Inner sleeve, Live in New York, 2nd edition, 1973

By the early 1970s, album covers had progressed from plain brown wrappers to hand painted merchandising to beautifully designed artifacts. “Rock” (as opposed to rock’n’roll) elevated lowly cardboard to personal expression. 

All this is to say that even at a tiny independent like Oblivion doing the most with your LP covers was seen by the company as a statement that the music inside was worthy of great attention. No one ever accused Tom and me of wanting to hold back on what we knew (we were waiting for the internet without even knowing it), and Tom’s evangelism for Fred McDowell was so complete that he insisted we needed an inner sleeve for Fred’s Oblivion release.

No matter we were broke (as always) and that a sleeve without a hole was even more expensive, in addition to the extra typesetting, negatives, printing plates, and the printing itself.

I think if we had it to do over, we might have included the lyrics, like we did on Blues from the Apple; after all, blues lyrics are the lifeblood of the form. Fred’s discography was nowhere as extensive as it is now, 40 years after his death, so we resolved that spreading the word on his recorded legacy would be worthy of our listeners’ attention.