Jack Davis Album Covers

Last weekend, I found myself on my knees, crouched over a row of repurposed cardboard liquor-boxes, flipping through pawned LPs. I was actually surprised to see record albums in a pawn shop, but these were good — no Ferrante and Teicher, no 101 Strings, no Sing Along With Mitch. Many of the records were in remarkable shape for used albums, but most were common popular musicians of the sixties and seventies. I picked out a little stack of the rarer albums, along with the obligatory Whipped Cream & Other Delights that I buy any time I find it (I own fourteen).

Much like the classic Herb Alpert, one other album was chosen purely for the cover art. I’d never seen the album before, do not recognize the band’s name, but the art itself is immediately familiar. The artist, known for his stylish caricatures that teeter on the edge between realistic and fanciful, is Jack Davis.

I, of course, remember Jack Davis from his early years at MAD Magazine. Starting in commercial art and comic books in the 1950s, Davis applied his tremendous skill for everything from horror to humor, along with more than a few things in between. Many of his works have reached iconic status, such as the “life-sized” Frankenstein poster that was sold in the back of comics throughout the sixties and the two-legged bug constantly fogged by RAID during 1980s commercial breaks. Known for producing quality work in little time, Davis has been a mainstay in advertising for decades. And, as I’ve found many times, he was particularly skilled at producing record album covers.

Jack Davis’ poster for It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World makes for an obvious transition to the soundtrack album cover, but Davis’ record albums aren’t just a creative reuse of an already paid-for painting. Davis produced unique, custom artwork for numerous recordings, from comedy to rock-and-roll. Davis often returned to his roots as a horror-comic artist, producing album covers for Halloween records.

For a comic art collector, a Jack Davis record album provides a piece of art worthy of hanging on a wall. Record sleeves measure approximately 13″ on a side, and numerous places manufacture frames designed for displaying record jackets. Even larger are his fold-out or wrap-around covers that double the width, like the Sailcat cover I got this weekend. While much of Davis’ art is smaller than the page in a magazine and was often black-and-white, his album covers show off the detail and color of his work.

Record collectors no doubt have their own quirky tastes in collection (as my Herb Alpert collection attests), but when a collector begins to find themselves seeing the same albums over and over, it takes a new perspective to give the act of digging through boxes at a thrift shop a new life. Davis illustrated numerous albums — so many that it’s difficult to find a complete list, despite several online archives devoted to just his album art — that simply hunting for Jack Davis art will open up new directions in a record collection. Imus in the Morning, The Cowsills, Homer and Jethro: you don’t even have to like to listen to the albums, if the art is the key. Trying to find every Jack Davis illustrated album jacket could become a full-time obsession. Look through your existing collection first, of course — you may not have noticed that the Kelly’s Heroes soundtrack and The Greatest of the Guess Who both feature Jack Davis illustrations. For the rest, give the record bins at your usual haunts a second look — you might have missed out on a work of art.