Vogue Picture Records 1946-1947
I discovered a fascinating blog post at COLOURlovers (a craft blog, not a vinyl blog) called Unusually Colored Vinyl Records. It featured a variety of impressive colored vinyl productions including the Man Or Astroman release, “Your Weight On The Moon” on glow-in-the-dark vinyl pictured above. But the REAL treasure in this blog post was the mention of some seriously vintage post-war vinyl produced in Detroit by a company called Sav-Way Industries.
The Vogue Picture Discs are amazing for their detail and the instant visual reference to the post war era when they were made (1946-1947) but the real stunner for me was the visual theme of the Marion Mann track, “You Took Advantage of Me”.
Decades before The Tubes put out Mondo Bondage, here’s a very racy post-war vinyl record implying all sorts of naughty things with this picture. There are some 74 Vogue Picture Record titles in this collection, which you can view more of at the University of California Santa Barbara, but none of them are quite as provocative as this one.
Sure, it COULD be argued that this was an innocent depiction of the song’s theme, but lest we forget, post-war culture in the 40s was filled with double entendres created to titillate and amuse while maintaining “plausible deniability” in a so-called respectable society. Mondo bondage indeed!
–Joe Wallace
