My grandfather, Wade Denning, composed and arranged music for a variety of brands, commercials, tv shows, and his own albums. You might recognize some of the music on this site; the Maxwell House theme, the H-A-LL-O-W-EE-N song that lots of kids grew up singing. Before he passed away in 2007, he complied these clips from reels and reels of music in his basement. Quality isn’t great in some cases, and there’s a blip in one of the videos where it looks like he tried to record the evening news, but it’s all generally awesome stuff. Oh, and I don’t pretend to own any of this, or know anything about copyright – leave comment if you’d like something removed and have a valid reason.
Hello, I am writing an article about the Halloween Party LPs that your grandfather was involved in producing. Would you be able to be interviewed and share some stories about him?
Sorry for the delay. Would be happy to talk. clay@myersharris.com
Overjoyed to find this site as I really loved your grandfather’s music. For context; I grew up on several of his horror records, wrote about his work several times on my old blog “Scar Stuff”, and made a stop motion video for the H-A-LL-O-W-EE-N song a few years ago.
I actually tried to track him down several times (dating back to the late 1990’s), but was never able to get a concrete contact. I was sorry to hear about his passing before I had a chance to thank him for the joy his work had given me.
So given all of the above, I’m simply amazed to find such a gigantic trove of content — thanks so much for compiling and sharing it all.
Thanks for visiting!
Carol Denning was a good friend of mind. She was a music teacher in Winston-Salem, NC in the seventies. I met her while working at Duncan Music Company. You must be kin. I helped chaperone a group of her students to perform at Adelphi University. Please give her my absolute best.
That’s my mom! I will tell her you said hello.
I don’t really know what to say here, since your grandfather had a huge impact on my life based on one record he did in the ’70s. It was the Famous Ghost Stories record. My late brother and I were first introduced to the stories via the “Headless Horseman” and “The Hitch Hiker” singles that were on the backs of (I think) Honeycomb cereal. That was so cool, that these stories – with their eerie sounds and all – could come to us on the back of a cereal box. We wore those out, and soon found that they were also on a long-player called “Famous Ghost Stories,” which my parents bought for us. Time and time again, we listened to those terrifying tales. Your dad brought them to life for us. My brother died 20 years ago, and listening to these stories with him is still one of my fondest memories of good times. A few years ago I bought as near mint copy of the album as I could find, and digitized/cleaned it to upload to my Google Play so that I’d have it for all time. I also made a CD out of it with a cover and all to give to my folks, who loved it (they recalled that my brother could recite Mr. Denning’s version of “The Headless Horseman” from start to finish without a hitch).
I started a podcast a while back (link in my name I think) that includes sounds and music from a video game, and it didn’t occur to me how much I had pulled from your grandfather until my wife said, “this is kind of like that album you listen to from time to time.” I was astonished I hadn’t recognized it immediately that it’s what I was trying to do – bring an audio story to life through sounds and music.
Your grandfather obviously had a huge influence on me. I wish he had done more of these. But thank you so much for creating this site. It finally allowed me to thank someone for his amazing talent and for hours and hours of enjoyment and wonderful memories. Cheers.
Thanks, Aaron, that’s very nice to hear!
I love your grandfathers work, especially in the old halloween records. In fact, I’ve been trying to create a fanmade sequel to Sounds Of Terror (https://www.discogs.com/Wade-Denning-Monster-Mash-Sounds-Of-Terror/release/1673258). I’ve already made one track, The Black Death, imitating the dialect he uses in his recordings.
From my fanmade album, More Sounds Of Terror – A Tribute To Wade Denning.
https://soundcloud.com/noah-bangs/the-black-death