Sounds of North American Frogs is a 1958 album of frog vocalizations narrated by herpetologist Charles M. Bogert. The album was released on the Smithsonian Folkways record label as part of its Science Series.
The field recordings for the album were created by Bogert from 1954 to 1957, who was then the chair of the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Amphibians and Reptiles.
Background and release history
A decade prior to the release of Sounds of North American Frogs, the 1948 album Voices of the Night was among the first to feature frog calls. It was produced by Arthur A. Allen and Peter Paul Kellogg of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and included recordings of 26 species of frogs from the eastern United States.
From 1954 to 1957, herpetologist Charles Mitchill Bogert, chair of the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Amphibians and Reptiles, collected field recordings of frog calls throughout North America. Bogert compiled the recordings and provided narration for the album. Sounds of North American Frogs was released on vinyl in 1958 on the Smithsonian Folkways record label as part of its Science Series. The cover of the album was designed by Ronald Clyne.
Bogert went on to elaborate on the themes he put forward in the album's booklet in his major 1960 paper "The influence of sound on the behavior of amphibians and reptiles". The paper marked the beginning of modern bioacoustic research into Anuran vocalization. Smithsonian Folkways followed Sounds of North American Frogs with the similarly narrated 1960 album Sounds of Insects by entomologist Albro T. Gaul.
In 1998, on the 40th anniversary of the release of Sounds of North American Frogs, Smithsonian Folkways issued a digitally remastered version with an introduction by herpetologist Richard G. Zweifel. The album was reissued again in 2023.
Contents
Sounds of North American Frogs includes the calls of over 50 species of frogs in 92 separate tracks. A 17-page booklet accompanying the 1958 album, entitled The Biological Significance of Voice in Frogs, was "profusely illustrated".
Bogert's narration describes the production and function of frog vocalizations, including advertisement calls (mating calls), territorial calls, release calls (warning calls), and frog choruses. The narration includes discussion of the relationship between body size and pitch.
Reviews and legacy
In a 1958 review of the album in the journal Copeia, herpetologist James Arthur Oliver called its accompanying booklet "the best and most comprehensive review of vocalization in amphibians that I have seen." A 1959 issue of Sports Illustrated sang the album's praises, calling it the "last word in frog recording, not a rock 'n' roll approach but a faithful capturing of solos and symphonies, with a masterly interpretation by Mr. Bogert, the Toscanini of the frog world".
The album developed a cult following and by the 1990s, college radio stations were featuring a frog "call of the day" from the album. The album was named the 'Weird Album of the Month' for the October 1998 issue of CMJ New Music Monthly, which noted that the barking tree frog's hypnotic chirp "wouldn't sound out of place on an Oval record". Musician David Toop, in his 1999 book Exotica, mentions Sounds of North American Frogs as one of his favorites, describing Bogert's narration as "unwittingly comical" and "froglike".