We should explain: the new music series from Nonesuch, 1969-1980

When crate-digging at swap meets, there’s a cover design trope I see popping up again and again in the vintage electronic LP bins: a pure white background, an illustration (usually on the left), and an essay that starts on the front and continues on the back. I’ve often wondered what this series was in its breadth and depth, and thanks to Discogs and Google image search I’ve discovered these were all new music titles from Nonesuch. I’ve found 50 unique titles in the series, all released between 1969 and 1980 (not including two reissues and five Quadraphonic LPs released concurrently with their stereo counterparts).

The artist roster includes your choice of heavyweights of 20^th century new music, including Ives, Cage, Wuorinen, Carter, Xenakis, Dodge, Schoenberg, Varese, Milhaud, Davies, Crumb, Babbitt, and Rzewski. The Nonesuch catalogue from 1964 through the mid-seventies was packed with deathless Western classical favorites, non-Western music, and dips into the vintage Americana songbooks of Scott Joplin and Stephen Foster, so in retrospect the design approach for these new music LPs made great sense – if you throw new music by unfamiliar composers at a record-buying audience, don’t just anticipate their WTF response, cater to it by starting your explanatory notes up front right under the title.

Based on my research, only about 40% of these items have ever been reissued, so to hear the rest, you’ll either have to keep digging the crates or crank up YouTube.

Fredric Myrow / Roger Reynolds - Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, Arthur Weisberg, Phyllis Bryn-Julson Spectrum: New American Music, Volume I ‎[Myrow, Songs from the Japanese; Reynolds, Quick Are the Mouths of Earth] H-71219 (1969)

Stefan Wolpe / George Rochberg / Seymour Shifrin - The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, Arthur Weisberg, Jan DeGaetani Spectrum: New American Music, Volume II ‎ H-71220 (1969)

Jacob Druckman / Joseph Schwantner / John Harbison / The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, Arthur Weisberg Spectrum: New American Music, Volume III ‎ H-71221 (1969)

Charles Ives, Alvin Brehm, Henry Brant, Peter Phillips - The American Brass Quintet With Jan DeGaetani American Brass Music ‎ H-71222 (1969)

Donald Erb Music For Instruments & Electronic Sounds H-71223 (1969)

John Cage & Lejaren Hiller / Ben Johnston HPSCHD / String Quartet No. 2 H-71224 (1969)

Charles Wuorinen Time's Encomium (For Synthesized & Processed Synthesized Sound) H-71225 (1970)

Eric Salzman The Nude Paper Sermon ‎ H-71231 (1969)

Elliott Carter Sonata For Flute, Oboe, Cello & Harpsichord / Sonata For Cello & Piano ‎ H-71234 (1969)

Bertram Turetzky - John Cage / Pauline Oliveros / Ben Johnston The Contemporary Contrabass H-71237 (1970)

J.K. Randall, Barry Vercoe, Charles Dodge Computer Music ‎[Quartets In Pairs, Quartersines, Mudgett: Monologues By A Mass Murderer, Synthesism, Changes] H-71245 (1970)

Iannis Xenakis Electro-Acoustic Music [Bohor I, Concret P-H II, Diamorphoses II, Orient-Occident III] H-71246 (1970)

Elliott Carter - The Composers Quartet String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 H-71249 (1970)

Charles Dodge Earth's Magnetic Field ‎ H-71250 (1970)

Arnold Schoenberg - Jan DeGaetani - Arthur Weisberg Pierrot Lunaire Op.21 H-71251 (1971)

Jacob Druckman Animus III / Synapse / Valentine H-71253 (1971)

George Crumb Ancient Voices Of Children H-71255 (1971)

William Bolcom / William Albright With Sydney Hodkinson New Music For Organ H-71260 (1971)

Charles Wuorinen Chamber Concerto For Cello & 10 Players / Ringing Changes, For Percussion Ensemble ‎ H-71263 (1971)

Edgard Varèse Offrandes / Intégrales / Octandre / Ecuatorial H-71269 (1972)

