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William S. Burroughs
Ali's Smile

Album UK 1971 on Unicorn Books label
Spoken Word (Spoken Word)

Blank labels: side A white, side B black. Record issued in a plain white card cover. 99 copies were originally produced, meant to accompany a hardback edition of Ali's Smile published by Unicorn Books, packaged together in a cardboard mailing carton. Side A plays at 33rpm and is WSB reading Ali's Smile, a section from Exterminator! Side B plays at 78rpm and is a voice announcing a series of test tones played at different cycles per second. Ali's Smile was later released on Vaudeville Voices. From Eric Shoaf's WSB bibliography: Email correspondence with Richard Cupidi, publisher of Ali’s Smile at Unicorn Books, is revealing as he notes: “There were 99 copies of the book to be issued, but my then-partner left 20 or so LPs on a heater which warped the play out of them. So, some books were sold without the record, and the remaining couple of dozen unsold books were pulped. There were probably less than 50 full sets distributed including a number of which went to libraries.” The author has located some 29 copies of the Unicorn edition in libraries, but only two of which have the vinyl recording.

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William S. Burroughs voc, 1914-1997 US album by, written by, read by, uncredited

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