Spike Jones - In Stereo : Une trouille mémorable en son strident ! [Green]

In Stereo: A Spooktacular in Screaming Sound is Spike Jones treating stereo speakers like a haunted house, monsters flying from wall to wall on goo-green vinyl.

Jones had spent nearly twenty years before that transforming horns, burps, and gunshots into a real musical language, but in 1959 he had a new toy to play with: stereo itself, still new enough that most listeners had barely heard it done well. Its arranger Carl Brandt described the record's orchestration as like a film, constructed in pieces because the sound design was simply too complicated to cut any other way. The casting reads like a bunch of voice actors that no one could identify at the time, with Paul Frees, Thurl Ravenscroft, George Rock and Lucille Norman all disappearing into ghouls and monsters.

My Old Flame is sung by someone credited only as I.M. Arson, which tells you exactly the kind of joke this record is. This Is Your Death unleashes Dr. Jekyll and a chorus of ghouls across the entire stereo field, the sound truly leaping from speaker to speaker in a way that nothing else at the time had attempted, and the Spooktacular Finale throws every voice and gag into one final collision.

Sixty-five years later, the stereo trick still works. Monsters were a good deal in 1959. Turns out they still are.