1971 The Lord of the Rings (Livingston Gilbert)

Release Date: 1971-2
Reader: Livingston Gilbert
Language: English
Organization: DBPH
Publisher: American Printing House for the Blind
ISBN: n/a
Duration: ~61-62 hours
Unabridged: Yes
Country: English
Licenced: Yes
Format: 32 x 10-inch vinyl records, 16⅔ rpm
NLS Book Numbers: TB 03367, TB 03369, TB 03368

Produced by American Printing House for the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled service of the Library of Congress. This reading was made purely for eligible members of this special library service in the USA and not available for commercial release.

Livingston Gilbert, from Louisville, was a newscaster and anchorman for WAVE radio and television for almost 40 years. Livingston started as an announcer with WAVE radio in 1941. His first television newscast was in 1948 and he remained the station’s anchor until 1972 (known as the “Dean of Louisville News”) when he worked with his first partner on the news show. He spent three days a week reading books for APH (American Print House for the Blind) beginning in 1939 and read right up until his death in 1981.

He spent his entire career at WAVE, and never apologized for the fact that he was not a writer or a journalist, but a deliverer of the news. Gilbert’s distinguished career was unmatched for longevity by any other local broadcaster in the country. During his final broadcast at the end of 1980, he said he hoped he would be remembered for his integrity. His wife Jan, with whom he had three daughters, was the APH studio director in the 1970s. Livingston was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 1981.

Livingston Gilbert’s recordings were not released all at once. They appeared in the Adult Fiction section of the Talking Book Topics bimonthly newsletter across 1971 and early 1972. The catalogue numbers for the last two volumes were assigned out of numerical order (3369 before 3368), which was common during APH’s heavy production years. Gilbert did not just read the narrative; he is one of the only narrators to have ever recorded the entirety of the Appendices (A through F). In The Return of the King, nearly 6 full records (roughly 10 hours) were dedicated solely to the supplemental history, timelines, and linguistic notes. His reading was specifically marketed as the “Reference Edition.”

This recording came only a few years after Norman Barrs had recorded The Lord of the Rings in 1968. The Barrs reading was a rushed priority to meet the 1960s Tolkien craze and Gilbert’s 1971 version was intended to be the high-fidelity successor for the vinyl era as well as including the full Appendices, which the Barrs reading had been unable to do. However, when the NLS began its move from vinyl (TB) to 4-track cassette (RC) in the mid-1970s, they had to choose which master to digitize.

At this time, there was a shift in NLS policy regarding British literature. The service received feedback from patrons that they preferred a British narrator for Tolkien’s “high” style. Norman Barrs, with his classical British stage background, was deemed more authentic to Tolkien’s prose than the more American, news-anchor style of Livingston Gilbert. So, while Gilbert’s 1971 recording was technically “cleaner” (newer tape masters), Barrs’s 1968 performance was considered the superior dramatic reading. The NLS chose to master the 1968 Barrs tapes onto the new RC 10975 cassette series instead of Gilbert’s. This meant that for a period in the late 70s and 80s, NLS patrons actually had less information available on cassette than they previously had on the (now withdrawn) Gilbert vinyl set.

When the NLS officially moved The Lord of the Rings to the Recorded Cassette (RC) format in 1978 (RC 10975-77), the Gilbert vinyl sets (TB 3367-69) were officially marked for withdrawal. When doing so, they explicitly cited “lack of demand for the American baritone on British epic prose” in internal memos. Thus, they were removed from the active circulating collection of regional libraries and destroyed or archived, making them extremely rare physical Tolkien media items today.