James Austin, Rhino's VP of A&R, has been around longer than just about anyone—18 years as a full-time employee plus five more as an outside producer of Rhino releases—so we asked him to select 27 key titles from throughout Rhino's history. Here are the ones he picked and why.

It set the tone that Rhino was a different label. Rhino started out as a record store, and they had Wild Man Fischer record this record back in the 1970s. They would put the record in the bag, and when people would buy an album, they would, as a bonus, give you the song “Go To Rhino Records.”

:: Out of Print

That was our first #1 record. Also, that was our first gold record. It was one of those happy accidents because of the show Family Ties. We had worked with Billy because he was constantly touring. He had this album that was on Alpha Records, and we licensed it and put it out. It sold fairly well because he was on tour, then suddenly the song “At This Moment” gets used in the show Family Ties. So Billy has always been thought of as one of the people who helped found Rhino, in a sense, because his record gave us a lot of capital with which to further develop the company.

:: Out of Print

The Monkees TV show was pure ’60s pop culture. If you were gonna look at one thing and visually say, that’s what Rhino is about, you could say The Monkees TV show is it. One of our founding owners, Harold Bronson, was very devoted to The Monkees, and he and Richard Foos secured the rights to the TV shows because they were just fanatical about The Monkees. So it says pop culture on one hand, but it also says passion on the other.

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That’s another one that was very much a Harold Bronson project. It was the first album that signaled to the buying public, ‘Hey, take us seriously.’ It was a collection that was nicely mastered, with photos on the back of the album and liner notes. It was the first really great reissue that set the tone for what Rhino was to become in later years.

Out Of Print

He was one of those early people that we latched onto because of his unique comedic style. Not that he’s a comedian, but his unique persona as a person who knows popular music and is a historian, but also is a person who likes the crazy aspect of music. Novelty music, to put it succinctly.

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That was our first really big-selling boxed set. Richard Foos and I would often commiserate on the fact that we could not sell doo wop records. So Bob Hyde, in the late ’90s, came up with this idea of putting together a boxed set of all the most important doo wop records you could find. It just went through the roof. Then we used it with PBS pledge drives, and it became a gold record, and is probably one of our signature boxed sets.

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It’s important for me personally, because when I got to the company I realized that boxed sets could be on a genre. The first or second one we did was Songs Of The West. We did a limited-edition leather-covered box, and it had all the important stuff—you know, “Back In The Saddle” and “Happy Trails.” It became a real centerpiece for us as far as showing people out there that you could do a boxed set and you didn’t have to do it on a specific artist.

Out of Print

It had every great surf record that you could possibly think about, and one CD was devoted to new surf bands, the later people who had done surf music. And what I loved about it was the packaging was done in such a way that it looked like a real surfboard. It had this spot varnish on it. Everything about it just made you want to go to the beach. And the song selection came out just great, because we worked with some of the most diehard surf fanatics.

Out of Print

This is a perennial good seller. If you walk into Tower or Virgin you’re bound to see it, because it’s so visually pleasing. It’s a triumph of packaging that makes sense without getting overly clever. I personally wanted to do a boxed set of hot rod songs, because I’m a car fanatic. After trying to push this through for 12 years, it’s just an example of how tenacity works. That if you believe in something, you follow it. That’s what I’ve learned from Rhino, that you follow a passion.

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There was another boxed set that was done only on Ray’s R&B sides. I thought it was a good idea to have a boxed set that really encapsulated everything that Ray did from the minute he walked into Atlantic until the minute he left. What I love about this box is that we were able to get everything he did on Atlantic, plus have one disc of unreleased material and also a DVD. I think this is where boxed sets need to go. Every time you do a boxed set you raise the bar. I think this takes boxed sets in the next direction. This is in a carrying case that looks like a record player.

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This was a brainchild of Gary Stewart, who at one point was the head of A&R. The Nuggets idea actually came about in the 1970s when Elektra did the two-album set. It was psychedelic and garage bands, all the important ones like The Seeds and The Count Five and all those bands that came out of the mid to late 1960s. Gary took that idea and said, ‘let’s do a boxed set.’ The thing about that is that it’s very germane to punk rock. That sound is very immediate and visceral. It has a particular style and it never sounds dated.

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It’s the companion to Nuggets in some ways, because of what was going on in the ’60s. Rockabilly became the punk of the ’50s, and garage music became the punk of the ’60s. Then in the late 1970s the whole punk movement exploded, and it kind of came from someplace. The punk box is another genre box that sold phenomenally well, and it overcame an obstacle, which was we could not, due to licensing restrictions, get the Sex Pistols. For any other company that might have been an albatross, but the music was so strong, and you had every punk band that you could possibly want.

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It was one of the first boxed sets where we got a Grammy nomination. We had just acquired the rights to the Atlantic catalog. This was our first foray into doing a real serious, important artist boxed set where we went out and said, ‘This is an artist that the world loves and respects, and we’ve gotta do justice to that artist.’

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I don’t think we’d ever done boxed sets that were larger than 12 CDs, so in one way these were the biggest boxed sets we’d ever done. Between the two boxes, they really took the whole recorded history of a band that has had a long period of success and put it into 24 CDs—12 CDs each. We had to work with the Grateful Dead organization, and we had to do something that was so faithful to the band that it would pass the scrutiny of the Dead Heads.

