The story behind each design
ThE sonObeAt SingLes SleEves
Three “big” ideas
When Austin-based Sonobeat Recording Company launched in 1967, its founders had three Texas-sized ideas: first, to create a record label that would showcase Austin and Central Texas musicians, singers, and songwriters; second, to record and release all Sonobeat 45 RPM singles in stereo (the music industry had experimented briefly with stereo singles years before, but stuck with cheaper monaural singles until the early ’70s); and, third, to distinguish Sonobeat singles with custom picture sleeves, a marketing device the major labels frequently used but that local and regional labels rarely could afford. Creating, printing, and packaging singles in custom sleeves was extravagant, but in concept it would help capture the attention of record reviewers at newspapers and magazines like Billboard, Cash Box, and Record World and promote sales at record retailers.
Things didn’t quite work out the way Sonobeat hoped; although all but two of its 24 45 RPM singles were released in stereo, only seven wore custom sleeves. The reality was that plain unprinted paper sleeves cost half a cent, but custom sleeves added as much as 5¢ to the cost of manufacturing and packaging each copy of a Sonobeat single, cutting the profit margin substantially. The retail price of a 45 RPM single in the late ’60s averaged 79¢, and the wholesale price that Sonobeat charged record stores was less than 40¢. Sonobeat’s custom picture sleeves became a cost the Joseys couldn’t continue to justify based on sales results.
Here’s the inside scoop on Sonobeat’s seven custom singles sleeves, all of which, except The Conqueroo’s, were designed in-house.
Sweetarts • A Picture of Me
Sonobeat’s first release, in 1967, was the Sweetarts’ A Picture Of Me. When Sonobeat recorded the ’Tarts, the band was already firmly established as one of the most popular University of Texas frat and club bands, playing a mixture of original songs written by Sweetarts guitarist Ernie Gammage and covers of top 40 and R&B hits. A year before recording with Sonobeat, the group had released a single on the Dallas-based Vandan label, which Sonobeat producer Bill Josey Jr. (whose radio air name was Rim Kelley) had played on his KAZZ-FM. top 40 radio show, so it was fitting that Sonobeat’s release should be distinguished from the Vandan release with a custom picture sleeve. Rim rubber cemented a publicity photo provided by the band to a sheet of Bristol board and hand set a combination of rub-on dry transfer lettering and self-adhesive cut-out lettering directly to the surface of the photo. Rim had designed KAZZ-FM’s weekly hit lists, distributed to listeners through local record retailers, using similar techniques. If you’re lucky enough to have a copy of the Sweetarts’ single in its picture sleeve, on close scrutiny you’ll see a faint outline around many letters in the words “Sweetarts” and “a picture of me”. Those words were set with adhesive-backed cut-out lettering whose edges didn’t completely disappear when burnished to the photo. The flip side of the single, Without You isn’t mentioned on the sleeve.
Don Dean • Night Life
Dapper Don Dean managed The Club Seville, a posh nightclub occupying the second floor of the Crest Motor InnWhen it opened in January 1966, the Crest Motor Inn in downtown Austin was known as Wilbur Clark’s Crest Hotel. Over the years, through ownership changes, it became the Crest Motor Inn, the Crest Sheraton, the Radisson, and, now, The LINE Austin., overlooking Austin’s Town Lake (now Lady Bird Lake). Don’s Sonobeat single, a jazzy cover of a Willie Nelson classic, Night Life, was destined to be sold at The Club Seville, where it was recorded, as well as at Austin-area record retailers, so it got special treatment with Sonobeat’s first highly stylized picture sleeve. Don provided one of his publicity photos that Miller Blueprint in downtown Austin re-photographed as a high-contrast negative, that in turn was reversed into a high-contrast positive print. Sonobeat co-founder Rim Kelley designed the sleeve, laying it out on Bristol board and applying dry transfer lettering directly onto the high-contrast print. Don’s was the first Sonobeat custom sleeve to include the titles of both the “A” and “B” sides of the single. The letters “b/w”, which precede the title Where or When, mean “backed with”, record industry jargon for the “B” side of a single. The term is meaningless today, since digital distribution of a “single” literally means one song. But in the age of vinyl records, a single meant a phonograph record with one tune on each side.
Lavender Hill Express • Visions
Visions launched a three-single relationship between Sonobeat and Lavender Hill Express, Austin’s first “supergroup”. Lavender Hill Express rose like a phoenix from the ashes of two hot Austin rock acts, The Wig and the Baby Cakes, both of which disbanded in 1967. Like the Sweetarts’ picture sleeve, Visions’s sleeve was created using a publicity photo provided by the band. However, unlike other picture sleeves designed by Sonobeat co-founder Rim Kelley using dry transfer and cut-out lettering sheets, Lavender Hill Express’ sleeve featured a hand-lettered title. The oval-like black space at the top of the publicity photo called for something special, so Rim drew and inked the title on Bristol board to precisely fit that space. The addition of the “stereo” graphic to the right of the title was an attempt to balance the composition. Printer Powell Offset in South Austin superimposed the reversed-out title over the rest of the sleeve layout, which Rim created with Letraset and Chartpak dry transfer lettering sheets.
