Disneyland: Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Disneyland records: ST-1920. This was first published in 1963 for $1.98, republished in 1965 as DQ-1285, and republished in 1971 as ST-3801. There was also an earlier recording with Bing Crosby as the narrator from the 1949 film. This record is narrated by Billy Bletcher, who had a long history of voice work with Disney and others. Michael Barrier has an interview excerpt with Bletcher from 1969.

Each side is a single story and a single track. I've gone ahead and copied out the songs as their own tracks as well..

Side 1 (songs by Don Reye and Gene DePaul):

• The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (12:10)
  
• Ichabod Crane (0:56)
  
• The Headless Horseman (2:08)

Side 2 (songs by Rice Owen Moore):

• The Legend of Rip Van Winkle (18:15)
  
• The Legend of Rip Van Winkle -- song (1:28)
  
• A Sorry Disgrace (1:32) Does the beginning of this sound like "Classical Gas" to anyone else?
  
• What To Do (1:25)

Project Gutenberg: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

Orson Welles: The Begatting of the President

The Begatting of the President. Orson Welles. United Artists, 1969, UAS-5521. This was also available in book form.

What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent:

During the Nixon era, Welles provoked another round of scrutiny by the IRS when he narrated a laboriously satirical record about Nixon told as a faux biblical tale, The Begatting of the President (1969). For a while that harassment drove him back overseas. Welles ran afoul of the IRS again in the early 1970s when it seized money paid to his compnay in Switzerland for an unfinished TV special he had been directing for CBS in 1968-70, Orson's Bag. He considered his company a production company, but the IRS ruled it a holding company. That tax problem led CBS to cancel the show and also caused difficulties with the funding of his feature The Other Sode of the Wind.

From Orson Welles: Rise and Fall of an American Genius:

Back in Hollywood, Welles made a phonograph record, The Begatting of the President, that ran into a storm of controversy. Brought out by Mediarts, it was banned by Metromedia stations and broadcast mainly on FM stations. The record was a bold onslaught on Richard Nixon, delivered in a quasi-biblical mode ("A little child shall be born in a grocery store in Whittier, and he shall sit upon the throne, and his administration shall be established greatly. Now the begatting of Richard Nixon was in this wise...") Welles won a Grammy for the record

I've been sitting on this for a few weeks trying to figure out how to explain why it doesn't work for me. Maybe it's just the preponderance of overly cute lines like "...Tet. And it was offensive" and "Loe, their portions were niggardly." Maybe it's the line readings Orson Welles gives that nods and winks to us that he's about to read one of these overly cute lines. I kinda like comedy driven by anger at the status quo, this, however, is smugness directed at the squares. Worth a chuckle, nothing more.

There's a slight warp in the record that affects the first part of track 1 on both sides. Other than that, pretty good quality.

Side 1

1. L.B. Jenesis
   
2. The Defoilation of Eden
   
3. Burn, Pharoah, Burn
   
4. The Coming of Richard

Side 2

1. The Pacification of Goliath
   
2. Paradise Bossed
   
3. The Raising of Richard
   
4. The Book of Hubert
   
5. The Ascension