Are audiobook narrators Joyce Bean and Jane Brown one and the same?

February 28, 2010 8:41 PM

I listen to a lot of audiobooks. Joyce Bean is a favorite narrator of mine. and I am very familiar with her voice. Yesterday I started listening to Dark Curse by Christine Feehan, and there's Joyce Bean's voice saying she is Jane Brown.

Here's the latest by Jayne Ann Krentz, narrated by Joyce Bean. It just gives a sample. http://excerpts.contentreserve.com/FormatType-25/0857-1/260675-FiredUp.wma

Here's the beginning of Dark Curse by Christine Feehan:
http://excerpts.contentreserve.com/FormatType-25/0857-1/162402-DarkCurse.wma

She calls herself Jane Brown there. But it's the same voice.

I tried a Google search for this but did not find anything. I wondered if anyone knows if she just changed her name or narrates under more than one name or what.

posted by AllieTessKipp to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

Joyce Bean and Jane Brown both have the initials J.B., so maybe it's a pseudonym? Maybe she can't narrate under the same name for two different companies?
posted by amyms at 8:49 PM on February 28, 2010

Maybe Jane Brown is an amazing mimic (probably more likely with an audiobook narrator than most jobs), and she knows that Joyce Bean is a popular narrator, and so she speaks like Bean and picks a name like Bean's to appeal to Bean's fans and employers?

Both Bean and Brown are nominated (for different awards, in different categories, though) for the Audio Publishers Association awards.
posted by sallybrown at 9:09 PM on February 28, 2010

Best answer: This blurb about Joyce Bean says she recently moved into the director's spot at Brilliance Audio, and makes it sound like she mostly does romance and romantic suspense. Dark Curse is also by Brilliance Audio and is read by Phil Gigante and Jane Brown (but only Phil is described in the reader blurb).

So it seems unlikely to me it's someone else at the same company imitating her -- that seems a little declasse -- and I don't think it's an issue about narrating for two different companies under the same name, but I do think it's the same person. Perhaps now that she's a director she is using a different name for when she works as a reader? Or perhaps she is using a different name for her romantic suspense and her paranormal romance books?
posted by inkyz at 12:20 AM on March 1, 2010

I don't doubt that you hear those two names as having one and the same voice. But it always has struck me how often professional or schooled women's voices are remarkable alike. It is as if there a just a few possibilities available for them.
posted by ijsbrand at 2:11 AM on March 1, 2010

Response by poster: I've just sent an email to Brilliance Audio to ask about this. I should probably have done that in the first place. :) I'll post the result if I get a response.
posted by AllieTessKipp at 9:03 PM on March 1, 2010

Response by poster: I got an answer from Brilliance Audio. They said it is the same person and that she is using a stage name currently for the Feehan series. :)
posted by AllieTessKipp at 1:25 PM on March 10, 2010 [1 favorite]