The story of Saturn Records is hilarious. There was essentially no planning, no archives, and absolutely no credit. They called their system "cash on the barrelhead no-bs c.o.d." If someone in France ordered records, someone would fly out there, make the exchange on the tarmac and head back to Philly. I don't think anyone ever took into account whether or not that was profitable.

Putting designs on the jackets would have taken time, and they were about just pressing stuff and getting it out there. The Grateful Dead were more together as an organization than the Arkestra, and that is saying a lot.

Thanks. A hard to pin down guy. Many different styles over the years. I think early on he was an arranger for Fletcher Henderson.

Saw him once in Cambridge MA in the 80's. My old roomie had about 50 or 75 of his albums, many w/ plain white covers bought from band members at gigs. It's amazing that a guy who was so visual would often just press a few hundred records and sell them to the fans at shows without a cover.

Their house in Philly was a few blocks from where my sister lived in the Germantown/Mt. Airy/Chestnut hill part of town. I would peer at it from the car window and wonder what kind of weirdness was going on inside.

"It's after the end of the world / Don't you know that yet?"