishers of the band U2) against SST Records and Negativland to stop sales of the disc. The recording has two versions of a cover of U2's song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," including an unauthorized sample of the original recording by U2. It was also alleged that the artwork was confusing; that consumers would mistake it for a copy of a U2 recording. The members of the band U2 were not a party to the lawsuit and restraining order, and did not learn about it until after the fact.

The lawsuit resulted in an out-of-court settlement in November, in which the remaining unsold copies, master recordings and mechanical parts for creating more copies were to be destroyed by Island, and the copyrights for the recordings were transfered to Warner/Chappell. According to an accounting at the time, before the court order 6951 copies of U2 had been sold (it has been estimated that about 5300 of these were compact discs, the balance were cassette tapes and 12" vinyl) and 692 promotional copies had been distributed (probably all 12" vinyl). Other than some illegal (and not high-quality) counterfeit copies (CD and 7" vinyl), these remain the only copies of this recording available.

To try to cut a long story down to a manageable length (this is probably the best documented case of its type, due to the band's policy of making the whole process as public as possible), Negativland was later sued by their label SST (regarding who was going to pay the costs of the first case, as well as the band's publishing a book The Letter U and the Number 2 which included documents critical of their label). Negativland was eventually able to get permission from all the original parties involved to allow them to rerelease the recording. However, Casey Kasem (the disc jockey) has refused to let the court injunction be lifted, as the recording includes out-takes from his American Top 40 show in which he curses up a blue streak. The band was able to publish a second version of their book (with information about the second suit) now titled Fair Use: The Story of The Letter U and the Number 2, which includes many source documents, press clippings and legal opinions about this case as well as copyright law in general.

The artwork....

front cover

back cover

[AfricaBrass]

That Negative album is pretty funny; mostly for the Casey Kasem rant. I remember when it was in the stores, but I didn't buy a copy. I ended up making one from my roomate later.

Just in case there are people out there who haven't heard it, here is the transcript of Casey Kasem's rant:

[perky] "Now we're up to our long distance dedication, and this one is about kids and pets, and a situation we can all understand, whether we have kids or pets or neither. It comes from a man in Cincinati Ohio, and here's what he writes.

    'Dear Casey, This may seem to be a strange dedication request, but I am quite sincere and it will mean a lot if you play it. Recently there was a death in our family. He was a little dog named Snuggles, but he was most certainly a part of...' [despondent] let's go...start again"

    "Coming out of the record, play the record, ok. Please..."

    [perky] "That's the letter U and the numeral 2 . The four man band features Adam Clayton on bass, Larry Mullin on drums, Dave Evans, nicknamed The Edge on..."

 

    [angry] "This is bullshit! Nobody cares! These guys are from England, and who gives a shit! It's a lot of wasted names that don't mean diddly shit!!!"

    [seethingly quiet] "Emmm...too many... Come out of those goddamn up-tempo numbers, man, It's impossible to make those transitions. Then you gotta go into somebody dying! [raises voice] Goddamn it if we can't come out of slow records. I don't understand it, Why aren't we doing these instrumentals, too? Do we got 'em?"

    [shouting] "Will somebody find the goddamn answer?"

    "OK"

    [livid] "I want a goddamn concerted effort to come out of a record, that isn't a... a fucking up-tempo record , every time I do a goddamn ...DEATH Dedication! This is the last goddamn time. I want somebody to use his fucking brain to not come out of a goddamn record that is a ... up-tempo,  and I gotta talk about a fucking dog dying!!!"

    [beside himself] "What is this... this is fucking ponderous, man..."

    [perky]"This is American Top 40, right here on the radio you grew up with, Music Radio 138... Oh Fuck!"

I don't blame him for not wanting this album re-released.

[Bill Fenohr]

The Beatles album was a bit more offensive then Kevin makes it sound. Those are doctor coats the Fab Four are wearing and what they are holding are dolls that were made to look like dsmemembered babies.

When Capitol recalled the album, we still had about 200 copies in the store. Being the good capitaists we were, we told Capitol that we had sold out. We then sold the lp "under the counter" for $30 a pop.

Then,at first to make matters worse Capitol just put the new cover on over the old one. It did not take the kids long to figure out you could just steam the new cover off.

[Quincy]

Here's a link to several others.

My favorite bit of weirdness is the cover of The Five Keys Live On Stage.

A penis?

Supposedly on the far left. You know, the hand?

