Liner Notes – Recollections of a dying art

LINER NOTES – RECOLLECTIONS OF A DYING ART

During the late ‘60s I received a fee of seven pounds for supplying my first sleeve note – one that adorned Dizzy Gillespie’s Jambo Caribe . I rang the record company office and requested a copy of the record only to be told “If you get paid, you don’t have the album as well!” Since then, I’ve penned in excess of 200 liner notes. This piece is about those who have more famously contributed to the genre
Long may they grab Grammys.

During 1967, visitors to producer Lenny Waronker’s office at Warner Brothers were confronted by a pencil-printed sign hung under the cover of the first Harpers Bizarre album, which was stuck his wall.
The sign, according to Stan Cornyn, who fashioned the group’s sleeve notes, read ‘The Harpers Bizarre Are Not Cute’.
“Apparently not,” Cornyn mused “Since they first began Feelin’ Groovy, Dick Scoppetton has had his brown locks trimmed to terrier length by some US Army clown posing as a barber. Wise-up time. Ted Templeman, whose blonde hair falls over his head like the skin of a peeled banana, has travelled from his native Santa Cruz , California all the way to Harper’s Bazaar just to get himself laid out in the magazine. He did. Their producer, Lenny Waronker, just turned 26, has added a hand-carved 14” wood nude to his desk top and now takes long weekends in Palm Springs to get his lungs going again.”
All part of Cornyn’s note for the group’s Anything Goes album, typically zonked out. But fun to be with. Kinda hippy-speak, hippy-chic. Another reason why, along with The Beatles and Tiny Tim, the ‘60s stay remembered.
It wasn’t always that way.
The fun started in 1948, when US Columbia began marketing 33 rpm microgroove recordings. RCA opted to do their own thing and released 45 rpm singles, while EMI in Britain claimed “It’ll never fly” and refused to have anything to do with the whole caboodle until October, 1952. It was then, initially left to Columbia to decide how their long-playing goodies should be wrapped. The first appeared in decorated paper bags but this idea was soon ditched and more substantial sleeves were hastily rushed into service. The front sleeve presented no problem, a photograph of the artist concerned, or a cheapskate bit of artwork accompanied by the name of the album, usually sufficed. But the back sleeve posed more of a problem. It couldn’t be left blank. And a further array of artwork seemed excessive. “Eureka” yelled one inspired employee in Columbia’s New York office. “We’ll pay someone to inform record-buyers just how great an album they’re perusing.” Happy birthday, sleeve-note!
Such notes initially fell into one of two categories – the “this is Doris Day’s third album and its even more wonderful than the other two” kind – or the terribly informative, hang-on-to-your-encyclopaedia type of thing. Jazz buffs adored the latter. Dates of sessions, who played the 15 different solos on a record, how Diz tilted his horn. God, it was wonderful.
Those who dispensed Grammys at each year’s end thought so too. When the first plaudit was handed out in the Best Album Notes category, in 1963, it was British-born writers Stanley Dance and Leonard Feather who were acclaimed kings of the back-sleeve for a scholarly dissertation that bedecked RCA’s The Ellington Era. Pure pop was not considered worthy of consideration in the category.
When Stan Cornyn heated up his typewriter for action, he was hardly welcomed by the masses. Fans didn’t like what he wrote. He lacked respect for hard-core information. It mattered little if Sinatra had the hottest jazzmen in the world sitting in on dates or if he was recording his 57th Gershwin item. Cornyn just didn’t see things in terms of solid facts. As Reprise’s prime annotator he thought in terms of flow. Words that entertained. If he informed, it was in his own freefall way. Nancy Sinatra came described as “Ninety-five pounds of affection. She’s been there already. Barely in her twenties, she looks younger.That look, like Lolita Humbert like Daisy Clover. A young fragile thing, on its own in a wondrous-wicked-woundup-wasted-wild-worried-wisedup-warmbodied world.” It was almost Gonzoid.
Somebody loved Cornyn. Frank Sinatra especially
So much so that Stan became a regular on the back of Sinatra albums. It proved a healthy arrangment. Especially at Grammy time. At the 1965 Awards, Cornyn won Best Album Notes for his contribution to Frank’s September Of My Years. The following year he picked up the plaudit yet again – this time for Sinatra At The Sands. Sinatra was exceedingly chuffed to have his name connected with any Grammys that were going. And Cornyn didn’t mind at all. Even if his masterpiece – his literary contribution to Happiness Is Dean Martin, didn’t get a nod.
He contended that what Dean dispensed was Epic Sloth, “Kind of half-eyed looking out at you, grinning “Hi ya pally” like he hopes you haven’t got anything heavy on your mind.” Not that Martin took it that easy, Cornyn mused. Dino never got where he was by just sitting around “trying to make spaghetti look tense.”
How Cornyn felt when the non-professionals moved in has never been revealed.
