Coup De Stereo: The Strange, Sexed-Up World of the Ohio Players' LP Sleeves, Part I

Best remembered for the incendiary disco-era hits "Fire" and "Love Rollercoaster," when the Players' first album, Observations in Time, came out in the 1960s neither it (nor its sleeve art) ever made a ripple.

Then, in 1971, their second release, Pain, gave them a harder-edged, jazzy funk sound and a completely new direction in pop album art.

The album and its title single hit the charts and came with a fetishistic cover that features a somewhat manly woman with impressive thighs brandishing a whip. She’s dressed in a way that seems to be the missing link between Conan the Barbarian, Mad Max and the coming punk-rock fashion revolution.

The very next year, the Ohio Players — naturally enough — followed up Pain with Pleasure, though it has to be said that the cover model seems to be suffering from a migraine or a famine of some sort (the great Tang shortage of 1972, perhaps?).

There have been many guesses about the identity of the cover model over the years. Some believe it is simply a beautiful (yet nameless) bald woman, while others are sure it is a young Scatman Crothers or the singer/activist from Midnight Oil. Either way, the music on Pleasure is totally smoking, and it went to No. 4 on the R&B charts.

If you experience enough pleasure it turns into Ecstasy, which the Ohio Players released in 1973. By now, it was starting to look like somebody at the group's Westbound Records label got a good deal on an S&M fetish photo shoot; the same follicle-impaired model seems to appear in all of the cover photos. The sudden addition of the man and the chains makes this one seem a little like the plotline of the forgotten drive-in scuzz-classic Mandingo.

While I respect the patience involved in putting a year-by-year storyline together, I have to say that this cover in particular has little to do with the Ohio Players' music, which is generally party funk with jazz changes and a few love-jams thrown in.

I would think that it would be pretty tough to top the concept of ecstasy in general, but the Ohio Players managed it with Climax. The album completes the story arc of their Westbound Records career, the entire (then) underground fetish aesthetic and their appreciation of bald models that are quite beautiful on one hand but also have a tendency to look like beloved male actor Scatman Crothers.

This was put together after the band moved over to major-label status, so maybe the bald lady stabbing her man in the back is supposed to be a hot end to serious lovemaking (note to the ladies: please do not try this move at home), or maybe it's about the band stabbing the label in the back by going on to record for Mercury Records.

Whatever the reason, the Ohio Players would ditch the S&M LP covers but keep the general 1970s sepia-skinned sexiness going forward in the next phase of their career. So, tune in next time and discover even more sexed-up weirdness from the world of the Ohio Players.