Gerard Schwarz, Ursula Oppens The New Trumpet ‎[Peter Maxwell Davies, Sonata for Trumpet & Piano; Lucia Dlugoszewski, Space Is a Diamond; Hellermann/Duncan, The Fire] H-71275 (1972)

Ruth Crawford Seeger / George Perle / Milton Babbitt - The Composers Quartet String Quartets H-71280 (1973)

Kurt Weill • Darius Milhaud • Arthur Weisberg Conducting Contemporary Chamber Ensemble Suite From The Threepenny Opera, La Création Du Monde H-71281 (1973)

George Rochberg - The Concord String Quartet String Quartet No. 3 ‎ H-71283 (1973)

Peter Maxwell Davies Eight Songs For A Mad King ‎ H-71285 (1973)

Samuel Baron - Karl Korte / Mario Davidovsky / Meyer Kupferman Music For Flute & Tape ‎ H-71289 (1974)

Varèse, Colgrass, Cowell, Saperstein, Oak - The New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, Raymond DesRoches Percussion Music ‎ H-71291 (1974)

George Crumb [David Burge, piano] Makrokosmos, Volume I H-71293 (1974)

Peter Maxwell Davies, The Fires Of London Vesalii Icones ‎(LP, RE) H-71295 (1974)

William Bolcom - Bruce Mather, Pierrette LePage Frescoes (War In Heaven / The Caves Of Orcus) ‎ H-71297 (1974)

Donald Martino / Charles Wuorinen - Speculum Musicae, Daniel Shulman (2), Fred Sherry Notturno / Speculum Speculi H-71300 (1974)

Stefan Wolpe / George Rochberg / Jeff Jones (12), The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, Arthur Weisberg, Phyllis Bryn-Julson, Jan DeGaetani Spectrum: New American Music, Volume IV ‎ H-71302 (1974)

Milton Babbitt / T.J. Anderson / Richard Wernick – The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, Arthur Weisberg Spectrum: New American Music, Volume V ‎ H-71303 (1974)

Schoenberg - Paul Jacobs Piano Music ‎ H-71309 (1975)

George Crumb Music For A Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III) ‎ H-71311 (1975)

Elliott Carter Double Concerto For Harpsichord And Piano With Two Chamber Orchestras / Duo For Violin And Piano H-71314 (1975)

Darius Milhaud - William Bolcom Piano Music ‎ H-71316 (1975)

Charles Wuorinen String Trio / Bearbeitungen Über Das Glogauer Liederbuch / Grand Bamboula ‎ H-71319 (1975)

Harvey Sollberger With Charles Wuorinen, Sophie Sollberger, Allen Blustine, Jeanne Benjamin Twentieth-Century Flute Music (Works By Berio, Davidovsky, Fukushima, Levy, Reynolds, Roussakis, Trombly, Varèse, Westergaard, Wuorinen) ‎(2xLP) HB-73028 (1975)

Claude Debussy, Paul Jacobs Etudes For Piano, Books I & II H-71322 (1976)

William Bolcom - Paul Sperry, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Dennis Russell Davies Open House / Commedia ‎ H-71324 (1976)

Arnold Schoenberg - The Light Fantastic Players Serenade For Seven Instruments & Bass Voice, Op. 24 ‎ H-71331 (1976)

Bartók, Busoni, Messiaen, Stravinsky - Paul Jacobs Piano Etudes ‎ H-71334 (1976)

Charles Ives - Gilbert Kalish Piano Sonata No. 2 "Concord, Mass., 1840-60" ‎ H-71337 (1977)

Peter Maxwell Davies / Richard Wernick Dark Angels / Songs Of Remembrance ‎ H-71342 (1977)

Igor Stravinsky - Paul Jacobs, Ursula Oppens Music For Two Pianos & Piano Four Hands ‎ H-71347 (1978)

John Heiss / Seymour Shifrin / Paul Lansky - The Boston Musica Viva, D'Anna Fortunato, Richard Pittman New American Music For Chamber Ensemble ‎ H-71351 (1978)

Charles Wuorinen Percussion Symphony ‎ H-71353 (1978)

Frederic Rzewski / John Harbison - Speculum Musicae With David Evitts, The Emmanuel Choir Of Boston Song And Dance / The Flower-Fed Buffaloes ‎ H-71366 (1979)

Donald Martino / Milton Babbitt Triple Concerto / Arie Da Capo ‎ H-71372 (1980)

Hap Palmer: Learning With Circles And Sticks

More or less exactly what you’d expect from occult educational records of the 1970s. (TLDR; the trick is to beat the teacher with the emancipation stick until the end-of-period bell rings, then jump in the magic circle and disappear.)

