50+ years ago, children could learn to read along with spoken word and music on vinyl records, those released through Disney were considered one of the best. These were the days when a record player was commonplace, there wasn't all that much to offer on television (certainly no streaming services) and of course, smartphones were a pipe dream (or nightmare, depending how you look at them)
SPECIAL NOTE: While the record plays very well, the audio is a bit "strange" - read my comments below
DISNEYLAND RECORD AND BOOK - The Jungle Book
Walt Disney Productions
Cat# 319
1967
Record & Book format
USA print & release
BOOK:
24 page book
Very good condition
NO missing pages
NO personal writing on any page*
*There was some personal printing but this has been "Whitened Out" and I also notice on the front cover there has been some graphic destruction around the area of this White Out application.
White Out has also been applied to the record label Side A (ONLY) - this time no mess around the White Out was created!
CLEAN
Graphics are clean and "fresh"
RECORD:
This 7" record, must be played at 33 as you would for a vinyl album
The female narrator's name is unknown and it is not stated within the book or on the record labels. She does has such a very nice voice, although I can detect a slight American accent.
Side A: The Jungle Book in brief as inspired by the Mowgli stories written by Rudyard Kipling.
Spoken word only on this side
Side B: This side opens with a pleasant little ditty called "The Bare Necessities Of Life" the second song is sung by a Monkey "Oh Oh Oh I Wanna Be Like You You You" - both songs are bright cheerful uplifting songs that children can easily mimic.
The book has nice clean, colourful graphics with short sentences. Text print is quite large and easy to read.
COSMETIC CONDITION:
RECORD:
Clean
Some very light occasional scratches or marks but nothing too dramatic HOWEVER ... the actual source recording is "not-quite-right" - definitely a manufacturing fault.
Playing Side A (spoken word) the narrator is clear and easy to understand but following her script (around 1/2 second or so delay I can hear the very same spoken words but at a much lower level). This rather delayed echo (1/2 second is a long time in the world of echo's!) is NOT reversed and plays "forwards" if you are familiar to tape "print through" it is very much like that except the spoken word is not backwards. I checked on both channels (this is a mono recording played on stereo equipment) but they both have the same "background echo" No, this isn't something to do with the grooves or the pickup, the source audio seems to be at fault.
It really doesn't spoil listening to the story but if you can imagine listening to the record and you have some people in the room also saying the same words but much more quietly and quite muffled, as though the have their hands over their mouths.
Quite strange, I haven't come across this before but I guess it is the late 1960's after all and these SEE-HEAR-READ releases were aimed at a low price point back in those days.
All of my notes above ONLY apply to Side A!
Side B with the songs & singing has no such echo
BOOK:
CLEAN
NO missing pages
NO tears
NO personal names
Barely any graphic discolouration at all - pretty impressive after more than 50 years!
On page 24 (the story line actually finishes on page 23) there is a drawing outline on the last page and this has NOT been coloured in by a child - just as it originally was bought.
This is another nice piece of audio & childs entertainment history from the wonderful world of Disney.
I have placed the record within a new plastic inner sleeve to help protect it from paper dust and the whole book is now within a sealed clear plastic package.
