Mild mannered Austin, Texas, composer Herman M. Nelson was the first artist to exclusively provide songs for Sonobeat's publishing affiliate, Sonosong Music Company. Although Herman and Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Sr. had met in the early '60s, Herman's association with Sonobeat began in mid-1968 when Jim Chesnut recorded About to Be Woman and Leaves for Sonobeat stereo single PV-s112. The songs were selected from an impressively large body of material Herman had composed over several years. Herman's diverse song catalog eventually yielded two demo albums for Sonobeat's sister company, Sonosong Music (see Sonobeat discography). The first Nelson song demo album was performed by Jim Chesnut (guitar and vocals), Karol Phelan (vocals), and Herman (guitar and vocals), and the second by Bill Wilson (guitar and vocals) and Mike Waugh (bass). The demo albums were used to solicit other artists' interest in recording Herman's songs and were circulated to major record companyA&R departments. Both demo albums were monaural, and neither was commercially released. Bill Sr. recorded a third Herman Nelson song demo album -- performed by Nelson and Waugh -- after moving the Sonobeat studios to Liberty Hill, Texas, in 1973, but distributed the demo only on audio cassettes.

Herman wrote the lyrics for the Lee Arlano Trio's 1969 Sonobeat single, School Daze (and provided a copy of the single from his personal collection to the Sonobeat archives) and when Sonobeat assembled a band around charismatic drummer Vince Mariani in 1970, Bill Sr. called in Herman to write lyrics and the melody for the group's debut single, Re-birth Day. In 1971, when Bill Sr. began working with the Bill Miller Group, he again called on Herman to contribute lyrics to several of the group's songs, but the only song in which Miller ultimately used some of Herman's lyrics -- a line here and there -- was the Egyptian mythology-inspired Ra-Ma.

Herman recalls that after Bill Sr. moved the Sonobeat studios to the KVET building on North Lamar, they met frequently at the nearby Dunkin' Donuts or Toddle House for coffee and talk about a wide range of subjects.

Herman, an Austin resident since 1950, is an award-winning poet and the creator of Elksinger's Perfected Tarot system and cards. Even in the '60s, Herman's "ordinary guy" look and demeanor belied his true passion for metaphysics and the occult, which he slyly celebrated in many of his unusual and thought-provoking song lyrics.