Under the category of: What were they thinking? That’s where I would put this early 1970s album cover, for The Roscoe Mitchell Solo Concerts.
Source: Euclid Records
I can’t think of a more depressing scene. Is this shed where he lives? Is Mitchell a starving musician who has been reduced to living in a shed with peeling paint? Oh, and what’s with the ladder anyway?
I don’t know about you, but this album cover wouldn’t inspire me to buy the record. Perhaps I’m wired wrong. Maybe the idea was to make people feel sorry for the starving artist who lives in a shed, and who is trying to make enough money to feed himself and his faithful companion.
If the photographer set this shot up, he/she should hang their head in shame. Even the photo isn’t great. There are a number of ways that this might have been salvaged.
Maybe it’s best not to overthink this. It was 1974 after all, and album covers as art hadn’t really caught on like wildfire yet. But really, is this the best they could come up with?
Perhaps there is a hidden or subtle meaning that I’m not getting. If so, please someone enlighten me.
I wonder what the legendary jazz saxophonist, Roscoe Mitchell, thinks today, as he looks back on this album cover.
Mitchell is a famous jazz musician, composer, and educator. For more than 4 decades he has recorded, performed, toured, and taught throughout the United States and Europe. Mitchell has also received many awards and grants, including a National Endowment for the Arts.
If you’d like to read a review of The Roscoe Mitchell Solo Concerts, check out this post on Inconstant Sol. If you’re interested in buying the album, a copy happens to be for sale on eBay at the moment.
@David: Interesting… Probably a more valid theory than mine. 😉
@Russ: I didn’t know that. Canadian Content perhaps? :scratch: That would explain a lot. 😉 Much like many of the disaster movies that I notice are playing on the Sci-Fi channel in the evenings lately.
Perhaps the cover was shot in Sackville, NB. That would explain a lot…
FYI, Sackville is an independent Canadian label. Not meaning to suggest that has any bearing on the cover quality… 😉
Helen, Roscoe’s written that in the ’70s Chicago became too much for him and he moved to the country–I think Michigan first, and then Wisconsin. I’d guess the shed was his studio; the dog is part of the picture’s “don’t mess with me” message which was probably to be expected at the time, but the site was his Walden where he remained open to contacts with the outside, unlike (I’m surmising) his monk friend Joseph Jarman.