So in response to a request by @olivetreeann for more album cover entries my first post of 2024 is a photo I took 46 years ago in 1977. I have boxes and boxes of Kodachrome slide film which I have recently begun digitizing.
My randomly selected artist was André Messager, a French composer and the random quote that gave me my album title was from Fred Allan (?) the last four words of which were "nothing can be done" (Full quote: A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done)
The fun of this for me is imagining a back story to go with the album. So here it is.
André Messager was born in Montreal in 1907 and moved west to Vancouver as a young man to seek his fame and fortune. He found neither. What he did find was a love of blues music, which was quite a subversive form of music in the 1920's. Over the years he became quite adept at playing the harmonica and on weekends he could be found playing at various clubs and bars or street corners for spare change. In 1977 the owner of a small, independent recording studio heard him play and brought him into the studio to make a record. It contained mostly covers but also a couple of tunes he wrote himself including the title track, "Nothing Can Be Done". The album disappeared without a trace and André was back playing for spare change. He died penniless in 1985. Years later the album developed a cult following among blues afficionados and since long out of print collectors will pay many hundreds of dollars for it. Poor André, if he only knew.
