Forgotten Stories: MICHAEL AVALLONE meets BAT MASTERSON (1960)

I've read Mike, and I've seen Bat, but never dreamed the twain had met. If fact, I'd be willing to wager that even so avid an Avallone fan as Mr. Stephen Mertz had no notion of it. But meet they did, and here's the proof.

This record has resided in my collection for fifteen or twenty years, and the line "Stories by Michael Avallone" was right there on the back cover, but I never noticed it until recently, when I was fixin' to post it to YouTube. There's no date on the LP, but I found an ad for it in an August 1960 issue of Billboard magazine, and that seems about right.

The stories themselves are no great shakes, by any standard. I'm guessing Avallone dashed each one off in thirty minutes or less, collected his paycheck, and promptly forgot them. But they're interesting enough, and suitable for children, and what the heck, they are about Bat Masterson.

Most interesting to me was "The Duel in the Bella Union," in which Bat faces his doppelganger. Yeah, it's an overused device, trotted out for just about every pulp, comic and movie hero sooner or later, but it's still worth a listen. This version of the Bat Masterson Theme, attributed to The Nightriders, ain't bad either.