Vinyl Lives On

The first record George Meredith ever bought was by jazz pianist Erroll Garner in 1955. He was 15 and a self-admitted “jazz freak.” Rock ’n’ roll wasn’t on his radar.

That changed on October 25, 1964. Ed Sullivan introduced the Rolling Stones to his show and told the audience that the British band would perform during both halves. With that, adoring fans screamed, the curtain rose, and Mr. Meredith began paying attention to rock music in a way he never had before.

Ironically, 13 years later, in 1977, his firm’s first client at Gianettino and Meredith Advertising was WNEW-FM, the leading rock station in the world. As creative director, Mr. Meredith pitched them the slogan, “Rock Lives,” a battle cry against the continuing threat of disco.

Today, he’s repurposed the slogan to include the resilient shelf life of vinyl with the exhibition “Turning Tables: Album Covers by Artists Who Rarely Did Album Covers” at Innersleeve Records in Amagansett. The show features just a slice of Mr. Meredith’s now 2,000-plus LP collection.

“Look at these, they’re just beautiful,” Mr. Meredith said during an interview at the store, gesturing to the “picture show,” a free-standing wall tacked with nearly 200 records. “They’re all so fun and unique. Vinyl is definitely back.”

The exhibit, which debuted in 2004 at Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica, California, is an amalgamation of Mr. Meredith’s musical tastes. On view are albums from the late jazz legends Miles Davis and David Brubeck, who died on December 5, to the rock gods, including Aerosmith and The Beatles.

But more important, it represents the artists who got listeners to buy the records in the first place, according to Innersleeve Records owner Craig Wright, who opened his store last summer.

“When you bought an LP, you listened, looked, read lyrics, stared at the images, paintings, poems, art, then flipped the record and went back to staring at the cover some more,” Mr. Wright wrote in an email last week. “George showed me his portfolio back in August and I immediately felt it should be shown here. I have been in the retail music business since the mid-’80s and I’ve seen LPs morph to cassettes and cassettes to CDs, the demise of the record store as a result of downloads and now back to the vinyl resurgence. There is no doubt that vinyl is making a comeback, and has been for some time.”

Vinyl artists today have an impressive roster of predecessors, among them Andy Warhol, a leading figure of the pop art movement. Before he became recognized as a visionary, Mr. Warhol was an illustrator responsible for 52 album covers, Mr. Meredith said, including “Menlove Ave.” by John Lennon, Liza Minnelli’s “Live at Carnegie Hall” and the rare “Tennessee Williams Reading From ‘The Glass Menagerie,’ ‘The Yellow Bird’ and Five Poems.”

The Velvet Underground & Nico may have nabbed Mr. Warhol’s most iconic cover for their debut album in 1967. It featured a yellow banana-skin sticker that peeled off, suggestively revealing a reddish banana underneath.

“Warhol got into everything. Anything that had to do with art at the time, he was interested. What’s interesting about this Warhol is it’s 16 RPM,” Mr. Meredith said, pointing to “Trombone by Three” released by Jay Jay Johnson, Kai Winding and Bennie Green in 1956. “For a very brief time, a couple of the labels decided they might want to try 16 RPM: twice as many songs. It didn’t work. So this is really rare because they didn’t sell but 10 of these.”

Further down the wall of more than 100 LP covers is Jackie Gleason’s “Lonesome Echo” by his very good friend Salvador Dalí. It is the only album cover the surrealist Spanish painter ever created, Mr. Meredith said, who also owns pop artist Edward Ruscha’s sole cover—“Music” by Mason Williams.

“He was Ed’s best friend,” Mr. Meredith said of Mr. Williams. “They were friends in Texas in high school and they drove to California together to start a life. Mason became famous and Ed did this cover for him. I didn’t know it existed when I came across it. Oh, I just had to have it.”

Another favorite is “Now Playing,” illustrated by Alberto Vargas, but mostly because the cover pictures Bernadette Peters—Mr. Meredith’s celebrity crush—in her negligee. A poster of the same image—inscribed “To George, with all my love, Bernadette,” a gift from a friend in the entertainment industry—hung in Mr. Meredith’s bathroom in Springs for many years before he and his wife, Beth, remodeled. It has yet to find a new home in their house, he said.

“Everybody knows, and I mean everybody, that Bernadette Peters is the one woman I might leave my wife for,” the 72-year-old laughed. “And Beth, she is an amazing woman.”

It was about 10 years ago when he saw her. It was Christmas Eve and Ms. Peters was standing on 58th Street in Manhattan talking with a handsome Italian actor. Mr. Meredith walked by at first, he recalled, but quickly turned around and interrupted the conversation.

“Hi, excuse me, I don’t mean to bother you, but I have a Bernadette Peters story,” he said to the actress/singer.

“Oh, tell me!” Ms. Peters replied, and he told her about the poster. “That’s wonderful, thank you,” she said, leaned over and planted a kiss on his cheek.

A smitten Mr. Meredith started to walk away, but turned back a second time. “What are you up to?” he asked her.

“She said she was doing a benefit the night after Christmas, but on New Year’s Eve she said she’d be down in Atlantic City,” Mr. Meredith said. “‘You should come, it’s a big show.’ I said, ‘I’m afraid I have plans.’ So we talked for a few more minutes and then she said, ‘Well, you have a wonderful Christmas,’ and kissed me on the lips!”

He blushed slightly at the memory and continued, “I call my wife. I said, ‘You’ll never guess who just gave me a “Merry Christmas” kiss.’ She says, ‘Bernadette Peters.’ I went, ‘Jesus.’ She said, ‘Who else would you tell me about, who you kissed?’ So I call my secretary for forever and ever and said, ‘Have a wonderful day tomorrow, I’ll see you next week. Love you, honey. Oh, by the way, you’ll never guess who just gave me a “Merry Christmas” kiss.’ ‘Bernadette Peters.’ True stuff. How transparent am I?”

He continued walking along the wall of records and pointed out some of rock’s “idol photographers” among the artists, including Elliott Erwitt, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Lee Friedlander and Robert Frank. When Mr. Meredith owned turntables, he listened to some of his albums, he said, but switched to CDs like everyone else in the 1980s—though he never stopped collecting LPs.

“Vinyl was being lost for quite a while. Vinyl just ended, CDs came out and a whole generation was not thinking about what they might be missing,” Mr. Meredith said. “But what’s happened in the last year or so is every group issues what they do in vinyl now, as well. A lot of aficionados don’t like the sound they get from CDs and from iPods. There’s a different sound.

“I think this,” he pointed at the wall of album covers, “has substance. The album cover is just as important as the record itself.”

“Turning Tables: Album Covers by Artists Who Rarely Did Album Covers,” featuring Andy Warhol, Richard Avedon, Salvador Dalí, Ed Ruscha, Billy Sullivan and Robert Mapplethorpe, among others, will open with a reception on Saturday, December 15, from 4 to 6 p.m. at Innersleeve Records in Amagansett. For more information, call 375-5316.