(Album ©1978, Epic Records)
This 1970’s southern rock band was grouped in
with the Skynyrd / Allmans / Marshall Tucker / Outlaws scene, and in fact they followed Skynyrd out of Jacksonville, Florida and onto the charts. Their first three records all went platinum, which was due as much to the company which they kept as to how good they were. No offense meant, but their first record wasn’t THAT good. The fact was that Southern rock was at a high point by the late ’70’s, and Molly Hatchet stepped up to help satisfy the demand.
Their second album however, was that good. Their second album was Flirtin’ With Disaster, which was the high point of their career, their only double-platinum disc, with a title track which remains a classic rock staple to this day. Until I sat down to write this post, I planned on including that album cover in this list, as it has a great cover too – a painting by famed fantasy artist Frank Frazetta called “Dark Kingdom.” That cover is here. In fact Molly Hatchet’s first three albums all have Frazetta paintings, but it was their first record that has my favorite artwork of the three, and so I am calling an audible and swapping in the band’s eponymous debut album.
The first record uses one of the most popular Frazetta paintings, entitled “The Death Dealer.” I’m sure I initially saw the album cover in a Columbia House Record Club insert in the Sunday paper, or something similar. It’s an archetypal ’70’s album cover, suggesting that there was ultra-masculine, aggressive music within. The music actually gets close to that – it’s fast-paced, and sounds big and tough and rockin’.
The original “The Death Dealer” painting (completed in 1973) spawned a series of novels and comic books and got attention way beyond what a normal painting would. Interestingly, Frazetta painted a series of 6 Death Dealer paintings, and the last one in the series sold for $1.7 Million at auction in 2018. 4 of the other 5 were all action poses, but I loved the view of the character at rest in the original, pausing in his death dealing. When I saw The Fellowship of the Rings, I felt that Peter Jackson drew heavily on this image in creating the Nazgul, especially when they were on horses early in the movie chasing the hobbits through the Shire. Maybe Frazetta drew on imagery from the original Tolkein books in painting this?
Even at a very young age, I was mesmerized by this painting before I had heard of Molly Hatchet. Being a huge Frazetta fan, this has to be on my list of favorite album covers. Over 1 million units sold and the band were on their way.
