Vinyl Ventures

Finalist – 2022 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research, BEST HISTORICAL RESEARCH IN RECORD LABELS

Th Vinyl Ventures: My Fifty Years at Rounder Records is a memoir of Rounder and of the music business written by one of the three Rounder founders, Bill Nowlin.

The label was born in 1970, a “hobby that got out of control,” a fledgling record company more or less conceived when vinyl still reigned, while the Sixties were still in flower, and which began publishing on a shoestring budget of just over $1,000. Founded by three friends just out of college, the Boston-area company produced over 3,000 record albums, the most active company of the last half-century, specializing in roots music and its contemporary offshoots. Rounder won fifty-six Grammy Awards and documented a swath of music that in many cases might otherwise never have been presented to a broader public. It’s arguably a quintessentially American success story.

This book focuses on the early years up to and just through when Rounder evolved to a second stage, with a generational change that has kept the label healthy and flourishing when so many other cultural enterprises from the era have folded or gone dark. It includes original photographs taken by the author or drawn from the Rounder Records archives. It’s the story of three people with no background in business who took an idea and, through hard work and passion, built something of lasting cultural significance.

Listen as you read

The digital editions (eBook and ePub) contain numerous links to music featured in the text so that readers can listen along. Links go to Spotify and were verified at the time of going to press.