Nonesuch Records
Stuff You Don't Know
About the 60s
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This excerpt is from the book "Follow the Music," the story of Elektra records as told by its founder, Jac Holzman.
Without Nonesuch There Might Have Been No Doors; Electronic Music on Nonesuch
JAC HOLZMAN: The singer-songwriter years were filled with change and challenge, both political and personal, and Elektra was in the thick of the movement. But I could feel the need for something more, to make a bold move unrelated to what the label had been doing, and I had absolutely no idea of what that might be. Then, without notice or ceremony, it hit me. No experience in life goes wasted. I recalled when I was an indifferent college student at St. John's. Music was a key element of the Great Books program, but it went beyond the "harmony of the spheres" that permeated our celestial mechanics and math studies. Music would pour out of the windows of the dorms, which were really very large, post-colonial houses. And no junk. Walking across campus, you would hear folk music, music for ancient instruments, Haydn, Vivaldi, Beethoven's "Grosse Fuge," Johann Sebastian Bach and all his progeny, and a glorious helping of Mozart, the patron saint of St. John's music junkies.
There was only one record store in Annapolis, Albright's,
on Maryland Avenue. It had a few cramped listening booths, and I would go
down and graze among the classical records, especially the baroque offerings,
which were stocked only because St. Johnnies were serious music people.
The Westminster label recorded with care and offered a broad range of music
that fit my taste. In the early days of LP's, Westminster albums cost $5.95
each. I wanted two, but I could only afford one, and I would drive myself
nuts choosing. Buying only one album was like trying to satisfy your craving
with one potato chip.
Fast forward fifteen years. All that time I had been keeping detailed notes on classical records issued in Europe, subscribing to a large number of overseas record magazines, clipping reviews of whatever looked interesting and pasting them onto loose-leaf pages by label and genre of music. I had three notebooks full of information and no idea what I was going to do with it. By late 1963 we were set up in our new offices adjacent to Rockefeller Center. Paul Rothchild was on board. Koerner, Ray & Glover were becoming known. The singer-songwriters were an established genre. And now . . . what? My mind was searching for something to get interested in.
Nina and I were at a restaurant on 57th Street for dinner with Harry Lew, our New York distributor, and his wife, and they were late. Perhaps because Carnegie Hall was right across the street, I was struck by my recollection of having to choose between two records I wanted so badly when I was a student. In 1963 classical records were $4.98, and quality paperback books, trade paperbacks, were $2.50. "Wouldn't it be neat," I mused, "to have a line of fine records at the same price as trade paperbacks?"
What kind of music? Unusual, baroque-oriented,
with a very focused sense of audience-meaning essentially me as I was in
1948-1950. In sum, adventurous repertoire for music lovers with more taste
than money.
Package the line intelligently. Fashion liner notes that would not only
discuss the music, but also-and this was important to me-the social context,
because music, sports, reading, and I assume sex, were the prime entertainments
of that day. And I knew Bill Harvey could come up with some clever cover
ideas that would showcase the music, with all fustiness brushed away.
The whole idea came to me so fully realized that I couldn't find the words to express it for a minute or two. I diagrammed the basic shape of it and wrote out the critical details on the paper tablecloth.
Harry Lew finally arrived. He heard me out, and thought I was crazy to try to compete in classical music with the majors and the knowledgeable established independents like Vanguard.
That was not about to slow me down. Next day I boarded a jet to Europe, my carefully assembled classical notebooks in my carry-on-this was the raw material of the idea and I wasn't taking chances with lost baggage. Paris and London were my first stops. I cold-called everyone, introduced myself and booked appointments. Being president and owner of Elektra was enough to get me in the door to make my pitch. I wanted records the European labels never thought would or could be released in America, and here is a guy offering a $500 advance per album plus a royalty. I brought very simple licensing agreements and a raft of blank checks which were clearly visible and aching to be filled in.
I creamed seven quite nice albums from these sources,
and spent many hours in further research at London's Gramophone Shop, which
stocked everything worthwhile in classical recordings from Europe. I returned
to New York with the certainty that if we could bring the whole concept
together I could easily acquire many more albums, and I had already targeted
the most likely sources of repertoire.
We gave the project a code name, Nonesuch, so that if we were ever asked
we could truthfully say there was no such project-what in government is
called "plausible deniability."
I had asked Bill Harvey to mock up a few covers, and I contacted Ed Canby to write the liner notes. Bill thought the best approach to create an identity was original artwork in a well designed frame, with the label's logo prominently on top, for instant recognition as people flipped through the record racks.
