1. James Royer Flora was an American artist best known for his distinctive and idiosyncratic album cover art for RCA Victor and Columbia Records during the 1940s and 1950s.
18 Facts About Jim Flora
1. 2.
Jim Flora was a fine artist as well, who created hundreds of paintings, drawings, etchings and sketches over his 84-year life.
3.
In 1941, Jim Flora married his college sweetheart, artist Jane Sinnicksen.
4.
In 1943, when Steinweiss entered the navy, Jim Flora was promoted to art director.
5.
Jim Flora's artwork began appearing on Columbia 78 rpm album covers in 1947.
6.
Jim Flora became Columbia's sales promotion manager, but soon grew frustrated with a position where he produced little art.
7.
Jim Flora drove to Mexico with his family; they remained south of the border for 15 months, during which time Jim and Jane painted, created woodcuts, and lived as bohemian gringos in Taxco.
8.
Around this time, Jim Flora did spot jobs for Columbia as a freelancer, illustrating album covers and reviving Coda during 1952 and 1953.
9.
Jim Flora illustrated the cover of Computer Design magazine for 17 years, and frequent covers for American Legion magazine.
10.
Between 1955 and 1969, working with children's book editor Margaret K McElderry at Harcourt Brace, Flora wrote and illustrated 11 books for young readers, including The Fabulous Firework Family, The Day the Cow Sneezed, Charlie Yup and His Snip-Snap Boys and Leopold, the See-Through Crumbpicker.
11.
Jim Flora quickly reconnected with and signed Flora, who between 1972 and 1982 created six more children's books for her, including Pishtosh, Bullwash, and Wimple and Stewed Goose.
12.
In 1994, Jim Flora produced a redrawn and rewritten edition of his first children's book, The Fabulous Firework Family.
13.
Jim Flora had a cartoonish style that in its earliest incarnations betrayed a diabolic humor and uninhibited sense of outrageousness.
14.
Jim Flora's style evolved radically over the decades; comparing his sharp, edgy commercial work of the 1940s to his middlebrow buffoonery of the 1970s sometimes leaves the impression they were done by different artists with the same name.
15.
Jim Flora would have exhibitions, and the galleries would set out a basket of magnifying glasses.
16.
Jim Flora was primarily an artist, and incidentally a humorist.
17.
One of Jim Flora's album covers, the 1955 RCA Victor release This is Benny Goodman and his Orchestra, was parodied twice: on a 1998 Pearl Jam tour poster and on the cover art for the 2000 CD Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas by the theremin band, The Lothars.
18.
The cover of the 2003 CD Conviction by slam poet Taylor Mali parodied Jim Flora's 1947 cover art for Gene Krupa and His Orchestra.