Spoken word album
Encyclopedia
A spoken word album was a record album that did not consist mainly of music or songs, but of spoken material
. It could be said to be the ancestor of today's audiobook format. Spoken word albums ranged from such items as recordings of actual political speeches and/or dramatic readings of historical documents, to dialogue from the soundtrack
of a film, to condensed dramatized versions of literary classics, to complete performances of plays by Shakespeare or other great authors, to stories for children, or to standup comedy routines recorded live in nightclubs.
1941 version of Charles Dickens
's A Christmas Carol
on American Decca Records. However, a true milestone was reached when Columbia Masterworks, which had previously released an album of excerpts from Shakespeare's Richard II
with Maurice Evans
, recorded most of Margaret Webster
's famed (and never filmed) 1943 Broadway
production of Othello, starring Paul Robeson
, José Ferrer
, and Uta Hagen
, on an eighteen-record 78-RPM set that was later transferred to LP. It was the longest spoken word album made up to that time. The album gave millions of listeners who otherwise were unable to attend a theatrical performance a chance to hear Robeson as Othello and Ferrer as Iago. Sales of the album, however, were affected after Robeson was blacklisted by the U.S. government in 1950 for his alleged Communist sympathies.
, 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.
s, however, original cast albums of non-musical plays, as well as spoken word albums of film soundtracks, went into a serious decline from which they have never completely recovered. CDs usually place more emphasis on music than on the spoken word, and there was little interest in only listening to a play or dialogue excerpts from a film when one could now buy plays and films on video and watch them at home whenever they wished. While the Cosby albums have resurfaced on CD, most of the other albums mentioned above have not. (Some of the Caedmon albums have been released on CD by Harper Audio, a division of Harper Collins, which now owns Caedmon.) The 1968 album of Romeo and Juliet excerpts has also appeared on CD, and Pearl has issued the Robeson Othello in that medium, but the CD edition of the Othello has, unfortunately, attracted little attention in comparison to the history-making vinyl record release of the 1940s , and now that Cyrano de Bergerac
, A Man for All Seasons, the Olivier Othello
, the Zeffirelli versions of Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew, the television version of Mark Twain Tonight, and Richard Burton's Hamlet
are all available on DVD
, this has become for most a more preferred way to experience these productions.
Although Naxos Records
is a major producer of audiobooks, many famous spoken word recordings of the past, such as Columbia Masterworks' John Brown's Body and Don Juan in Hell have yet to be released on CD, although Don Juan in Hell has become available as an mp3
download. Whether or not it will appear in CD form is still unknown. Also online (but not yet on CD) is Capitol Records' The Story Teller: A Session with Charles Laughton, a Grammy-winning one-man stage performance by the actor, featuring dramatic readings from the Bible
, Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw
and Jack Kerouac
, as well as autobiographical reminiscences.
. Among them are the Naxos audiobooks, as well as a Chandos Records
series of albums which combine the music that William Walton
wrote for several Shakespeare productions (including the Olivier
film adaptations) with readings from the author performed by such actors as John Gielgud
and Christopher Plummer
. There is also a Hyperion Records
stereophonic re-creation of Ralph Vaughan Williams
's 1942 radio play adaptation of The Pilgrim's Progress
, again with Gielgud.
Today, such websites as BBC
, ZBS
, L.A. Theatre Works
and The Hollywood Theater of the Ear
offer full-length recordings on CD of their dramatic productions. These recordings are possibly the closest that modern day discs have come to the spoken word albums of the 1960's.
Spoken word
Spoken word is a form of poetry that often uses alliterated prose or verse and occasionally uses metered verse to express social commentary. Traditionally it is in the first person, is from the poet’s point of view and is themed in current events....
. It could be said to be the ancestor of today's audiobook format. Spoken word albums ranged from such items as recordings of actual political speeches and/or dramatic readings of historical documents, to dialogue from the soundtrack
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
of a film, to condensed dramatized versions of literary classics, to complete performances of plays by Shakespeare or other great authors, to stories for children, or to standup comedy routines recorded live in nightclubs.
Early beginnings
Spoken word albums have been made since the early days of recording; examples include the popular Ronald ColmanRonald Colman
Ronald Charles Colman was an English actor.-Early years:He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings included Eric, Edith, and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he...
1941 version of Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
's A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of...
on American Decca Records. However, a true milestone was reached when Columbia Masterworks, which had previously released an album of excerpts from Shakespeare's Richard II
Richard II (play)
King Richard the Second is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to be written in approximately 1595. It is based on the life of King Richard II of England and is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by some scholars as the Henriad, followed by three plays concerning Richard's...
with Maurice Evans
Maurice Evans (actor)
Maurice Herbert Evans was an English actor noted for his interpretations of Shakespearean characters. In terms of his screen roles, he is probably best known as Dr...
