Of course, they weren’t really Laurel and Hardy, but were extraordinary voice talents, outlandishly nice guys and Convention Guests of Honor, Wally Wingert and Chuck McCann. 

Chuck started out in the 1950s doing (among other voices) a dead-on Hardy imitation with Dick Van Dyke as Laurel on the Jack Paar show.  Wally, who hails from my own adopted South Dakota, calls himself the man of 999 voices, has more credits than you can shake an IMDB page at, and most recently became the announcer for Jay Leno’s Tonight Show. 

These guys are talented fellows and they had agreed to lend their voices to the annual Mark Time Awards radio show.  We knew that the “mentor” and the “kid” had always wanted to work together so we wrote their favorite characters into the script.  We got more than we bargained for.  Along with Laurel and Hardy’s distinctive phrasings and pace, other voices showed up:  Sidney Greenstreet, Alec Guinness, Paul Lynde and Sean Connery. 

Something one will always notice about the best impressionists is that even though they are on mic using mostly their voices—they have to be physical.  To find Hardy’s voice Chuck McCann couldn’t help but fiddle with an imaginary tie, and Wally Wingert kept checking for his imaginary bowler hat and scrunching up his face to let out a Laurel-like whimper.

The other thing I’ve noticed about the best impressionists is that they seem to be a generation behind.  Chuck is much more comfortable mimicking Jack Benny and the 30s-40s radio talents and movie stars of his youth, while Wally goes for Jack Nicholson and the icons of his boyhood.  It’s probably because young ears are the most impressionable.  Get it, impressionable.   

We had a blast and I think the audience did, too.  So, how does one direct wonderful talents like Chuck and Wally?  Five words – Get Out of the Way (and let all those voices shine.)

Villains On Parade makes it’s broadcast debut on KFAI-FM radio in Minneapolis on July 25, 2010 and will be available in the ZBS.com catalogue this fall.

Brian Price
920 Creekside Lane
Plainfield, IN  46168
317/203-5044
check out:  http://www.greatnorthernaudio.com

They had stuffed a state-of-the-art, 315-pound acetate phonograph disk recorder in the trunk of the father’s Ford sedan.  This gave them the ability to produced almost immediate 78-rpm records for both the musicians and the Lomax’s employer, the Library of Congress.  In 1936-37 Alan schlepped 155-pounds of equipment to Haiti to log in over 1,500 recordings of unique voodoo, religious and dance rhythms. 

By 1959-60 Lomax took yet another fieldtrip to the south recording more jazz, blues and traditional tunes, and had graduated to using reel-to-reel machines and early stereo microphone techniques. 

 When I worked for University Extension of the University of Missouri I was editing fascinating interviews with mid-twentieth century mules skinners recorded on either high end but really heavy metal-cased Nagra reel-to-reel field machines or fairly light but lousy (hissy) sound quality cassette tape recorders.

 The point is that field recording has had its ups and downs, but mainly ups.

 So, I was recording my daughter’s flute recital last month with a very cool and light (130 grams without batteries) handheld Tascam DR-07 Portable Digital Stereo Recorder.  The stereo mic picked up a nice balance between the flutes and the piano accompaniments.  My job was to get the complete recital recording and then post MP3s for each of the kids’ performances up on the Internet to be listened to and/or downloaded.  A piece of cake.

 I felt like Alan Lomax.  These girls, aged 7 to 17, may not have been playing the blues or doing time in prison (yet), but I was able to take a sound recorder into the wilds of suburban Indiana and capture a great (as far as we parents were concerned) performance. 

Hooray for new technology – small and mighty.    

Brian Price
920 Creekside Lane
Plainfield, IN  46168
317/203-5044
check out:  http://www.greatnorthernaudio.com

There's a fascinating blog about the audio voice industry out thre that just gets more and more interesting and more and more involved. It's called Vox Daily and is run out of all places, London, England, by a Canadian with an Italian surname, Stephanie Ciccarelli -- proving that voice acting is very much an international profession.

