heck-yeah-old-tech:

Let’s All Sing With The Chipmunks – 1959, mono, original cover, mine.

The album that started the career for The Chipmunks, though Dave Seville (Ross Bagdasarian, Sr.) had been recording straight music and novelty songs since 1951 and was seen and heard as a piano player in Hitchcock’s Rear Window in 1954. Soon after this album, the Chipmunks got their first animated cartoon series, and things have continued from there. Ross Sr. died in 1972, but after a seven year pause the work was carried on by his son Ross Jr. and the recent CGI movies prove The Chipmunks are still at it.

Nowadays the voices are done by separate actors and using digital manipulation, but Ross Sr. did the original voices (and those of earlier characters, The Witch Doctor and The Bird On My Head) using a variable speed tape player and his own voice over multiple takes. Quite a bit of work to put together just one song, let alone a dozen songs per album on the first dozen albums.

And now, something you rarely see: an autographed Chipmunks album!

Alvin: I still want a hula-hoop!