The spooky spoken word of Vincent Price

❉ Celebrate the anniversary of Vincent Price’s passing with this playlist of his spoken word albums!

Not many people know that horror legend Vincent Price, who passed away on this day in 1993, recorded four spoken word albums based around the themes of witchcraft, the occult & demonology between 1969 and 1976.

In 1969, Capitol released ‘Witchcraft and Magic: An Adventure In Demonology’, this was followed by three albums on the Caedmon Records label: 1972’s ‘Tales Of Witches, Ghosts And Goblins’, ‘A Coven Of Witches’ Tales’ from 1973, and 1976’s ‘A Hornbook For Witches’.

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They remain curious vinyl artefacts from another era – when the occult went pop – along with the likes of Dave and Toni Arthur’s ‘Hearken To The Witches Rune’, Alex Sanders’ ‘A Witch Is Born’ and Louise Huebner’s ‘Seduction Through Witchcraft’.

An article on the Capitol album, posted by Dangerous Minds, noted:

Original pressings of Witchcraft-Magic apparently included a booklet called (gulp) “The Hand of Glory,” and one wonders who put so much research and care into this set. The album’s script, which traces the history of witchcraft through the Bible, the Middle Ages, the Spanish Inquisition, and Nazi Germany before turning to practical instruction in the dark arts (see side three, track three, “How to Make a Pact with the Devil”), is the work of a mysterious figure named Terry d’Oberoff, whose only other credit appears on the 1970 debut of an LA soul group called—wait for it—Black Magic.

Price’s spooksome spoken word albums have been quite hard to find, having been out of print for many years, and some have never been re-released at all, but versions of some of them can be found on Spotify, which we have helpfully compiled into a single Spotify playlist – perfect for some Halloween listening pleasure!

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