In just the last couple of weeks, the discussed topics have ranged from what rates can and should a freelance voice talent charge, how does one incorporate audio editing into the fee for their work, how does one improve their voice for animation, how one "brands" their voice, and why do publishers hire narrators rather than authors to read their books.  

The most interesting topic, however, may have been about "preceived value.: The discussion followed that perceived value seems to be a sliding scale balancing what the client thinks a job is worth with what the professional believes their services are worth. We're not just talking money here. When a client says, "It's only a few words" or "It's just reading a book: there may be a perceived misconception about what it takes to read ad cpy or narrate an audiobook well.

It can be very easy for the client and the eventual listener to not understand how much practice, preparation, and polish a voice actor brings to every job.  And why should the listener care.  Many jobs take a lot of work and dedication to do well.  It’s why they’re called jobs. 

However, I think for many voice talents there’s a beckoning and a draw to doing this type of work that goes beyond just reading a piece of writing well.  There’s doing something that one heard ones heroes do.  There’s being part of a continuum.  Here are a couple of examples.

On Wally Wingert’s (now the voice of the Tonight Show) website: www.wallyontheweb.com Wally has a wonderful YouTube video honoring his boyhood hero, Adam West.  It’s funny and touching.  By the time he was 12 years old Wally knew exactly what he wanted to be.  The same goes for long-time voice actor, Chuck McCann (www.chuckmccann.net).  As a child he corresponded with his idol, Stan Laurel.  Chuck and Wally were lucky enough to have chances to work with the people they admired most.  Not a bad gig.        

Voice acting may not be the oldest profession, but it’s a link in a long chain of theatrical and storytelling traditions.  That’s the real perceived value.

Brian Price
920 Creekside Lane
Plainfield, IN  46168
317/203-5044
check out:  http://www.greatnorthernaudio.com

Runyon:            Well, sir, could you tell me how I could get to Curgatory, because my dog Pootzy…

Father Time:     Oh, yes, was he a delinquent dog?

Runyon:             No, sir, a mongrel.

            -- The Odyssey of Runyon Jones, 1938

Writer, director, journalist and teacher, Norman Corwin, will be 100 years old in less than a month, May 3^rd.  His generation most likely has seen more changes and transformations in art, technology and culture than any other group of humans in the history of human beings.  And Corwin was part of the process—he was there.  He was riding the waves, the radio waves.  He’s had a huge influence on the style of how America communicates, on how America sounds to itself. 

During the Golden Age of Radio (1938 to 1950) Norman Corwin created some of the most impassioned, literary, and entertaining programming of the era.  With the use of poetic heightened language for his narratives, film-like jump cuts and transitions, and original music scores Corwin found he could talk about any subject and go any place, including outer space, on the radio, in audio, in just sound.

There are a couple of reasons why Corwin approached radio from a different angle than other radio personalities of the times.  One is that like Orson Welles Corwin was so young.  He was just 27 years old when started producing and writing original pieces for CBS.  These “youngsters” didn’t come out of the Vaudevillian traditions that Fred Allen or the Marx Brothers hailed from.  They sensed that although radio broadcast to millions of listeners, it was a very intimate and personal medium.  One could whisper to the listener rather than shout from the stage.

The second reason is that Corwin saw radio as a very American innovation.  Like jazz and the automobile he saw radio crossing boundaries and bringing people closer together.  Like his heroes, Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman, Corwin was constantly examining and celebrating the idea of America. 

The subject of America holds center stage in some of his most famous creations:  We Hold These Truths (1941) celebrated the 150^th anniversary of the United States Bill of Rights just a week after Pearl Harbor was attacked.  On A Note of Triumph was broadcast just as Allied victory in Europe was announced on May 8, 1945. 

Corwin’s influence spans the last 70 years.  You can hear his rhythms and observations reflected in the work of some of his most ardent fans:  Ray Bradbury, Rod Serling, Gene Roddenberry and Norman Lear.  

