In 1938, a 23-year-old graphic designer named Alex Steinweiss was hired as the first-ever art director for Columbia Records in New York. He was assigned a project: to help promote a new release by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. They were famous not only for writing more than 500 songs since 1919 but also for creating 28 stage musicals for Broadway audiences and beyond.
In those days, all music came on 10-inch, 78 RPM discs. If you had a collection like the one Alex was assigned, perhaps a dozen of those individual discs were packaged together in what looked like a bound book with paperboard covers. Inside were sleeves for each of the records—kind of like what you’d have in a photo album for individual pictures.
But this wasn’t a “photograph album”—it was an album for “records.” And this is where the term “phonograph album” or “record album” came from. The first company to create such bundles of records was Odeon, a German company, in 1909. For the next 30 years, all records were sold in pretty plain paper sleeves, maybe with a little bit of text on them. Phonograph albums were also pretty anonymous—just plain paperboard bindings.
Anyway, back to Alex, who had just been hired as Columbia’s first-ever art director. The label needed this “phonograph album” to be a hit with consumers. “How can we get people to pay attention to this release and sell as many copies as possible?”
Alex was hit by inspiration. He and a photographer went down to the Imperial Theatre in the theatre district and convinced the owner to let them play with the marquee on the street. He changed the sign to read, “Columbia Records… Imperial Orchestra under Richard Rodgers… Smash Song Hits by Rodgers and Hart.” The sign was lit up, and they took a picture.
That photo was used for the cover of the phonograph album—and that was the first-ever album cover artwork. Because it helped the album sell extremely well, other labels started adorning their albums (and even individual records) with photos and other art.
A whole new industry was created. Not that long ago, there were design studios around the world dedicated to creating album artwork.
The profession took a hit when the 12-by-12 palette of the vinyl album shrunk down to the 6-by-6 space of a CD. Then it took even more hits as we moved to digital files and streaming. But now that vinyl is back, so is the interest in album artwork.
With that in mind, this is part two of a show that looks at some of the most iconic-looking albums in history—along with some of the secret stories they contain.
Songs heard on this show:
- Oasis, Rock’n’Roll Star
- Korn, Blind
- The Cranberries, Linger
- Rage Against the Machine, Bulls on Parade
- Godsmack, Voodoo
- Blink-182, What’s My Age Again?
- The Strokes, Last Nite
- Audioslave, Cochise
- Killers, When You Were Young
Here’s the playlist courtesy Eric Wilhite.
The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on these stations. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4XWBfwcblEEeYTJ3X8X6td?si=tXTL2tpIS4KWlJfvvFydrQ&pi=BFejSOSPQ1OG8Don’t forget that there’s a podcast version, too, in case you miss any episodes. Get them for free wherever you get your podcasts.
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