Sounds of North American Frogs

From 1953 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 in "swamps, lakes, woods, creeks, and roadside ditches"^[1] of the United States and Mexico. Bogert compiled the recordings and provided narration for the album. Sounds of North American Frogs was released on vinyl in 1958 on the Folkways Records label as part of its Science Series.^[2] The album was produced by Bogert and Moses Asch and the cover was designed by Ronald Clyne.^[3]

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".^[4] The paper marked the beginning of modern bioacoustic research into Anuran vocalization.^[5][6]

Sounds of North American Frogs was not the first album to feature frog calls. The 1948 album Voices of the Night was among the first and included recordings of 26 species of frogs from the eastern United States. It was produced by Arthur A. Allen and Peter Paul Kellogg of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.^[7] Folkways Records followed Sounds of North American Frogs with the similarly narrated 1960 album Sounds of Insects by entomologist Albro T. Gaul.^[8]

In 1998, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of Folkways Records, Smithsonian Folkways issued a digitally remastered version of Sounds of North American Frogs. The reissue included a 41-page booklet, an introduction by herpetologist Richard G. Zweifel, and a mention of the decline in amphibian populations.^[9][5][1] The album was reissued in 2023.^[10]

Sounds of North American Frogs includes the calls of 57 species of frogs in 92 separate tracks. A "profusely illustrated"^[11] 17-page booklet accompanied the 1958 album, along with an essay by Bogert entitled The Biological Significance of Voice in Frogs.^[12] The annotated track listing from the booklet provides the species that can be heard as well as the exact location and date that each track was recorded.^[1]

Bogert's narration describes the production and function of frog vocalizations. Different categories of calls, such as advertisement calls (mating calls), territorial calls, release calls (warning calls), and choruses, are illustrated with all of the families of North American frogs. The narration discusses the role of frog vocalization in species recognition and the effect of phylogenetics on call structure.^[5] In a description of the relationship between body size and pitch, Bogert explains that the frequency of the marine toad's call is about 600 cycles per second while that of the oak toad is about 5200 cycles per second. To illustrate, the album includes a sequence of seven calls, with the species decreasing in size as the frequency increases.^[7]

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."^[7] A 1959 issue of Sports Illustrated praised the album, 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".^[14]

The album developed a cult following^[15][16] and by the 1990s, college radio stations were featuring a frog "call of the day" from the album.^[10] In its October 1998 issue, CMJ New Music Monthly named the record its Weird Album of the Month, noting that the barking tree frog's hypnotic chirp "wouldn't sound out of place on an Oval record".^[17] A review in Pitchfork noted that the warning vibration of the southern toad "sounds like an outtake from an Aphex Twin record".^[16] 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".^[18]

A 1999 review in Copeia of Sounds of North American Frogs by Kentwood Wells found that the 1958 album "remains the most comprehensive work to date, both in the number of species included and the variety of call types presented". The review noted that the dated commentary, such as the old taxonomic categorization and the terminology used to describe calls, could cause confusion for the general public and students.^[5]

• List of amphibians of Northern America

• Sounds of North American Frogs at the Internet Archive
• Sounds of North American Frogs booklet (1998)
• Sounds of North American Frogs, Smithsonian Folkways