Spoken Word Album - LP Influence and Educational Value

LP Influence and Educational Value

After the advent of LPs, spoken word albums became much more common. The Ronald Colman A Christmas Carol was transferred to LP, as were many other 78-RPM spoken word albums made by Decca, such as Moby Dick, with Charles Laughton as Captain Ahab. An uncredited actor provided the voice of Ishmael, the narrator. Disneyland Records issued many spoken word albums for children, including narrated adaptations of the Disney classic films in their "Disneyland Storyteller" series. Notable Broadway productions, such as the 1950 Don Juan in Hell (with Charles Boyer, Charles Laughton, Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead), the 1953 dramatized reading of the poem John Brown's Body (with Tyrone Power, Judith Anderson and Raymond Massey), the original 1962 Broadway version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (with Uta Hagen, Arthur Hill, George Grizzard and Melinda Dillon), and Richard Burton's Broadway production of Hamlet (1964), were all recorded complete with their original casts by Columbia Masterworks. José Ferrer was heard in an album of excerpts from Cyrano de Bergerac, with members of the cast of the 1946 Broadway revival in which Ferrer first played Cyrano, on Capitol Records. Caedmon Records recorded the complete plays of Shakespeare, as well as recordings of other plays such as Death of a Salesman with original stars Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock, The Glass Menagerie with Jessica Tandy, and a nearly complete Cyrano de Bergerac with Ralph Richardson, who had triumphed in the role in London in 1946. Many of these recorded dramas were played in high school literature classes to enable students to hear the play and follow along in their textbooks at the same time.

After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, memorial collections of his speeches began to appear on LP. Most of the soundtrack of the commemorative 1966 documentary John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums, narrated by Gregory Peck, was released on a Capitol Records LP.

Dialogue excerpts were also released of the film soundtracks of Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew (1967) (on RCA Victor), and Romeo and Juliet (1968) (on Capitol). RCA Victor also released a virtually complete 2-LP album of the film soundtrack of A Man for All Seasons. RCA Victor was also responsible for complete 4-LP album sets of the Laurence Olivier Othello and Zeffirelli's National Theatre of Great Britain production of Much Ado About Nothing, starring Maggie Smith, Robert Stephens, and Albert Finney. Comedy routines by such celebrities as Bill Cosby became extremely popular on Warner Bros. Records. Emlyn Williams recorded an edition of his one-man performance as Charles Dickens (for Argo Records), and Hal Holbrook recorded excerpts from his one-man Mark Twain Tonight! for Columbia Masterworks.