The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall
(A radio serial created from A Hornbook for Witches by Leah Bodine Drake (1950), and read by the incomparable Vincent Price released by Caedmon Records in 1976.)

As Halloween began to get commodified more and more in the ’70’s and ’80’s, the kinds of music and recording that were hitting the market began to dabble in strange little nooks and crannies.  Disney had established that narratives could work, and many people stuck with reading Edgar Allen Poe if they wanted a spooky story.  But Caedmon Records expanded the scope of what they were willing to release, and with that they contacted Vincent Price to perform for their Halloween releases.

I’ve written at length about both Vincent Price and his relationship with Caedmon Records, so I won’t bore you too much with that, except to say that to me, he really is a Halloween character, through and through.  My perception of him as a kid was very much that of a horror creature, and I would get pretty excited when I would hear his voice, or see him in a film.  Having Vincent as a part of Halloween just makes sense, and I’m happy to hear him year-round.

Below are five links, that allow you to hear the five-part series I ran last October as part of our Annual Halloween Spook-tacular!  These were delivered into the podcast feed on five consecutive days – Monday through Friday – at 11 AM each day.  String all five of these together for a 25 minute tale that is a fantastic way to spend an evening if you’re looking for something seasonally appropriate to do.

The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall (Part I of V)

The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall (Part II of V)

The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall (Part III of V)

The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall (Part IV of V)

The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall (Part V of V)

There’s something really fun about serial entertainment, as the kinds of people who are prone to binge-watching any TV Show can easily attest to.  We like being cut off at the height of the stories’ telling, knowing that we have to wait for the next segment to come a day, week, month or year later.

I’m not sure how many new fans got into the story as it was being doled out in five-minute chunks, but Vincent Price fans loved it, and I had a lot of fun making it, for sure, so much so that I even made a little commercial for the event.

Halloween Nuggets!
(Originally podcast on 17 October 2014.  Expanded for this presentation.)

Once “The Monster Mash” hit the scene in 1962, two things became clear for artists in the 1960’s: the combination of Monsters and Rock Music was perfect for any aspiring artist, and the “Christmas Effect” was now applicable to Halloween as this songs – not even a great song, to be sure – was starting to get guaranteed seasonal airplay.  In the same way that cutting a Christmas Tune gave your group some longevity, if only because you would get yearly airplay), then anyone with a guitar and some friends could watch a few horror films late at night and cast around for their own novelty hit that might help launch their careers.

But it wasn’t just people like Bobby Pickett and Don Hinson that were cranking out monster songs, and in the early ’60’s, rock music was changing.  Surf had hit the scene pretty hard in the early ’60’s, telegraphing psychedelia by a few years.  Surf taught kids that, so long as your guitar player could solo and your rhythm section could play nice with each other, anyone could start one of these bands.  Once The Beatles made their epic three week engagement on The Ed Sullivan Show, it seemed as if this version of Rock & Roll was not your parents version from the last decade.  Focused on teenagers and their alienation from the rest of modern culture, Rock Music was no longer just about dancing and partying, but had a new range and sound that was electric, and LOUD.

It helped that there was a lot of cheaply made instruments for sale – both new and used – and was thus easy to distribute among the suburbs.  Kids everywhere began to create bands with their friends, and by the end of 1964, hundreds of garage bands across the country started, all picking up instruments, picking up cues from the Rock Stars on TV, and picking up on this Monster Vibe that was reverberating through our Culture in Movies and The Late Late Show.  Just because these groups were not famous, and were not well known outside of their own home town was irrelevant; if they could get a gig at the local armory, or at a house party, that was fine.  And, if one of them had enough savings to sink into pressing up a 45, hey, that was cool, too.  Teenagers – distracted by hormones and parties and the War in Vietnam and girls & boys and surfing – had never gotten together and planned to create a music movement.  Instead, they were just looking for ways to pass the time.

1 – 4 – 5.  Now Start A Band.

Lenny Kaye was one of these teenagers, and started his own band in 1964 – The Vandals.  As a fanzine writer and music enthusiast, this made sense, and as he got to know other bands and began traveling, he collected records by other garage groups – music that Kaye labeled “punk rock” – and found that many of these songs were in danger of getting lost in the cracks if action was not taken.  In 1972 he assembled the original Nuggets compilation, which showcased music by groups that, while not representative of the entire movement, captured those with some pretty big regional hits: The Blues Project, The 13th Floor Elevators, The Amboy Dukes, and Nazz.  As some would say, the rest in history: Nuggets has become a sort of cottage industry for Rhino Records, who released 14 sequels to Kaye’s original record in the late ’80’s, and assembled three 4-disc sets of other material, along with other 4-disc localized collections like the LA and San Francisco sets.

