I can recall my introduction to Jimmy Smith, when Babs Gonzales phoned me from New York and blurted: "Hey, Brother 'B', are you hip to this organ playin' cat from Philly, named Jimmy Smith? He's a boss cat on the Hammond Organ." I would have merely listened politely, but when Babs Gonzales invested his hard-earned cash to call from New York, then I knew it was important. I immediately went over to the swingingest record shop in Chicago, the Met, and ear-checked some Jimmy Smith LP.'s.
That's Holmes Daylie, a DJ known to his listeners in Chi-town as "Daddio" Daylie, at the start of his liner notes essay for the Jimmy Smith album Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which also has a charmingly surreal cover of Smith--dapper in his tan trench coat--holding hands with a model in a hyena(?) mask.
These kinds of liner notes--hype, but an erudite kind of hype that respects the reader/listener--seem to have been a fairly common feature to music releases at one time. A sign that the distributors were making an investment of thought as well as money. I've seen this sort of text on old LP covers and a few CD reissues. Outside of best-of collections no one seems to bother anymore. Of course sales of music in physical media have cratered, but the fall-off seems to have preceded the rise of streaming and the web by some time.
2 comments:
You found a great liner note in Holmes Daylie's introduction of that album (very cool picture).
It's interesting to know you've been thinking about the subject as liner notes aren't something I've thought about in ages. I did find an article by a guy who's addressed the issue in some detail. He does note too that distributors were making investments in material they actually liked that went beyond the financial.
Verve seems to have had some nifty covers on their jazz albums, even if they didn't have a house style like Blue Note.
That's a pretty good writeup by Heather McDonald. As she notes there were a few different changes that happened to end the era of liner notes. First CDs offer less space. They have booklets, but only in rare cases are they used for essays or personal reflections. Which may well be because to the larger conglomerates music itself is a small part of the business.
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