Photographer Barry Feinstein's original album cover proofs for the front and back of Ike & Tina Turner's 1969 album Outta Season, showing the iconic blues-rock duo in whiteface, winking and eating massive slices of watermelon in a sarcastic reversal of stereotypical Jim Crow-era caricatures. The color semi-glossy 14 x 14 photographs are affixed to their original 20 x 24 boards, with protective plastic overlays. Both mounts have labels from Ted Staidle & Associates Photographic Color Reproduction, Los Angeles, affixed to the reverse. In overall fine condition, with some scuffing to the mount below Ike's front cover image.
A heavy blues album released in March 1969, Outta Season includes such blues standards as 'Honest I Do,' 'My Babe,' 'Rock Me Baby,' 'Mean Old World,' and 'Crazy 'Bout You Baby,' plus their signature cover of Otis Redding's 'I've Been Loving You Too Long,' highlighting Tina Turner's raw, emotional vocals. The art direction for the cover was done by Tom Wilkes with photography by Barry Feinstein, though Amos and Andy are humorously credited on the album—a reference to the popular blackface roles of Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll. Due to the interest of white audiences in blues music in the 1960s, Los Angeles Times music critic Pete Johnson noted that the Turners are 'pictured in whiteface eating big slices of watermelon each winking broadly at any young record buyers who might suspect that black people can't sing the blues.'
From the personal collection of Barry Feinstein and accompanied by a letter of authenticity from his estate. Barry Feinstein passed away in 2011, and since then his estate has offered posthumous estate stamped limited edition photographs from his archives; this example, printed during his lifetime and deriving from his personal collection, is superior to those gallery offerings.
Barry Feinstein: A Brief Biography