It is impossible to say if Kaye knew what was happening when he made that first collection in 1972, but before long he set off not only the modern Rock Record collector market, but a whole genre of compilation albums.  The Pebbles series followed in 1978 (which seems to have stopped after 28 collected LPs of tunes), each collecting the lesser-known groups of the Garage Era.  Crypt Records‘ very own Tim Warren started Back From The Grave in 1983, as series of comps that focused on some of the wilder, rawer, and crazier records from this same era.  (Up to 10 volumes, at this point.)

But more importantly, these (and other) compilations that came out in the years since began to document an era that was beginning to be lost.  Classic Rock Radio was the dominant format in America by the ’80’s, and it seemed as if the history of rock and roll was going from Elvis to Led Zeppelin, with little focus on the ’60’s outside of the psychedelic movement (that seemed to map over the political ideology of the counterculture).  However, not everyone was into psyche rock.  Most people in the ’60’s had grown up on Rock & Roll, and want to make something closer to The Troggs than to Jefferson Airplane.  These compilations reclaimed the story of Rock Music from the one that was being heard on the radio, and helped document scenes that had otherwise disappeared once everyone went off to college.

It is ironic that a more complete picture of the ’60’s didn’t come together until the ’80’s, and even then seemed only appreciated by collectors and nerds who enjoyed doing the research.  But people who had worked to assemble these kinds of comps also established an entire market for LPs that were not collections of Hit Songs.  The idea that you could make a record that documents a time and and a place – wherever and whenever that might be – created the Punk Rock that Kaye had identified in Garage Music.  Not only has the Killed By Death series done for punk what these other comps did for the ’60’s, but the larger idea of documenting these fragile (and quickly disintegrating music movements) gave the DIY movement the much needed juice to keep going when things seemed darkest, a tradition that has persisted into the 2010s.

RockBeat Records

In the early 2000s, S’more Entertainment was just another small record company looking for an angle, and noticed that the reissue market was one place that record sales were not dropping off.  They began with re-issues of Black Oak Arkansas and Nazareth records, and hit gold with Dick Dale’s back catalog.  They quickly assembled a collection – Surf-Age Nuggets – under the name RockBeat Records, hoping that if it bombed, they could quickly shed the name and keep going.  However, Surf was still big money, and this collection (available on both CD and LP) but this new subsidiary on the map.  Very quickly RockBeat, and the work they were doing in that office, subsumed the parent company.

RockBeat had hit on a formula, and went on to release collections of The Moving Sidewalks, Little Feat, The Blasters, Albert King, Django Reinhardt, and the very impressive Los Nuggetz Volume Uno, which assembled the previously-uncharted territory of Mexican Rock Music from the ’60’s and ’70’s.  Armed with this success, they began casting around for something else they could put in the stores, and hit upon the idea of collecting old ’60’s Monster songs.  Plenty of garage bands had recorded stuff like that, and with access to a number of artist’s catalogs, it appeared that they could even release a proper boxed set, music like the comps they were using as their inspiration.

Taking cues from the Wavy Gravy model, RockBeat inserted horror movie trailers into their three-disc set, in-between songs about partying in graveyards and hanging out with vampires.  The the concentration (and quality) of the tunes here is what really sets this apart from the stuff you usually find in stores when September rolls around.  Foregoing anything close to “The Monster Mash,” they really dug into the Nuggets of the past, and assembled almost 100 tracks of incredibly rockin’ songs, many of which had not been comped elsewhere.  (There is some overlap with other sources, but not much.)

As a relatively new compilation – 2014, no less – it remains to be seen if this collection will gain the same kind of notoriety of the Nuggets predecessors that paved the way for this label.  And, to be completely fair, RockBeat might not have a long-term future, either.  (Having only been around for 10 years, and the increasingly declining state of the Record Industry, might make it hard to build a career on re-issues.)  However, in our house, this collection is already a classic, and is absolutely essential listening this time of year.  If you want to class up any party you’re throwing – and you still want to be on-point with seasonal treats – Halloween Nuggets is the only way to go.

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You can purchase the album at Amazon.com.

You can stream the entire thing at Spotify.  (I think you need to be logged in for that link to work.)

