📷 Gallery Inner Sleeves

Threads with gallery-like content.
That sleeve was probably issued in early 1969 given the most recent LPs listed are CS-971x, which is late 1968. All appear to be from 1968 with the exceptions of Born Free and John Wesley Harding which are from 1967.

Check out this one from the same time, but specific to where Clive Davis was musically steering the company.

DSC01654.jpg
 
That sleeve was probably issued in early 1969 given the most recent LPs listed are CS-971x, which is late 1968. All appear to be from 1968 with the exceptions of Born Free and John Wesley Harding which are from 1967.

Check out this one from the same time, but specific to where Clive Davis was musically steering the company.

DSC01654.jpg
Yes, but Columbia had money (or was willing to spend money) on different, specific inner sleeves. If you bought Andy Williams, Percy Faith or Johnny Mathis during this period, the inner sleeve wouldn't be promoting "The Sound of the Revolutionaries".

A&M was smaller, with more limited resources and Jerry Moss was very protective of those. A fact proven by those inner sleeves. The rock acts were Jerry's work---if he'd been more about ego than finances, he'd have used the sleeves to blow that horn.
 
Looking back through some of the sleeves from other labels, Atlantic had cover pictures but others such as Elektra and Vanguard did not. the latter two had the complete listing of available albums by catalog number and title for each of their artists. Warner/Reprise advertised Loss Leaders and some covers. RCA had covers on their sleeves as well. By 1972-73, Vanguard and Elektra had stopped their listings as they were doing either white sleeves or lyrics on the sleeves.
This was becoming the trend as more albums had artist pictures on the inner sleeves.
 
I'm more used to sleeves from the 70s and beyond that were either custom innersleeves for the albums, or generic plain innersleeves. My parents' records, at least the older mono records, never were in sleeves--just the jackets. And I didn't look at too many of the sleeves on the stereo records upstairs, although I was familiar with a couple of them as beyond the A&M sleeves, I never really cared what was on them.

It is kind of neat buying the new old stock sealed LPs now, since they've been unopened for four or five decades at this point. Like opening a time capsule. All the incoming records go through the ultrasonic cleaner and into new rice paper sleeves; if they have a generic white sleeve, I don't keep them with the record but if they have any other sleeve, that sleeve also gets stored in the jacket.
 
Sometimes at a thrift store I come across and old lp that is still sealed but that is very rare. I have a couple and they are still unopened.
 
Dunhill, ABC & other labels "We Wouldn't Drop A Name...." had theirs in 1967 - 1973 with blue & white or black & white!!
 
RCA had their full-colour inner sleeves until about 1969-70; round about this time they shifted into their huge multi-year DynaFlex (i.e. "DynaWarp") brouhaha; I must have opened at least a dozen NOS RCA LPs from 1970-72 in the past 5 years and each had the Dynaflex inner -- no more adverts.

The sleeve below is the last one I could find with adverts. It has LPs as late as LSP-42xx (mid '69), so it was probably issued late '69. You see the expected 1969-70 visual requirements for the old crowd: Jumbo trying to look sorta like a hippie's cool uncle, and Ed Ames with his Good/Bad/Ugly look. Otherwise, while not as on-the-spot contemporary as Columbia, most of the issues are from 1967-69 -- with a couple of the comps from even earlier. Unlike Columbia, RCA was cautious with the acceptance of rock / contemporary pop (they had that strong Nashville arm after all); though during 1970-71, however, they finally started stepping up to the plate with some decent rock groups (e.g., Lighthouse, Cat, Forever More, Noah, Sky, et al).

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DSC01668.jpg
 
RCA had their full-colour inner sleeves until about 1969-70; round about this time they shifted into their huge multi-year DynaFlex (i.e. "DynaWarp") brouhaha; I must have opened at least a dozen NOS RCA LPs from 1970-72 in the past 5 years and each had the Dynaflex inner -- no more adverts.

The sleeve below is the last one I could find with adverts. It has LPs as late as LSP-42xx (mid '69), so it was probably issued late '69. You see the expected 1969-70 visual requirements for the old crowd: Jumbo trying to look sorta like a hippie's cool uncle, and Ed Ames with his Good/Bad/Ugly look. Otherwise, while not as on-the-spot contemporary as Columbia, most of the issues are from 1967-69 -- with a couple of the comps from even earlier. Unlike Columbia, RCA was cautious with the acceptance of rock / contemporary pop (they had that strong Nashville arm after all); though during 1970-71, however, they finally started stepping up to the plate with some decent rock groups (e.g., Lighthouse, Cat, Forever More, Noah, Sky, et al).

DSC01663.jpg


DSC01668.jpg
I have an RCA issue of "The Worst of Jefferson Airplane from 1970. It does not have album covers on the sleeve but has a small listing of Classical music artists and about the proper playing of a record-"Place the stylus on the outer edge and gently push it into the first groove." This might even be a first printing of the album but RCA's choice of this sleeve for a rock album is puzzling.
 
I must have opened at least a dozen NOS RCA LPs from 1970-72 in the past 5 years and each had the Dynaflex inner -- no more adverts.
They had to do something to convince the record buying public on those soundsheets. 😁
 
Back to A&M, here's the LISTEN TO YOUR WORLD innersleeve:

carpentersclosetoyousleeve1.png

carpentersclosetoyousleeve2.png

This one was found inside a later issue Carpenters CLOSE TO YOU (also Cat Stevens' MONA BONE JAKON) album. This one uses adaptations of the real covers so as to up the contrast and to make the typography readable at the small size.
 
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Has anyone ever seen one that has either Offering or Ticket To Ride featured on it? I’ve searched for years with no luck. Just wondering.
 