Non-professionals that is, like Johnny Cash and Tom T.Hall, country-folk both.
J.R. Cash, who’s always had a way with words opted to become the Man in Blank Verse for the note to Dylan’s Nashville Skyline, claiming, in a poem titled Of Bob Dylan that “There are those who do not imitate/Who cannot imitate/But then there are those who emulte/At times, to expand further the light/Of an original glow/Knowing that to imitate the living/Is mockery/And to imitate the dead/Is robbery.
In all, Cash contributed just 45 lines, concluding “Here-in is a hell of a poet/And lots of other things/And lots of other things.”
Though the poem was dedicated to Dylan, it could have been about Cash himself.
As a sleeve note, the piece outclassed anything else that the record industry could deliver that year. And, come Grammy time, Johnny Cash stepped up not only to receive an award for Best Country Vocal Performance for A Boy Named Sue but also hung around to be acclaimed Best Album Annotator for the second year in succession, having already received a similar accolade for his note to the Johnny Cash Live At Folsom Prison during 1968. Not that he was the first country star to be hailed
for his liner writing ability. During 1967 John D Loudermilk raised a cheer that could be heard all the way back in Nashville, when was acclaimed Best Sleeve Note writer for his efforts on his own Suburban Attitudes In Country Verse. Three years in a row for country. Music City suddenly seemed like the centre of popular music’s literary universe. However, in the wake of Nashville’s best storyteller, Tom T, Hall Grammy-grabbing for annotating his own Greatest Hits album during 1972, homespun was dunked. From that point on, with a couple of exceptions, things swung the way of the studious, the great life-studies. Book-fillers all. Perhaps Hall’s effort had been prompted by the note Bill Littleton had drafted for Tom T.’s In Search Of A Song album, the previous year. Wrote Littleton: “I went with Tom to write this liner note and, just by chance, took a small camera. The pictures tell more than words could so, in support of the old saying that one picture is worth a thousand words, I hereby submit this as a sixteen thousand and sixty-one word liner” Explaining, perhaps, the series of dodgy snaps that decorated the back sleeve.
Perhaps the judges came out in sympathy for Pete Hammill, who fashioned the note for Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks. A wordy affair, his literary effort was made almost unreadable by Columbia’s choice of minute size print that was made all the more indecipherable by being set against a a dark reddish-brown backdrop. Hammill’s own opening phrases didn’t exactly endear him to the average back-of-cover reader.
“In the end, the plague touched us all. It was not confined to the Oran of Camus,” he mused in best Tarantula mode. Part pretentious, but never lacking passion, the Hammill note somehow complemented David Oppenheim’s accompanying illustration perfectly. Which is why Hamill’s offering out-pointed Tom T Hall’s note for his Greatest Hits Volume 2 album, plus Ralph J Gleason’s jottings for The Real Lenny Bruce in 1975.
Rarely has there been a year when a jazz album, or maybe two, hasn’t garnered an award nomination. Certainly there has been no shortage of fine jazz writers, though in the beginning it was generally thought that those who handed out such plaudits considered jazz to be dangerous, yet, at the same time, respectable. Length has also played a part. Providing a virtual tome for an all-encompassing Ellington box-set or an epic Smithsonian blues collection still impresses.
Hardly surprising in a CD age when notes hardly get room to breath amid on a normal pop issue where buyers have to virtually squint in order to discern cover art details.
So does anybody really care anymore ?
Amazingly someone does. None more so than those who contribute to the online Liner Notes Preservation Society. The Society’s site is a thing of wonder. Where backsleeve chunks of garbage meet shards of genius and the wonders of notes providers of albums by Big Black Damned, Prince Buster, The Who, and Marilyn Manson are provided with space alongside those stemming from releases by the 13th Floor Eelvators and Donovan, whose Sunshine Superman regales us with such thoughts as “Sunshine super duper: a collapsed I am a child affair no less: the legend of the girl child: a tale for ageing children. Twelve kingfishers: dive – a flash of turquoise – brilliant into the pool (summer – dono-leitcho’s island)…etc”
What does it all mean? the LNPS ask. And who can blame them?
It’s the LNPS who have discovered the cuckoo note – the one that flies in and takes over when no-one is really watching. Such a note appears on an album that is attributed to Perez Prado but bears the seemingly innocent title addition – “and Other Latin American Favourites”. Anyone hoping to learn more about the Mambo King might be somewhat surprised when the liner note turns instead to the subject of Latin Rhythms leader Eddie Maynard , who will apparentlyarise from nowhere amid a speck of light to make great impact upon the Earth and all who dwell therein!
There are a zillion other tales to be read in the naked city of liner notes. Like those involving lyricist Johnny Mercer, who, when providing a note for the Bobby Troup Sings Mercer album opted to write the whole caboodle in verse. Or Miles Davis turning writer and providing a note for his Jack Johnson album because the boxer’s story so inspired him. Perhaps too a mention of myriad record company inefficiencies regarding sleeve-note production – one writer was amazed to find that
his originally error-free creation had acquired a no less than score of mis-spellings along the way, the phrase “ a Basie-like accompaniment” being translated into a “Bassey-like” one amid the literary mayhem, while Glenn Miller’s American Patrol was transformed into African Petrol.
