Mickey Spillane as Mike Hammer

"Don't smile. I don't like people who smile like that." This record, an artifact of Mickey Spillane's high summer of popularity as the people's hard-boiled novelist, is full of such lines. It contains an "original story written and told by Mickey Spillane with Betty Ackerman."

Everything about this record and Spillane's work has been parodied over and over. His own writing was a kind a parody or cartoon version of the hard boiled novel - and suitably, Spillane wrote cartoon stories before he did his first novel.

This item presents Spillane's approach boiled down to its essence. A woman in distress - the record starts off with the sound of her being slapped. (Being entertained by the repellent has since been taken to ridiculous extremes in popular culture.) A white knight, here Spillane's Mike Hammer character (voiced by the author himself), intercedes. The woman falls in love with Hammer. Hammer kills the bad guy. This all happens in two acts lasting a total of 13 minutes, accompanied by bongos.

The flip side of the record contains four musical numbers. First is a portrait in sound of Velda (the women in distress, later Mike's secretary). Next is something called "The Woman" (not sure how she differs from Velda). Then there is "Oh, Mike!," which the cover vaguely describes as "the passion that Spillane has so well expressed in the seven Mike Hammer books." And finally the Mike Hammer Theme.

The music is by Stan Purdy. The cover says that Spillane discovered him in "The Rendezvous" in Carlstadt, New Jersey. I haven't been able to trace Purdy's later pursuits, so maybe he returned to the Rendezvous. The music isn't bad, actually, and there are strings and things, so funds were spent.

I wish they had expended a few more bucks on the cover, which G. R. Wilson appears to have executed with Crayolas. A better choice would have been the artist whom Signet used to do Spillane's book covers, helpfully depicted on the back of the record. You can see some of those book covers here.

The record is from 1954 and appears to be the first (only?) issue on V Records.