Already in 1949, the first year Andy Warhol worked a s a commercial illustrator in New York, he received commissions for record cover art. He did spot drawings for at least two LP’s on the Columbia label (Carlos Chávez, A Program of Mexican Music and Prokofiev, Alexander Nevsky), both released in 1949.You can hardly call these rare, though, as they regularly turn up for sale, at fairly low prices. This is not the case for a commission Warhol received from the NBC radio station that same year: cover drawings for promotional boxes for radio shows, that were sent to companies in the first months of 1950. Only two titles have surfaced so far: the radio play Night Beat (three known copies) and the news show Voices and Events (one known copy). These are the rarest of all Warhol record covers.

The Night Beat cover is probably the first record cover drawing by Warhol that was printed in a magazine, illustrating a short blurb in the trade magazine Advertising Agency and Advertising & Selling, issue of July 1950. “One of the earliest in Warhol’s professional bibliography”, according to former Warhol archivist Matt Wrbican in an essay in Criticism (2014). “ In a feature titled Clipping board, a sort of gossip column for the industry. The following appears with Warhol’s drawing of musicians, in bright red: ‘Andrew Warhola is a young man from Carnegie Tech with an unusual technique. Might be said to be a combination of the old and new. It is hoped that he will quickly get beyond the field of record and album covers’. At the time, Warhol already had a few
illustrations published on the packaging of musical recordings, as well as in a number of magazines including Glamour and Harper’s.” (Matt Wrbican, Warhol’s Time Capsule 51, published in: Criticism, Summer 2014, Vol. 56, nr. 3, pp. 689-699).

Warhol, by the way, luckily never abandoned the field of album and record covers.

The NBC radio campaign was announced in a short article in the February 1950 issue of Variety, a trade magazine for the entertainment industry. Record boxes with a sales pitch and a complete radio show were sent out to companies and agencies in search for sponsorships.

The Night Beat boxset contains three 7” records, 45 rpm, on blue vinyl. Six sides are numbered EO-CX-342 through 347. The drama series stars Frank Lovejoy as newspaper reporter Randy Stone. Every night on the lookout for good copy in the city, Stone usually meets people in distress. He tries to help out whenever he can. The episode in the boxset is titled Zero. Randy Stone and a doctor’s secretary search the town to find a man who has suicidal thoughts, after learning from a medical report he is soon to die. But the secretary has made a big mistake: because she typed a 0 instead of 9 in his file number, the patient has received the wrong report. Date of broadcast of this episode was Monday February 6, 1950.

Here you can listen to the promo talk. And also listen to the full episode “Zero”.

I have in my collection an early version of the Night Beat drawing, in graphite. It is interesting to see that Warhol in 1949 was first using a different drawing technique, rather pointillistic, before switching to the blotted line style, as used in the final, more dramatic Night Beat drawing.

Warhol’s drawing was heavily based on a publicity image of Burt Lancaster in the film noir Sorry, Wrong Number, as seen in an ad in LIFE magazine, issue of October 25, 1948. The hat is quite clearly traced from this ad. LIFE magazine in the early Fifties was an important source for Warhol’s drawings.

The drawing on the Night Beat cover is a blotted line drawing, less pointillistic. Some elements were kept (the old type telephone, the nose, the mouth). The hat is different, and also the more paranoid eyes, looking as a man afraid he’s being followed. A typical image for film noir studio photos, in those days. Some staged studio stills of Burt Lancaster are in that style. Also on these pictures the older type of telephone is used, whereas in the film (and the poster ad) Lancaster was talking into a more modern telephone horn.

The cover of the Night Beat box, 1950.

Coming soon: a post on the Voices and Events box.