📷 Gallery Inner Sleeves

Threads with gallery-like content.
My favorite line from the Sinatra/Jobim notes has always been this one:
Mine:

You feel for anybody who will blow it on the next take. It begins. The long, long. About a minute and a half in, then the trombonist braaacks a note. Braaack. That obvious. He can’t look over at some other trombonist; he’s the only trombonist. So he sits there, a blutch-colored felt hat sagged across the bell of his horn, hung there to keep it Soft. Poor Trombone Player knows: his music said B and it came out F and Jesus was it wrong.
 
This one (6b) IH-6b1.jpgIH-6b2.jpgwas inside 1976's NADIA'S THEME:
This was also inside many other albums including my Copies of "Whipped cream and other delights" and "South of the Border" by Herb That sleeve brings back many fond memories
 
I never paid much attention to the albums on those later sleeves. I wasn't aware that Steve Marriott (of the Small Faces) recorded on A&M.
 
I never bought an album just because I saw it on an inner sleeve but I always enjoyed seeing what was available from the label and if I heard something I liked from the artist then I would consider getting the album.
 
I always wanted a couple of the A&M/CTi records from some of A&M's earlier innersleeves--it would take me decades to finally get ahold of them. 😁
 
I did see two albums listed in the color catalog from late 1970 that piqued my interest. One was Evie Sands-Any Way That You Want Me and Jeff Comanor-Sure Hope You Like It. I had heard Evie Sands on the radio and knew of Jeff Comanor as a songwriter for songs that The 5Th Dimension covered.
I never saw either album in stores. I do hope I will find them one day. at a used record store for a reasonable price. I never have heard Jeff Comanor records on the radio.
 
Jeff Comanor's Sure Hope You Like It album was one I played quite a bit back in the 80s after I found it in used record store while i was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. It's actually quite good and, yes, I enjoyed it! There were several folk/composer/singers on A&M back in the day. Besides the obvious Phil Ochs and Shawn Phillips, there was Comanor, Mike 'Abo and (to some degree) Emitt Rhodes whom I found quite enjoyable. David Batteau (the lower left album on the sleeve above) is also a terrific album. He wrote A coupke tunes on Sergio's eponymus A&M comeback album in '83...

--Mr Bill
 
I remember seeing a few A&M albums on the innersleeves and buying them later, but I don't know if I ever bought one just BECAUSE of an innersleeve. But, they say repetition is the best form of advertising.... it's all about top-of-mind awareness. So maybe after seeing a few Sandpipers albums repeatedly on variouso innersleeves, my eye was drawn to Sandpipers albums. Who knows?
 
(Oh, good grief! Why on Earth would anyone place Whipped Cream on an inner sleeve in 1971? The point of an inner sleeve is to hawk the new stuff -- not an LP that already sold 50,000,000 copies. Be that as it may, if you're gonna play that game then where the heck is Sergio? More to the point, Sergio was an active recording artist in 1971 while Herb was was "on leave" so to speak.)
 
(Oh, good grief! Why on Earth would anyone place Whipped Cream on an inner sleeve in 1971? The point of an inner sleeve is to hawk the new stuff -- not an LP that already sold 50,000,000 copies. Be that as it may, if you're gonna play that game then where the heck is Sergio? More to the point, Sergio was an active recording artist in 1971 while Herb was was "on leave" so to speak.)

Yeah, but at that point, WHIPPED CREAM probably was still selling better every month than Sergio's last two albums combined. You could argue that WARM and THE BRASS ARE COMIN' weren't, and that Herb was "on leave", but Herb was the boss. His name was part of the label.

I have NO explanation for Jimmy Rodgers' presence or why they heavied up on Spooky Tooth.
 
Even today, Whipped Cream still outsells everything else in Herb's catalog.

It does seem a little odd to still have an album that everyone apparently knew about pictured on that innersleeve. Then again, maybe they were hoping that buyers of their newer pop/rock records would make the connection that this was the same label that released Whipped Cream...? Which is still a little odd since the record buying public was moving away from easy listening.
 
It's a bit interesting that the outer columns are the old-guard MOR stuff - 5 Herbs and a Jimmie Rodgers, while the inner "tic-tac-toe" is all of the newer "Jerry Moss" acquisitions.
 
And I have another one from that series. I'm not sure in which album it came - I already had scanned it ages ago.

InnerAnsel.jpgInnerAnsel2.jpg
 
This sleeve almost made sense...I mean Lee Michales is one thing -- but Blodwyn Pig?

No matter how you slice it...all I can say is, Again with the TJB?? That ship sailed! It's now 1970 and we're at SP-4280 with tons of new acts and yet we're wasting valuable advert space on ancient LPs that all the more do not represent the direction of the label. That'd be like Columbia loading up their inner sleeves with old Percy Faith and Ray Conniff releases (and yet both men actually continued to record for the label well into the mid '70s).
 
This sleeve almost made sense...I mean Lee Michales is one thing -- but Blodwyn Pig?

No matter how you slice it...all I can say is, Again with the TJB?? That ship sailed! It's now 1970 and we're at SP-4280 with tons of new acts and yet we're wasting valuable advert space on ancient LPs that all the more do not represent the direction of the label. That'd be like Columbia loading up their inner sleeves with old Percy Faith and Ray Conniff releases (and yet both men actually continued to record for the label well into the mid '70s).
C2BE7437-C649-4DC4-A590-3F70BD6E9D5E.jpeg
 
This was also the era of the record club ads, where covers of albums, or approximations thereof, appeared in magazine after magazine, and often placed the most recognizable covers in the most looked at places. And any album could easily be next to any other, no matter the genre. And like these Columbia "covers", there was often a mini track listing added to the artwork. I give props to A&M for presenting the real cover artwork on their innersleeves without appending track lists.
 
This sleeve almost made sense...I mean Lee Michales is one thing -- but Blodwyn Pig?

No matter how you slice it...all I can say is, Again with the TJB?? That ship sailed! It's now 1970 and we're at SP-4280 with tons of new acts and yet we're wasting valuable advert space on ancient LPs that all the more do not represent the direction of the label. That'd be like Columbia loading up their inner sleeves with old Percy Faith and Ray Conniff releases (and yet both men actually continued to record for the label well into the mid '70s).
It also helps to remember that these inner sleeves were used for all A&M releases of the time...so people buying Sergio's STILLNESS and PAIS TROPICAL , The Baja Marimba Band's AS TIME GOES BY, Robin Wilson's AIN'T THAT SOMETHING, Herb's SUMMERTIME, The Sandpipers' A GIFT OF SONG and others would see and possibly be interested in the catalog stuff from the MOR/Jazz days.
 
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