Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Yazoo Zippy, sort of

In today’s Zippy, Bill Griffith pays tribute to his great-grandfather, the painter and photographer William Henry Jackson. I knew there was something familiar about this image of two musicians.

[“Picture Maker.” Zippy, March 10, 2021. Click for a larger view.]

Of course: another Jackson photograph from this depot scene appears (uncredited) on the cover on the 1972 Yazoo LP Blues From The Western States 1927–1949 (L-1032). Here’s that photograph: Waiting for the Sunday Boat. You can see the album cover in this illustrated Yazoo discography. And here’s the photograph Griffith captures in today’s strip: True Lovers of the Muse.

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Later in the day: I just discovered an earlier glimpse of True Lovers of the Muse on page 5 of Griffith’s Invisible Ink: My Mother’s Secret Love Affair with a Famous Cartoonist (2015), where the artist depicts himself examining the photograph with a magnifying glass.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Orange Crate Art, footnoting the comics since whenever.]

comments: 2

ksh said...

I did not know that about Bill Griffith and William Henry Jackson. I have a decent collection of Zippy and Yazoo records. It also seems an interesting coincidence that R. Crumb did Yazoo covers. Who would a thunk it?

Michael Leddy said...

It’s a small world. I just discovered that this image appears (in partial form) on page 5 of BG’s family history Invisible Ink, which begins with a box of WHJ memorabilia.