The Conqueroo • 1 to 3
The Conqueroo, the singular house band at The Vulcan Gas Company, Austin’s ’60s hippy music venue on Congress Avenue, deserved an idiosyncratic picture sleeve for its Sonobeat stereo single, 1 to 3 backed with I’ve Got Time. Because The Conqueroo and The Vulcan together defined Austin’s hippie scene in the late ’60s, Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Sr. contracted Austin photographer Belmer Wright to photograph the band in its natural habitat and The Conqueroo’s friend and artist extraordinaire Gilbert Shelton (creator of the ’60s indy comics The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Wonder-Warthog) to provide a unique design to wrap around Belmer’s equally unique photo. The photo was shot, using an ultra-wide angle lens to give a semi-fisheye perspective, on the front porch of The Conqueroo’s rented house on Grandview Street just off The University of Texas campus. Belmer added eclectic elements to the scene – four neighborhood kids and a dog (or maybe two) – surrounding the band members that captured The Conqueroo’s personality as an alternative band long before that term existed. Gilbert’s design, modeled after the Vulcan Gas Company’s iconic psychedelic posters and handbills of the era, perfectly embellished Belmer’s photo, creating a sleeve that embodied the Vulcan’s – and The Conqueroo’s – collective essence. Not knowing which song would be picked as the “A” side, Gilbert hand lettered two versions of the sleeve artwork finishing the design just before moving to San Francisco, where he got his big break as an underground comics creator. With two versions of the sleeve artwork, it was a no-brainer to use them both, making The Conqueroo’s single Sonobeat’s first double-sided custom sleeve. Producer Rim Kelley added the typeset material at the bottom of the sleeve using dry transfer lettering. Except for one quirky mistake – the phrase “Recorded live at the Vulcan Gas Co.” is embedded in the tail of the Q in ”Conqueroo“, but the single wasn’t actually recorded before a live audience – the sleeve arguably is the best, and without doubt the most unique, in Sonobeat’s catalog.
Sonobeat’s custom sleeves were printed by Powell Offset Services in South Austin. Powell also printed the blank center labels used on Sonobeat’s singles and albums.
Special photographic effects (such as the high contrast photo on Don Dean’s single sleeve) were made by Miller Blueprint in downtown Austin.
We’ve never located any of the original sleeve artwork in the Sonobeat archives, leading us to surmise that the finished designs were left with the printer and are now long lost.
Lavender Hill Express • Watch Out!
When Sonobeat released Lavender Hill Express’ second stereo 45 RPM single, producers Bill Josey Sr. and Rim Kelley intended to record an album with the group. This alone justified special treatment for the picture sleeve for Watch Out! backed with Country Music’s Here to Stay. The band provided two 8" x 10" photos, both taken on location on the outskirts of Schwertner, Texas, just north of Austin. As you might have guessed, keyboardist Johnny Schwertner’s family hailed from the tiny town, founded in the 1880s by Johnny’s great-grandfather.
The rural setting was a good fit for the two completely different song genres represented on the single. Not only did each side of the sleeve feature a different outdoor photo, but both sides featured a color overlay applied to the band name and song title, using different lettering styles selected to reflect the genre of the particular side, rock for the “A” side and country for the “B”. Aligning the color type layer, which Rim set by hand, was a little tricky but worked out OK, although it resulted in some detail in both photos washing out. The two-sided sleeve allowed record shops to rack copies of the single in both the rock and the country bins by simply flipping the single sleeve to the appropriate side. This had a secondary purpose of encouraging record shops to buy a few more copies of the single than they might have purchased if the single appealed to only one audience.
Lavender Hill Express recorded a third single for Sonobeat in 1968, but by the time it was released the band was so well known on the Austin music scene that a picture sleeve was an unnecessary marketing expense, so the third single went “naked” in a plain paper cut-out sleeve.
(Johnny) Winter • Mean Town Blues
In summer 1968, Sonobeat recorded an album’s worth of material with Johnny Winter’s trio, then known simply as Winter. Two tracks, Rollin’ and Tumblin’ and Mean Town Blues were selected for a stereo single release to build anticipation for Johnny’s album, The Progressive Blues Experiment, that Sonobeat planned to release during the holiday season in 1968. Winter’s pounding blues represented a departure from the rock, psychedelic, and jazz music Sonobeat had recorded and released in ’67 and early ’68. Johnny was one of the most unique musicians producers Bill Josey Sr. and Rim Kelley had worked with, and they had a hard time deciding which song should be the single’s “A” side. Those factors led Rim to design a simple sleeve using a close-up shot of Johnny commissioned from Austin music photographer Burton Wilson, overlaid with the “Winter” and the Sonobeat logo on the front, with no mention of the song titles. An elusive backside to the sleeve featured an array of film strips from Burton’s photo session with Johnny, with the song titles, release number, and other customary information interspersed among the strips. As with the other sleeves he designed, Rim used dry transfer lettering applied directly to a print of Johnny’s photo. Notably, the Winter single marked the debut of Sonobeat’s stylized “S” logo (symbolizing Sonobeat Stereo). Although Rim doesn’t recall designing the back side of the single sleeve, there’s sufficient stylistic and technical evidence – including the appearance of specific type fonts Rim frequently used – to easily conclude that, indeed, he did. There also is sufficient evidence that the Winter single was issued in both a single-sided version of the sleeve (just the front) and in the double-sided version; however, it’s exceptionally rare to see the double-sided sleeve show up on eBay or phonograph record auction sites, leading us to conclude that as few as 100 copies of the single were packaged in the double-sided sleeve.
