Levi Strauss “Salesman’s Record” 1967 Radio Spot Ads Salesmen
Rare LEVI’S Salesman’s Record 1968 FOR Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco. They had a groundbreaking campaign targeting the youth and used bands in their ads. Some of the bands were Jefferson Airplane, Sopwith Camel, PG&E, and West Coast Natural Gas. I don’t know who are on these but as they were recorded in San Francisco, local musicians were probably used. They are different musical styles ranging from psychedelic to garage rock. The sound file has a short sample of each..
VERY rare 1967 original 10" LP with 9 tracks in thin cover. These were radio spots advertising Levi’s blue jeans. This LP would have been distributed only to persons involved in the Levi’s ad campaign as well as radio stations which were airing the actual advertisements. I’m not sure how many copies would have been pressed of this sort of item but apparently few seem to have survived today. We get four tracks each from Jefferson Airplane and The Sopwith “Camel”, plus one track from West Coast Natural Gas Co. The ads themselve are really quite psychedelic and kind of nutty- sounds as if they were trying to sell jeans to stoned hippie kids (who I suspect were wearing Levis already). One of the JA ads (“East Indian”) cropped up on one of their CD compilations a long time ago so you may have heard that track before.
NOTE: there were also at least two different one-sided version of this record: one was numbered ETR-6702 and was a one-sided 12" with just the two Airplaine tracks featured on side two here, apparently issued without cover, and another one-sided 12" numbered CRC-6717, that featured only the five tracks that are on side two of this version, and also apparently was issued without a cover. THIS record I am offering for auction is the version with two sides, nine tracks in total, and cover included. I have no idea, however, if there were MORE than three versions of this material (I wouldn’t be surprised, for instance, if there was another one-sided press of side one only floating around out there), but this version seems to be the only one with ALL of the tracks in one place. If anybody has definitive information on the various issues of this material, please forward and I will post it here. These Levi’s promos almost never come up for sale in any version! Looking on Popsike turned up one copy each of the one-sided versions mentioned above but NO sales for this two-sided version with cover. So it’s quite likely that this version has not been offered for auction anywhere in many years.
