To sustain the classic Flora
LP tradition of the 1940s and '50s, I've long
advocated restoring his art to record album covers. Aside from
one or
two knockoffs of existing Flora designs, the first new release to adapt Flora non-LP art was
Do This! by
Seattle's Reptet, in 2006. The cover for the forthcoming Raymond Scott Quintet CD
Ectoplasm (scheduled for February 2008 US release) was completed last May. Now comes the Quartet San Francisco's
Whirled Chamber Music, whose cover designed is adapted from a mid-1960s uncirculated Flora painting entitled
Barberinni.
Not coincidentally
{ahem!}, the QSF album contains seven
Raymond Scott compositions (including "Powerhouse"), seeded amid an eclectic mix of
Ellington, AWB, Bernstein, Corea,
Tower of Power, and one original. As quartet leader
Jeremy Cohen asserts, "The tradition of chamber music has taught us to play from our hearts with the highest standards. So when the music says swing, we
swing. When the music says groove, we
groove." Hear them swing and groove
here.
Over the next few months, the QSF will
perform in Los Angeles, Columbus, Pasadena, Louisville, NJ, NYC, Berkeley, Natick, and elsewhere.
Update (September 27): "Scientists working diligently in a laboratory somewhere recently discovered a DNA strand and have identified it as the
Cartoon Gene."
Spanky new from Jim Flora Art LLC and Yee-Haw Industrial Letterpress, Knoxville: three different sets of four unique cards each. The cards are hand-printed letterpress on recycled paper and come bundled with kraft envelopes in a clear sleeve. Fun to mail, funner to receive, but also klassy-kool for framing.
Above: quartet of 1955 hepcats from the "Plant You Now, Dig You Later" set. Below, the "Deluxe-O-Tone" line of retro-record players (1940s- and 1950s-era):
Here's the "Stardust" series (1954 illustrations):
