The Daws Butler Collection is seventeen-and-a-half hours worth of radio plays, comedy recordings, cartoon scripts, and acting tutorials related to voice acting legend Daws Butler. Butler was the iconic voice of countless Hanna-Barbera characters including Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, Elroy Jetson, and Snagglepuss. He also voiced advertising characters, most famously Cap’n Crunch.

The collection of Butler materials is available as an MP3 download ($18.99) or on 18 CDs ($33.56). For the amount of material, it’s a bargain either way.

Sme of the materials are Daws Butler performing himself, and there are also a series of scripts by Butler that are performed by one of his protégés, Joe Bevilacqua. Here’s a rundown of what’s in the audio collection:

  • Daws Butler’s Halloween Happening by Daws Butler: A new production of the classic radio play, this ghostly story was originally written and performed by Daws Butler. Veteran voice actor Joe Bevilacqua teams up with Lorie Kellogg in this new recording, complete with music and sound effects.
  • What the Butler Wrote by Daws Butler: In this series, Joe Bevilacqua presents performances of several scripts Butler wrote for his 1975 acting workshops.
  • Rare Daws Butler by Daws Butler, Stan Freberg, Herschel Bemardi, Shep Menken, and Carol Hemmingway: Daws Butler voiced many of Stan Freberg’s greatest comedy records. Here is a hilarious collection of his never-before-released comedy records.
  • Rare Daws Butler, Volume Two by Daws Butler: A follow-up to Rare Daws Butler, this second collection features another hour of Butler’s rare comedy recordings.
  • Daws Butler Teaches You Dialects by Daws Butler: Voice magician Daws Butler teaches accents and dialects in this radio production.
  • Uncle Dunkle and Donnie by Daws Butler and Joe Bevilacqua: A collection of imaginative cartoon scripts, this series of 35 fables was created by Butler in the 1960s. Here his protégé, Joe Bevilacqua, performs all 97 characters with music and sound effects.
  • Uncle Dunkle and Donnie Two by Daws Butler and Pedro Pablo Sacrista: This second collection of fables features 19 never-before-released recordings of Daws Butler’s stories, as well as two new Uncle Dunkle fables.
  • The Christmas That Almost Never Was by Daws Butler: It is Christmas Eve at the North Pole when Santa Claus loses his “remembery” and only a child who has been good for 365 days can save Christmas! Written and performed by Butler, this children’s radio play was recorded in the 1940s.

For a nice intro to the man, watch this 1986 video in which Daws gives a personal tour of his office:

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