Once we had the first releases looking good, and about sixty days from initial launch, I decided to tie up the richest lode of material available from a single source, Club Français du Livre et de la Disque in Paris, which had a fine music division (also a major book club reprinting European classical literature in complete sets, handsomely bound, much beloved by the French). My reasoning was twofold. If the idea caught on, I would have to move fast to build a catalog, because I didn't have one of my own to draw from as did Vanguard, Vox, and the majors. Anxious to preempt anyone else from accessing the riches of Le Club, I telexed the owner-president, M. L'Hôpital, and followed up with a visit.
Le Club did business from a formidable stone mansion on a prestigious street in central Paris. Outside M. L'Hôpital's office door were two lights, one red, one green, so his secretary would know when she could enter. The door was tufted brown leather, and when it was opened there was an identical door reset about eighteen inches, forming a leather airlock. The office was in elegant Empire style, and behind a gold leaf desk was M. L'Hôpital, a cultured, quite handsome gentleman in a blue pinstripe suit, the most perfectly ironed shirt with a collar to envy and an immaculately knotted tie. He spoke excellent English, but had never heard of Elektra. I showed him preview samples of the first Nonesuch releases, and told him I was willing to commit immediately to twenty albums, and that I wanted three years exclusivity to comb his list. And I just happened to have a check with me for $10,000 for a contract to be negotiated. My hunch about M. L'Hôpital was that he could make the deal and that his handshake would seal it. He gave his commitment to twenty masters which would be air-shipped to me as soon as they could be duplicated, and I left with him a sample agreement that Irwin Russell had prepared. Then we went out and had a civilized French lunch of several courses and wine. It's a good thing we got the business done first.
BERNIE KRAUSE: Jac introduced me to Paul Beaver. Paul had a place in LA, on Hyans Street, a one-story red brick warehouse, pretty funky, falling apart more with each earthquake. Inside he had the largest collection of Novachords, the first synthesizer, built by Hammond in the Thirties, with many presets-
JAC:-It had a hundred sixty-nine tubes and weighed a quarter of a ton.
BERNIE KRAUSE: Paul had an Ondes-Martinot too, a little French synthesizer, also from the Thirties. He built all kinds of other instruments. He was doing a lot of effects work with "Creature of the Black Lagoon"-type B movies-on the sound stage he would have a series of oscillators and other devices on a table thirty feet long and scurry back and forth. He did the effects for "War Of The Worlds," "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers," movies all through the Fifties. He had quite a reputation. Paul was also a conservative Republican. He wore blue serge suits with dandruff on the shoulders. He was one of the world's greatest Wurlitzer theater pipe organists-his big dream was to build a restaurant in the round where he would come up with his organ through a water fountain and play all night. He was also a Scientologist and a believer in UFOs.
I was a folkie-I had been a banjo player in the Weavers, the last replacement for Pete Seeger. I was looking for a different musical voice to express myself. At Mills College, at the music center, they had early prototypes of the modular synthesizer, and I got very excited about the potential of the instrument, the medium of electronic music.
Paul and I bought a synthesizer, a Moog, but we couldn't get Hollywood interested in using it, and we couldn't get record companies interested in electronic music. We had something like a hundred rejection letters from all around the world. We were almost broke.
I had done some consultant producer work for Nonesuch with Tracey Sterne, and I knew of Jac's proclivity for experimentation. He was the only one with the vision to see what this instrument, the synthesizer, could do.
JAC: It didn't take much genius to figure out that the record was the ideal medium for electronically generated music. I had been aware of the possibilities for years. My dad had a lawyer named Abe Frisch whose hobby was creating tapes of music, synthetically generated, only Abe did it with a massive inventory of tiny magnets which he pressed, one by one, onto the tape, re-arranging the ferrous oxide tape particles into something resembling a sound.
BERNIE KRAUSE: Jac took the risk, got behind it, and gave us a contract to record a guide to electronic music as a boxed set with LP and detailed booklet. The album was on the Billboard charts for twenty-six weeks, one of Nonesuch's best-selling records to that time. It was the key to introducing the synthesizer into pop music and film. This was something really important, something that broke down all the walls in the music business.
More broadly, Jac's vision gave a voice in the world to a new musical instrument, in effect the first to be successfully introduced since the saxophone a century before.
"Follow the Music" is the must-read story of Elektra records, as told by its founder Jac Holzman and the artists and staff of one of America's legendary record companies. (441 pages, softcover, 140 illustrations) Order today from this site and from Amazon.com
Copyright 1998 by Jac Holzman and Gavan Daws. All rights reserved.