Edited February 18, 2005 by Quincy

[Late]

This one was famously re-done:

[John B]

as was this one, for some bizarre reason:

[JSngry]

Roxy Music - COUNTRY LIFE

What about those BNs that were given new covers by Liberty?

[Jim Dye]

Yeah, Brandon. I still have my copy of U2. I had an extra, sealed in a long box, but I sold it years ago to a friend. I remember snatching up the last 2 copies and telling our distributor that we had sold them. LOL

[John B]

Art Blakey's A Night at Birdland has had three sets of covers:

Edited February 18, 2005 by John B

[Late]

as was this one, for some bizarre reason:

I know ... that's the only occasion when Miles recorded on a "left-handed" trumpet. I had two copies of the original vinyl of this. Sold one for a hand-held calculator about a year ago.

[Joe]

as was this one, for some bizarre reason:

Wow. That brings back memories.

[Jim R]

Pretty broad topic. With all the changes made to individual titles/covers when we entered the digital era, it might make more sense to focus just on changes made to LP's. Anyway, I sometimes use "aka" in my database to denote a change in titles, so I did a search and came up with this (no particular order to this, some are CD/LP, some are newer title/older title, etc):

Lou Donaldson- Lush Life (aka Sweet Slumber)

Chet Baker- Picture Of Heath (aka Playboys)

Ike Quebec- Easy Living (aka "Congo Lament")

Kenny Burrell- It's Getting Dark (aka "Live at the Village Vanguard" on Muse)

Lucky Thompson / Gigi Gryce- Lucky Thompson / Gigi Gryce In Paris (aka "Street Scenes")

Hampton Hawes- Blues For Bud (aka Spanish Steps)

Hampton Hawes- Piano Improvisation (aka Autumn Leaves (In Paris))

Sonny Criss- Sonny Criss Quartet Featuring Wynton Kelly (aka At The Crossroads)

Dexter Gordon / Wardell Gray- Citizen's Bop (aka "The Master Swingers")

Rene' Thomas / Bobby Jaspar- Thomas/Jaspar Quintet (aka "From Rome To Comblain")

[Brandon Burke]

Same session right.....?

[Bill Fenohr]

When they changed to gate fold covers Mainstream changed cover design and in some cases album titles of a number of their 56000 series. Among those that i remember off the top of my head were albums by Maynard Ferguson, Clark Terry, Morgana King and Terry/Brookmeyer.

[WD45]

as was this one, for some bizarre reason:

I know ... that's the only occasion when Miles recorded on a "left-handed" trumpet. I had two copies of the original vinyl of this. Sold one for a hand-held calculator about a year ago.

Isn't his jacket circa 1970 or so, too?

[bertrand]

Going back to Pete Laroca: Turkish Women At The Bath was reissued by Muse as a Chick Corea album called Bliss. LaRoca sued and won.

Bertrand.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

And I recall seeing foreign issues of that album, title translated into Spanish as "Extasis" - still under Corea's name. It used to be a regular find in the bargain bins. I didn't buy that, but I did pick it up as part of a twofer "The Time-Wind Collection" under Corea's name (Netherlands issue). That cover has a photo of Corea mid-late 1970s.

LaRoca was indeed getting screwed over - that album was all over the place and he wasn't getting any recognition, and probably wasn't getting a dime either.

Mike

[brownie]

United Artists had the 1959 Cecil Taylor 'Hard Driving Jazz' LP turn into 'Coltrane Time' when Coltrane became a Name two or three years later!

[Jim R]

There are so many examples of this kind of thing just in the LP era.

Barney Kessel's "Easy Like" had two different covers.

"Monk Plays Ellington" had two different covers.

The Sonny Rollins/Big Brass on Metrojazz got a new look when it came out on Verve.

Kenny Burrell's Argo LP "A Night At The Vanguard" became "Man At Work" on Cadet.

Bill Evans' first Riverside LP had two different covers.

Grant Green's Muse LP "Green Blues" became "Reaching Out" on Black Lion.

The Kenny Dorham Black Lion CD's ("Osmosis" and "West 42nd Street") were originally released on LP's under different leaders.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

The Stereo/Contemporary situation is an interesting case of this kind of thing.

See:

http://www.jazzdiscography.com/Labels/stereo.htm

http://www.jazzdiscography.com/Labels/contemp.htm

There are also other Contemporary albums that had earlier/later titles. These are noted.

Mike