Barbara Lynn

Saturday, 18 August 2007

Peter van Dongen was not particularly pleased with the CD-sleeve that I used to illustrate the story that I wrote about him. He has made so many more interesting drawings for bands!
The recent birth of his son Milan is a good excuse for an update.
Long time ago, before Peter had any comic book out yet, I was asked to do the artwork for an LP with Barbara Lynn material. A guy called Johan, who ran a record shop that I visited frequently ( The Sound of the Fifties ) was a fan of Barbara Lynn and because there was no compilation of her music available back then, he thought to release one himself. Not a bootleg, but an official release! It must have cost him ten years of his life, but the LP exists and it is a great record. I only had one record of Barbara Lynn back then, her hit You’ll lose a good thing, but that is by far not the best track of the 17 songs that Johan picked for this LP, so i was quite happy to be part of this project.
Since there was not a good picture available for the cover, and since the Internet was not available too in 1985, I asked Peter van Dongen if he could make a drawing. Well, to be honest, I asked somebody else first, but she was way to expensive for this no budget project. Peter came up with a much better drawing than I had expected, and Johan must have been more than pleased with it. But as a good businessman he did not show this, afraid that I would ask extra money for the artwork.
The recordings on the LP are all made from 45’s from Johan’s collection. While listening to it again tonight I noticed the little SFX’s that are so dear to me, but that are no longer part of the music of today. Here is one of my favourites, a song that shows all the ingredients that makes miss Lynn stand out in this interesting twilight zone between blues and soul.

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