The golden days of advertising

February 2, 2009 on 1:22 pm | In Music, advertising | No Comments

The calendar I have at my desk is of old blues album ads from the 1920’s and 30’s, mostly because Barnes & Noble and the Strand had unbelievably awful calendars on sale for 2009. Last year I got an amazing R. Crumb calendar from the Strand, but when I came back this year searching for a calendar I had my choice of sailboats, kittens, puppies, or oil paintings of flowers. So I hit the internet and picked up this awesome calendar from Blues Images.

February’s image is this (an adaptation of it):

Photobucket

The tagline is awesome. This was a day when advertising had some stones. “It’s The Greatest Record Ever Made.” That promises a lot. I’d love to be able to weave that claim into one of my ads. Just balls-to-the-wall braggadocio.

Thing is, the song’s really good. It may not be the greatest record ever made by today’s standards (in my mind, it’s Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”), but I’m sure I would have worn out the needle on “Milk Cow Blues”.