, recorded most of Margaret Webster
Margaret Webster
Margaret Webster was an American-born theater actress, producer and director. Through her parents, she held dual US/UK citizenship.-Career:...
's famed (and never filmed) 1943 Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
production of Othello, starring Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
, José Ferrer
José Ferrer
José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón , best known as José Ferrer, was a Puerto Rican actor, as well as a theater and film director...
, and Uta Hagen
Uta Hagen
Uta Thyra Hagen was a German-born American actress and drama teacher. She originated the role of Martha in the 1963 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee...
, on an eighteen-record 78-RPM set that was later transferred to LP. It was the longest spoken word album made up to that time. The album gave millions of listeners who otherwise were unable to attend a theatrical performance a chance to hear Robeson as Othello and Ferrer as Iago. Sales of the album, however, were affected after Robeson was blacklisted by the U.S. government in 1950 for his alleged Communist sympathies.
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 DeccaDecca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
, such as Moby Dick, with Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton was an English-American stage and film actor, screenwriter, producer and director.-Early life and career:...
as Captain Ahab. An uncredited actor provided the voice of Ishmael, the narrator. Disneyland Records
Disneyland Records
Disneyland Records is the original name of the Walt Disney Company's record company.After long associations with primarily RCA Victor Records, with a few select titles on Capitol, Disneyland Records was established by the Disney studio in 1956 with its first release entitled A Child's Garden of...
issued many spoken word albums for children, including narrated adaptations of the Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
classic films in their "Disneyland Storyteller" series. Notable Broadway productions, such as the 1950 Don Juan in Hell (with Charles Boyer
Charles Boyer
Charles Boyer was a French actor who appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1976. After receiving an education in drama, Boyer started on the stage, but he found success in movies during the 1930s. His memorable performances were among the era's most highly praised romantic dramas,...
, Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton was an English-American stage and film actor, screenwriter, producer and director.-Early life and career:...
, Cedric Hardwicke
Cedric Hardwicke
Sir Cedric Webster Hardwicke was a noted English stage and film actor whose career spanned nearly fifty years...
and Agnes Moorehead
Agnes Moorehead
Agnes Robertson Moorehead was an American actress. Although she began with the Mercury Theatre, appeared in more than seventy films beginning with Citizen Kane and on dozens of television shows during a career that spanned more than thirty years, Moorehead is most widely known to modern audiences...
), the 1953 dramatized reading of the poem John Brown's Body
John Brown's Body (poem)
John Brown's Body is an epic American poem written by Stephen Vincent Benet. Its title references the radical abolitionist John Brown, who raided Harpers Ferry in West Virginia in the fall of 1859. He was captured and hanged later that year, and his name and rebellion inspired the civil war song...
(with Tyrone Power
Tyrone Power
Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. , usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan,...
, Judith Anderson
Judith Anderson
Dame Judith Anderson, AC, DBE was an Australian-born American-based actress of stage, film and television. She won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award.-Early life:...
and Raymond Massey
Raymond Massey
Raymond Hart Massey was a Canadian/American actor.-Early life:Massey was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Anna , who was born in Illinois, and Chester Daniel Massey, the wealthy owner of the Massey-Ferguson Tractor Company. Massey's family could trace their ancestry back to the American...
), the original 1962 Broadway version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee that opened on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theater on October 13, 1962. The original cast featured Uta Hagen as Martha, Arthur Hill as George, Melinda Dillon as Honey and George Grizzard as Nick. It was directed by Alan Schneider...
(with Uta Hagen, Arthur Hill
Arthur Hill (actor)
Arthur Edward Spence Hill was a Canadian actor best known for appearances in British and American theater, movies and television...
, George Grizzard
George Grizzard
George Cooper Grizzard, Jr. was an American actor of film and stage. He appeared in more than 40 films, dozens of television programs and a number of Broadway plays.-Life and career:...
and Melinda Dillon
Melinda Dillon
Melinda Rose Dillon is an American actress, perhaps best known for her roles in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the holiday classic A Christmas Story.-Early life and career:...
), and Richard Burton
Richard Burton
Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...
's Broadway production of Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
(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
Cyrano de Bergerac (play)
Cyrano de Bergerac is a play written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand. Although there was a real Cyrano de Bergerac, the play bears very scant resemblance to his life....
, with members of the cast of the 1946 Broadway revival in which Ferrer first played Cyrano, on Capitol Records
Capitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
. Caedmon Records recorded the complete plays of Shakespeare, as well as recordings of other plays such as Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman is a 1949 play written by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was the recipient of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. Premiered at the Morosco Theatre in February 1949, the original production ran for a total of 742 performances.-Plot :Willy Loman...
with original stars Lee J. Cobb
Lee J. Cobb
Lee J. Cobb was an American actor. He is best known for his performance in 12 Angry Men his Academy Award-nominated performance in On the Waterfront and one of his last films, The Exorcist...
and Mildred Dunnock
Mildred Dunnock
Mildred Dunnock was an American theater, film and television actress.- Early life :Born in Baltimore, Maryland and graduated from Western Senior High School, Dunnock was a school teacher who did not start acting until she was in her early thirties...
