Art director dies

Los Angeles Times
August 22, 2006

When Frank Sinatra ended his two-year retirement at 57 in 1973, Warner Bros. Records art director Ed Thrasher came up with the perfect title for the legendary singer's comeback album.

The album for Warner's Reprise Records label, whose cover photograph by Thrasher showed a relaxed and grinning Sinatra during a recording session, was called "Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back."

"Ed showed the artwork to Frank and he just flipped, as we all did," recalled Joe Smith, former president of Warner Bros. Records. "Frank thought 'Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back' was a great phrase, and it later turned out to be an ad hook when Frank was out on the road again."

As an art director, Smith said, "Ed had the talent for getting along with the talent, especially with a Frank Sinatra, who could get very cranky. With Ed, Frank was a pussycat. He never gave Ed any trouble about the covers."

Thrasher, who worked on hundreds of major albums as an art director, died of cancer Aug. 5 at his home in Big Bear Lake, said his son, Jeff. He was 74.

Thrasher received 12 Grammy Award nominations as an art director between 1962 and 1974, the year he and fellow art director Christopher Whorf won Grammys for best album package for Mason Proffit's "Come and Gone."

Having joined Warner Bros. Records in 1964 after being an art director at Capitol Records, Thrasher was the art director on a long string of albums from major artists.

Among them: the Jimi Hendrix Experience's "Are You Experienced?", Joni Mitchell's "Song to a Seagull," the Grateful Dead's "Anthem of the Sun," Sinatra's "My Way," Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey," Earth, Wind & Fire's "Earth, Wind & Fire," the Doobie Brothers"'Stampede," Commander Cody's "We've Got a Live One Here," Bill Cosby's "Wonderfulness" and Richard Pryor's "Was It Something I Said?"

Thrasher did the photography for many of the albums, in addition to working on print ads and posters. In the early '70s, he also worked with architect A. Quincy Jones on the design of the current Warner Bros. Records building in Los Angeles.

Said Stan Cornyn, a former Warner Bros. Records executive vice president who was the director of creative services when he worked with Thrasher in the '60s and '70s: "He was skilled and flexible, and flexibility is not a bad attitude to have when you're dealing with rock 'n' and roll stars."

Thrasher's sense of humor extended to occasional practical jokes.

Noticing that the company's top executive routinely made a 10 a.m. stop at the sole upstairs restroom in the old Warner Bros. Records building, Thrasher installed a life-size dummy -- with shoes, socks and pants rolled down to the ankles -- on the toilet in the restroom's only stall.

Thinking the stall was being used, the executive made repeated trips to the restroom before, Cornyn said, "He finally got down on his knees and figured it out."

"It was characteristic of the kind of business attitude that hardly exists anymore," Cornyn said. "So he was a bon vivant, a good liver. And I think that enabled him to work with artists, who, by and large, were nervous people. He did very well with them; he was a good hugger and satisfier.

"It began to change when singer-songwriters became more prominent; artists like the Grateful Dead and Joni Mitchell decided they wanted to do their own covers. Ed had to learn to put up with that, and he did. Others didn't want to do their own covers. Frank Sinatra never dreamed of doing that, but he was a previous generation."

After leaving Warner Bros. Records in 1979, Thrasher formed Ed Thrasher and Associates, an advertising company that created art for films, including Prince's "Purple Rain" and Mel Gibson's "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome."

Born in Glendale, Calif., on March 7, 1932, Thrasher was the son of Edward Lee Thrasher Sr., a Los Angeles City Councilman from 1931 to 1943.

After graduating from John Marshall High School, Thrasher served in the Navy during the Korean War. He studied art and illustration at Los Angeles Trade Technical College and the County Art Institute before being hired as an assistant in the art department at Capitol Records in 1957.

Thrasher, whose 22-year marriage to actress Linda Gray ended in divorce, is survived by his son; his daughter, Kehly Sloane; two grandchildren; and his sister, Marilyn Ball.