Sleeve of Italian pop performer Fabrizio Ferretti's 1966 single "Operazione Tuono", aka "Thunderball", with a flip side of "L'amore" by Memo Remigi.

We just couldn’t resist posting this one. It’s an Olympic Runners 45 sleeve, with cover star Joan Collins pictured in full regalia from her 1979 disco-themed drama The Bitch. If you think her outfit is bad, you should see the movie. Rent it. Go on, we dare you.     

James Bond soundtrack albums and singles, with production art covers, plus paintings by Frank McCarthy, Robert McGinnis and others.     

Nearly everything about enigmatic bluesman Robert Johnson could have come directly from the pages of a pulp novel. Some say he sold his soul to the Devil at a dark crossroads in exchange for the ability to play guitar. Only two photographs were ever taken of him during his life. He died in 1938 after a jealous husband poisoned his whiskey with strychnine. And nobody knows for sure where he is buried, though there are three spots that claim the distinction. The only agreed upon fact about Johnson’s life is that he came into the world in 1911 in a house in Hazlehurst, Mississippi. Now, that house is slated for restoration by its owners, the county of Copiah, Mississippi. Over the years it has fallen into disrepair, but when originally built by Johnson’s stepfather it was considered a spacious and modern home, particularly by the standards of the sharecropping south. Copiah County officials hope to draw some of the music tourists that visit the nearby Mississippi Delta region, which seems a safe bet considering Johnson’s stature. He is considered by most music aficionados the greatest bluesman ever, and one of the most unique guitarists. He is also, without doubt, one of the most mysterious figures in musical history.     

Above we have Australian actress Trisha Noble on the German pamphlet art for Diese frau ist Gefährlich, which was a 1966 spy film originally released as Death Is a Woman. For some reason, the movie was retitled to Love Is a Woman for its American run, and you see that art below. But perhaps wanting to provide audiences with a three-dimensional portrait of the subject matter, the film also bore the title internationally of—you guessed it—Sex Is a Woman. We couldn’t find the Sex Is a Woman art, so the promo photo after which the German and American posters were based will have to do. Although she isn’t well known now, Trisha Noble is actually one of those people that has been in show business her entire life. As a teenager she released six hit albums in Australia as Patsy Ann Noble, then turned to acting. If you’re old enough, you may remember her from the American television series Strike Force, with Robert Stack. And if you’re young enough, you may recognize her as Padmé Amidala’s mother in Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones, and Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith. And if you remember none of that, check her out here getting groovy to her hit single “Accidents Can Happen” and you’ll never forget her again.

Cover art from an assortment of sixties and seventies soundtracks and collections from Beat records, Italy. Note the Sandro Symeoni art in panel nine. If you missed our earlier post on this master's work, you can find it here.

Photo of Miles Davis, after being beaten and arrested by New York City police outside the club Birdland, fifty years ago today.

On the cover of this August 1955 issue of the tabloid Lowdown the editors get confrontational with the then-governor of Michigan, G. Mennen Williams. The story involves chart-topping singer Johnnie Ray, who in June 1951 was convicted of propositioning a man in the restroom of a Detroit burlesque house called the Stone Theatre. Lowdown’s insistence upon a pardon for the singer is simply a backdoor way of airing out the scandal while pretending to crusade on his behalf. How do we know that was Lowdown's intent? Simple—because any tabloid worthy of labeling itself such would have known Ray was bisexual. He pled guilty on that solicitation charge without even bothering to bring a lawyer to court, and his sexual involvement with both halves of the husband-wife comedy team of Bob Mitchell and Jay Grayton was not exactly a state secret. On stage Ray was an emotional singer whose antics earned him the nicknames the Prince of Wails (for his unrestrained style) and the Nabob of Sob (for his tendency to burst into tears), so even if his fans didn’t realize he was bi, they certainly understood that macho was not his stock-in-trade. Which meant, in the end, he had a nice career even with the tabs dogging his heels. He scored numerous big hits, including “Cry” in 1951, and “You Don’t Owe Me a Thing” in 1957. But even if Ray was impervious to slander, some of Lowdown’s other victims were less fortunate. We'll discuss some of them in the future.