RARE EDWARD GOREY Art NEW FACTORY SEALED Dream World of DIon McGregor LP

$

200

This is a most rare Vintage Factory Sealed LP:

The Dream World of Dion McGregor

 (He Talks In His Sleep).

This is the rare and difficult to find original Decca Records release. This is McGregor's first collection.

The collection is still wild and wonderful.  If you aren't familiar, these are unearthly, bizarre, and often hilarious transcriptions of the dreamtime locutions of humourist and lyricist Dion McGregor, all of course to be taken dead seriously. 

The cover illustration is by the well know illustrator Edward Gorey,  who was Dion's friend.  Gorey also did the book's illustrations, as well.

VINYL = BRAND NEW, FACTORY SEALED, ALBUM WAS NEVER OPENED!

COVER = EXCELLENT and still in ORIGINAL SHRINKWRAP!  UNDER THE SHRINKWRAP, THE ALBUM COVER HAS SLIGHT RINGMARK AND FOXING MOSTLY ON THE BORDER AREAS (TINY BROWN AND GRAY SPOTS IN THE PAPER CAUSED BY AGING). THERE IS A TINY CUT-OUT HOLE ON THE LOWER LEFT CORNER.  VERY SLIGHT ROUNDING OF CORNERS FROM TIGHT SHRINKWRAP.

IF YOU CHOOSE PRIORITY MAIL IN THE USA, THE ALBUM IS SHIPPED FULLY INSURED.  THIS RECORD WILL  BE SENT INTERNATIONALLY BY REGISTERED MAIL.

  Dion McGregor is most likely the greatest sleeptalker in recorded history. In another age, the brilliance of his slumbered monologues would have seen him branded as a spiritual medium, sorcerer, possessed by the devil, or simply insane. But in this slightly more enlightened era, there is a fine line between insanity and genius. This makes sleeptalking as sparkling as Dion McGregor's simply worth celebrating. His dream-stories are so unique that a special word had to be coined just to describe them. Unlike your average sleeptalker, whose utterings rarely go beyond a few indistinct words here and there or perhaps the occasional semi-coherent mumbled sentence, Dion McGregor actually dreams out loud, verbalizing fully-realized miniature dramas of the subconscious. His clear articulation is underscored by the noises of the New York City street traffic below his open second-story window. The somniloquies of Dion McGregor are among the most unusual sounds you'll ever hear.  Dion McGregor, as a young man, got a small supporting part in a Claude Raines film. A diehard movie buff and struggling actor and song lyricist habitually without a home of his own, McGregor was shuttling between the couches and guest beds of several apartments of a nondescript five-storey walkup at 961 First Avenue, on the east side of midtown Manhattan, when his various roommates began to notice the rare clarity and duration of his sleeptalking sessions. It was Peter de Rome, a British writer and filmmaker (later a prominent director of gay erotic films), who in 1960 or thereabouts first tried to make something of the somniloquies. According to the introductory notes McGregor wrote to a 1964 book of transcriptions of his dreams, de Rome "tried taking the dreams down in longhand, but the words came faster than he could write. I had a good laugh about it and then forgot it." But when de Rome told Mike Barr, another resident of the building and a songwriting partner of McGregor's, about the sleeptalking, Barr immediately recognized that he had stumbled onto something special. Barr, a budding composer whose hobby was tape-recording the audio portions of movie musicals off late-night TV, was eager to turn his microphone on McGregor's dreams. McGregor, on the other hand, was not quite so eager to have his dreams turned upon, but for the historical record -- as well as for a permanent address of his own -- he would endure. All that he hoped to directly gain from having his dreams recorded were ideas for potential song lyrics. McGregor moved to the spare twin bed in Barr's living room, where his exceptional talent would be voluminously documented over the course of the next seven years. As the collection of tape reels grew, Barr began playing them for some of their friends in New York's theatrical whirl. They eventually reached the ears of producer and talent agent Jules Green, a co-creator of The Tonight Show and manager of Steve Allen, still a hot property at the time. At that point, things quickly moved into high gear. Green was struck by the alien notion of a man who dreams out loud, and by the compounded strangeness of being able to eavesdrop on those dreams. He approached Milt Gabler, A&R director of Decca Records, to suggest that Decca release an audio verité album of the best of the somniloquy tapes. Gabler was a savvy industry insider with an ear for unique material. He had been the founder of Commodore Records, the world's first independent jazz label, and had produced groundbreaking records as disparate as Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" in 1939 and Bill Haley & The Comets' "Rock Around The Clock" in 1954. Gabler was that rare record executive with the soul of an artist, who decided to release The Dream World Of Dion McGregor (He Talks In His Sleep) "because I was a nut!" He had no expectation nor even reasonable hope that such a strange album might do any significant business. "I knew it wouldn't be a gigantic seller," he says today, "but I thought I should do it just to show that some people talk in their sleep. This guy told complete stories and that's what I wanted to prove." Gabler adds, as if the point weren't inherently clear, "I did it because it was different." The album of ten dream-tapes was released in January of 1964. Green also played the tapes for Bernard Geis, a respected book publisher whose imprint was distributed by Random House. Unlike Gabler, Geis was looking for sales. "I thought it might catch on as a novelty," he remembers. "I thought it was quite an unusual book and took a flyer on it." On May 27, 1964, Bernard Geis Associates published The Dream World Of Dion McGregor, a collection of transcriptions of 70 of McGregor's somniloquies. To render the gorgeous three-color (red, black and a near-golden yellow) cover illustration and the 30 black-and-white line drawings inside, Geis hired Edward Gorey, a high school classmate of his wife's who was just beginning his rise to fame as an illustrator of the whimsical and the macabre. The album cover is nearly identical to that of the book, but their differing proportions dictated that each be drawn from scratch. The additional space on the album version allowed for the subtitle. The album and the book both stiffed.

