Hello,
I was planning on adding a CD but found myself a bit confused about what to title it. Specifically, I’m finding it difficult to be confident about what cover text is part of the title and what isn’t.
Here’s a cover that’s formatted the same as mine (my CD’s in the same series as this one). To me it appears that there are four distinct bits of text which could reasonably be said to be part of the album’s title: “LXXIII”, “Miles Davis Quintets”, “Bitches Brew Live”, and “the golden age of jazz”, and the only surely applicable guideline I’ve found is in the style guidelines for titles: “Release and release group titles shouldn’t generally contain performers”. That still leaves three bits of text to deal with.
My first instinct would be to title the release The Golden Age of Jazz LXXIII: Bitches Brew Live (in which “Bitches Brew Live” is a subtitle), but none of the other entries in the series are titled so. Among the other entries the most common mentality seems to be what I initially thought would be best but with the series’ name removed, but it seems odd to omit the series’ name while keeping the release’s place within that series. The strategy used for Roy & Other Rarities (release 19 in The Golden Age of Jazz) seems most rationale to me, but I’m having trouble finding official documentation which either backs it up or rebuts it.
The best justification I can come up with is saying that “the golden age of jazz” and “LXXIII” are like “Miles Davis Quintets”: rather than being part of the title, they are descriptors which state the release’s relation to other entities—but since there doesn’t seem to be precedent for that line of thinking in the documentation, I want to hear others’ thoughts (and make sure I haven’t simply missed some bit of documentation which directly and perfectly answers my question!) before I add my CD or modify the others in the series.