, The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. Williams worked on various drafts of the play prior to writing a version of it as a screenplay for MGM, to whom Williams was contracted...
with Jessica Tandy
Jessica Tandy
Jessie Alice "Jessica" Tandy was an English-American stage and film actress.She first appeared on the London stage in 1926 at the age of 16, playing, among others, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's King Lear. She also worked in British films...
, and a nearly complete Cyrano de Bergerac with Ralph Richardson
Ralph Richardson
Sir Ralph David Richardson was an English actor, one of a group of theatrical knights of the mid-20th century who, though more closely associated with the stage, also appeared in several classic films....
, 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
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
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
John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums
John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums is a ninety-minute filmed memorial tribute to President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated on November 22, 1963. It was completed in 1964, and released to theatres by Embassy Pictures in 1966...
, narrated by Gregory Peck
Gregory Peck
Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor.One of 20th Century Fox's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an...
, was released on a Capitol Records LP.
Dialogue excerpts were also released of the film soundtracks of Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli KBE is an Italian director and producer of films and television. He is also a director and designer of operas and a former senator for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party....
's The Taming of the Shrew
The Taming of the Shrew (1967 film)
The Taming of the Shrew is a 1967 film based on the play of the same name by William Shakespeare about a courtship between two strong-willed people...
(1967) (on RCA Victor), and Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet (1968 film)
Romeo and Juliet is a 1968 British-Italian cinematic adaptation of the William Shakespeare play of the same name.The film was directed and co-written by Franco Zeffirelli, and stars Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey. It won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design; it was also...
(1968) (on Capitol). RCA Victor also released a virtually complete 2-LP album of the film soundtrack of A Man for All Seasons
A Man for All Seasons (1966 film)
A Man for All Seasons is a 1966 film based on Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons about Sir Thomas More. It was released on December 12, 1966. Paul Scofield, who had played More in the West End stage premiere, also took the role in the film. It was directed by Fred Zinnemann, who had...
. RCA Victor was also responsible for complete 4-LP album sets of the Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
Othello and Zeffirelli's National Theatre of Great Britain production of Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....
, starring Maggie Smith
Maggie Smith
Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, DBE , better known as Maggie Smith, is an English film, stage, and television actress who made her stage debut in 1952 and is still performing after 59 years...
, Robert Stephens
Robert Stephens
Sir Robert Stephens was a leading English actor in the early years of England's Royal National Theatre.-Early life and career:...
, and Albert Finney
Albert Finney
Albert Finney is an English actor. He achieved prominence in films in the early 1960s, and has maintained a successful career in theatre, film and television....
. Comedy routines by such celebrities as Bill Cosby
Bill Cosby
William Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr. is an American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist. A veteran stand-up performer, he got his start at various clubs, then landed a starring role in the 1960s action show, I Spy. He later starred in his own series, the...
became extremely popular on Warner Bros. Records
Warner Bros. Records
Warner Bros. Records Inc. is an American record label. It was the foundation label of the present-day Warner Music Group, and now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of that corporation. It maintains a close relationship with its former parent, Warner Bros. Pictures, although the two companies...
. Emlyn Williams
Emlyn Williams
George Emlyn Williams, CBE , known as Emlyn Williams, was a Welsh dramatist and actor.-Biography:He was born into a Welsh-speaking, working class family in Mostyn, Flintshire....
recorded an edition of his one-man performance as Charles Dickens (for Argo Records
Argo Records (UK)
Argo Records was a record label founded in 1951 by Harley Usill , and musicologist Cyril Clarke with £500 capital, initially as a company specialising in "British music played by British artists" , but it quickly became a company primarily specialising in spoken-word recordings and other esoteric ...
), and Hal Holbrook
Hal Holbrook
Harold Rowe "Hal" Holbrook, Jr. is an American actor. His television roles include Abraham Lincoln in the 1976 TV series Lincoln, Hays Stowe on The Bold Ones: The Senator and Capt. Lloyd Bucher on Pueblo. He is also known for his role in the 2007 film Into the Wild, for which he was nominated for...
recorded excerpts from his one-man Mark Twain Tonight! for Columbia Masterworks.
