Whether your a fan of traditional Jewish songs or your tastes run more to thrash metal (or maybe both?) there's no denying that the cover of this recent find would be much beloved of any mid-20th century illustration fan. I'm almost 97.5% sure that Mike Ludlow painted the album art - and probably in the late 50's.
If you take a look at some of the examples in my Mike Ludlow Flickr set I think you'll agree that this looks very similar to the work Ludlow was doing for The Saturday Evening Post and Esquire around 1957 to '61.
But since there is no signature visible we'll have to put a question mark behind the credits on this first one.
No doubt about the next record jacket, though - its signed in Ludlow's earlier signature style and is a great example of the classic 50's romance "big head" style the illustrators of the Cooper Studio perfected. I'm willing to bet Ludlow painted this piece around 1960.
And finally, a later period Ludlow album cover. Its got the popular mid-60's 'streaky line' style that many illustrators were adopting at that time... and the less legible signature that we were finally able to determine is Mike Ludlow's, thanks to reader Harold Henriksen, who helped identify it in this recent post.
You'll find plenty of other illustrated album covers -where else? -in my Illustrated Album Covers Flickr set.
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