Class of 2012 – List of Record Labels Who Supported Great Album Art
In as much as “pop” music in the early days of the Pop/Rock era included musical acts that easily crossed-over from jazz, R&B, country, folk and Rock & Roll to deliver music in many styles to a public hungry for their records, record companies were not eager to be classified and chose to make sure that their cover designs would appeal to a fairly broad audience.
However, many musical artists sought to team with like-minded art directors to create packaging for music that would best-represent their own feelings about how they’d like the buying public to perceive them and their music. Once shown to be effective marketing tools, trend-setting album cover design was embraced by certain record labels, who then – as a prelude to the big-budget video productions of the 1980s and 90s – put significant resources behind these promotional packages. It is the labels that showed this type of forethought that we look to honor in this category.
Name of Label/Examples of Musical Artists Represented
Apple – Badfinger, The Beatles, Yoko Ono, Billy Preston, Ravi Shankar, James Taylor
Atlantic/Atco – Bee Gees, John Coltrane, Cream, CSN&Y, Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, Charles Mingus, Vanilla Fudge
Blue Note – Cannonball Adderly, Art Blakely, Kenny Burrell, Donald Byrd, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins
Capitol/EMI – The Band, The Beatles, Dave Clark Five, Nat King Cole, Iron Maiden, Peggy Lee, Johnny Mercer, Les Paul, Pink Floyd, Frank Sinatra
Charisma – Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Hawkwind, Julian Lennon, Monty Python, The Nice, Alan Parsons Project, Van der Graaf Generator
www.charismarecords.co.uk and www.emimusic.com
Columbia/CBS – Tony Bennett, The Byrds, Doris Day, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Johnny Mathis, Santana, Simon & Garfunkel, Barbra Streisand
Elektra/Asylum/Nonesuch – Jackson Browne, Tim Buckley, Judy Collins, The Doors, The Eagles, MC5, Queen, Carly Simon, The Stooges
Parlophone – The Beatles, James Brown, Duran Duran, The Hollies, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Pet Shop Boys, Radiohead
Polydor/Polygram – ABBA, Blind Faith, Eric Clapton, ELO, Jimi Hendrix, The Moody Blues, The Rolling Stones, Cat Stevens, Traffic, U2
RCA/Victor – Duke Ellington, Eurythmics, The Guess Who, Don McLean, The Monkees, Iggy Pop, Elvis Presley, Lou Reed, ZZ Top
Reprise – The Beach Boys, Bing Crosby, Jimi Hendrix, The Kinks, Joni Mitchell, Frank Sinatra, T. Rex, Jethro Tull, Neil Young, Frank Zappa
Verve – Count Basie, Natalie Cole, Duke Ellington, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Parker, Linda Ronstadt, Mel Torme, Sarah Vaughan