Decline
With the advent of videocassettes and compact discCompact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
s, however, original cast albums of non-musical plays, as well as spoken word albums of film soundtracks, went into a serious decline from which they have never completely recovered. CDs usually place more emphasis on music than on the spoken word, and there was little interest in only listening to a play or dialogue excerpts from a film when one could now buy plays and films on video and watch them at home whenever they wished. While the Cosby albums have resurfaced on CD, most of the other albums mentioned above have not. (Some of the Caedmon albums have been released on CD by Harper Audio, a division of Harper Collins, which now owns Caedmon.) The 1968 album of Romeo and Juliet excerpts has also appeared on CD, and Pearl has issued the Robeson Othello in that medium, but the CD edition of the Othello has, unfortunately, attracted little attention in comparison to the history-making vinyl record release of the 1940s , and now that Cyrano de Bergerac
Cyrano de Bergerac (1950 film)
Cyrano de Bergerac is a 1950 black-and-white feature film based on the 1897 French Alexandrine verse drama Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. It uses poet Brian Hooker's 1923 English blank verse translation as the basis for its screenplay...
, A Man for All Seasons, the Olivier Othello
Othello (1965 film)
Othello is a 1965 film based on the National Theatre's staging of Shakespeare's Othello staged by John Dexter. Directed by Stuart Burge, the film starred Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Frank Finlay, and Joyce Redman, providing film debuts for both Derek Jacobi and Michael...
, the Zeffirelli versions of Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew, the television version of Mark Twain Tonight, and Richard Burton's Hamlet
Richard Burton's Hamlet
Richard Burton’s Hamlet is a common name for both the Broadway production of William Shakespeare's tragedy that played from April 9 through August 8 of 1964 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, and for the filmed record of it that has been released theatrically and on home video.-Background:The production...
are all available on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
, this has become for most a more preferred way to experience these productions.
Although Naxos Records
Naxos Records
Naxos Records is a record label specializing in classical music. Through a number of imprints, Naxos also releases genres including Chinese music, jazz, world music, and early rock & roll. The company was founded in 1987 by Klaus Heymann, a German-born resident of Hong Kong.Naxos is the largest...
is a major producer of audiobooks, many famous spoken word recordings of the past, such as Columbia Masterworks' John Brown's Body and Don Juan in Hell have yet to be released on CD, although Don Juan in Hell has become available as an mp3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
download. Whether or not it will appear in CD form is still unknown. Also online (but not yet on CD) is Capitol Records' The Story Teller: A Session with Charles Laughton, a Grammy-winning one-man stage performance by the actor, featuring dramatic readings from the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
and Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
, as well as autobiographical reminiscences.
Today's spoken word albums
There have been some spoken word albums over the past fifteen years or so that have been recorded specifically for compact disc; these have often been combined with classical musicClassical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
. Among them are the Naxos audiobooks, as well as a Chandos Records
Chandos Records
Chandos Records is an independent classical music recording company based in Colchester, Essex, in the United Kingdom, founded in 1979 by Brian Couzens.- Background :...
series of albums which combine the music that William Walton
William Walton
Sir William Turner Walton OM was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera...
wrote for several Shakespeare productions (including the Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
film adaptations) with readings from the author performed by such actors as John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
and Christopher Plummer
Christopher Plummer
Arthur Christopher Orne Plummer, CC is a Canadian theatre, film and television actor. He made his film debut in 1957's Stage Struck, and notable early film performances include Night of the Generals, The Return of the Pink Panther and The Man Who Would Be King.In a career that spans over five...
. There is also a Hyperion Records
Hyperion Records
Hyperion Records is an independent British classical record label.-History:The company was named after Hyperion, one of the Titans of Greek mythology. It was founded by George Edward Perry, widely known as "Ted", in 1980. Early LP releases included rarely recorded 20th century British music by...
stereophonic re-creation of Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
's 1942 radio play adaptation of The Pilgrim's Progress
The Pilgrim's Progress
The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come is a Christian allegory written by John Bunyan and published in February, 1678. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of religious English literature, has been translated into more than 200 languages, and has never been...
, again with Gielgud.
Today, such websites as BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, ZBS
ZBS
ZBS stands for* ZBS Foundation* Zugbeeinflussungssystem S-Bahn Berlin...
, L.A. Theatre Works
L.A. Theatre Works
L.A. Theatre Works is a non-profit media arts organization based in Los Angeles.- History :Founded in 1974, the organization was originally called “Artists in Prison,” and used theatre as a means to provide a voice to incarcerated men and women who were traditionally unheard and underserved. In...
and The Hollywood Theater of the Ear
Hollywood Theater of the Ear
Hollywood Theater of the Ear is a non-profit production company specializing in audio theater, founded in 1993 by Yuri Rasovsky, which releases productions through Blackstone Audiobooks.-External links:*...
offer full-length recordings on CD of their dramatic productions. These recordings are possibly the closest that modern day discs have come to the spoken word albums of the 1960's.