 I’ve heard Corwin speak and I’ve never heard anyone make being an American, being a patriot sound so relaxed and so apolitical.  Loving his country and talking about it was just natural for Corwin.  Like George Gershwin or Babe Ruth Corwin was and remains a true American original.

Happy Birthday, Norman.

---------------------------------------

Brian Price
920 Creekside Lane
Plainfield, IN  46168
317/203-5044
check out:  http://www.greatnorthernaudio.com

About once a month, maybe once a week, yet another production of something by Edgar Allen Poe is released.  Sometimes it's a straight read by a name actor issued by a name publisher.  Sometimes the recording is done by a first-time-out community theater group.  Sometimes there's a little music and a few sound effects involved.  Always the performances sound slightly spooky.

Spooky, because people keep cranking out the same five or six major Poe pieces (The Tell-Tale Heart, The Masque of the Red Death, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Raven to name a few) year after year after year apparently completely unaware that anybody else has ever read and recorded the things.  Spookier still, because the performances all seem to be uniformly based on a vintage Vincent Price performance you can now catch on You-tube.

And most spookiest of all -- the stories continue to sound really good.  They are concise, entertaining and still twisted in a very original nineteenth century American kind of way.  Edgar Allen Poe was a flat-out great writer.

However, I think the major reason Poe is so popular in the audiobook industry is because he's in the public domain.  Poor old Poe is dead, has apparently been that way for some time and; therefore, his works are no longer copyrighted and he can't protect himself.  One doesn't have to seek permission to use his works. 

-- 

-- 

-- 

I was just reading an article that says much of Alaska can get 45 minutes or less of sunlight a day in the dead of winter.  So, this article was recommending ways to stay "up" and be "positive" by avoiding depressing films and listening to soothing music.  I say all you have to do is listen to Native Alaskans and they'll chase the midnight blues away.

In August I was invited to Anchorage to help produce and edit Raven's Radio Hour for Native Voices At the Autry and Native American Public Telecommunications.  Rarely have I worked with such a talented group of professional singers, storytellers and actors.  They just made me smile and it was a joy to be around these folks for eleven days.

The show deftly mixed comic spoofs with traditional tales and juxtaposed their amazingly syncopated drumming with show tunes.  The script was smart and insightful and I'm sure after hearing Romeo and Juliet performed by a stuttering Raven and a gorgeous Eagle you'll never quite hear Shakespeare in the same light again . 

My favorite skit was called, The First Yuk - the creation legend of the Yup'ik people.  I remember there was a big discussion about what the first man should sound like.  We tried goofy accents and odd deliveries and finally realized the obvious-the First Yuk should sound like a guy from Alaska-way back in Alaska.  Because the sound of Alaska sounds like no other place on Earth.

Just recite the village names of Nunapichuak, Shishmaref, D'Loi Chet, Sivuuquq and Naparymuit.  These are the places the cast hailed from and these are sounds of words and imagines that inform their performances.
 
Raven's Radio Hour has just been released on PRX by Native American Public Telecommunications and I'm sure mostly Native radio stations and maybe a few outlying community radio stations will air the show.  That's too bad.  Raven should be played in New York and L.A. right along side Prairie Home Companion and the sports news.  So contact NAPT and get a copy.  It's that good and besides how else are you going to melt the winter blues away? 

THE ECHO OF ONE HAND CLAPPING
 Notes on Audio Publishing and Production
B y Brian Price



  Who Voices History Usual Owns the Book
(part of my  Let's Make Sweeping Generalizations Series)

There's an old saying that says history is written by the winners.  I think that's also true in the audiobook industry.  History is voiced by the winners.  And when I say winners, I say it with an English accent. 

The more one listens to the classics, classic histories of ancient Greece and Rome and classic retellings of the classic myths, the more you'll realize that they are all told with English accents even though the British Isles were fifteen hundred miles and a couple of written languages away from the center of the action. 

--