Oscar Brand And His Young Friends "Trick or Treat: Hallowe'en Celebrated in Story & Song" (Caedmon, TC1624, 1979)

Entertainer Oscar Brand has had a long and varied career over the years, and this 1979 LP was one of the many children's albums he recorded for Caedmon. Sounding something like a more kid-oriented take on Dean Gitter's "Ghost Ballads" (with maybe a pinch of Wade Denning & Kay Lande's "Halloween: Games, Songs and Stories" around the edges), "Trick or Treat: Hallowe'en Celebrated in Story & Song" aims to present a folk-song celebration of Halloween traditions, with Brand throwing in some back-story on the origins behind the holiday whenever he can. Of course the spookiness factor isn't terribly high for the most part (I mean hey, while "Hallowe'en, Hallowe'en" might be a cool & creepy quick historical summarization, "Clementine" is just never going to sound very frightening to me no matter how grim the subject matter might've originally been), but since they were clearly going for more of a lighthearted "storyteller" vibe it mostly works, and would be pretty good little-kid listening I'm sure.

Quoting the liners:

"The Celts celebrated New Year's Day on November 1st. It was a logical choice, for the harvest was in and the cold white silence of winter was approaching. The Druids began to celebrate this day to honor Samhain, the Lord of the Dead. Honoring Samhain usually meant sacrificing horses and human beings in his name. When the Romans conquered Britain in 61 A.D. they outlawed the sacrifice and the celebration. This didn't prevent the Druids from continuing the practices, but it did cut down on the publicity.

Since those primitive times, our folk music and folk lore have been overloaded by songs and ballads of apparitions, ghosts, witches, demons, goblins, and other unwelcome personalities. [...] From the thousands of old songs, we have chosen an LP-full. We've enlightened these by a few erudite explanations. We have enlarged these by the use of supernatural sound effects. And we have given the whole a twisted ending worthy of the holiday. If you guess the ending before it arrives, score one for your paranoia. We didn't guess the ending -- it happened suddenly and unexpectedly in the studio, and has never been explained. [...]

If any of this is understandable, blame Samhain... he wrote this collection of notes while I watched".


Link Removed