This striking music brochure promo art for French singer Juliette Gréco and Disques Fontana (a subsidiary of the Dutch label Philips Records) was created by the famous illustrator O’Kley in 1956. The art was reused for record covers, as you see below.

Gréco, an actress as well as singer, was a fixture in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area of Paris, and her acquaintanceships with such figures as Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty earned her the nickname La Muse de l’existentialisme—the existentialists’ muse. She was also, according to Miles Davis, one of the great loves of his life, and the feeling was reciprocated, so that wins major points right there because Miles was the bomb.

Moving on to the art, O’Kley was a pseudonym for Nantes-born Pierre Gilardeau, the man behind some of the most collectable Folies Bergère posters. He also illustrated many book covers and movie posters, and after a long career died in 2007. We’ve seen some good examples of his art, so we’ll try to get back to him a bit later—but we make no guarantees. You can see another Fontana post here.

We got curious about Nai Bonet, who we’d never heard of until last week, and after taking a stroll around the internet discovered she was pretty famous in her day and even released a 1966 single for which you see the sleeve above. The song is called “Jelly Belly,” with “The Seventh Veil” on the flipside. Bonet teaches fans to do her trademark Jelly Belly dance, which we can only imagine led to many sprained backs in mid-century America. But maybe you want to try. The instructions are in like Danish, but here’s the gist:

A couple of weeks ago we said we’d get back to more Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan album sleeves, so above is a rather eye-catching one for a collection of Cure songs entitled The Spell’s Unbroken. It’s a live release that was recorded in Birmingham, England in 1985 and pressed in Germany in 1986, and it’s got such Cure goodies as “Kyoto Song,” “Let’s Go to Bed,” and the excellent “In Between Days,” as well some more obscure tracks. The album is unofficial—or a bootleg, if you prefer that term—so in theory it was pressed and sold without the band’s participation. We also assume Gourdon hadn’t a clue about the art. And wouldn’t you know it—the record sells for exorbitant amounts of money, routinely over a hundred dollars. We don’t know about you, but that’s enough to cure us of any urge to buy it.

We ran across a rare, Japanese-issued James Bond theme song collection and decided to steal a few photos because inside was this brilliant poster of George Lazenby by Frank McCarthy. Lazenby took over the Bond role for 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in which the character got married only to see his new wife gunned down at film’s end. We’ve been involved in some spirited debates about where Lazenby fits in the Bond pantheon—some of his defenders even say he was the best Bond. We wouldn’t go that far, but he did have one of the best theme songs, Louis Armstrong’s “We Have All the Time in the World,” which opens this compilation. Ironically, Lazenby didn’t have much time—United Artists booted him out of the Bond role the next year when Sean Connery returned to film Diamonds Are Forever. If you haven’t seen On Her Majesty’s Secret Service we recommend it. And you can listen to “We Have All the Time in the World” here.

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.     

Back in April we showed you a nice poster for the Italian sexploitation documentary Inghilterra nuda, and talked briefly about the proliferation of such films during the ’60s and ’70s. The promo art was painted by the legendary Sandro Symeoni, an Italian illustrator who has more than 3,000 posters and record sleeves to his credit. Below is a small collection of this master’s work for your Sunday enjoyment. If these pique your interest, a cursory search on the web will turn up many more pieces.

B-movie-influenced CD covers and promo materials by U.S.-based punk band Mary Shelley Overdrive. More items here.    

We haven’t explored the sword and sorcery aspects of pulp very much yet, so we thought we’d show you the below Frank Frazetta painting used for the covers of a 70s metal album and a Spanish language Conan book. We doubt Frazetta’s piece, titled Ice Giants, is hanging in a museum somewhere, but it should be. For the life of us we can’t see how a Pollack or a Lichtenstein is any better. But maybe we’re just crazy.