Nasty Brutish & Short
Little Girl, What Are You Wearing
It’s Opposite Day Forever
Let’s Hide the Tambourine
Who Wants To Touch And Be Touched
I’ll Tell You In The Morning
Do a Bump
Tied to the Slumber Wheel

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Sweet Pickles Pop 26

I don’t actively try to recover all the records I had as a kid, because some of them are better off lost. But I realized this year that “Sweet Pickles” has been haunting my workaholic self since 1980: specifically the song “Responsible Rabbit”, an autobiographical tune sung by a rabbit of the same name who’s so efficient he takes lunch at exactly 12:01 and “I work while I chew 'til 12:32”. Sweet Pickles was a series of children’s books about 26 animal friends who live together in a town stuffed full of basic personality types, designated alphabetically by the animals’ names – Imitating Iguana, Positive Pig, Clever Camel, Kidding Kangaroo, Doubtful Dog, and so on. This companion LP allows each animal to sing his or her story in a pop song, all of them desperately catchy, several of them skewing disco (and they don’t embarrass themselves – the production values are top-notch). A more cynical listener could consider this a musical survey of personality disorders, and at least one song, “Bashful Bear Blues”, has aquired an unintended but compelling new meaning in the 21^st century: “Everywhere I cruise / I’m shakin’ in my shoes.” Woof! But kids of course heard it for exactly what it is, a tour through the many moods we all cycle through in life. There’s something, or several things, that I guarantee you’ll include in your next mix – starting, I hope, with “Tantrum”, a stone classic.

Sweet Pickles Theme Song — Pop 26

What A Wonderful Town This Could Be — Outraged Octopus

Lion Looks At Love — Loving Lion

I Do It Too — Imitating Iguana

Responsible Rabbit Rag — Responsible Rabbit

I'll Do It Tomorrow — Goof-off Goose

Havin' Fun — Zany Zebra

Isn't It Sweet To Eat? — Enormous Elephant

Bashful Bear Blues — Bashful Bear

Tantrum — Temper Tantrum Turtle

If I Could Only Make Up My Mind — Imitating Iguana

Stork Spills The Beans — Smarty Stork

Not Allowed — X-Rating Xerus

Haw, Haw, I'm Only Kidding — Kidding Kangaroo

I'm Gorgeous — Vain Vulture

I Am Clever — Clever Camel

I'm Moody Moose — Moody Moose

I'm Nasty Nightingale — Nasty Nightingale

Health Is Very Healthy For You — Healthy Hippo

It's Your Fault — Accusing Alligator

Do The Yakety Yak — Yakety Yak

When The Going Gets Tough — Fearless Fish

That's Something To Worry About — Worried Walrus

Whatever Can Go Right Will — Positive Pig

Down In The Dumps Again — Doubtful Dog

It's Not Fair — Jealous Jackal

Another Birthday — Unique Unicorn

Sweet Pickles Theme Song (Reprise) — Pop 26

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

This record by this guy

This was the first in a series of records of this guy reading his own work. I've been to his website, and he's not selling it, so I'm putting it up here, without any searchable keywords, strictly as a present to anyone who stumbles on this blog. (Trivia: listen for a short snippet that DJ Shadow later sampled.)

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Various Artists: Some Haystacks Don't Even Have Any Needle

Eleven actors - Anne Anglin, René Auberjonois, Georg Stanford Brown, Donald Gallagher, Donald Griffith, Donald Harron, Kate Hawley, Pamela Hoffman, William Hutt, Dave McKnight, and Tony Randall - read 51 poems by 20th-century poets. This 2-LP set was produced to accompany the textbook of the same name published by Scott, Foresman and Company in 1970. The selection of poets is very tasty and includes works by Cummings, Millay, Auden, and Yevtushenko.

