Before Brillo Box or Banana: Music With The Album Cover Art of Andy Warhol, Various Artists
Various Artists

• Andy Warhol… Prince of Pop Art… Manager of the Velvet Underground… Cultural Icon.

• 4CD collection of music originally released with artwork by the legendary artist.

In 1949, the ambitious young Andy Warhola moved to New York to pursue a career as a commercial artist. “The future is New York City,” he told his sceptical mother.

As an illustrator, it was the unusual quality of Andy’s drawing that drew the attention of clients and other artists, including Peter Blake: “What attracted me was a certain fluid, broken line. Matisse draws in one line. Warhol made the pen stutter.’

Before transitioning into the internationally acclaimed artist of the serious avant-garde, Andy established himself as one of the most sought-after commercial artists of the decade. His clients included virtually every fashion magazine in the NYC and the record labels Columbia, RCA and Blue Note, for whom he designed a diversity of jazz and classical record album sleeves, sometimes collaborating with the brilliant graphic designer Reid Miles and often with Julia Warhola, his mother, whose ornate calligraphy is unmistakable in Andy’s early art.

The first three discs of this edition present selections of the music to be found on the albums Warhol designed for record companies in the years leading up to the Pop Art Explosion; from Chopin to Moondog, from George Gershwin to Thelonious Monk. Disc Four, ‘Andy’s New York’, provides a suitably evocative backdrop to Warhol’s rise to prominence, showcasing the work of many of the pioneering jazz and avant-garde artists in the NYC of those times, including such giants as Charles Mingus, John Cage and – in the vanguard of free form jazz – a personal favourite of Lou Reed, Ornette Coleman.

TRACK LISTING

DISC ONE
1 Gioachino Rossini – William Tell Overture – NBC Symphony Orchestra / Arturo Toscanini
2 Carlos Chávez – Xochipili-Macuilxochitl – An Imagined Aztec Music
3 Carlos Chávez: Danza a Centeotl from Los Cuatro Soles (The Four Suns)
4 Sergei Prokofiev – Field of the Dead from Alexander Nevsky, Op. 78 Jennie Tourel (mezzo-soprano), Philadelphia Orchestra, Westminster Choir / Eugene Ormandy
5 Robert Schumann – Des Abends (In the Evening) from Fantasiestücke, Op. 12 – Arthur Rubinstein: piano
6 Ludwig van Beethoven – Adagio Cantabile from Piano Sonata No. 8, in C Minor, Op. 13 “Pathétique” Arthur Rubinstein: piano
7 Manuel de Falla – Ritual Fire Dance / Boston Pops Orchestra / Arthur Fiedler
8 The Continental / Boston Pops Orchestra / Arthur Fiedler
9 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Allegro moderato from Violin Concerto in D major, Op 35 – Erica Morini, Chicago Symphony Orchestra / Désiré Defauw
10 -28 Felix Mendelssohn – Variations Sérieuses, Op. 54 – Vladimir Horowitz: piano
29 Franz Liszt – Funérailles (Harmonies Poétiques Et Religieuses No. 7) – Vladimir Horowitz: piano

DISC TWO
1 George Gershwin – Rhapsody In Blue / Byron Janis: piano
2 George Gershwin – Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture – Arr. Robert Russell Bennett / Indianapolis Symphony / Fabien Sevitzky
3 Kenny Burrell – But Not for Me
4-10 Maurice Ravel – Daphnis et Chloé – Scene Three – Boston Symphony Orchestra / Charles MunchFrédéric Chopin – Nocturnes Op. 9
11 No. 1 in B-Flat Minor: Larghetto
12 No. 2 in E-Flat Major: Andante
13 No. 3 in B Major: Allegretto Frédéric Chopin – Nocturnes Op. 15 – Jan Smeterlin: piano
14 No. 1 in F Major: Andante cantabile
15 No. 2 in F-Sharp Major: Larghetto
16 No. 3 in G Minor: Lento

DISC THREE
Count Basie & His Orchestra
1 7th Avenue Express
2 Wonderful Thing
3 Rat Race
Joe Newman Octet
4 Top Hat, White Tie and Tails Artie Shaw & His Orchestra
5 Jungle Drums
6 Lady Day
Jay Jay Johnson – Kai Winding
7 Riviera
8 Hip Bones
9 Wind Bag
10 We’ll Be Together Again
11 Bennie Green – Whirl-a-licks
12 Cool Gabriels – Elevation Thelonious Monk
13 We See
14 Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
15 Locomotive Moondog
16 Perpetual Motion
17 Trimbas in Quarters
18 Trimbas in Eighths
19 Organ Rounds
Johnny Griffin
20 I’m Glad There Is You
Kenny Burrell
21 Yes Baby
22 Autumn in New York

DISC FOUR
Andy’s New York
1 Eric Dolphy & Booker Little – Ode to Charlie Parker
2 Charles Mingus – Better Git It In Your Soul
3 Morton Feldman – Piece for Four Pianos
4 Ornette Coleman – Peace
5 Lambert Hendricks & Ross – Cloudburst
6 Jimmy Giuffre 3 – Brief Hesitation
7 Gunther Schuller – Abstract Trio from Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee
8 John Cage – Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano: Sonata II
9 Modern Jazz Quartet – Versailles
10 Bill Evans Trio – Alice In Wonderland
11 Luciano Berio & Cathy Berberian – Circles
12 Cecil Taylor Quartet with Albert Ayler – Four (excerpt)
13 Lenny Bruce – Blah Blah Blah…