Jackie Gleason presents Lonesome Echo

Jackie Gesso

(Capitol Records W627, 1955)

It was the artistic collaboration of the century: television funnyman Jackie Gleason and renowned surrealist Salvador Dali. How this came to be, I'm not particularly sure. But it certainly made for some great album art, the most unique among Gleason's many pop records. I suspect that Gleason wanted to perhaps enter the exotica genre—and what could be more exotic than one of Dali's otherworldly terrains? But one can only wonder what Gleason thought of Dali's description of the album cover:

"The first effect is that of anguish, of space, and of solitude.

"Secondly, the fragility of the wings of a butterfly, projecting long shadows of late afternoon, reverberates in the landscape like an echo.

"The feminine, distant and isolated, forms a perfect triangle with the musical instrument and its other echo, the shell."

Anguish? Wings of a butterfly? To the moon, Dali, TO THE MOON!

Strangely, Dali's note is hand-dated 1953, while the cover painting is hand-dated 1955. A mystery to reverberate in the mind like an echo…