Laughably bad public domain Jazz album covers

Thanks to copyright law being different in Spain than any other country there is an almost endless supply of grey-market CD releases of classic jazz albums. These things are thrown together in about 30 minutes on a computer and released, with obviously very little quality control.

Here are a few favorites, in almost every case it's the wrong musician on the cover.


The artist on the cover is Jimmy Smith, not Thelonious, plus that is a Hammond organ, not a piano.


Now, HERE is Thelonious! Unfortunately, it's for a Johnny Richards CD....


This is not Charlie Parker, this is Forrest Whitaker playing Charlie Parker in the film Bird (1985).


A couple problems here, first off...not Howard McGhee...second..that's a baritone sax, not a trumpet.


The very best of...why is there a picture of tenor saxophonist Ike Quebec instead of piano-player Tadd Dameron?


Closer this time, at least it's an alto sax, but again...not Charlie Parker...this is Johnny Hodges.


I bought a copy of this CD and later found out the artist pictured on the cover is Von Freeman, NOT Willis Jackson. This was an American produced CD released by famous Atlantic producer Joel Dorn...who SHOULD know better.


More movie confusion. This is not Benny Goodman, it is Steven Allen who played him in The Benny Goodman Story.


Yep, at least they got a picture of a vibes player...though it's Bobby Hutcherson, not Milt Jackson.

Wow... Now I know better than to buy Jazz from Italy.

That Goodman and Parker are so obvious!

This is hilarious. So how could they screw these up? Rushed jobs?

Yes, all rush jobs and artwork assigned to people who wouldn't know a jazz musician from a hole in the ground. You can find a ton of these grey market titles on Spotify as well.

S.D. wrote:

Yes, all rush jobs and artwork assigned to people who wouldn't know a jazz musician from a hole in the ground.  You can find a ton of these grey market titles on Spotify as well.  

Yeah Spotify seems to be flooded with them. Sucks having to sort through all of them when browsing an artist's discog.

Spain is the only country who only recognizes copyright for 50 years (as opposed to Life + 50 years). So these classic jazz releases are perfectly legal in Spain, but become "grey-market" once they are exported into other countries with different copyright rules.

I know nothin' about jazz or the musicians who play it, so I would never have noticed the discrepancies on those covers (except maybe the Forest Whitaker one)... but still, that's funny as hell.

To be fair, you could give any dorky white boy a clarinet and it would look like Benny Goodman