Album Art From The Canyon

In pop culture, album art, quite simply, exists as an art genre separate and complete. The cover of an album is generally chosen to represent the feeling or evoke a response to what might be contained inside. The earliest albums were built around the defunct medium of 78 rpm records, a format that could only accommodate a couple of songs per side, meaning that an album, and we're talking back in the 1930s and 1940s, was literally an album, with several records inserted inside sleeves bound to the cover folder.
The medium and the artwork became more defined as Record labels evolved. This growth initiated art departments, which led to art teams, house photographers, favourite designers, illustrators and so on. Certain labels had their own art departments, while others shopped out the job to design firms, or graphic artists. Essentially, the growth of the music industry, gave rise to a new form of art. Album Art. 

Today we'll be looking at the small, but brave independant Canyon label and offer a glimpse at the artwork stylings cherry picked from the dozen albums they issued. Canyon was formed in 1969 and closed at the end of 1970.  Canyon's trip might have been short and sweet, while Canyon's spin-off imprints RRG and Roker were just as short lived, a style emerged. The label's identity was forged as a mixture of pop-art album artwork and a mixture of studio portraits. 

Canyon album cover monatge one: Clockwise: Nina Simone - Gifted & Black (Canyon, 1970); Bliss - Bliss (Canyon, 1970); Clay Pitts Orchestra featuring Arlene Tiger - Female Animal Original Soundtrack (Canyon, 1969); Nina Simone - Right On! (Roker, 1971).

From pop-art and op-art minimalism (Simone LPs) to the almost religious Bliss album cover, we see a mixture of bold lines and colour. Most of the albums pictured here feature reworked photo imagery in some form or another. Musically they range from stark torch jazz, blistering hard rock and straight up exploito-exotica soundtrack music,  in this case for the smut film 'Female Tiger'.

Canyon album cover montage two: Clockwise: Doris Duke - I'm A Loser (Canyon, 1969); Swamp Dogg - Total Destruction To Your Mind (Canyon, 1970); King Errison - The King Arrives (Canyon, 1970); Raw Spitt - Raw Spitt (Canyon, 1970). 

There's a stark, hard look to the first three picture here, how often do you see garbage and debris on the cover of a late 60s album, let along a soul record of any desription. The concept is most likely Swamp Dogg's, although the photography for Swamp's 'Total Destruction', and Doris Duke album, is credited to one Willis Hogans Jr. These days Hogans is best known for being a friend of the Hendrix New York crowd, and his late 60s photographs of Jimi Hendrix. Hogans also provided the cover photo for Swamp Dogg's infamous Rat On! LP from 1971, featuring a photo montage of Swamp riding a giant albino rat (or is it a mouse?).. anyway you'll find that pic used to help illustrate the worst album covers of all time, despite the fact it's brilliant and pure Swamp Dogg. Who is this Swamp Dogg you ask? 

After spending most of the 1960s as a journeyman producer and solo artist Jerry Williams Jr. re-invented himself as Swamp Dogg bringing a progressive approach to soul music, not only for his own album, but the two main artists he brought to Canyon, Doris Willingham and Charlie Whitehead, billed respectively as 'Doris Duke' and 'Raw Spitt'.  All three albums were of a similar vibe, contemporary with a subversive stance and an eye to the common person without a sense of condescension. Relationships, fidelity, race and politics all get an airing, with a strikingly minimal, yet solid production sound due to Swamp and the studio and session team he found in Macon, Georgia. Thematically all three albums share a similar look. Each feature a shot of the artist in a rather low key and unglamorous setting. The Doris Duke and Raw Spitt album covers evoke a pensive loner stance. While Dogg's own album cover is just as gritty, his gonzo humor brought to the fore, represented by the irreverant hobo-esque pose (or lack of). 

The non-Swamp album pictured (bottom left) is the only Canyon LP by proto-funkster King Errison striding a tree in groovy style, but more significant as a counterpoint against the scuzzy look of the first three pictured in this set. The King Arrives is the LP that mixes the graphic element (the border around the over photo) and the differing styles in cover portraits that Canyon label utilised. FYI - these last four albums are classics, go find them;  nuff' said.