Nothing better to start the new year, than with a totally unknown Warhol cover. Imagine my surprise, while I was patiently browsing a Japanese online used record store, when I saw this little gem. Never seen or heard of it before, and it is very well possible that neither did Andy Warhol!

The details:
Victor, ES-8111, 7″
Boston Pops Orchestra – Arthur Fiedler, conductor
Berlioz: Rakóczy March
Verdi: Aida – Grand March
Housed in the special plastic jacket “VICTOR RECORD 45 RPM PATENT JACKET”, a type of jacket well known to collectors of Japanese Elvis Presley EP’s from the 1950ies.

It is in fact the second known Japanese EP cover that re-uses Andy Warhol’s artwork, that was commissioned for the 1956 jazz album Cool Gabriels on RCA’s sub label Groove. The first was an EP with Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, performed by the Wiener Philharmoniker, conducted by Pierre Monteux, Victor ES 8097. It was released in Dec 1958/Jan 1959.

For pinpointing an exact time of release for the two Japanese Victor EP’s, I bought some monthly catalogues of the Victor label, with “new releases of Japanese and Western music”.
ES 8097 (Wedding March) is listed in catalogue 1959/1, so the record was released in January of 1959, or at the end of the preceding month, December 1958.
ES 8111 (Marches by Berlioz and Verdi) is listed in catalogue 1959/7, which suggests the record was released in the month July of 1959, or end of June.

I intend to do further research on how the art departments of record companies from different countries exchanged (or sold?) their cover art design. How did a Warhol drawing, commissioned for a 1956 American jazz LP, end up on two Japanese EP’s, three years later, in different colors and for a different genre? More on that later (I hope).