It is also available in a number of other places, too.

Playlist:

Watusi Zombi * Jan Davis * Halloween Nuggets
Graveyard * The Phantom Five * Halloween Nuggets
Scream * Ralph Neilsen & The Chancellors * Halloween Nuggets

Mother Box 034

Frankie Stein And His Ghouls!
(Originally podcast on 14 October 2014.  Expanded as a blog post for this presentation.)

Before The Cramps & The Misfits there was another Monster Themed rock band, made up of real monsters, that was blowing the socks off all the cool kids in mid-’60’s: Frankie Stein & His Ghouls!  But the story of how these monsters came to be was so secretive that, for many years, it was completely unknown to most.  The mystery behind Frankie Stein & His Ghouls is, for some, most of the charm, and in the summer of 1964 when their first record slipped out into stores, unannounced, it was pretty clear that the Synthetic Plastics Company (under the Power Records imprint) had a hit on their hands.

For those of you who don’t want the mystery of these recordings ruined for you, I completely understand.  You might want to skip most of the rest of this essay.  There is something amazing about the complete package you see in the album above.  This was absolutely marketed to kids in every way, but also: to HIP kids.  Kids who liked to dance, who understood how cool ghouls really were, and knew that having monsters at your party was the only way to be “cool.”  If you grew up like this, you probably don’t want to know the truth about Frankie Stein.  Who would?  The band is better off as a group of unknowns.  In a way, I like to think that these records really were made by the monsters you see on the covers.

It’s sort of lame, in this modern age of instant-information, to think that you have to know everything about everything.  It’s the same problem when Jandek went from a genuine mystery to this guy who releases eccentric records that a fair number of people have now met.  This group of monsters cutting rock and roll LPs is just as reasonable to any boring truth that would probably ruin the charm of these amazing recordings.  So, please, feel free to skip the story below.  I won’t be offended.

But, if you want to learn a little more, follow me…

In 1950 the Synthetic Plastics company went from the premiere manufacturer of plastics that were used by the garment industry to the premiere manufacturer of children’s music entertainment, basically overnight.  It was not a glamorous or financially solvent field to enter into, but from the perspective of the company, Children’s Entertainment could be produced in the same way that their assembly lines had produced plastic products for clothing.  Turn your limitations into strengths, and hire good workers to produce quality materials.  Then, find the right store to stock your product, and roll out the advertising.  The ideas were basic business practices for decades now, and Synthetic Plastics went about creating a number of subsidiary companies throughout the ’50’s and ’60’s to release one kind or another of children’s LPs as a way to stay competitive.

While the idea that each of these different “labels” all had a traditional staff of record industry analogs is to even give the practice a Synthetic Plastics that much credit or planning.  Each staff member at Synthetic Plastics headed “a label,” and they were each in charge of the releases that label put out.  The company had a studio, and everyone learned how to run the gear on their own.  Once a recording was finished and the covers were designed (again, by the one in-house self-taught design team), the company would ship these off to be pressed, after which the records were sent to their warehouse, where they shipped out their product to every store that carried their stock.  Everyone was urged to get as many releases out as possible.  Quantity was going to win this battle.

Story albums and collections of children’s rhymes and songs were instant hot sellers, but as the ’60’s began to start rocking, it was clear that the kiddie dance crazes were another market that Synthetic Plastics to fill.  Kids were really enjoying these LPs of dance songs, each song catering to a dance that was popular.  This wasn’t Rock and Roll per se, just a very watered down and “whitened” form that was popular everywhere now that groups like The Beatles and The Stones were starting to get going.  These dance LPs (instrumental, of course) were safe ways that parents could let their children enjoy Rock music, and built in a guaranteed fan base for rock music as the kids got older.  Synthetic Plastics began searching for some musicians that “got” this new sound, to produce records for them to release.

The found the perfect Duo in the pair Joel Herron & Fred Hertz.  Joel had came out of radio, conducted his own band in the ’50’s, and had made a name for himself as a bit of a songwriter.  Joel met Fred working on The Jimmy Dean Show, and they bonded over having grown up on jazz and swing, but having a love of the new R&B and Rock music that came with girls, dancing and drugs.  Joel was approached by Synthetic Plastics to assemble an in-house band to record for some of these dance records they were planning, and the money was just good enough that he brought Fred Hertz (and some of his regular players) along with him.  Joel and Fred bonded over pop culture, and loved talking about different creature features they had recently taken in, always making obtuse and crude references to bad horror tropes when the got together.  Very quickly they developed a sense of humor that made them a perfect working partnership.

