Have Yourself a Very Vinyl Christmas

When I'm out "thrifting" at the Goodwill, I sure love finding albums with illustrated covers. Whenever I find some with a Christmas theme, I think of one of my fellow Flickrites, The King of Jingaling. He loves Christmas vinyl so much, he's not only sharing his fabulous collection of album cover art on Flickr, he's even created a great website, Falalalala.com, where you can hear audio clips from some of these albums, read about the artists who produced them - and discuss them - and even buy CDs ( and other Christmas-themed goodies) that the King has compiled and created himself. If you dig vintage vinyl Christmas music, pay the King a visit. Above is a piece by a mystery album cover artist I've featured before. I still can't decipher his signature and I don't recognize the style. There are a lot of knowledgable readers of this blog so I keep hoping someone out there will identify him for us.

Those of you who've been visiting this blog all year may recall a January post on album cover art where I showed the work of an illustrator named Neil Boyle. Well I dug up another gem (below) by Boyle - this time in a very different style from his other effort.
And for those who's tastes run to the cartoony styles of illustration, there's the obscure offering from Hanna-Barbera Records way back at the top of this post. Amazingly, this record has credits on the back - not just for illustrator Paul Julian, but for the art director (H.C. Pennington), layout (Tony Segri) and even the lovely hand lettering by Robert B. Schaefer.

I dunno about you, but its the little preview shots of the other albums in the series on the back of the record jacket that really make my mouth water. Just look at these wacky storylines from the folks at Hanna-Barbera Records: Wilma Flintstone Tells the Story of Bambi (!?) How is that even possible? The Flintstones lived in the stone age, for pete's sake - the story of Bambi takes place in, like, 1932 or something... Is Wilma Flintstone able to bend the time/space continuum?
Pixie and Dixie with Mr. Jinks Tell the Story of Cinderella - but what a Cinderella she is - hoochie mama - rrrowrr! And I love how this updated Cindy loses a gogo boot instead of a glass slipper - that Mr. Jinks sure can tell a story!
Finally, who could resist this awesome Jonny Quest album with a fully painted cover showing Race Bannon battling a giant squid. I would have snapped this up in a second as a kid and would probably (foolishly) pay too much on ebay to own it today.

Luckily, these albums are so not available that I don't even need to worry about them cropping up there and tempting me. I'll just have to keep digging through the stacks o' wax at the local Goodwill and keep my fingers crossed for that lucky find.

You can see all these images at full size in my Illustrated Album Covers Flickr set.