About

The glamorous album cover is one of the great commercial art forms of the twentieth century, and one of its least credited. The back of a sleeve might name the photographer and the art director and still leave out the woman on the front: the 1965 Whipped Cream & Other Delights credits “Peter Whorf Graphics”, and not Dolores Erickson.

This gallery puts her name back on the record wherever it can be found. Each cover turns over to show the album, the artist, the year, and who she was.

The rules

• A name appears only with a source. A newspaper or magazine piece, an interview, a credit printed on the sleeve, or a reputable history. A forum caption is not enough, and when no one can say who she was, we don’t guess.
• No minors, ever. Any cover showing someone under eighteen, or whose age can’t be established for a suggestive image, is left out.
• Every card links its sources, so you can check us. Sources sometimes disagree; when they do, we go with the stronger one or leave the claim out.
• Credit where it belongs. Cover images come from the Cover Art Archive and album details from MusicBrainz. Each cover belongs to its label and photographer.

A tip of the hat

We are not the first to love these sleeves. Benjamin Darling’s book Vixens of Vinyl: The Alluring Ladies of Vintage Album Covers (Chronicle Books, 2001) collected a hundred of them more than two decades ago. If you like this site, find a copy.