DustyWhite
A little information about Frankie Albano's LWB (*large white book)
I love this thread. Everyone is so knowledgeable and helpful
If I may add just a little here . . .
Frankie Albano is a mystery and no one except Kaplan seems to know what happened to him. All of my research ends up in dead ends (I *really need to add all of this to the waitesmith.org site when I can free up some time—and I apologize that so much more information has not been added yet).
But to the point . . .
"Frankie Albano" shows up on two singles (45 records—I really need to post these images). If memory serves me one label was "Dondee" and the other I forget at the moment. I can upload the images later if anyone is interested. But "Frankie Albano" appears in1922 as "Frankie Albano and the Deadbeats" on the Dondee label (in Hollywood) and then again on the Tower Records label, presumably in the 1960's (also in Hollywood).
Then he shows up with a "Make Love Not War" poster that is credited to "Tarot Productions" in 1967. That same year we have the Tarot Wheel and then the deck. Please note that at this time University Books was "HUGE!" and was printing the world's first full color decks from the U.S. Frankie considered himself an alchemist of sorts and wanted the colors to represent the four elements (hence his new deck).
It looks like he sketched out the image for this LWB from the illustrations Lisa provided above
Now, here is where it gets weird. Albano disappears off of the map completely.
There are records that he owned two pizza shops in Hollywood later, and there is an "Albano family" who for generations has been making pizza in Northern California. I need to remember to contact them and dig deep for any information, as Albano is not a surname as common as Smith, or Jones.
All of this points to Frankie had almost certainly purloined his material from "public domain text" as all evidence points to the fact that the PKtT *never was under copyright in the US* (see this page for a shock) but scroll to the very bottom to see a partial list of every dog and pony show (including some of the world's largest publishers—including a few who are over 100 times bigger than USGS ever will be) who published . . . (here comes the punch in the nose)
"The exact art that Pam drew." This creates a real loophole for copyright issues, which are mostly put to bed now anyway.
So, Frankie takes "excerpts" (that is a polite way to put it) into his LWB (he created the first "large white book") and it looks like this was intended to go with his giant decks (which have squared edges) but as they did not fit in the box this may have ended up as a stand-alone product that sat alongside the giant cards. Frankie produced the world's first tiny deck, the world's first yellow box, and he copied UB's world's-first "LWB" (little white book) and "tuck box" (first ever other than L.W.). So yeah, Frankie coped a lot, but if you want to have some fun check out (someday) how UB's LWB was photocopied exactly by Albano (Tarot Productions) and then those same exact pages were copied by an early USGS.
Wow, talk about everyone stealing from each other!
One last note. UB never disappeared. They are still in business under a different name, but like a ghost, no one sees them. Just a useless bit of trivia.
Anyway, I hope this wan't too much information. I also hop that it helps
I love this thread. Everyone is so knowledgeable and helpful
If I may add just a little here . . .
Frankie Albano is a mystery and no one except Kaplan seems to know what happened to him. All of my research ends up in dead ends (I *really need to add all of this to the waitesmith.org site when I can free up some time—and I apologize that so much more information has not been added yet).
But to the point . . .
"Frankie Albano" shows up on two singles (45 records—I really need to post these images). If memory serves me one label was "Dondee" and the other I forget at the moment. I can upload the images later if anyone is interested. But "Frankie Albano" appears in1922 as "Frankie Albano and the Deadbeats" on the Dondee label (in Hollywood) and then again on the Tower Records label, presumably in the 1960's (also in Hollywood).
Then he shows up with a "Make Love Not War" poster that is credited to "Tarot Productions" in 1967. That same year we have the Tarot Wheel and then the deck. Please note that at this time University Books was "HUGE!" and was printing the world's first full color decks from the U.S. Frankie considered himself an alchemist of sorts and wanted the colors to represent the four elements (hence his new deck).
It looks like he sketched out the image for this LWB from the illustrations Lisa provided above
Now, here is where it gets weird. Albano disappears off of the map completely.
There are records that he owned two pizza shops in Hollywood later, and there is an "Albano family" who for generations has been making pizza in Northern California. I need to remember to contact them and dig deep for any information, as Albano is not a surname as common as Smith, or Jones.
All of this points to Frankie had almost certainly purloined his material from "public domain text" as all evidence points to the fact that the PKtT *never was under copyright in the US* (see this page for a shock) but scroll to the very bottom to see a partial list of every dog and pony show (including some of the world's largest publishers—including a few who are over 100 times bigger than USGS ever will be) who published . . . (here comes the punch in the nose)
"The exact art that Pam drew." This creates a real loophole for copyright issues, which are mostly put to bed now anyway.
So, Frankie takes "excerpts" (that is a polite way to put it) into his LWB (he created the first "large white book") and it looks like this was intended to go with his giant decks (which have squared edges) but as they did not fit in the box this may have ended up as a stand-alone product that sat alongside the giant cards. Frankie produced the world's first tiny deck, the world's first yellow box, and he copied UB's world's-first "LWB" (little white book) and "tuck box" (first ever other than L.W.). So yeah, Frankie coped a lot, but if you want to have some fun check out (someday) how UB's LWB was photocopied exactly by Albano (Tarot Productions) and then those same exact pages were copied by an early USGS.
Wow, talk about everyone stealing from each other!
One last note. UB never disappeared. They are still in business under a different name, but like a ghost, no one sees them. Just a useless bit of trivia.
Anyway, I hope this wan't too much information. I also hop that it helps