We ran across these CDs and thought they’d be an interesting share. The covers are sloppily Photoshopped, but we certainly can’t fault the choice of models. Some are semi-famous actresses, such as Claire Gordon, just below, and others are pin-ups. Most of the photos were borrowed from the British cinema magazine Picturegoer, which was published from 1921 to 1960. We haven’t featured that magazine yet, but we’ve a mind to buy a few because they’re widely available online. As far as the music here goes, each CD is a compilation of twenty-five or thirty 1950s pop songs, but we haven’t heard them, so we can’t comment on the quality. Sloppy cover work often hints at hastily compiled music, and perhaps substandard sonic quality, but you never know. Anyway, we have fifteen scans total, with Julie Glenville, Sheree Winton, Barbara Joyce and more.

When we saw this 7-inch gatefold over at Harakiri Chamber scanned and posted in two pieces we couldn’t resist Photoshopping it into one. It’s got Meiko Kaji, and if you’ve watched her movies you know it was her enemies who wound up in two pieces, not her. Anyway, Kaji is attired here for her role as Akemi Tachibana in Kaidan nobori ryu, aka The Tattooed Swordswoman. We took a close look at that movie back in October. You get two Kaji songs here—the a-side “Jingi Komoriuta,” which was featured on the soundtracks of Kaidan nobori ryu as well as 1971’s Ginchô wataridori, and the b-side, which is entitled “Koi ni Inochi wo.” This 1970 pressing is very rare and costs the equivalent of $100, which is quite a sum to drop on two tunes. But if you’re curious you can listen to the first one here and the second one here.

The Japanese weren’t the only ones who produced amazing 45 sleeves for James Bond music. Above you see art for Shirley Bassey’s Bond theme “Goldfinger,” released by Columbia Records and EMI in Italy in 1965, with Sean Connery and gold plated Shirley Eaton caught during a moment between takes on the set. In Italy the movie was called Agente 007, Missione Goldfinger, which is why the title on the reverse differs from the front. Check out those Japanese Bond sleeves here.

Above and below are the front and rear sleeves of four Japanese soundtrack pressings for the 1960s James Bond films Thunderball, From Russia with Love, You Only Live Twice, and Goldfinger. The themes were sung by Tom Jones, Matt Munro, Nancy Sinatra, and Shirley Bassey respectively, and pictured along with Sean Connery you see Bond beauties Claudine Auger and Shirley Eaton. Ms. Eaton, as wrong-place wrong-time Jill Masterson, had the dubious honor of being suffocated under a coating of gold paint, certainly one of the most infamous deaths of any Bond femme. We think these sleeves are great, and if you agree and want to see a lot more excellent 007 soundtrack art, check our previous posts here, here, and especially here.

 

Here's something wonderful we found on our recent U.S. trip. It's a 1929 woodcut print promoting Harlem's famous Cotton Club. You probably know the Cotton Club was one of America's most prominent speakeasies, if that isn't an oxymoron, and that it hosted some of the greatest jazz luminaries of the age, including Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, George Gershwin, and many others. The place was mob owned, specifically by England-born gangster Owney Madden. If stories about the sheer wildness of the Cotton Club are true, this print certainly captures its spirit. The artist here is E.M. Washington, who was quite well known for his woodcuts, and whose surviving original work goes for a fortune. This particular item is a reprint, which put it well within our price range.

Above is the front cover of a Japanese sonosheet, which is basically a thin, flexible record, housed in a booklet of colorful art, and usually dealing with popular shows of the 1960s and 1970s. This one is for Batman, obviously, and like most sonosheets it features theme music. At least, we assume so. We're digital people, so we aren't sure what's on this, exactly, since our last turntable went to the Goodwill in 1998 along with some Teva sandals and a stinky old money belt. We don't miss latter two items, but we wouldn't mind having the turntable back. Anyway, the art on this is kind of interesting, so we thought we'd post it even if we can't listen to it. It was painted by I. Hiroyazu, whose name is new to us.

And speaking of vintage technology, our internet junta has just told us they never recieved our fax for a new line (can you believe they still do shit by fax here?). We've called every other day for two weeks to make sure they got it, and been told they wouldn't know for fifteen working days because it's not their department. Time was up yesterday, and quelle fucking surprise, they say they never got the fax, even though we have a fax reciept. So they lost or tossed the fax, reciepts are basically just scrap paper, and we're back to square one—we have to send a fax and wait fifteen working days.

Not to go on a rant, but streamlined telecommunications is a big help in stabilizing a struggling country's GDP. After all, even if people who actually live here have no choice about these matters, people who do business internationally cartainly have the option not to choose certain countries. We're not going to say outright where we are, or what company we're dealing with, because, well, you know how those things go. But for those who know where we're located, we'll just say that, yes, there is so much about this country that is wonderful and which we'd never give up (the people, the wine, the festivals, the food), but when it comes to efficiency and service in telecommunications—no contest. The Yanks beat this place like a maid beats a dusty rug. Sonosheet scans below.

We mentioned Romanian-Tatar dancer Nejla Ates yesterday, and commented on her appearances on numerous bellydancing album sleeves. Well, above are five of those with Ates as the model. At the height of her fame, she danced in some of the most famous clubs in the U.S., and at one point, to promote her role in the 1954 Broadway production Fanny, producer David Merrick commissioned a nude statue of her and had it clandestinely installed in New York City’s Central Park. The statue didn’t last long, but the publicity helped Fanny run for 888 performances. Ates eventually returned to Istanbul, where she died of cancer in either 2005 (if you believe most sources) or 1995 (if you believe her husband’s detailed account). Below are three shots of her in her prime performing at the NYC nightclub Latin Quarter in 1953. If you want to see her in actual motion, her short dance from 1955’s Son of Sinbad is here, and there’s more of her in yesterday’s post. 

We ran across a rare, Japanese-issued James Bond theme song collection and decided to steal a few photos because inside was this brilliant poster of George Lazenby by Frank McCarthy. Lazenby took over the Bond role for 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in which the character got married only to see his new wife gunned down at film’s end. We’ve been involved in some spirited debates about where Lazenby fits in the Bond pantheon—some of his defenders even say he was the best Bond. We wouldn’t go that far, but he did have one of the best theme songs, Louis Armstrong’s “We Have All the Time in the World,” which opens this compilation. Ironically, Lazenby didn’t have much time—United Artists booted him out of the Bond role the next year when Sean Connery returned to film Diamonds Are Forever. If you haven’t seen On Her Majesty’s Secret Service we recommend it. And you can listen to “We Have All the Time in the World” here. 

American jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie plays at the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, Rhode Island, during the summer of 1964. We found this shot in an old copy of the Spanish culture magazine Triunfo. 

We came across this shot of Frank Sinatra waiting for a train and it really struck us. We didn’t know the photographer, year or place, but there’s this thing called the internet and it has a lot of information on it. Soon we found that the photog was a Frenchman named Luc Fournol, and not long afterward we identified the time as June 1958. As for the place, we’d assumed Spain because of the architecture, but apparently this is the Monte Carlo train station. Sinatra was in town to perform at the famed Sporting Club, and that concert produced another iconic photo, which you see below. And what the hell, just to be completist about it, if you want to hear the concert, which is of course great, it’s downloadable here.