Vincent Price: dramatic readings, audio documentary (of several sorts), and narration....spoken word recordings (and a little singing).

Among the Caedmon covers by Leo and Diane Dillon

I had included links to a couple of the Caedmon recordings in last week's Overlooked A/V...but Horror List member Jeff Swindoll pointing to The Sound of Vincent Price site on Monday, sadly with a number of its links dead or less complete than those below, made traveling down this rabbit hole almost inevitable...that and how much I enjoyed listening to Price's recordings previously linked...another, newer catalog page is at The Vincent Price Exhibit.

Samples of radio drama and cast recordings:

The Adventures of the Saint (CBS, Mutual/MBS, NBC Radio, 1945-51) starring Price as Simon Templar
Escape (repeat performance): "Three Skeleton Key" (CBS Radio 1950 originally)(recorded again in 1956 as an episode of Suspense)

Capitol Custom Records, 1962. Seattle World's Fair speculation on the next century, full of typical gosh-wow boosterism, and Alexander Laszlo's score. Selections audible here, at The Sound of Vincent Price (note blue vinyl).

from Darling of the Day (Original Cast Recording): "He's a Genius" (RCA, 1968) (Price speak-sings; Broadway production which flopped quickly despite major talent involved--co-star Patricia Routledge won a Tony for it.)

Side 1, Track 1: "PTA"

Side 1, Track 5: "The Joke"

(Cadet Records, 1970; sketch comedy featuring Price and a good cast generally.)

The Price of Fear:  the complete series on the Internet Archive

The Price of Fear: "Specialty of the House" (ep. 11; adapting the Stanley Ellin story; BBC Radio 4, 1973)


In 1979, Price was the Wednesday night host for the mystery, suspense and horror episodes of The Sears Radio Theater. I'm not sure if he acted in any episode. (Five nights a week, slotted on CBS Radio with The CBS Radio Mystery Theater, also stripped, with Sears offering westerns (with Lorne Greene) on Monday, humorous drama (with Andy Griffith) on Tuesday, Cicely Tyson hosting romantic drama on Thursdays; Richard Widmark adventure drama on Fridays. Sears at 8p, Mystery at 9p in Honolulu. I don't remember at this point if KHVH-AM chose to continue clearing the Sears series after it went into repeats for a second season, moving to the Mutual Radio network, as the Mutual Radio Theatre...but it was a "faithful" CBS affiliate, and I'm not sure who was running MBS programming in Honolulu in that period (not that missing Paul Harvey broke my spirit in any way).

Spoken Word Records:

 

Poems of Shelley (Caedmon Records, 1956)

"With a Guitar, To Jane" (and several more at adjoining links)

Co-Star: The Acting Game: Vincent Price (Co-Star Records, 195?)
--part of a series of Co-Star albums with actors playing scenes that took the Music Minus One concept to drama...you're acting, with script provided, the scenes with the actor in the album at hand. Albert Brooks must've had some of these...: "The Governor's Son"


America the Beautiful: The Heart of America in Poetry (Columbia Records, 1961) 

Tales of Witches, Ghosts and Goblins (Caedmon Records, 1972)
X

A Coven of Witches' Tales (Caedmon Records, 1973) 

A Graveyard of Ghost Tales (Caedmon Records, 1974) "The Lavender Evening Dress"


The Gold Bug by E. A. Poe [not my favorite of his most revered tales], Caedmon 1974

Edgar Allan Poe: The Imp of the Perverse and Other Stories (Caedmon Records, 1975)  "Morella"

"Berenice"

A Hornbook for Witches (Caedmon Records, 1976) 

Edgar Allan Poe: Ligeia (Caedmon Records, 1977) 


The Goblins at the Bathhouse and [The] Calamander Chest (Caedmon Records, 1978) Part 1 of the Ruth Manning Sanders story

Part 2
Part 1 of the Joseph Payne Brennan story
Part 2

Fancies and Goodnights: The Stories of John Collier (Caedmon Records, 1980)

"Evening Primrose"

"The Touch of Nutmeg Makes It" (rather quiet transcriptions at time of linkage)

HarperAudio, which bought the Caedmon catalog, has reissued some of these recordings in various compilations, and licensed a few others to other labels.






Audio/multimedia documents:

Panorama: A ColorSlide Tour of  the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio (Harry Abrams/Columbia Record Club 1960) a book with slide cards (one presumably was provided with a custom projector when one subscribed to Panorama)  and a 7" 33rpm disc, as with several others narrated by Price (at not quite double-time to cram it all in 16 minutes, in this case) among other hosts--I had a secondhand couple of the books in the Panorama series when I was young, with the slide cards but no projector and no records still with them.

Witchcraft--Magic: An Adventure in Demonology (Capitol Records, 1969)
--an attempt at "nonfictional" documentary in a double-album set

Price had also done a fair amount of recording (or endorsing, as in the case of Gallery) about cooking and wine, and audio documentaries about Christian matters, including the double-album His Son, and an earlier LP devoted to musical impressions of artworks Price appreciated, Gallery.

Jazz A/V: two hours plus of jazz, JAZZ CASUAL and more

There was a sporadic presence of jazz on television as I grew to love the music...in the 1970s one might catch a performance on The Tonight Show (or, more infrequently, on Saturday Night Live) and there was (starting in 1983, though somehow I remember it being earlier), somewhat intermittently it seemed, Oscar Brown, Jr.'s series From Jumpstreet, or the very occasional appearance of jazz musicians on PBS's other music series such as Soundstage or Austin City Limits. The small but persistent efflorescence of jazz programming from the 1960s was gone, and no one seemed too interested in repackaging it or even simply repeating it...the innovations of the latter 1980s, such as Sunday Night/Night Music, hadn't arrived yet. When Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was one of the more reliable sources of jazz music on television, you knew things had reached a pretty pass. So, here, after the complete presentation of a notable third stream work I'd missed over the years, are two episodes of Jazz Casual, jazz critic and Rolling Stone co-founder Ralph Gleason's NET (proto-PBS) series, bookended by some European presentations of comparable heroes of mine.

Dizzy Gillespie, soloist: J. J. Johnson, composer; Gunther Schuller, conductor: Perceptions




The Thelonious Monk Quartet in Denmark:


Jazz Casual with Ralph Gleason:
The Modern Jazz Quartet:



To make up for the disappearance of this, here's the MJQ on the UK series Jazz 625:

  
And also the full episode with the Bill Evans Trio:


The Dave Brubeck Quartet:

(followed by a much-later Paul Desmond performance and a 1962 performance by the Shorty Rogers band, apparently for the Steve Allen series Jazz Scene USA; elsewhere credited: Lou Levy on piano, Gary Peacock, bass, Larry Bunker, drums, Gary Lefebvre on woodwinds and Rogers as flugelhornist).

Max Roach Group: Freedom Now Suite (for German television, 1964)