Has anyone ever seen one that has either Offering or Ticket To Ride featured on it? I’ve searched for years with no luck. Just wondering.
You piqued my curiosity so I went through all my A&M albums and did not see a sleeve with Offering/Ticket To Ride. The only place I ever saw the Offering cover was in the full color catalog that I got from A&M way back in the day. I had looked for it in the stores but never saw it but it had been reissued at Ticket To Ride. It took me a while to figure out it was the same record. Hopefully I can find it as Offering some day.
 
Has anyone ever seen one that has either Offering or Ticket To Ride featured on it? I’ve searched for years with no luck. Just wondering.

Look back at this post. TICKET TO RIDE is there:

 
Back to A&M, here's the LISTEN TO YOUR WORLD innersleeve:

carpentersclosetoyousleeve1.png

carpentersclosetoyousleeve2.png

This one was found inside a later issue Carpenters CLOSE TO YOU album. This one uses adaptations of the real covers so as to up the contrast and to make the typography readable at the small size.
This is more like it. Essentially everything is 1970-72. (The oldest LP is SP-4188 (mid '69) -- this is one of three Burts, which seem to be pushing it -- but that may be because A&M, from what I can tell, was essentially out of the MOR/orchestral pop business by 1972.)
 
Back to A&M, here's the LISTEN TO YOUR WORLD innersleeve:

carpentersclosetoyousleeve1.png

carpentersclosetoyousleeve2.png

This one was found inside a later issue Carpenters CLOSE TO YOU album. This one uses adaptations of the real covers so as to up the contrast and to make the typography readable at the small size.
I see Pais Tropical by Brasil'77 on this sleeve. I never saw Crystal Illusions or Stillness on the sleeves for Brasil'66 nor did I ever see Primal Roots on a sleeve for Brasil'77. Since the latter was the last lp on A&M for Sergio Mendes, maybe the execs decided it did not need to be on a sleeve.
 
Harry, the previous Ansel Adams sleeve I have on my copy of YeMeLe. I had this one from Warm but I took it out of the sleeve so many times to play it that it fell apart and I no longer have it. The extra copies that I bought from used record stores do not have it either.
One comment I have to make is about the Alan Copeland Singers lp. Years ago, someone had called into the radio station about a song medley. I called the next morning as at the time I was not near a phone. I let the dj know it was this album and gave them the name and label and catalog number. I have no idea if the searcher ever found that album or not.
 
It's kind of interesting how in the earlier days, an album sleeve would really be a promotional tool, not an artistic representation of the music. Including a blurb like "England's Newest Hitmakers" and maybe a song list on the front cover was the norm, and liner notes on the back, along with a group of "other" albums available on that label, added to the promotional content.

Later on, the album cover became more of an "artistic statement," so the song list and promo blurbs on the front went away, but the liner notes and "other" album cover display still appeared on the back of most LPs.

Then, when the rock era got fully moving and the whole outer cover became an artistic statement, the front artwork began to encompass the whole cover and the blurbs were eventually banished to just the inner sleeve. Then came the advent of the custom innersleeve, which spelled an end to those promotional items.

The very last step was, if you were REALLY a big name, your album cover would ONLY contain your artistic statement and sometimes not even be cluttered up with a title or a band name!
 
It's kind of interesting how in the earlier days, an album sleeve would really be a promotional tool, not an artistic representation of the music. Including a blurb like "England's Newest Hitmakers" and maybe a song list on the front cover was the norm, and liner notes on the back, along with a group of "other" albums available on that label, added to the promotional content.

Later on, the album cover became more of an "artistic statement," so the song list and promo blurbs on the front went away, but the liner notes and "other" album cover display still appeared on the back of most LPs.

Then, when the rock era got fully moving and the whole outer cover became an artistic statement, the front artwork began to encompass the whole cover and the blurbs were eventually banished to just the inner sleeve. Then came the advent of the custom innersleeve, which spelled an end to those promotional items.

The very last step was, if you were REALLY a big name, your album cover would ONLY contain your artistic statement and sometimes not even be cluttered up with a title or a band name!
Good chronology of events, Mike!

The only thing I'd add is the "incredible shrinking logo".

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Phase one---prominent logo placement, stereo/mono designation and catalog number.

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Phase two, smaller logo, standardized placement along with stereo/mono designation and catalog number.

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Phase three---stereo/mono branding gone (reasonable, since they're not making mono anymore) but logo and catalog number becomes microscopic.

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Phase four---wanna know what label it's on? Maybe it's on the back cover. Catalog number? It's on the spine. Period.

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...or maybe not.

By surrendering cover branding, the labels largely lost their ability to create and promote an image for themselves beyond the label on the vinyl itself---and there were cases where the artists commandeered that space for an album or two, as well.
 
I think that's one reason I got a kick out of this Joe Jackson album cover:

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(The only thing missing would have been to release it on an old A&M tan label!)

And to a lesser extent Jackson's later record:

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This one is a take-off on a Sonny Rollins Blue Note album cover, and a couple of the elements are switched around. Hence, the "A&M SP5000" doesn't follow typical A&M labeling, but does riff on Blue Note's style with the label name and catalog number prominently on the front jacket.
 
I think that's one reason I got a kick out of this Joe Jackson album cover:

1620664193303.png

(The only thing missing would have been to release it on an old A&M tan label!)

And to a lesser extent Jackson's later record:

1620664385797.png

This one is a take-off on a Sonny Rollins Blue Note album cover, and a couple of the elements are switched around. Hence, the "A&M SP5000" doesn't follow typical A&M labeling, but does riff on Blue Note's style with the label name and catalog number prominently on the front
Of course, Rudy, he then followed it with WILL POWER:

joe-jackson-will-power-41-cd.jpg
 
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