Tuesday, February 01, 2011

I Hope We Don't Meet Il Calamaro Gigante Now!!!

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but I recently scored a copy of the first album I ever owned. An original, BTW, not a reissue, because there's never been one.

From 1954, the storybook to Walt Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.


With the film recreated as a sort of radio play on two (four-sided) 78rpm or 45rpm RCA Victor discs; I had the 45s. They predated any rock 45s I ever bought, incidentally.

Here's part one.



The Kirk Douglas part is played by the late great William Redfield, who you might recall as one of the loonies in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. In any case, I think you'll particularly enjoy Snoopy the Seal barking and tooting.

Seriously -- Disney never recycled this version on LP or CD, and I hadn't heard it since I was, oh, maybe ten years old. Proust was right, though. After finally finding a copy on Amazon and then making a digital transfer, I listened to it again for the first time last week, and I remembered every idiotic word.

6 comments:

Rinjo Njori! said...

I had the King Kong version (might not have been Disney). I played it ad nauseum until I found a box of my Mom's 45's when I was 7 yo. Never looked back..

Faze said...

For me, it was the 78 set, "Bozo under the Sea" Seriously. It had similar page-turning cues, like when the seal barks. And speaking of Kirk Douglas, I saw "Lust for LIfe" for the first time last night. Douglas as Van Gogh was pretty intense.

Edward said...

Your cease and desist or from Disney is in the mail;>

Bob said...

And once again I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy), immediately the old gray house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theater.
Du côté de chez Swann (1913)

Anonymous said...

This:

"Oh, if I had a wish, oh Snoopy,
One small wish!
We'd homeward bound be sailing
That's my wish"

Bark, bark, bark, HONK!

Anonymous said...

Hi,

Just an update for your blogroll. Never Get Out Of The Boat REDUX is over here these days.

http://ngootbredux.blogspot.com/

Thanks for all your kind support.
Willard