This entry in my newly-semi-regular CC Vinyl series is the sleeve for The Impressions’ early 1966 album Ridin’ High with slick pasted slightly askew. The Impressions was a group out of Chicago led by one of my favourite artists; Curtis Mayfield. That’s him on the Cobra.
Mayfield’s Cobra was a 1965 427-equipped CSX-numbered monster. Sam Gooden (l) and Fred Cash had to make do with pre-427 Corvettes, a subtle nod to the hierarchy within the group. Although The Impressions recorded out of Chicago, this pic brings to mind an excerpt from a Mojo Magazine article discussing Detroit’s Motown label;
‘The label even operated a protocol involving the type of car you owned. “You weren’t allowed to have certain cars until you reached a certain level,” explains keyboard player Johnny Griffith. “It was like a class system. If a musician bought a Cadillac before it was considered proper, they’d stop calling you on sessions for a while. Every weekend I’d fly somewhere to do a session, and I’d have me a Cadillac convertible waiting at the airport. When I came back home, I drove an old Buick.”‘ – Ben Edmonds, Mojo March 1999.
Curtis was prolific, writing for The Impressions, Aretha Franklin, The Staple Singers, Baby Huey and others, as well as having a brilliant solo career. His most complete album was the Super Fly soundtrack, which does not qualify for CC Vinyl due to my entirely arbitrary rule that a car must feature on the sleeve and, alas, this evocative artwork above was not used on the cover. He wrote the lyrics in counterpoint to the movie’s exploitative narrative and placed them over plaintive melodic soul. If you’re looking for a Curtis Mayfield starter album, this is the one.
For now, I’ll leave you with a track from Ridin’ High called ‘Too Slow’. Stick it on play and enjoy while I redirect you to CC.
Seeing since it’s EARLY 1966, and there were no Cobra replicas, yet, since they were new in Ford dealerships… That is definitely a real Shelby Cobra. 🙂
With a singer of Mayfield’s magnitude, he had a great taste for style in his automobiles. Wonder if the 2 Vettes, were big blocks. I mean 396s, that is… Since, like you said, the 427 in the Vette wasn’t then available.
We all know Superfly drove an Eldorado, but that car on the album cover looks almost like a Stutz Blackhawk.
Awesome find, Don. My parents have tons of Motown records, namely from the 60’s and early 70’s. A great time for music, as well as cars.
A fun piece – it’s cool when old records and old cars meet, as both are interests of mine too. It is interesting that the British label is His Master’s Voice, when in America it was RCA Victor. A bit of a CC effect here, as my daughter has been enjoying the vinyl copy that she just picked up of Meet the Beatles – the American version issued by Capitol Records. No cars on the cover, though.
You remind me of another kind of CC vinyl, when vehicle manufacturers commissioned records to be available through dealers. A few weeks ago I picked up a1960-ish album of jazz music from Columbia Special Products that was sponsored by Studebaker. I have another that was a collection of mainstream classic pop tunes that was a joint product of RCA Victor and Chevrolet, from maybe 1961. I need to write something on these oddities sometime.
JP, “His Master’s Voice” was an EMI-owned imprint with only a historic (yet fascinating) relationship to RCA. I’ve seen all or part of this history in multiple sources, wikipedia’s looks pretty accurate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice
But here’s a “six degrees” aside…the American Broadcasting Company began as NBC Blue Network (NBC was owned by RCA until 1986).
Back when the US Government wasn’t shy about enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, they forced RCA to spinoff Blue, then a couple years later, broke up the Hollywood Studio System, which among MANY other things, forced Paramount to divest its chain of movie theaters.
The two newly independent entities – United Paramount Theaters and the old Blue Network – became ABC. ABC-Paramount was their record division.
Today, Universal Music Group owns the old ABC catalog.
The “Bling” associated with today’s R&B/Hip-Hop…Escalades, Maybachs…can all point back to album covers like these.
The high-level story I’ve heard, which seems consistent with that Wikipedia article, is that the “His Master’s Voice” logo was a trademark of Emile Berliner, the German-born inventor of the phonograph as we now know it, which he licensed to affiliates in different countries along with his technology. Berliner called his invention the “Gramophone”, and many of these companies originally had the word “Gramophone” in their name. RCA ended up with the His Master’s Voice trademark in the U.S. (and most of the rest of the Americas) via its corporate predecessor Victor. In the UK (and in most British Commonwealth nations aside from Canada), the label that owned it eventually came to be known as HMV, after the trademark, and merged with two other companies to form EMI in the early 1930s (in the U.S., EMI was also the parent of Capitol Records from the mid-1950s onward).
