Disneyland Album Cover Mystery Update!

Last March (can’t believe it’s been that long!), I was asked if I knew any information about the photo on the cover of the John Fahey album, “Of Rivers and Religion” (shown above). I wrote a post about it, and as it turns out, one of the people involved in the photo shoot recently reached out to me and gave the 411 behind this little known piece of Disneyland history. Here is the story that Scott J. Tepper (credited as the location scout on the liner notes) told me when I interviewed him.



How Scott met John Fahey: Scott was a brand new lawyer in the Los Angeles area. He moved from a firm in Santa Monica to one in the Mid-Wilshire area, focusing on selective service draft work. The attorneys there typically represented labor unions, communists, the blacklisted, and eventually political activist and philosopher Angela Davis. John had tax issues, and attorney Harry Margolis (who was indicted but acquitted for tax fraud in 1977) was assisting him. Scott became friends with the musicians that worked with his firm, even if he wasn’t all that crazy about their genre of music. In March of 1972, Fahey told Scott, “I just finished this album with an orchestra, and I have no idea for the cover.” When Scott heard the title, “Of Rivers and Religion,” he immediately thought of the Rivers of America at Disneyland. Reprise Reccords supplied the art director/photographer, Ed Thrasher, who told Scott, “This is your idea, so I want to see what it is.” The three went to Disneyland to see if the Mark Twain would work as the subject of the album cover. The day they visited, it wasn’t working. In addition, Thrasher realized what sounded good was not going to work out through his lens. “I can’t get the river AND the Twain in the frame. I also can’t really tie rivers to religion as it is, but while we’re here, let’s look around.” Scott was familiar with the Park from his childhood, so he guided Ed and John around. When he saw one of the Tom Sawyer rafts/barges, things began to come together.



Ed grabbed some of the cast members who were hanging out on the Mark Twain and asked if they were interested in making $5 posing for photos. “Do you have any other clothes?” Ed asked them. “We have rags that we work with,” they replied. Approximately ten cast members donned the old rags, got on the barge, and floated out on the river. Ed took about a half a dozen shots on his old-school Hasselblad camera (which was hidden in Ed’s satchel and snuck into the Park), sliding the plates in and out between each photo. Scott recalls it only taking about five minutes of shooting time before Ed said, “I think I have the photo for the cover!”



The amazing part? They did not have permission to shoot a single photo. The Disneyland publicity folk only gave John Fahey permission to scout the location, which really made John and Scott laugh at how everything came together so quickly. Afterwards, Scott heard from John that he told the people at Disneyland that he got the shot he wanted, and the publicity people told him they needed to see it before publication. After viewing the photo, they told John that as long as Disneyland was given credit, all was OK. In those days, they were just happy to get publicity. A very different mindset from how tightly Disney controls their image today. Something like this could never happen now without a resulting lawsuit! Scott never saw Ed again after the shoot. 

 

When the album was released, Disneyland was listed as the location (as promised), and Scott’s name was credited for the Location Concept. However, he was not happy that his middle initial was not used!

Scott also shared some memories of going to Disneyland as a child. In 1955 for his mother’s 40th birthday (which in a happy coincidence was July17), the family attended Opening Day. Thanks to the television program, “Walt Disney’s Disneyland,” the entire nation (including the Tepper family) was aware of the impending opening of the Anaheim park. The Teppers lived in Pacific Palisades at the time and hopped in the car for what seemed like a 2.5 hour drive, all on surface streets. They had never been to Anaheim before. Scott remembers the gigantic parking lot full of cars, but nothing like what it would eventually become. He also remembered the thrill of being able to park close to the entrance and seeing the Park when they got out of the car. The family didn’t have much of a wait to get in, but rather just walked right through the turnstiles. There were plenty of 15' high construction walls that day, as not everything had been completed. The family walked around the park and went on some of the attractions, with the favorite being The Rocket to the Moon in Tomorrowland.