The idea was to lay down some tracks that Synthetic Plastic could use as “bed music.”  With a set rhythm section recorded, the label could go back and have different “lead” musicians do different solos and bespoke licks over the same bed music.  This gave Synthetic Plastics the opportunity to creating a number of “songs” without having to record the whole band every time.  The more unique lead parts they could lay over the tracks, the better, and soon one session with a full band was paying off rather fruitfully for the label.  Using different themes and cover designs, Synthetic Plastics managed to do very well for themselves with this idea, and by 1963 a number of these Dance Records has been making the rounds in stores, and sold fairly well.

It is hard to say who had the idea first, but after a night of getting loaded and goofing around in the studio, Joel & Fred took the sound effects from the studio archives and laid them over the dance tunes they had recorded, and made a tape for themselves that they would play around for friends.  They knew they could outdo “The Monster Mash” in terms of performing, and the way they mixed the tracks, it sounded like real monsters were playing the tunes.  Both Joel & Fred were well aware of the Shock Theater! monster book happening around them, and while the tape was started as a joke, once they got a cover mocked up and had made a few copies for friends in the radio industry (pressed under the amusing moniker “Power Records,”) it seemed as if the idea was crazy enough to actually work.  In 1964, Synthetic Plastic tested “Introducing Frankie Stein and His Ghouls: Monster Sounds And Dance Music” (The Ideal Party Record!) to an unsuspecting America.  It sold out in every store, and thus the “Power Records” label – which had not existed before – was handed over to Joel & Fred.

The next year was busy for Joel & Fred, and in the summer of 1965 they released four new Frankie Stein LPs, and re-issued the one from the previous year, all of which sold very well everywhere they were available.  These were easily produced in the studio, again recycling other tracks they had cut for other dance records, then remixing them with the “Frankie Stein Sound,” and it seemed as if Joel & Fred had set up a cottage industry.  But they also had other interests in Hollywood, and making kids fare all day, every day didn’t really appeal to them, especially given how cheaply Synthetic Plastics was producing them (skimping on things like studio time, and pay).  Fred went on to be relatively unknown afterward, and Joel went back to radio and television, popping up here and there for the remainder of his life.  Frankie Stein & His Ghouls would be a nice footnote to a small paycheck they had received from Synthetic Plastics, and wasn’t really thought about by either of them again.

As time went on, these records began to become quite collectable.  The original print runs were the only time Synthetic Plastics put any money into the project, and when Fred & Joel left, both Frankie Stein (and Power Records) essentially stopped production, and the company moved on.  Until some of these songs were reissued (incompletely) on a two-CD set in 2005, the primary way anyone heard this music was from a friend who had made a cassette transfer, and to this day LP rips float around online.  Fans had no way of finding (or confirming) information about these records for decades, and while the value of the original LPs (like much of the Synthetic Plastics releases from their early days) skyrocketed in value on the resale market among people in the know, they were completely unheard of by most everyone else.  For a long time, these albums seemed mythical.

This, in many ways, ushered in the modern era of Halloween Novelty records.  Frankie Stein took the ideas of scary sounds LPs and “The Monster Mash,” and combined them in a way that punk bands have been doing every year since.  And there is immense charm and genuine strangeness to these albums that qualifies as experimental at times, too.  And, let’s not forget, they rock and roll was pretty good for 1964, when you get down to the playing.  Frankie Stein did not invent the Monster Rock And Roll song, but in five albums over less than two years, he certainly perfected it, codified the sense of humor, and insisted on a good backbeat.

These days, these albums are virtually forgotten by the mainstream, and are rarely dusted off outside of record nerds like me.  But the idea of music by monsters is so compelling that these albums deserve a second listen.  These are albums made during the golden age of children’s albums, and in many ways, the perfect synthesis of a studio system creating the Casablanca of monster records, almost completely by accident, like some creature born in a lab.

It isn’t required that you know how these kinds of records get made.  But it is important that you get to know them, anyway.

* * * * * *

Stoned (Monkey, Watusi) [Excerpt] * Frankie Stein And His Ghouls * Shock! Terror! Fear! (1964)
Mummy’s Little Boy (Monkey, Twist) * Frankie Stein And His Ghouls * Ghoul Music (1965)
Dance Of Doom (Monkey, Watusi) * Frankie Stein And His Ghouls * Monster Sounds And Dance Music (1965)

Their page on discogs.com

Roger’sBasement.com.  (A fan site from the ’90’s / early ’00’s that details every scrap of information anyone can find / has / knows about Frankie Stein.  This site is now defunct in the last year, but there are archived versions of the site at archive.org.