In the U.K., RCA did not begin operations until 1957. Before that time, it licensed its material to HMV, presumably due to the historical ties between the two companies as Berliner Gramophone affiliates. Elvis Presley’s early singles therefore came out in the U.K. on HMV. When RCA started up a British operation, his releases switched to RCA, but the records didn’t have the “His Master’s Voice” logo on them, because RCA didn’t own the rights to the logo in the U.K.
As for The Impressions’ U.S. label, ABC-Paramount Records, it was established in 1955 by ABC-Paramount Corp., which as Chas alluded to had been formed by the merger of the ABC TV/Radio network and the Paramount Theater chain. In the 1950s there was a lot of cross-pollination going on between TV networks/film studios on the one hand and record companies on the other, and this was ABC’s attempt to jump in. Using the “Paramount” name as part of the record label name also effectively blocked Paramount Theaters’ former parent Paramount Pictures from using it should they decide to enter the record business (which they eventually did). “Paramount” was dropped from the corporation’s name in 1962, and from the record label’s name in 1966. I’m not sure what happened to the theaters, but ABC got out of the music business in the late 1970s, selling the record label to MCA in 1979. Some online research suggests that ABC-Paramount Records/ABC Records never operated in the U.K. until 1974, which I hadn’t known before. Ray Charles, who was also on ABC-Paramount during the 1960s, was also on HMV in the U.K., so ABC-Paramount may have struck a deal to license all of their material to HMV for British release.
In some ways, there are a lot of parallels between record labels and car companies. You get a feel for the way Capitol/EMI did things, just like you get a feel for the way Chrysler Corporation did things. You memorize the various label designs and catalog numbering systems used by Atlantic Records, just as you memorize the engine and model lineups used by Pontiac over the years. Like cars, records available from major labels in Canada were usually essentially the same as those sold in the U.S., but there are exceptions (an American record collector encountering a Monkees record on RCA or a copy of the Beatles’ “From Me To You” 45 on Capitol is in much the same position as an American car buff encountering a Plodge or a Cheviac). As with car manufacturers, a lot of record labels have fallen by the wayside over the years, and are no longer with us. The record industry as a whole is a shadow of what it once was, just like the domestic car industries in North America, the U.K. and Australia.
Can’t go wrong with The Beatles. Looking forward to that article, JPC.
Awesome song! Curtis Mayfield was definitely the best thing from Superfly. As fun as that movie is, the acting was pretty mediocre all the way around.
Not that I could do any better. 🙂
I love the music. Thanks for posting. I’ve never heard of the group The Impressions, or the album, Riding High. Any more music we should be aware of? 🙂
The best way is to find artists by label; Tamla/Motown, Stax/Volt and Atlantic are the big 3 in soul from the 60s. Artists like The Supremes and The Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding and a lot more. Happy hunting.
Poppa was a rolling stone. Where ever he laid his hat was his home. And when he died, all he left us was alone.
Awesome Don! There’s nothing like cruising in your favorite classic and listening to classic soul at the same time! Some of my favorite stuff!
Love this entry, and look forward to more from this series. I can hear the crackling vinyl. What an interesting concept from the label in terms of imaging as tied to the cars. My mom wanted to meet Jerry Butler, as he had recorded her and my dad’s “song” – “Let It Be Me”. Great piece, Don.
CC effect. I was playing Bobbi Martin’s raw country-soul version of ‘Let It Be Me’ last night. Can’t find it online though. Got me some Jerry Butler – love Mechanical Man.
I’ve heard of Curtis Mayfield. 🙂
60s style Soul Music and cruisin`-they just go together naturally.
Curtis Mayfield was one of the greatest of the whole soul era, even if he wasn’t that well known like some of the more popular performers.
Not the Impressions’ only auto-cover. Looks as though they were having some trouble with their XK-E…
Good taste all around. Curtis Mayfield solo and leading the Impressions. mid-year Corvette. real deal Cobra.
sadly Curtis was victim of some stage lighting falling on him and he was never the same up until his death. Even if you didn’t know the Impressions you must remember Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart covered his song “People Get Ready” in the ’80’s.
Thanks for a great read Don,one of Curtis Mayfield’s session musicians was a young Jimi Hendrix
Love this very informative music/cars tie-in. Long-time fan of the Motown sound and other classic R&B and Soul. Some music trivia: as recent as about 10 years ago (if not less), the longest continuously existing and performing group of the so-called rock era was The Four Tops. Several of the original members have since passed away in more recent years.