Hey all, does anybody know what movie was the first do have its own soundtrack released on vinyl/tape/cd etc. If anyone has any information please share. Thanks.
-NHL
The answer is a bit weird, but since you DID say vinyl…The earliest method of putting sound with film was to play a record along with the visual track. This was patented by Warner Brothers as the Vitaphone process. The first feature film to use Vitaphone was ‘Don Juan’ in 1926 which had an orchestrated soundtrack on a vitaphone disc to accompany it. It is considered by many film scholars to be the first sound film.
Of course, the hit songs from the second sound film, the Jazz Singer, were also sold to the general public.
If you are talking full soundtracks, I could not answer that, but it probably did not happen until the production of the long-playing 33 1/3 RPM record in the early 1950s.
But we COULD go back to the beginning… The original ‘Hello Mr. Edison’ film was accompanied by the phonograph playing the audio track of the film.
My father has soundtracks to several musicals that were released on a series of 45 RPM records. There were usually four or five discs, so you wouldn’t get all the songs and you definitely wouldn’t get stuff like overtures or incidental music.