Charles Mingus

Pithecanthropus Erectus

Atlantic Records, 1956 (original cover)

The Clown

Atlantic Records, 1957 (original cover)

Mingus Ah Um

Columbia Records, 1959

Mingus Dynasty

Columbia Records, 1959

Blues & Roots

Atlantic Records, 1960

(Corrected title/logo location, color)

Oh Yeah

Atlantic Records, 1962

Tijuana Moods

RCA, 1962 (Recorded 1957)

The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady

Impulse! Records, 1963

Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus

Impulse! Records, 1964

Mingus Plays Piano

Impulse! Records, 1964

Mingus at Monterey

Jazz Workshop, 1964

(Later cover, from Fantasy Records-distributed release)

Let My Children Hear Music

Columbia Records, 1972

Changes One

Atlantic Records, 1974

Changes Two

Atlantic Records, 1975

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers (today, Moanin')

Blue Note, 1958

(Mostly free of the weird 2-tone striping found here and most everywhere else)

Sun Ra

Sun Ra has probably the largest and most widely issued catalog in the history of recorded music, and the task of tracking when any bit of music was recorded or (often decades later) released has actually been the sole topic of multiple book-length features by an assortment of daring musicologists. His own record label, Saturn, often issued records with blank or hand drawn covers in extremely limited pressings that would simply disappear into the sands of time. As such the following titles are presented alphabetically and rarely captioned by more than a title. Good luck.

Angels and Demons at Play

(Original design, reconstructed from parts of several extremely low res images, approximating the original design as nearly as possible.)

Aurora Borealis

(Reconstruction of original, hand-drawn Saturn release cover from 1981, adapted from Popsike)

Fate in a Pleasant Mood

(1974 Impulse! reissue)

A Fireside Chat with Lucifer

(Adapted from Discogs)

The Heliocentric World of Sun Ra, Vol. 1

(Recent reissues)

The Heliocentric World of Sun Ra, Vol. 2

The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra

Interstellar Low Ways

(Original)

Lanquidity

Mayan Temples

The Nubians of Plutonia

(Jaw-dropping effort from the 1974 Impulse! reissue)

Nuclear War

Other Planes of There

Sound of Joy

Unity

Visits Planet Earth

(Reconstructed)