AN EASY DECISION by Kenneth Patchen — read by Tony Randall

THE BICYCLE by Jerzy Harasymowicz — read by Donald Harron

THE BAGEL by David Ignatow — read by Donald Harron

ART REVIEW by Kenneth Fearing — read by Tony Randall

UNGAINLY THINGS by Robert Wallace — read by Tony Randall

FROM A 19th CENTURY KANSAS PAINTER’S NOTEBOOK by Dave Etter — read by William Hutt

CORNER by Ralph Pomeroy — read by Dave McKnight

REEL ONE by Adrien Stoutenburg — read by René Auberjonois

FAST RUN IN THE JUNKYARD by Jeannette Nichols — read by Tony Randall

THE CENTAUR by May Swenson — read by Anne Anglin

THE DREAMER by William Childress — read by Georg Stanford Brown

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS by Robert Hayden — read by René Auberjonois

FIXER OF MIDNIGHT by Reuel Denney — read by Donald Harron

WHAT SHE DID IN THE MORNING... by Merrill Moore — read by Tony Randall

TWO FRIENDS by David Ignatow — read by René Auberjonois and Kate Hawley

SYMPTOMS OF LOVE by Robert Graves — read by Georg Stanford Brown

THE PICNIC by John Logan — read by Donald Harron

JACK HATES ALL THE GIRLS by E. E. Cummings — read by Dave McKnight

SINCE FEELING IS FIRST by E. E. Cummings — read by Tony Randall

THE INVOICE by Robert Creeley — read by Donald Harron

THE FLAT by Laurence Lieberman — read by Tony Randall

MODEL T by Adrien Stoutenburg — read by Dave McKnight

TRAVELING THROUGH THE DARK by William Stafford — read by René Auberjonois

THE DOUBLE-PLAY by Robert Wallace — read by René Auberjonois

COBB WOULD HAVE CAUGHT IT by Robert Fitzgerald — read by Donald Harron

EX-BASKETBALL PLAYER by John Updike — read by René Auberjonois

THE BATTLE by Louis Simpson — read by William Hutt

THE HEROES by Louis Simpson — read by Donald Gallagher

APOSTROPHE TO MAN by Edna St. Vincent Millay — read by Tony Randall

WARNING by Larry Rubin — read by Anne Anglin

THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN by W. H. Auden — read by Tony Randall

IN PLACE OF A CURSE by John Ciardi — read by Tony Randall

MOURNING POEM FOR THE QUEEN OF SUNDAY by Robert Hayden — read by Dave McKnight

LIES by Yevgeny Yevtushenko — read by Tony Randall

THE DINOSAUR BONES by Carl Sandburg — read by Donald Griffith

THE ORB WEAVER by Robert Francis — read by René Auberjonois

A BLESSING by James Wright — read by Donald Harron

ODE TO THE AMOEBA by Arthur Guiterman — read by Tony Randall

THE DIVER by Robert Hayden — read by René Auberjonois

LOBSTERS IN THE WINDOW by W. D. Snodgrass — read by René Auberjonois

RAIN OR HAIL by E. E. Cummings — read by Dave McKnight

MY OLD MAID AUNT by Dodi Schultz — read by Pamela Hoffman

ELEGY FOR A JAZZ MUSICIAN by Ernest Kroll — read by Dave McKnight

THE RAINWALKERS by Denise Levertov — read by René Auberjonois

THE MARKET MAN by John Ratti — read by René Auberjonois

WHAT ARE THE MOST UNUSUAL THINGS YOU FIND IN GARBAGE CANS? by James Schevill — read by Donald Harron

BATS by Randall Jarrell — read by Tony Randall

AT THE AIRPORT by Howard Nemerov — read by Tony Randall

EGO by Philip Booth — read by Donald Harron

MALFUNCTION by Richard E. Albert — read by Tony Randall

DAVID by Earle Birney — read by René Auberjonois

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.