As we continue our look at ‘naked vinyl’ album cover art, let’s explore two other companies who capitalized on the fad and what has transpired since.
In the last article, we discussed two West Coast record labels that were prolific and utilized ‘naked vinyl’ to sell their record albums. Not to be outdone by their counterparts, many East Coast record labels followed suit. None were more successful than the Davis and Que record labels and both of them focused on saucy songs and risqué nude cover art. Davis, in particular, had a cavalcade of stars that would churn out ‘double entendre’ songs that had been popularized on the Vaudeville stages. In fact, the owner of the label, Joe Davis, also wrote some of the songs and brought talented entertainers to the genre as well as a classic line of album cover art. The Que record label produced more of the same material, but the records were dubbed as “sexucational,’ with songs and stories to inform the uninitiated.
In 1967, it seems that the attitudes about ‘naked vinyl’ had changed over the years, being replaced by peace, love-ins and flower children. When Jimi Hendrix released his album “Electric Ladyland,” that featured Jimi surrounded by naked and buxom beauties, it created quite a stir. The cover was replaced, but the genre did not go away altogether, rather it was replaced by pop-art covers, psychedelia and slender, beautiful European women who would grace various covers from a multitude of musical genres. Read more...
