The Art Heatlie Orchestra & Chorus were based in South Africa, and recorded there, although at least a couple were picked up by easy listening labels further afield including Fontana and Philips. "Sax - O - Phonics '68" featured a fold out three part sleeve, issued by Renown Records who were based in South Africa. the album featured "for the first time in South Africa" the ELECTRONIC SAXOPHONE. This is probably the Varitone introduced in 1965 by H & A Selmer. The cover has a sexy girl in mini skirt and sliver boots, very much of the era.
This is a much featured sleeve on album cover sites but the career of The Art Heatlie Orchestra & Chorus remains stubbornly undocumented. They were based in South Africa, and their albums all seem to have been recorded and released there, although at least a couple were picked up by easy listening labels further afield including Fontana and Philips. "Sax - O - Phonics '68" is not unique in featuring a fold out three part sleeve (the wonderful Diana Dors album Swingin' Dors opens up down the middle like - er - doors_, but they are not common as they must have cost a lot more than regular sleeves to produce. Perhaps Renown Records (who were based in South Africa but also had a plant in Rhodesia) felt it was worth pushing the boat out here as the album featured "for the first time in South Africa" the ELECTRONIC SAXOPHONE. This is probably the Varitone introduced in 1965 by H & A Selmer (and featured on “Pete r Gunn” by Henry Mancini and Orchestra). This perhaps inspired the cover idea where a young woman unveils these facts from behind a curtain, and was so excited that she forgot her skirt. Actually that's not quite true; if you look closely you can see where a wardrobe assistant has hemmed the bottom foot of the dress up! Art and his orchestra steam through twenty covers in a beat mode, in a fairly predictable way, but I've heard a lot worse. Renown, busy through the Sixties, licensed a lot of American and British artists for 45s but also put out a number of these locally based beat albums for their white clientel.
Size: 3565px × 3659px
Photo credit: © Simon Robinson / Easy On The Eye / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: &, -, 68, africa, art, boots, chorus, electronic, featuring, girl, heatlie, mini, orchestra, phonics, records, renown, sax, saxophone., sexy, sixties, skirt, sliver, south
