Saturday, January 26, 2008

This Is Benny Goodman

Sketches for RCA Victor LP cover, 1955; final design below:

5 comments:

pussman and co said...

waw I jut discovered the art of jim Flora and I love it. I'm glad I did and I will link this blog!

Bye and I wish this blog a lot of visitors!!

Ernie said...

My warped sense of humour almost makes me wish we'd wound up with Benny on the phone. That would have been much funnier. And I love how he mocked up the whole thing, RCA Victor logo and all. They should have gone with his hand-lettering, too.

Irwin Chusid said...

Ern: They didn't just reject Flora's hand-lettering (and the phone figure)—RCA rejected his first cover idea altogether! The cover posted above was Flora's 2nd attempt. The near-completed draft of illustration #1 appears in The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora, and it is far superior. We suspect it was rejected because it depicts BG in the shape of a giant phallus.

neryl said...

It's so awesome to see the initial spazzy little pencil roughs...cool

Unknown said...

Jim Flora ist great. There a Pearl Jam tour poster that looks very similar. The trumpet player becomes the singer, even the pattern is the same. I posted the two posters on my blog at http://www.motmotshop.com/blog