When Scott exited the attraction, he looked for a restroom. Just one month away from being 10 years old, Scott was fiercely independent and went exploring on his own. He saw a wooden door in one of the construction walls and it opened, revealing a man who asked him, “How can I help you?” Scott told him  he was looking for a restroom and the man pointed down to the end of the wall. “There should be some there,” he told the child. “What did that man say to you?” Scott’s mother asked him when he returned. “Do you know who that was? That was Walt Disney!” Scott remembers his demeanor was kind, like a favorite uncle. Walt even seemed a bit bemused, especially since Scott had no idea who he was.

As for the oft-told stories about guests having to buy beverages because there weren’t enough water fountains, yes…that was true. Scott’s father was an orthodontist, so he was not crazy about having to buy sugary soft drinks for his kids. As for choosing between water fountains and restrooms, Scott says “Walt made the right decision!” He remembers it was a very hot day and that his father’s Buick sank into the recently paved asphalt of the parking lot. This made him even less happy than having to buy soda!



If you’re wondering how the Teppers got into Disneyland on opening day…so did I! One of Dr. Tepper’s patients was Annette Funicello. He took a technique from the 1930s and became the pioneer of removable braces in the early 1950s. Once the word got out, he got the business of every child actor in Hollywood. They all came to him so that they could have the removable braces, allowing them to snap them out before a scene. This helped give Dr. Tepper connections with everyone, including the rest of the Mousketeers. Years later, he also helped teen idol David Cassidy straighten his teeth.

And there you have it. The mystery of the album cover has been solved!

See more photos at my main website.

Album Cover Mystery

These days, it takes a lot to surprise me or pique my interest on all things Disneyland. Yes…I admit it. When it comes to vintage Disneyland, I’m fairly jaded. Yesterday, I was contacted by someone who was looking for background information on the album cover shown above. Originally released on August 15, 1972, the photo for John Fahey’s Of Rivers and Religion is from the CD reissue. At first glance, it appears to be a vintage Daguerreotype from the Civil War era, portraying a group of slaves on a raft with an Old Mill behind them. For sharp-eyed Disneyland nutz (like myself), you can see that it was snapped on the Rivers of America with Tom Sawyer’s Island behind them. The liner notes shown below… 



confirm that the photo was taken at Disneyland, with art direction and photography by Ed Thrasher.



Don’t believe it? Compare with this photo from my collection taken a few years earlier. Even the vegetation on the Old Mill matches.



The raft and the red buckets match, too. The photo was taken before Photoshop was available, and it is too good to be a composite from the time. So now that we know it’s genuine, what’s the story behind it?



I contacted my usual sources and they were all stumped. One was genuinely interested and wanted me to do a post; the other didn’t seem to care too much. Maybe he had just woken up and hadn’t had his Wheaties yet. I took the advice of the former and am now creating this post!

For the photographer, here’s what I found. What a pedigree! Edited from his August 2006 L.A. Times obit:

When Frank Sinatra ended his two-year retirement at 57 in 1973, Warner Bros. Records art director Ed Thrasher came up with the perfect title for the legendary singer’s comeback album. The album — for Warner’s Reprise Records label — with its cover photograph by Thrasher showing a relaxed and grinning Sinatra during a recording session, was called “Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back.” “Ed showed the artwork to Frank, and he just flipped, as we all did,” recalled Joe Smith, former president of Warner Bros. Records. “Frank thought ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back’ was a great phrase, and it later turned out to be an ad hook when Frank was out on the road again.”As an art director, Smith said, “Ed had the talent for getting along with the talent, especially with a Frank Sinatra, who could get very cranky. With Ed, Frank was a pussycat. He never gave Ed any trouble about the covers.” Thrasher, who worked on hundreds of major albums as an art director, died of cancer Aug. 5 at his Big Bear Lake home, said his son, Jeff. He was 74. Thrasher received 12 Grammy Award nominations as an art director from 1962 to 1974. Joining Warner Bros. Records in 1964 after having been an art director at Capitol Records, Thrasher was the art director on a long string of albums from major artists. Among them: the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Are You Experienced?,” Joni Mitchell’s “Song to a Seagull,” the Grateful Dead’s “Anthem of the Sun,” Sinatra’s “My Way,” Van Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey,” Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Earth, Wind & Fire,” the Doobie Brothers’ “Stampede,” Commander Cody’s “We’ve Got a Live One Here,” Bill Cosby’s “Wonderfulness” and Richard Pryor’s “Was It Something I Said?” Thrasher did the photography for many of the albums, in addition to working on print ads and posters. Said Stan Cornyn, a former Warner Bros. Records executive vice president who was director of creative services when he worked with Thrasher in the 1960s and ‘70s, “He was skilled and flexible, and flexibility is not a bad attitude to have when you’re dealing with rock ‘n’ roll stars.” Thrasher, Cornyn said, was able to “handle whatever came along,” because of his “charm, sense of humor, and he knew his job.” Thrasher’s humor extended to occasional practical jokes. Noticing that the company’s top executive routinely made a 10 a.m. stop at the sole upstairs restroom in the old Warner Bros. Records building, Thrasher installed a life-size dummy — with shoes, socks and pants pulled down to the ankles — on the toilet in the restroom’s only stall. Thinking the stall was being used, the executive made repeated trips to the restroom, Cornyn said, before “he finally got down on his knees and figured it out.” “This was Ed’s idea of a good time, and I must say it was shared by all,” Cornyn said. After leaving Warner Bros. Records in 1979, Thrasher formed Ed Thrasher and Associates, an advertising company that created art for films, including Prince’s “Purple Rain” and Mel Gibson’s “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.” Thrasher studied art and illustration at Los Angeles Trade Technical College and the County Art Institute before being hired as an assistant in the art department at Capitol Records in 1957. Thrasher, whose 22-year marriage to actress Linda Gray ended in divorce, is survived by his son; his daughter, Kehly Sloane; two grandchildren; and his sister, Marilyn Ball.



Yes. That Linda Gray. The one who played Sue Ellen Ewing on “Dallas.”

According to allmusic.com:

On Of Rivers & Religion, the ensemble included many of the New Orleans players who performed on Walt Disney's Song of the South film soundtrack.

The musicians listed in the credits on Fahey’s album are:

John Fahey – guitar
Chris Darrow – second guitar, dobro, fiddle, mandolin
Joel Druckman – double bass
Jack Feierman – trumpet
Ira Nepus – trombone
Joanne Grauer – piano, calliope
Nappy La Mare – banjo
Alan Reuss – banjo
Joe Darensbourg – clarinet

While I was unable to find the names of the musicians who specifically played on the “Song of the South” soundtrack, I did find a number of Disneyland connections for Fahey’s musicians. Chris Darrow put together a bluegrass band called the Dry City Scat Band which played at Disneyland during the summer of 1964. On Ira Nepus’ website, he states: “I have been a professional musician for over 40 years, beginning at age 17 while I was still in high school and working at Disneyland and numerous recording sessions.” Nappy La Mare played for the Straw Hat Strutters and with Bob Crosby at Disneyland. Alan Reuss played rhythm guitar for the song “Grim Grinning Ghosts” at Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. Joe Darensbourg also played at Disneyland according to Disney History Institute with the Dixie Flyers in 1960.





For a taste of Fahey’s album, you can listen to this track on YouTube:



That’s all I could find for now. Unfortunately, the details of the photo shoot itself are still unknown to me. I think it’s fairly safe to say that a photo like that (and its story) is not something the Disney Corporation is going to discuss any time soon. If you have any information, please drop it in the comments section!

See more photos at my main website.

Mark Twain Monday Medley

What better way to start a Monday than with an alliterative post on the mighty Mark Twain Riverboat at Disneyland? First up are some images from 1956.



Zooming in one would deduce that it seems like a slow day on the Rivers of America, specifically Tom Sawyer's Island.



The Summer of ’56:



Fast forward to 1958 with a view of the front:



…and the rear:



Zooming into the area that is approximately where the Haunted Mansion is now located:



You can just make out the corner of the Frontierland Depot in this closeup view:



See more Disneyland Mark Twain photos at my main website.

Vintage TSI Map

Couldn't believe it when I saw this vintage image of a Tom Sawyer map. Hard to believe this beauty was created in an age without the aid of a computer.

This other previously unpublished shot is from 1956.



Zooming into the raft, we can see the cast members dressed as Mark Twain's famous character.



This black and white gem is also from 1956.



More TSI shots at my main website.

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