Jim Chesnut • About to Be Woman
University of Texas undergrad Jim ChesnutJim Chesnut recorded the country-folk ballads About to Be Woman and Leaves for Sonobeat in 1968. The single’s release was Jim’s first and Sonobeat’s 14th. Both songs were written by Herman Nelson, whose large oeuvre of compositions was published by Sonobeat’s sister company, Sonosong Music. The decision to create a custom sleeve for Jim’s single was influenced as much by producer Bill Josey Sr.’s desire to promote Herman’s song catalog as by Jim, himself a talented songwriter who had performed on Herman’s first Sonosong demo album. Jim’s was Sonobeat’s last custom picture sleeve. To spend an extra four to five cents for each copy of a custom sleeve almost completely offset any profit margin Sonobeat hoped to make with most of its releases. Rim designed this final sleeve using the same technique he had used for the Sweetarts’ sleeve: he burnished dry transfer lettering directly onto a publicity photo Jim supplied.
Mariani • Re-Birth Day
Sonobeat began its relationship with jazz-rock drummer Vince Mariani in 1969 and released, perhaps ill-advisedly, a stereo single comprised of Vince’s drum solos Pulsar andBoots. The single was a financial failure, even though Vince’s performance was quite spectacular. By early 1970, Sonobeat had built a progressive rock band around Vince, featuring guitar wunderkind Eric Johnson and a rotating set of Austin bass guitarists, keyboardists, and vocalists. Calling the band simply “Mariani”, Sonobeat prepped an advance pressing of a single by the group, featuring band originals Re-Birth Day and Memories Lost and Found. Sold in Austin-area record stores, the single was intended as a teaser for an album to be entitled Perpetuum Mobile that Sonobeat planned to release later in the year, so rather than package the single in a custom sleeve (Sonobeat had conducted extensive photo sessions with the band, so there was no dearth of good visual material for a picture sleeve) or a plain paper cut-out sleeve, producers Bill Josey Sr. and Rim Kelley instead opted for a glossy white solid paper sleeve on which “Mariani” was rubber stamped at the top and “Advance Copy” at the bottom. Simple but also a little mysterious to pique record buyers’ curiosity.
Generic Sleeve
Of course, there were many Sonobeat singles released between the Sweetarts’ and Jim Chesnut’s that didn’t get the custom sleeve treatment. Whether or not to spend the extra time and money on a custom sleeve was a simple commercial guess as to which releases were most likely to be local breakout hits if given the marketing lift that a picture sleeve might provide. Those that seemed destined to become hits got a custom sleeve and those expected to have limited sales didn’t. Those that didn’t get a custom sleeve were packaged in a simple generic punch-out sleeve on which “Sonobeat Stereo” was rubber stamped. No Sonobeat singles released after Jim Chesnut’s were packaged in custom sleeves, a tacit acknowledgement that the extra cost was no guarantee of sales success.
How to make a custom sleeve
Desktop and computer-assisted publishing didn’t exist in the 1960s. National record labels had in-house art departments that created sleeve and jacket designs by hand, augmented with professional phototypesetting for titles and Linotype machines for blocks of text, such as track listings and album liner notes. Here’s the process Sonobeat used to create its custom singles sleeves.
1. Pencil out rough design sketches, followed by full-size mock-up drawings of the most promising designs.
2. Mount a 14" x 17" sheet of smooth finish 100 lb Bristol board, on which is printed a non-reproducing light blue alignment grid, on a drafting table.
3. Cut an 8" x 10" artist publicity photo down to 8" x 8" with an Xacto knife, align, and glue to the Bristol board with rubber cement.
4. Align dry transfer lettering (printed on clear acetate sheets that feature repeating full alphabets, numbers, and punctuation), using the grid on the Bristol board, then burnish the lettering onto the photo or Bristol board using a wood or plastic stick. Dry transfer lettering was and still is available in many different fonts, sizes, and colors.
5. When a type face isn't available in dry transfer format, use cut-out self-adhesive lettering, also on clear acetate sheets. Using an Xacto knife, individually cut out the letters and numbers, align them on the photo or Bristol board using a straight edge such as a t-square, and burnish into place.
6. If preparing a two-color sleeve, put the second color elements on a separate overlay, usually semi-transparent parchment paper, aligned with the artwork on the Bristol board. Add registration alignment marks, such as , just outside the borders of the artwork and overlay.
7. Add ink-drawn lines and embellishments above or below, but not directly on, the photo.
8. Make sure you have extra copies of the artist’s publicity photo and dry transfer lettering sheets, in case tragic and irrevocable mistakes occur during layout.
9. Deliver the finished artwork to the printer with any special instructions, such as the color selection for an overlay.
