Album Cover Fails from Budget Labels

[Rooster_Ties]

1 hour ago, Dan Gould said:

Yet it seems like these must have vinyl counterparts (maybe rarer still) given the license date of 1975. Where are  those?

There was also a Lee Morgan too, now that I’m thinking of it.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

4 hours ago, Rooster_Ties said:

What about those all those Japanese(!) Blue Note cheapos with the generic blue and white covers (maybe a little black in there too). I want to say they all said “Best Selection” or something similar — but the weren’t compilations, but rather full albums, in GREAT sound quality too (iirc) — or at least LIGHT YEARS better than the Applause CD issues of similar Blue Note stuff.

I had an Ornette one (maybe one or both of the Golden Circles?), and Jackie McClean too (maybe one of the pianoless titles with Grachan Moncur and Bobby Hutcherson?).  Maybe a couple more, I can’t remember.  Circa early 90’s, iirc. I only ever saw them at Euclid Records and/or Vintage Vinyl in St. Louis.

Anybody else remember these??  Not that the cover art was ‘bad’ — it was just generic, and all the same for every album — except the text. Might not have even had tray-card inserts, iirc. But the sound quality was damn good, pretty similar to full-blown TOCJ’s, iirc.

Anybody?  Were these legit?  I know the Applause were supposedly legit, at least on LP and cassettes (then subject to a later lawsuit in the CD era, which BN somehow won and got Applause shut down from issuing more CD’s) — iirc.

But no idea about the origin and legal status of the Japanese “Best Selection” BN titles. Always wondered about them, especially given the sound quality.

Was this one of them??

https://www.amazon.com/Ornette-Coleman-Trio-Best-Selection/dp/B000OV33CW

Edit: I seem to remember one of the other titles I had in this cheap series was a Blue Mitchel BN (maybe the one (or one of the ones?) with Joe Henderson?)

Forgot to mention I rarely paid more than $7-$8 for them back then, iirc.

 

Here’s Joe Henderson’s Our Thing…

https://m.bonanza.com/listings/our-thing-best-selection-by-joe-henderson-cd-jazz-master-series/1163446999?goog_pla=1&gpid=293946777986&keyword=&goog_pla=1&pos=&ad_type=pla&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI4peOq4ai9AIVGPrICh2_HgqqEAQYASABEgJEKfD_BwE

or here too..

https://www.ebay.com/itm/203295065228#vi__app-cvip-panel
 

Duke Pearson…

https://www.ebay.com/itm/164907796743

Wow - great memory! I had quite a few of those CDs... I remember buying them at the big Boston Tower Records thinking that they were from some weird Japanese reissue series. I was talking to Cuscuna about them and learned that they were boots so I dumped them all pretty quickly. I seem to remember a Blue Mitchell one but no listing in discogs. The discogs listing for that label seems to show that some of these CDs had real covers: https://www.discogs.com/label/413163-Echo-Industry-Co-Ltd

 

Amazon actually lists Blue Mitchell's The Thing To Do (Best Selection) as a download. I think that's the one I was thinking of: https://www.amazon.com/Thing-Do-Best-Selection/dp/B00865KZHO

BTW - these Best Selection CDs were really cheap and were usually in a sort of "cut-out bin" or no name PD sales section.

[jazzcorner]

6 hours ago, JSngry said:

Applause was a subsidiary of Liberty/Capitol, the company that then owned Blue Note.

Down there in the lowest right, really fine print.

Thanks for the Info.

I have the Four Freshmen Applause edition " Voices in Love".

It shows the original  CAPITOL cover art. So no complaints from here.

 

Edited November 18, 2021 by jazzcorner
more scans

[Big Beat Steve]

Interesting topic (that I so far had missed).

Reissue cover botchings of original-release cover artworks must have been numerous through the 60s, 70s and possibly 80s. I am not quite sure, though, where to draw the line between REAL budget labels and just mid-price (or at least well-distributed and therefore omnipresent) reissue labels compared to the original labels or FACSIMILE reissues.

A case in point that has bugged me many times: Many of the 80s AFFINITY jazz reissues of 50s/60s jazz LPs (many of which that originally appeared on Bethlehem). Strangely enough they often did reuse the original artwork for their reissues of Capitol LPs. Makes you wonder why ...

Another case: No idea if Stan Kenton's "Creative World" label was a "budget" label but at least he did secure the rights to reissue his old Capitol LPs with the original contents and titles. I have many of them but their rather generic and out-of-style covers of course are a letdown compared to the originals. But then this one ...

... is about as bad as it could possibly get. 
Quite a turnoff compared to the original one.

 

OTOH, MANY reissues by the ORIGINAL labels (particularly in the 70s) were just as inept, careless, unimaginative or just plain cheap. And they have no valid excuse, contrary to the budget labels. 

 

 

[mikeweil]

There was a German label Happy Bird reissuing Muse LPs (who were not really world champion of great covers) with generic design:

[Rooster_Ties]

2 hours ago, mikeweil said:

There was a German label Happy Bird reissuing Muse LPs (who were not really world champion of great covers) with generic design:

Perhaps a little generic, but those are all reasonably nice! — well, most of them anyway. Honesty, many of those are nicer than some other original Muse covers I’ve seen (assuming what I was seeing were in fact the original Muse cover designs).

[HutchFan]

Rooster,

I think that Kenny Burrell's Live at the Village Vanguard (pictured above) is one of the very best Muse covers!  And the Happy Bird cover is just ... generic as could be.  Totally nondescript.

Muse had some REALLY BAD covers.  No doubt about it.  ... But THAT KB cover ain't one of them -- at least from my point of view.  I think it's terrific.  Font, photo, everything. 

FWIW.

 

Edited November 22, 2021 by HutchFan