Amazon.com sometimes has a remastered CD containing most (but not all) of the Frankie Stein songs.

Afraid Of Nothing: The Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of The Haunted House!
(Originally podcast of 27 October 2014.  Re-written and expanded for this presentation.)

This is, by far, my favorite Halloween Record.  I currently have six copies, and I will usually buy another copy if I see one out in the wild, and at a reasonable price.  In a lot of ways, it is the archetype for what Halloween Records became in the ’70’s and ’80’s, and these days this kind of album is a forgotten relic from a time since past.  If anything, people are familiar with the dollar-store CD sound collages made to last up to 70 minutes, which was usually a rehashing of an ’80’s album that the CD Manufacturer has a deal with, transferred to digital from the master tape.

Monster Songs From the ’20’s to the ’80’s

But for the real deal, return with us, now, to the post-war Record Industry.  As long as there has been recorded music, there have been novelty records, and even songs that could be called Halloween-adjacent in those days.  As far back as the 1920’s there was a tradition of weird or funny songs slipping out among the serious endeavors, and scary songs were just as prevalent.  An early “spooky” meme in records was a sort of whistle or instrumental “flourish” to indicate a ghost, and there was a fascination with “boogey” men, made for double-entendres when boogie music came about, but also allowed writers to be off-color with regard to racial stereotypes and still get it into a song.  You even, occasionally, found scary sounds being added to a record, and most companies tried their hands at kids output from time to time.  All the pieces of the puzzle where there, but no one had gone after the idea as relentlessly as they could have.

The 1950’s were a very curious time, and as a number of cultural forces met to mix and mash, the emerging market for records and recordings was aided by the standardization of the formats: the 7″, the 10″ and the 12″ for size, and 45, 78 and 33 1/3 for speed.  With formats standardized, the production of records became cheaper and easier, and allowed for more and more experimentation.  You could press records in bulk, and small runs of new types of sounds could be made, tested on the marketplace, and re-pressed if sales were good.  Sound effects records of all types and shapes began to creep out into the market, as “found sounds” and other novel audio ephemera sold well among the newly-minted “audiophile” market.  With the baby boom taking over every aspect of life, music for kids became much more demanded, and records like Spooky Music found their way to the market much more often.  But the idea of making a living at Halloween Records was still a few years off, and again, was a result of a bigger cultural movement.

It wasn’t until 1957 – after the introduction of the Shock Theater package, that monster mania began in the US.  Kids were dressing up like monsters for fun, horror movies were being acted out on the playground, and Halloween was becoming big business.  Between ’57 and ’59, everyone was rushing out Halloween LPs to capitalize on this potentially passing fad: Dean Gitter releases a record of Ghost Ballads, Al Zanino releases his famous “The Vampire Speaks” 45, Hans Conried & Alice Pierce collaborated on their very strange “Monster Rally” LP (with cover art by Jack Davis, no less, and included mostly covers of strange novelty songs from previous years), Bob McFaddon & Rod McKune’s Songs Our Mummy Taught Us went the beatnik route, and Spike Jones with his incredible Spike Jones in Hi-Fi and A Spooktacular in Screaming Sound sort of mixed humor and a narrative for one hell of a record.  The stage was set for 1962, when Bobby Pickett scored a hit with “The Monster Mash,” taking all of these ideas and synthesizing them into a band of monsters that was lead by a Boris Karloff impression and contained a Bela Lugosi interjector as a recurring gag, all with rattling chains and moans to seal the deal.  Monster songs, for better or worse, were not going away.

Pretty song, rock, doo wop & country music were littered with monster gags, to not only capitalize, but to play with a well-worn metaphor: the monster as an outsider.  Frankenstein (the novel) really nailed this idea perfectly, and monsters very quickly became to embody the outsider in every respect.  As music was the generation gap for many, and monster became a proxy for someone “cool.”  There are endless songs about going to Frankenstein’s party, or a monster ball, or hop.  Graveyards became the hang-outs that kids would congregate in, and soon the lure of she-devils and women who could seduce and terrify were a very common theme.  Monsters, and being scared, were the perfect stand-ins for teenage libido and the pains of falling in love.  After 1962, Monster Metaphors become second only to UFOs and the Atomic Bomb as subjects for songs, and up until the early ’80’s there are hundreds of these songs, by a wide range of artists and songwriters.

