Customer Reviews

Vixens of Vinyl: The Alluring Ladies of Vintage Album Covers

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you're a collector of cheesecake album cover art, I'm afraid that you will find this book disappointing. The dust jacket refers to the author as a collector on these types of covers, but I must say that if this represents his best, he's got a pitiful collection. Most of the covers featured are standard thrift store items like 101 Strings and other pedestrian 60's stuff.

There are virtually no truly collectable albums like Johnnie Mann's "Night", Herb Jeffries' "Say It Isn't So" (with a young Barbara Eden), or the incredible "Speak Low" by Hal Otis (featuring a photo of Jayne Mansfield falling out of an evening dress). Nor are ANY of the most beautiful covers of the 50's highlighted, as it seems Mr. Darling is unaware of the truly beautiful covers of that era (like Hugo Peretti's "And So To Sleep" and George Cates' "Exciting").

Additionally, the book lacks other elements that would have made up for the omission of quality covers: the text is nearly worthless, no dates are given, nor is there any mention of the photographers from the studios of Capitol, Liberty and others who made these otherwise lack-luster recordings fly off the record store shelves. Kudus for the Sandy Warner section though.

The book includes a few (I mean less than 5) truly worthwhile covers and the rest is filler. Even many of the samples used are shelf-worn or damaged. Makes me want to write a book on the subject.

for the money, this is a cool little book. great layout and design. of course this is only the tip of the iceberg and several more volumes need to follow. better yet, a whopping huge volume with a hefty price tag should be devoted to this subject matter. 50s era george shearing lps (there are a couple in here) alone could fill a chapter. i can picture such a lavish book on my coffee table. if Mr. Darling needs more examples of beautiful, sexy lp covers, i have a bunch. until that book gets made, however, this book is a treat.

There's a big difference between vintage music collectors and vintage album art collectors. It should be obvious by the previous sentence.

A music collector will jump at a vintage mint-condition Esquivel! vinyl at the thrift store. This person can't wait to get it home to play it on his or her vintage hi-fi equipment. An album art collector will jump at an old scratched Hugo Winterhalter album just because Exotica Girl Sandy Warner is on the cover. When this person gets home, he or she will probably play frisbee with the disc inside and frame the album art for his or her wall. In short, music collectors are interested in music and album art collectors are interested in the dust jacket regardless of the music inside.

"Vixens of Vinyl" *isn't* for music collectors. It's for album art collectors. And it lives up to its name. This book has lots of wonderful album covers featuring lots of vixens from the 50s and 60s. Fans of kitsch, the lounge scene, or vintage graphic design will appreciate this book. Who cares whether a cover model is on a Martin Denny album or a 101 Strings album ?

Really, shouldn't a book about album art be about the *art* and not the musicians it's schilling for ?

Decent presentation of so-so album covers from authors personal collection he must have found at thrift stores.
Captions are pretty lame and offer no real information on the albums themselves. Went through it once than tossed it in my thrift store donation box.

Save your money and purchase "The Album Cover Album" or something similar instead.

As a little boy, I loved to sift through my dad's LP collection just to gaze upon those incredible album covers. The Martin Denny albums featuring cover model Sandy Warner were among my favorites.

By the way, that IS Sandy Warner on the cover of "Exotic Percussion". She is a woman of a thousand beautiful faces!

...Only a blind person could confuse the beautiful Sandy Warner with the horsey-looking dame on the cover of Martin Denny's "Exotic Percussion!" Invest some of your royalties in an economy size bottle of Windex...