Back in the 80’s there was a guy named Zeb Billings. He was a great musician, owned several piano and organ stores, and ran a sheet music company that supplied Easy Play sheet music for the booming portable keyboard business, like Casio and Yamaha. I was his sales manager for the sheet music company and it was an exiting and fun time. As that boom receded Zeb created what later became the Golden Sound Story. He used the staff he had at our sheet music company to do this and they started to become big sellers. I even got to do some voice work on several of the stories. I also helped Zeb with mail order for customers who couldn’t find these sound books in their area. The business was so successful that he approached Western Publishing (Golden Books) in Racine, Wisconsin and closed a deal to sell his company to them. He told them about how I helped with special customer orders and they, in turn, contacted me. I went down to Racine, an hours drive from my home, and after a very nice meeting, they asked me to do all their customer mail order business and also wanted me to handle all their school, library, and author/illustrator accounts. Zeb also mentioned that I did some sound work and their new division for these books later asked me to do some voice work. The game called What Am I? pictured above was all my voice! I wish I had some more of these games but they are all long retired. Anyhoo, the Golden Sound Story was born and they went on to become an international best seller. As you can see in the picture they branched off into several similar items. Smaller versions, Talking Tales in which the characters actually talk to each other in the story, games that you could actually record YOUR voice in the story, and even sound and light games that were a big hit for toddlers. The Disney stories were especially popular, even using actual voices from the films. The games in which you could record your voice or a sound effect were especially fun and sometimes a little naughty depending on who was doing the recording!
After a great run the Golden Book company was driven into bankruptcy by 2 Dicks (Snyder and Bernstein) and everything was halted. Luckily, Random House revived the Golden Book line, but the Sound Stories were never restarted. You can still see similar books in the stores today, but not the same quality. I still have several Sound Stories in inventory and I have to test each one because they are now very old and sometimes the sounds don’t work any more. You have to buy your own batteries but at least you know they will work and you can have that book that you grew up with. Another story from the Golden era of Golden Books.
