Spoken Word
Postwar American Phonograph Cultures
Description:... “How quickly we forget! Not so many decades ago, we were all listening to Vaughn Meader’s First Family album, Steve Martin on LP, or Columbia’s I Can Hear It Now. Alas, spoken word records, like so many aspects of phonography, have been relegated to garage sales and footnotes. Finally, thanks to Jacob Smith’s Spoken Word, this important form of entertainment and culture is receiving the attention it so richly deserves.”
—Rick Altman, author of Silent Film Sound
“Jacob Smith’s engaging study of spoken word LPs is as revelatory as it is welcome. No other book has so thoroughly explored a phenomenon that was unique to the 1950s and 1960s, when LPs were the only widely available medium that allowed consumers to enjoy repeated exposure to recorded material.
—Krin Gabbard, author of Hotter Than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture
"Smith's work contains historical material that few scholars have studied and many people have never even heard of. ... The grouping of these unique case studies results in new connections to and between various performance styles, materials, and industries."
—Susan Murray, author of Hitch Your Antenna to the Stars
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