A mystery solved 1997 was a heady year for the Jimmie Spheeris restoration project. Sony had recently agreed to let the late Johnny Pierce reissue Jimmie's catalog on CD. Johnny asked me to create cover art and packaging for the project and I immediately agreed to donate services. Johnny was working hard on deadlines in order to get Jimmie's entire catalog remastered and released in digital format. A phone call with an engineer at Sony confirmed what we most feared: Jimmie's master analog tapes were deteriorating and we were racing the clock to preserve his work before it became unsalvageable. Meanwhile, I was working to digitally restore cover art (sometimes pixel by pixel) from high-resolution scans of old LP album covers. A package arrived from New York that fall, postmarked October 17, 1997 (see the image above). It was sent by Jimmie fan Lori Herbison in response to some email she and I had previously swapped. Lori's package was a treasure trove: A letter Jimmie sent to her written in his hand, plus a copy of a photo I'd been trying to track down for years – Jimmie in a leather jacket and velvet gloves, with his pet crow (named "Oh"). The only other copy of the photo I had in the archives was a poor quality xerox from a concert poster that the late Paul Delph had given me years ago. I'd been hunting for an original print for years because I wanted to use the image as cover art on the final CD release. To my horror, I managed to lose Lori's package. I could type lots of excuses about why that happened (busy trying to pay the bills with other commercial projects, working out a hectic timeline for graphics on the Jimmie CDs, living under a constant avalanche of paper, and my general inability to stay organized, etc.,) – but in the end there's no excuse for misplacing such a heartfelt gift. Lori was rightfully distressed when I told her I couldn't find the package and it's been bugging me for a decade. To my delight, I found her package last week (the last week of August, 2007) while purging old files. Every couple of years, I attempt to clear out some of the clutter in closets full of old paperwork. I've managed to dig my way up to file boxes dating back to 1997. I was going through a project I did for Sun Microsystems in late '97 when an oversized envelope caught my eye. Inside, along with old work orders, concept sketches and invoices, I found Lori's package. Clearly, I'd had some sort of brain fart and dropped Lori's package into the old Sun Microsystems archive. A mystery solved. I've made new high-res scans and mailed the originals back to Lori (I was pleased to discover that she's still at the same address!). I have no idea who took the original photograph. If you're the photographer (or have any leads), please contact us. Finally, thanks again to Lori for making this image available... and for waiting a decade to see it resurface.

Free photo download for Jimmie fans

If you'd like a free high-resolution PDF of the photo above, click it and copy it to your hard drive. You can print the file on high-quality photo paper or copy the PDF to a disc... then take it to any good photo print retailer for a professional quality print. You'll need a PDF viewer such as Preview or Acrobat Reader to view the file. Image editing software such as Photoshop may also be able to open it. Image details: File name: jimmie_lori.pdf Image size: 9 inches x 9 inches Image resolution: 300 dpi File size: 6.1 MB (about 21 MB when opened) Photographer: Unknown