THE SHOW STOPPERS, Ain´t Nothing But A House Party, 1968
Posted: June 10, 2009 Filed under: 60s, Cartoon Sleeves, USA | Tags: Birth Control, Grobschnitt, Guru Guru, Heinz Dofflein, Northern Soul 2 Comments »
When I post records on this blog everything about them looks neat and organized. Looking for records at the flea-markets and in thrift-stores is the opposite. Everything is cluttered and you have to make your own decisions. In reality the dirt and the gold are so close they seem inseparable.
Like in this case. If you know the Show Stoppers you will know the deal. If you don´t, like I didn´t when I bought this record, you´ll go by the sleeve. I liked the cartoon. So imagine my surprise when I took this “party record”, that I had purchased for 50 cents in a thrift-store, home and gave it a listen. It´s a monster Northern Soul classic!!!
For some reason the people at Metronome had decided to market this 1971 re-release of the Show Stoppers 1968 hit record as a “party record”. Misleading would be an understatement. This is a classic Soul record!!! The sleeve was drawn by the young designer Heinz Dofflein.
Sadly I couldn´t find out much about Heinz Dofflein on the Internet. He did a great cartoon LP sleeve in the same style for the Guckenheimer Sauerkraut Band(1974) here. He also did a bunch of LP sleeves for Krautrock bands such as the legendary Robert Crumb inspired drawing for Berlin`s Birth Control (1972) here, Guru Guru (1972) here and a fantasy style painting for Grobschnitt (1977) here. But after that, he seemed to have stopped working. Hopefully some information will surface about Heinz Dofflein. I sure would like to know what happened to him…
( UPDATE 01/22/2010: I got a mail recently, by someone whose sister was Dofflein´s girlfriend once, informing me that Heinz Dofflein has died. That´s all they knew, not where and when, so I can´t confirm it.
Übrigens: ein kleiner erweiterter, von mir auf Deutsch geschriebener Artikel, über diese Platte der Showstoppers und über Heinz Dofflein erschien am 29. Oktober 2009 in der Wochenzeitung Jungle World. Zu finden Online hier.)
THE SHOW STOPPERS, Ain´t Nothing But A House Party, 1968
THE SHOW STOPPERS, What Can A Man Do, 1968
About me:
My name is Andreas Michalke. I´m a cartoonist from Berlin, Germany and I like collecting records. Most of the records I find in thrift stores or at flea markets here in Berlin. I like a lot of music but I thought I`d focus on odd German records. Preferably with cartoon covers.
All my scans are high-resolution. If you double-click on them they will get much bigger.
Recent Comments