Album liner notes reached their zenith in the late fifties and through much of the sixties, until lyric sheets and a rock-y preference for trippy art over blocks of clever text pushed them out of the layout space. But before then, the greatest bard of them all was Stan Cornyn, a Warner/Reprise executive who penned droll, stylized, sometimes downright absurdist notes for artists ranging from crooners to rockers...
"This is the dean martin. It is a largish bird which, like the purple martin, is given to frequent perching and swallowing. Its dark crest is going just a shade gray at the temples. The rest of its plumage it frequently sheds in favor of all new feathers from Sy Devore's. Specifications on the dean martin rump have not been established, this bird not having yet appeared in any European art films. Its tail is believed not to be forked, except on formal dinner occasions."
-- Stan Cornyn, The Hit Sound of Dean Martin
Brad Bigelow's excellent Space Age Pop site provides an introduction to Cornyn, featuring many more samples of fine prose -- don't miss the classic Dean Martin essay, Epic Sloth. More recently, Cornyn has written a book about his years in the industry, Exploding: The Highs, Hits, Hype, Heroes and Hustlers of the Warner Music Group. And from July 2002 comes this interview centered on the recording industry's current dysfunctional state. A sane man, our Stan.
Here's another interview with Stan:
http://www.dabelly.com/columns/reviews23j.htm