For research (some fruits of which may emerge soon), I’ve been spending another stretch buried in post-World War II, mid-century magazines. And I ran across this ad for Ella Fitzgerald’s 1956 Cole Porter Songbook album:

 

 

The drawing is by David Stone Martin, for many years Norman Granz’s go-to artist for album covers. (If you have more than a couple jazz albums from the 50s and 60s, Martin probably did one of the covers.) But the interesting data point here is the suggested list price: $9.96. That is a lot of money; adjusted for inflation, the album went for about 90 2018 dollars. Record albums—some albums, anyway—were not always the disposable-income commodities that they would eventually become.

Just for fun, a few other random gleanings: