The Complete Prestige/Lively Arts Discography

I think if you wanted to start getting into collecting original Jazz vinyl, a label by label strategy is the best approach - and the Prestige label is where to start. Blue Note is overrated and overpriced. Riverside is also overpriced, more scarce, and the vinyl quality itself is not the greatest. Chess/Argo/Cadet (admittedly my personal fave and my own personal collecting passion, but I'm trying to be objective here) you might consider - the sides are value priced, readily available, and mostly well recorded and produced - but the packaging itself is average, and they're no real ''names"- or artists to collect.

So back to Prestige: you've got some good artists to collect, quality of vinyl is acceptable, and copies are mostly good value (Blue Trident, 1964-70 vintage) . It was with this rationale that I started to build my own collection of Prestige vinyl alongside my first love, Argo/Cadet of course. And slowly, this blog begin to reflect my turn to Prestige. During the course of my crate digging, I gradually became fascinated with Prestige's ugly ducklings and other discographical oddities - entries with attractive titles but with little concrete information. I'm speaking here of course of the subsidiary labels outside of the main 7000 jazz series.

Prestige's subsidiaries by themselves have interesting histories - they essentially existed as tax dodges/accounting tricks (despite claims to the contrary in the press of catalog 'diversification') in the early 60s for Prestige owner Bob Weinstock to channel the label's profits back into the company instead of paying more taxes, according to an interview that Dan Gould conducted with Weinstock himself in Florida before his death. New Jazz and Moodsville were perhaps the most well known and profitable subsidiaries-but many other sub labels dealing with folk and ethnic recordings -Prestige International and Near East were never commercial propositions to begin with, sold very little at the time, and remain largely forgotten and unloved by collectors today.

However, one final area of Prestige remained frustratingly elusive - the label's Lively Arts/spoken word subsidiary. Announced in December 1961 before folding sometime in 1963, it existed as a fascinating precursor of the books on tape/audio books/podcasts genre (can we say books on vinyl? ) with a superb selection of cabaret, comedy (Billy Dee Williams, Hermione Baddeley) and literary titles (HP Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, Philip Roth, Dostoevsky, Norman Mailer) read by prominent actors (Roddy Mcdowall, Burgess Meredith, James Mason ) of the time. I'm baffled why this sub label has not attracted the sustained attention and appreciation of collectors.

So where to start with Lively Arts? My well worn copy of The Prestige Book(Tokyo jazz critique, 1996) was very helpful - but tracking down actual copies of the vinyl in acceptable playable condition was a very difficult and time consuming process. After many months of diligent searching and research, I was able to track down and document each side from a variety of sources: rips already circulating in the blogosphere (duly credited), rips from my own personal collection, and a bit of extra research and scrambling in reference libraries on my part. The Prestige Lively Arts discography is at best an acquired taste, so I present below the fruit of my endeavors in one large consolidated posting, with some of my extra annotations:

The Prestige Lively Arts 30000 series (12 inch LP) Discography

• LA 30001 Billy Dee Williams - Let's Misbehave. Produced by Don Schlitten. Recorded by Rudy van Gelder. Released December 18, 1961. This rip is courtesy of the anonymous user 'Royalcyclops' , posted in the comments of the Electronic Cerebrectomy blog. It's a cabaret side by a young Billy Dee Williams (African-American actor, later of Star Wars : Lando Calrissian fame). This LP is not very good - more of a historical curiosity than anything else. Williams was equally dismissive of this side/and of his brief singing career when he was interviewed by Ebony magazine in June 1983.
• LA 30002 A Taste Of Hermione Baddeley. Produced by Don Schlitten. Recorded by Rudy van Gelder. Released December 18, 1961. This is taken from my own personal collection - a rip of the original black label mono Lively Arts vinyl with RVG stamp. This is a very funny and witty comedy-cabaret LP by the veteran British character actress Hermione Baddeley. For those with a wicked sense of humor and a healthy sense of irony- recommended! I believe that this was the only comedy record ever released by Prestige.
• LA 30003 Roddy McDowall Reads The Horror Stories Of H.P. Lovecraft. Produced by Don Schlitten. Recorded by Rudy van Gelder. Released December 18, 1961. This rip has long circulated in the blogosphere courtesy of the Zombie Astronaut blog. Worth a listen for Roddy McDowall's spooky readings of these obscure HP Lovecraft short stories.
• LA 30004 Burgess Meredith Reads Ray Bradbury. Produced by Don Schlitten. Recorded by Rudy van Gelder. Production Coordinator Simon D. Maslow. Released June 30, 1962. This rip also courtesy of the Zombie Astronaut blog, as above. Unfortunately, low fidelity.
• LA 30005 Larry Storch Reads Philip Roth's Epstein. Produced by Don Schlitten. Recorded by Rudy van Gelder. Production Coordinator Simon D. Maslow. Released 1962? Very nice rip courtesy of the Learning to Share blog. I'm not much of a fan of Philip Roth, but Larry Storch gives a spirited reading.
• LA 30006 James Mason Reads The Imp Of The Perverse And Other Stories By Edgar Allen Poe. Produced by Don Schlitten. Recording [uncredited]. Production Coordinator Simon D. Maslow. Released November 24, 1962. Ebooks of The Imp of the Perverse , The Shadow, and Lionizing. This is again taken from my own personal collection - a rip of the original black label mono Lively Arts vinyl. James Mason, the noted British actor, is really outstanding here reading these three Edgar Allen Poe stories. Mason had previously read Poe for an earlier Decca recording.
• LA 30007 James Mason Reads Herman Melville's Bartleby, The Scrivener. Produced by Don Schlitten. Recording [uncredited]. Production Coordinator Simon D. Maslow. Adapted [eg. abridged] for recording by Joe Goldberg. Released November 24, 1962. Contemporary review by Nat Hentoff in The Reporter, April 11, 1963. Ebook of the original Melville text. This is the Lively Arts side that long eluded me: one of my Prestige holy grails - essentially impossible to obtain! However - a break last week led me to my nearby metropolitan Reference Library which held a copy which had languished in storage for forty years - an original black label Lively Arts mono vinyl. I was finally able to request access to this reference only copy on the weekend and make a (surreptitious) rip. Unfortunately the actual LP was in terrible shape (typical for library copies) with numerous skips which made for a frustrating and tedious ripping experience. You may detect some subtle edits - but after extensive digital restoration and editing - the gist of the Herman Melville short story as read by Mason remains unimpaired.
• LA 30008 Morris Carnovsky Reads Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground. Produced by Don Schlitten. Recording [uncredited; RVG?]. Directed by Simon D. Maslow. Released 1963? Wikipedia bio of Morris Carnovsky. This rip is from a combination of two sources: a 1972 WBAI/Pacifica radio broadcast obtained from a fellow collector, and my own rip from the original Lively Arts mono black label mono vinyl with Van Gelder stamp, held by this same reference library - both sources were edited together to produce the best possible copy. This is a very dramatic reading of some heavy material by this legendary Broadway/ Shakespearean actor - recommended!
• LA 30009 Norman Mailer Reads Norman Mailer. Produced by Don Schlitten. Recording by Paul Rothchild. Released 1963? Finally, this comes from my own personal collection, a rip of a Prestige Blue Trident PR 7689 reissue with Van Gelder stamp. Norman Mailer was a great writer (Naked and the Dead, The Executioner's Song) - but this side doesn't reflect this. This side is quite painful - a youthful Mailer reads some of his awful and pretentious poetry, accompanied by his bullshit, dated misogynist/macho posturing.