I am used to researching vintage sleaze books which have no copyright. My favorite publishers didn't like rules. So it seems funny to see the Library of Congress copyright entry for Black Mass Minx by J. X. Williams. They DO say on the cover "A Late Hour LIBRARY Book" after all, but I really don't think it was on any of the Library Journal recommendation lists.
Anyway, here it is. Right between Black Market Medicine and Black Muslim Affiliation. THIS post will get me on some lists I'm not sure I want to be on...Anyway. smack dab in the 1967 index, just when you would expect it.
1967. On the cusp of the tail end of the last legs of the long-dragged out life of the vintage sleaze paperback illustrator. A year or two later, most publishers would use actual photographs to sell the goods. Photographs of of pasty, unattractive, down on their luck drug addicts and hippies for the most part. A shame. Not only are the ones published after the Supremes threw up their hands ugly, I can't show them on my blog. Believe me, if you are doing your photo model hunts on 42nd Street in 1967, you were going to need photoshop, and it wasn't invented yet. MORE PANCAKE!
J.X. Williams was the pseudonym for more than one writer...a "house" name as it were. So says paperback guru Lynn Munroe on his website. Additionally, it might have been a name used by Ed Wood Jr!
The orange here is the brightest color known to man...that's why they use it on highway traffic construction sites. The orangutan is a mystery...but halfway through the book you might read "GET THIS APE OFF ME!" It can't be King Kong, as Kong's face took up more of the window. Faye (or Jessica) here seems uncomfortable, but not enough to get dressed.
Late Hour Library was an offshoot of a publishing endeavor larger than Time-Warner before they sold off all the book lines. A long convoluted history I'll leave to the experts. I just want to have fun with monkeys!
VINTAGE SLEAZE AND DULL TOOL DIM BULB iPAD and Paperback Books by the same author HERE at Blurb.com