For EACH ADDITIONAL LP (2 LP Sets count as 2 LPs), ADD THE FOLLOWING to the BASIC SHIPPING CHARGE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE FOR EACH EXTRA LP or Box Set.

Add $1.00 per LP to the shipping charge for USPS Media Mail shipment in the USA or Add $3.00 for USPS Priority in the USA.
Add $2.00 for EACH ADDITIONAL BOX SET (Media Mail Shipment in the USA Only.
Add $4.00 per LP for First Class Air Mail to CANADA.
Add 5.00 per LP for First Class Air Mail for SHIPMENT WORLDWIDE.
For SHIPPING BOX SETS INTERNATIONALLY, please ask for exact rates.

For Each Additional 45 or EP

 USA and Canada:  Add 50 cents

Worldwide: Add $1.00 

Please contact me for combining other records such as 78's, 45's or CD's in order to save on shipping.

 Visual Grading Is as Follows:

MINT .. Literally Perfect Record, Shiny Gloss, No Marks, Beautiful Condition.

MINT- .. Very Clean, Light Paper Marks... A Great Record for Most Any Collector.

VG+ .. Light Scratches Only, Should Play Well with Only Occasional and Minimal Surface Noise at Times.

VG .. A Nice Record, Looks Good, but Plays with Some Surface Noise in the Background.

VG- .. Rough with Scratches and has Much Surface Noise , but Will Play without skips.

G .. Plays Quite Rough, Has Multiple Scratches, Very Noisy.

P .. Poor Condition. Good only for those who will accept any copy to fill in their collection.

For EACH ADDITIONAL LP (2 LP Sets count as 2 LPs), ADD THE FOLLOWING to the BASIC SHIPPING CHARGE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE FOR EACH EXTRA LP or Box Set.

Add $1.00 per LP to the shipping charge for USPS Media Mail shipment in the USA or Add $3.00 for USPS Priority in the USA.
Add $2.00 for EACH ADDITIONAL BOX SET (Media Mail Shipment in the USA Only.
Add $4.00 per LP for First Class Air Mail to CANADA.
Add 5.00 per LP for First Class Air Mail for SHIPMENT WORLDWIDE.
For SHIPPING BOX SETS INTERNATIONALLY, please ask for exact rates.

For Each Additional 45 or EP

 USA and Canada:  Add 50 cents

Worldwide: Add $1.00 

Please contact me for combining other records such as 78's, 45's or CD's in order to save on shipping.

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