The problem, of course, is that of popularity: nothing has “topped” Monster Mash in terms of a hit, with the only exception being “Thriller.”  (A tame, and yet Vincent Price bejeweled, version of the same idea.)  While many have tried, the archetype of a cool monster party that you have stumbled upon is hard to outdo, so much so that even bands like Whodini and Buck Owens have tried.  But after “Monster Mash” and “Thriller,” it was clear that the subgenre has little depth.  Once you find that monster party, the only thing left is to let Bob & David make fun of you.

Scary Sounds To Shock Your System

In 1964, Disney was not the place anyone looked for when they wanted something scary.  While they had done the occasional scary cartoon, it was not what they were known for, in spite of what you heard about how scary the kids thought the witch was in Snow White.  But they were looking for other ways that they could capitalize on the growing children’s market, and a scary record seemed to be in the consciousness of America, and everywhere.  They hired Laura Olsher on to do a pair of other records for them (“The Little Engine That Could” and “Learning To Tell Time“), so they offered her the chance to voice “Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of The Haunted House” for them as well.  To an unassuming audience in the summer, they released this LP with a nearly Black and White cover, to see how well it did.

With Halloween just around the corner, they sold through instantly.  Everyone reordered when the second printing was available.

Side A of the record contained a number of “Adventures In Sound” (as Disney called them) with sounds from their very famous Disney Effects Library.  (Any Disney nerd can recognize voices and effects from any number of cartoons and shows.)  In addition to title track, there’s “Chinese Water Torture” and “Your Pet Cat.”  These 10 recordings are complemented on Side B with the raw sound recordings from the library.  “Screams and Groans” or “A Collection of Crashes.”  Half story LP an Half Effects Record, it lay somewhere in-between two different genres that were not quite one or the other, and was, in effect, it’s own thing, far from the monster songs that were gaining popularity.  With great art that had a fantastic Haunted House on the front and back, the Liner Notes went on to talk about how you could have, “even greater enjoyment in creating sound stories of your own using the effects on this LP plus others you may do yourselves.”

Let that sink in for a moment.  Here’s a huge, monolithic company like Disney inviting you to remix their media, with the addition of your own work, to create something new.  While this could not have been their intention, it was none-the-less taken to heart by a number of companies in the following years.  The ’60’s, ’70’s and ’80’s found a proliferation of “Halloween Sounds” LPs, with a story / narrative on one side, and raw sound effects on the other.  In fact, it was such a formula that you rarely found records that were only one or the other.  The “Halloween Sounds” genre of LPs was cemented in form and content by that original Disney album, and in the years that followed a number of copycats – including “Sounds To Make You Shiver” (1974) and “Haunted House” (1985) – directly copy this style.  Most modern CDs of “scary sounds” are often just combining audio from albums from this era, and I think they have all (more or less) fallen into the public domain.  Following the Disney model, a sub-genre of Ghost Stories with sound Effects followed, pioneered by Vincent Price on the Caedmon Label, most commonly with Edger Allen Poe short-stories being read, to great effect.

Much of this was, of course, Disney’s prelude to their interest in designing a Haunted House for Disneyland, which they launched in 1969.  Disney finally understood that fun a casual horror was not only a healthy market, but could be taken advantage of in their park.  The LP could not only market Halloween itself, but their new theme ride, too.  Without this album, that amazing part of Disneyland may never have existed.

The overall decline in the way that vinyl is produced has made Halloween albums only affordable to make on CD, where the quality has dropped tremendously, both in terms of Halloween Novelty Music, and in terms of sound effects recordings.  While they are readily available in any store with Halloween Accoutrements, most often they are cheaply made, and don’t sound as robust as the recordings you find in these older efforts.  Disney unwittingly opened up pandoras box: by encouraging remixing, other companies realized there was a small market to be had in Halloween records, and people like Wade Denning and The Haunted House Co. found ways to make a name for themselves.

More importantly, this record taught people that you can make your own Halloween.

Here’s the sounds.  Here’s the ideas.

All you need to do is have at it, and enjoy.

* * * * * *

This link will remain active for a short period of time.

And this link goes with the former.

A simple Google Search reveals a whole range of other listening options.  (And I recommend the image search view to check out the variety of album covers over the years.)

I imagine I will be receiving some e-mail from some of you, so again: austinrich@gmail.com.