[78-L] Alex Steinweiss article

[Cary Ginell]

Liesl told me to limit my letter to 100 words or it would be edited for me. I'd rather do the editing myself than have them do it. I think I made my point and cited some verified sources. The rest you can do on the Times' website, where one can be freer with word counts. I sent Liesl scans of 1920s 78 sleeves on Perfect and Brunswick, which show illustrations of recording artists, selected listings from their catalogs, and some creative artwork of the times. The main thrust of the article was that Steinweiss invented the modern album cover. The other misstatements - concerning record sleeves and what an album is - are just sidebars. If I only had 100 words, I wanted to refute the main premise of the story - that Steinweiss somehow invented the album cover industry. This is not a big deal for the Times. I'll be lucky if my letter gets in at all. It's a murmur of protest, but at least it's something. 

Cary Ginell

> From: mbiel at mbiel.com
> To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com
> Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:05:24 -0700
> Subject: Re: [78-L] Alex Steinweiss article
> 
> Is Cary developing a web page with the illustrations that the reporter
> wants to link to?
> 
> The other aspect of the article concerned the plain brown paper sleeves.
>  We should include some sleeves, possibly starting with some Columbia
> sleeves, the early pre-1910 sleeves with the muse in flowing veils, then
> perhaps some of the multi color ones in the late 20s.  THOSE will freak
> them out.  Then a few Victor and Brunswick sleeves with the artist
> pictures and bios.  In my posting I mentioned that Edison cylinders and
> disc sleeves had detailed notes for the specific records, and we should
> illustrate a few of these.  
> 
> I think that Cary edited his letter a little too much, leaving out the
> description of what an album and a sleeve is.  It also still gives
> Steinweiss too much credit, especially in the first sentence.  His
> revolutionary action was just to add his artistic sense to the covers,
> not that his were the first covers -- that is not clear enough.
> 
> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 78-L mailing list
> 78-L at klickitat.78online.com
> http://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/listinfo/78-l
 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222986/direct/01/