Though not as well known today as his musical peers, trumpet player Jonah Jones honed his chops with Cab Calloway before moving toward popular jazz in the tradition of his inspration, Louis Armstrong. These sleeves came from Capitol Records, both in 1958, when Jones was rising to popularity arranging short versions of popular jazz and swing tunes, often from motion pictures and Broadway, such as his hit treatment of “On the Street Where You Live,” from the stage version of My Fair Lady. The short format made the platters brief—only twenty-six and twenty-seven minutes respectively.
However, we posted these records because of the models. We’ve seen the sleeves around over the years and always marveled at this pair. With their hair-dos that look casual but took forever to get just right, and their chic pants, they reside in the stratosphere of cool. In fact, they’re so cool it’s possible there were never any other women like them. We’ve seen a lot of 1958 movies but never anyone that looked like these two characters. But that’s fine. They’re aspirational figures. Everything about them says: Try to be like us.
The pair (one has her back turned, so there could be a third model, but doubt it) were never identified in the album info, so they’re unknown today. There’s no way anyone at that time could have predicted the rise of the internet, its preservation of obscure visual everythings, and the resultant burning need to identify any person from the past who looks remotely interesting. We’ll have to live without knowing. By now, sixty-seven years later, we can presume that one or both have died. But they left a mark—at least around here. Our lifetime goal now is to leave a cool void where we used to be.
