Ray Charles – Yes Indeed! album art
Contributed by Florian Hardwig on Feb 17th, 2018. Artwork published in
.
Topics▼ |
Formats▼ |
Typefaces▼ |
2 Comments on “Ray Charles – Yes Indeed! album art”
The original cover may follow the 1960s trend of not putting black artists on the covers of their albums, for fear of racist distributors and record stores not covering. This also happened with james brown and shirelles records.
Thanks, Matt. That’s an interesting observation. This sad phenomenon is related to women writers having to choose a male or gender-neutral pen name to increase their marketability, like Andre Norton. If this was indeed the reason to choose a photo of cheering white girls over a portrait of the artist, then it must have been at the instigation of the marketing department, and not the designer. Marvin Israel had no problem with showing photos of black artists, see Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers With Thelonious Monk (1958) or Ray Charles’ self-titled debut album for Atlantic Records from 1957.