Liner note writing – it’s a life.

Fred Dellar
Liner Notes – The Grammy Winners
1963 Duke Ellington: The Ellington Era (Columbia) Stanley Dance
1964 Mexico (Columbia) Stanton Catlin
1965 Frank Sinatra: September Of My Years (Reprise) Stan Cornyn
1966 Frank Sinatra: Sinatra At The Sands (Reprise) Stan Cornyn
1967 John Loudermilk: Suburban Attitudes In Country Verse (RCA) John Loudermilk
1968 Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison (Columbia) Johnny Cash
1969 Bob Dylan: Nashville Skyline (Columbia) Johnny Cash
1970 Bessie Smith: The World’s Greatest Blues Singer (Columbia) Chris Albertson
1971 Sam Samudio: Sam, Hard And Heavy (Atlantic) Sam Samudio
1972 Tom T Hall’s Greatest Hits (Mercury) Tom T Hall
1973 Art Tatum: God Is In The House (Onyx) Dan Morgernstern
1974 Bob Wills: For The Last Time (United Artists) Charles R. Townsend
1975 Bob Dylan: Blood On The Tracks (Columbia) Peter Hamill
1976 The Changing Face Of Harlem – The Savoy Sesssions (Savoy) Dan Morgenstern
1977 Bing Crosby: A Legendary Performer (RCA) George T Simon
1978 A Bing Crosby Collection (Columbia) Michael Brooks
1979 Charlie Parker: The Complete Savoy Sessions (Savoy) Bob Porter, James Patrick
1980 Frank Sinatra: Triology (Reprise) David McClintock
1981 Errol Garner: Master Of The Keyboard (Book Of The Month) Dan Morgenstern)
1982 Bunny Berigan: Giants Of Jazz (Time-Life) John Chilton, Richard Sudhalter
1983 Bill Evans: The Interplay Sessions (Milestone) Orrin Keepnews
1984 Various: Big Band Jazz (Smithsonian) Gunther Schuller, Martin Williams
1985 Sam Cooke: Live At The Harlem Square Club (RCA) Peter Guralnick
1986 Frank Sinatra: The Voice, The Columbia Years (CBS) Gary Giddins and others
1987 Thelonious Monk: Complete Riverside Recordings (Riverside) Orrin Keepnews
1988 Eric Clapton: Crossroads (Polydor) Anthony DeCurtis
1989 Charlie Parker: Bird, The Complete Charlie Parker on Verve (Verve) Phil Schaap
1990 Clifford Brown: Brownie, The Complete Emarcy Recordings (Emarcy) Dan Morgenstern
1991 James Brown: Star Time (Polydor) Cliff White, Harry Weinger and others
1992 Aretha Franklin – Queen Of Soul, The Atlantic Recordings (Atlantic), Dave Marsh, Jerry Wexler, David Ritz, Tom Dowd, Thulani Davis, Ahmet Ertegun, Arif Mardin
1993 The Complete Billie Holiday On Verve (Verve) Buck Clayton, Phil Schaap, Joel E Siegel
1994 Louis Armstrong: Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man 1923-1934 (Columbia-Legacy) Dan Morganstern, Loren Schoenberg
1995 The Complete Stax/Volt Soul Singles Vol.3 1972-1975 (Stax) Rob Bowman
1996 Miles Davis & Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings (Columbia) George Avakian, Bob Belden, Bill Kirchner, Phil Schaap
1997 Anthology Of American Folk Music (Smithsonian-Folkways) John Fahey, Peter Stampfel, Eric Von Schmidt, Luis Kemnitzer and others
1998 The Miles Davis Quintet 1965-1968 (Sony Legacy) Bob Belden, Todd Coolman, Michael Cuscuna
1999 John Coltrane: The Classic Quartet Complete (Impulse) Bob Blumenthal
2000 Miles Davis and John Coltrane: The Complete Columbia Recordings 1955-1961 (Sony) Bob Blumental
2001 Richard Pryor: And It’s Deep Too (Rhino) Walter Mosley Charley Patton: Screamin)’ And Hollerin’ The Blues (Revenant) David Evans
2004 Various Artists: Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues (Sony) Tom Piazza
2005 Woody Herman: Complete Columbia Recordings: (Sony) Loren Schoenberg
2006 Jelly Roll Morton: Complete Library Of Congress Recordings (Rounder) Alan Lomax, John Szwed
2007 Fats Waller: If You Got To Ask, You Ain’t Got It (RCA) Dan Morgenstern
2008 Various Artsts: John Work III Recording Black Culture (Spring Fed) Bruce Nemeroy