Thread by @dean_frey

A thread of album covers featuring Richard Avedon portraits.
From 1960: Igor Stravinsky conducts The Rite of Spring

Dave Brubeck Quartet: Red Hot & Cool, a live album from 1955
A wonderful photo by Richard Avedon. Paul Desmond, Bob Bates & Joe Dodge are all there, even if they're out of focus.
Love Walked In:

Another Richard Avedon album cover: Broadway's Fair Julie, from 1961

Two Richard Avedon portraits of Tammy Grimes, from her first album for Columbia in 1962.

A superb Richard Avedon portrait is featured on the cover of Allen Ginsberg Reads Kaddish, 1966

Barbra Steisand by Richard Avedon
Je m'appelle Barbra, from 1966
So many great things about this album: arrangements by Michel Legrand (&, in one song, Ray Ellis).

I know Simon & Garfunkle's 1968 album Bookends really well; I remember listening to the LP. I don't expect I knew who Richard Avedon was in those days. A wonderful portrait.

Johnny Winter: Second Winter, from 1969
Superb portrait by Richard Avedon

Lenny by Dick Avedon, 1976

Muddy Waters by Richard Avedon
Hard Again, 1977
Mannish Boy:

Dexter Gordon by Richard Avedon
Gotham City, 1981

So many great Frank Zappa portraits; this is one of my all-time favourites, by Richard Avedon.
The Yellow Shark, with the Ensemble Modern, 1993. This was Zappa's last album; it was released a month before his death.

Mamaloshen by @PatinkinMandy, a Klezmer album from 1988
Photography royalty on this project: the photos of Patinkin are by Richard Avedon, the Statue of Liberty shot is by Joel Meyerowitz, & Alfred Stieglitz's The Steerage, from 1907, is featured on the back cover.

Another great double portrait by Richard Avedon: Ian Bostridge & Mitsuko Uchida. I adore their version of Schubert's Die Schöne Müllerin, released in 2005. Avedon died in October 2004, so this must have been one of his last projects.

And here's one more posthumous cover from Richard Avedon. This Mitsuko Uchida Beethoven album was released in 2006.

I forgot to include the Mike Nichols & Elaine May covers in this Richard Avedon album cover thread! The first, from 1961, is An Evening With Mike Nichols & Elaine May.

With an even more wonderful back cover photo!

And from the following year, 1962, Mike Nichols & Elaine May Examine Doctors, with a great double portrait by Richard Avedon

Coincidentally, I'm reading @MarkHarrisNYC's book Mike Nichols: A Life, & came across this scene, where Avedon invites Nichols & May to his apartment. This was in 1959.