Actor Jim Dale received a Grammy nomination today for his audio recording of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” Theatermania.com reports Mr. Dale “is up for Best Spoken Word Album for Children,” with the awards due to be presented February 10 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. As readers will recall, Mr. Dale, who narrates the US editions of the Harry Potter audio books, was nominated previously for a Grammy for his recording of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” and won the award for his voice work on “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” Congratulations Jim Dale!
His reading of the DH is simply magical! His voices are so incredible. I don’t know how he does it. I try to read to my daughter using different voices but I get very confused and mix up accents (which I really can’t do properly and then everyone starts sounding like they are from Mars.) I see that he was NOMINATED for OotP. Why didn’t he win? That was a supurb album. And to think that he had a very limited time to do this, not even a few months but just a few weeks. Incredible.
I like the audio too, but I just have one problem with them.
Jim Dale makes the girls sound all whiney a lot, and I wish he wouldn’t. That one part in DH when Harry is “dead,” and Ron, Hermione, and Ginny see it, I cracked up at how he voiced Hermione and Ginny. I almost cried when I read it the first time, but I laughed at this one.
Just thought I’d make that pointer. Apart from that, they’re good;)
I LOVE Jim Dale. He is so damn good- I about fell off my chair when I heard his voice doing a commercial for Pushing Daisies! I thought there was something Harry Potter related coming on the tv!
I VERY much love his work… recently listened to the entire series, and just had to start over again as I missed hearing it daily. One side note, I found it interesting that he changed the pronunciation of “Hermione” and “Voldemort” late in the series, to include a hard “I” and the “t”. Does anyone know if Jo had requested, or some other back story to it?
He is of course actually Sir Jim Dale as he comes originally from the English Midlands in Northamptonshire and was knighted by the Queen some time ago. So he is not really Mr.Dale – but Sir Jim – but admittedly he never mentions this himself – he is very modest – and it does not really matter. I agree he is great! :-)
not a patch on stephen fry i’m afraid (he reads the british audio version). Jim Dale does some seriously odd voices for the characters which don’t seem to fit somehow. and stephen fry was always dumbledore in my head, so it works very well!
CONGRATS JIM!!!!!!!
I love his readings so much, I really hope he gets the award, he definetely deserves it.
@ellabellatrix- I also almost fell of the chair when I first saw the Pushing Daisies commercial, I started yelling “Oh my god, it’s JIM DALE!!!!!!!” Apparently he didn’t just narrate the commercial, he narrates the whole show.
He most certainly is not Sir Jim Dale. He received the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2003). This is the lowest of the ‘gongs’ that you can receive in the Honours List. It is a world away from a knighthood!
If you get a chance, listen to Stephen Fry narrating the books for the British market. I’ve heard both and Stephen Fry is so much better than Jim Dale. I find Dale’s HBP unbearable to listen to, though admittedly DH was a lot less grating. Dale does weird stuff, like making Bellatrix speak with a strange French accent – presumably because her surname is Lestrange (which he also annoyingly pronounces in an affected French way). Surely he must know that she’s as ‘Pure’ as an English Pureblood witch can possibly be and that Lestrange is her married name anyway!
Karen
Posted by karen (the one without the avatar!) on December 07, 2007, 07:42 AM
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No offense to Mr. Dale, but honestly I think Stephen Fry blows him out of the water (Stephen Fry reads the UK audio editions). My husband and I listened to the UK editions and loved them. We listened to Jim Dale and nearly fell asleep. I just don’t understand why Jim Dale gets all these awards and there’s no mention of Stephen Fry. (I know Mr. Fry has gotten some UK awards, but he deserves just as many, if not more, than Mr. Dale.)
Just my two knuts.
CONGRATULATIONS Jim!!!!!
I’ve been listing to him read DH. He’s wonderful!