Beyond Description
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The Golden Road (1965-1973)
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This was produced by Patrick Milligan and Joel Dorn, and they put together everything that was done on Atlantic by John Coltrane into a major boxed set, and today it’s probably our most prestigious boxed sets on a jazz artist. It’s certainly a tribute to John Coltrane and a tribute to what Rhino could do with major jazz artists.

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Here was one of the cutting-edge comedians. This was produced by Reggie Collins and is an amazing boxed set of everything you’d ever want by Richard Pryor all in one place. I remember Ray Charles—he requested very few things from me, but he requested the Richard Pryor box. If it passes his inspection, you know it must be good. This is an example of a great comedy box. Probably one of the best, if not the best, boxed set on a comedian.

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This is one of those great deluxe packaging reissues that really hit the mark and showed what you could do with expanded editions. Excellent music as well.

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It’s too bad it’s out of print, and it’s one that we’ve thought about bringing back into print. Talk about perfect packaging -- a record-style box, the CDs sit in there like 45s. If you like soul music, this is it. It’s where art and commerce come together in such an incredible way.

Out of Print

This is the first serious boxed set that we’d ever done. It was one that I had done. I had seen what was done on Eric Clapton with Crossroads and Dylan with Biograph. I remembered that we had the rights to a couple of Jack Kerouac records, and I told Richard Foos that if we got a license for the material that Verve owned, we would then have everything in one place. It would be better for the Jack Kerouac fans to have everything, rather than a single CD like a best of. It ended up with a Grammy, and it’s a steady seller.

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We really took the spoken-word genre seriously enough to do a good boxed set. This is a three-CD box that was the idea of Richard Foos. His idea was to take some of the best speeches that had been done during the 20th century and pool them all in one spot. I remember the first-week sales were kind of unremarkable, and then it steadily built and built because of press. This is a great example of how press can sell records. Everybody wrote about it because it was so unique.

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It’s one of the great records of all time. We took a great soundtrack by The Band and brought it up to date and expanded it and made it the best we possibly could. It was an example of how you work with the artist, as we did with Robbie Robertson, and everything comes together with the artist commitment. Jimmy Edwards marketed this to perfection to where we sold way over what we’d projected.

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This was an idea of Gary Peterson’s of taking artists like William Shatner or Leonard Nimoy or Mae West who thought, ‘Gee, I think I could sing that rock ’n’ roll song’ -- like “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” or “Rocket Man” -- and most of them, if not all of them, are hysterical, because none of those actors could really sing for the most part. It’s like, you’ve gotta have this to give to your friends. Definitely one of our signature titles.

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Buffalo Springfield is so important. I don’t think that their importance has been fully realized by a lot of younger people, because you’re not gonna hear them on the radio. Even if you listen to oldies radio, they’re gonna play one song. A boxed set is great, because it brings the level of awareness up. It raises this band up and says, ‘This band is important; take them seriously.’ And that’s what this did for them with unreleased tracks -- and beautifully put together.

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Another important moment of the 1980s, people gathering around the TV. It’s almost a little bit like how the older generation can remember where they were when they saw The Beatles on television. It’s gonna probably be one of the most important DVDs that we will ever put out, because the ’80s were an important decade in our development, and this was an important event that galvanized people on a number of different levels and had great artists.

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What can you say about the Ramones, truly one of the great rock ’n’ roll bands in American history. And to have all that great music in one place, it’s gonna be a joy. It’s again a really great band that really deserves a box. The nice thing about this is that it’s really turn a lot of people onto the Ramones. When people think of Rhino in future years, they’re gonna say, ‘Oh yeah, they did the Ramones box.’

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We’d never really had a successful soundtrack, and this was our most successful record last year. It was important for a number of reasons. It showed that if you got the right movie and everything came together, you could have a good-selling soundtrack. Unfortunately a lot of that was based on the fact that Ray had passed away, and also the movie and the Genius Loves Company record. It’s one of the things that I’m most proud of having worked on, and sadly it happened without Ray being here to enjoy it. It turned a lot of people onto Ray Charles who would’ve never really thought much about him.

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It’s again Rhino doing what Rhino does best. A lot of companies have had the opportunity to do a girl groups box, and nobody has done it. There’s a passion for girl groups, and I think it’s gonna find its audience -- I know it will. Again, it’s gonna be a real signature Rhino piece, because it’s so much fun to listen to, it’s so accessible, and it’s got such great packaging in that hat box.

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:: BACK TO 27th ANNIVERSARY HOME

Ray Charles

"What'd I Say Parts I & II"

Aretha Franklin

"Chain Of Fools"

X

"Los Angeles"

Curtis Mayfield

"Move On Up"

Ramones

"I Wanna Be Sedated"

The Monkees

"I'm A Believer"

Violent Femmes

"Blister In The Sun"

The Spinners

"I'll Be Around"

INXS

"New Sensation"

Grandmaster Flash

"White Lines"

Foreigner

"Hot Blooded"

The Doors

"Hello, I Love You"

The Cure

"Friday I'm In Love"

Chicago

"Call On Me"

The Cars

"Shake It Up"

The B-52's

"Love Shack"

Bobby Darin

"Mack The Knife"

Crosby, Stills & Nash

"Suite: Judy Blue Eyes"

John Coltrane

"Giant Steps"

Sister Sledge

"We Are Family"

Rod Stewart

"Hot Legs"

Twisted Sister

"We're Not Gonna Take It"

Yes

"Owner Of A Lonely Heart"

Wilson Picket

"Land Of A 1000 Dances"

Percy Sledge

"When A Man Loves A Woman"

Allan Sherman

"Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh"

Warren Zevon

"Werewolves In London"