Arnold Roth Album covers

Arnold Roth is a legendary cartoonist and a true comedian on paper. Also a great guy. For the last seven decades he's contributed his unique drawings, cartoons and comics strips to Esquire, Punch, Playboy, National Lampoon, The Saturday Evening Post, Sports Illustrated, Premiere, Holiday, Politiks, Smithsonian, Humbug, Help!, Time, Newsweek, and The New Yorker,  just to name a few.

 He's also written and drawn numerous children’s books, sports books, illustrated book jackets, and drawn the syndicated comic strip Poor Arnold’s Almanac. And if that's not enough, Arnold Roth is also a great jazz musician and music aficionado, and has illustrated many jazz, pop, dixieland and even classical album covers, mainly in the 1950's and 60's. Here's a sampling.
Enjoy! 

1957 Columbia records convention souvenir program give-away

Thanks to John Wendler for providing some of the album covers.

Sam Norkin's Album Cover Art

Sam Norkin (1917-2011), was a renowned caricaturist and illustrator who created over 4000 published drawings over a seven decade career, depicting theater performers, film and TV actors, opera singers, ballet dancers, and jazz, pop and classical musicians.

Sam Norkin self-portrait

Norkin was also the most well-known of the various imitators of the legendary theatrical caricaturist, the great Al Hirschfeld. The good natured Hirschfeld even laughingly refers to Norkin in the documentary "The Line King" as his imitator.

From 1940 to 1956, Norkin's Hirschfeld-esque illustrations were featured in the New York Herald Tribune and then from 1956-1982 his work was featured weekly in the New York Daily News. 

Sam Norkin was also hired to create many record covers over the years which is the work I most enjoy of his. So if you've always just thought of him as just a Hirschfeld imitator, check these album covers out. Several of these covers were clearly Hirschfeld-influenced, but most were drawn and designed in his own graphically distinctive style. 

                     Thanks to John Wendler for supplying some of the cover images.

        All about Sam Norkin's Jerry Lewis Mural at Brown's Hotel & Resort:
http://drewfriedman.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-jerry-lewis-mural-at-browns.html