By Request! More Jack Eigen! Plus Ridiculous Vocals, My Favorite Poet, Igor Stravinsky, Some Relatives Visit, Steinbeck Pro and Con and a bit of Union Propaganda

Greetings! 

Before I get to this week's offerings, I want to share a very interesting comment I received regarding the last post, specifically, the tape of an adult man interviewing six-year-old Joe Hogan. An anonymous reader listener wrote: 

The man interviewing him seams to be in another room. I think this may have been some sort of studio. The clicking you here is the talkback going on and off. Back then, you had to hold down the button to talk, then release. He kept releasing it to soon. This seams like some sort of low budget production deal I think. I think Joe is listening through a monitor (the room sound when they talk) its not a direct mic feed or anything. I don't think they were related, I think he was just trying to make Joe feel comfortable. Maybe some sort of news thing for the school? Also, if you listening very carefully when he asks Joe, "Can you write?" He accidentally releases the talkback in the middle of his sentence, and you can briefly hear Joe's mic pick him up from the control room

Makes sense to me! Thanks!

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I have received a handful of requests for a further portion of my collection of Jack Eigen broadcasts. And this requires a bit of explanation. First, for those who haven't heard any of the other offerings in this series, my write up on Mr. Eigen can be found in this post. Suffice to say that, for the better part of twenty years, Jack Eigen was an irritant on the late night Chicago radio dial, but one that plenty of people could barely do without. As my mother once told me (and as is mentioned in that earlier post), his irritating manner was, in her view, essentially what drew people into listening to his shows. 

For those of you who have downloaded my previous Eigen offerings, I will share (as I mentioned in my last post) that I actually cheated you out of additional Eigen material when I posted what I identified as "Volume Five", last May. You see, that offering was actually the exact same tape as the one I had posted as "Volume Four", over a year ago. 

So here is the reel "Volume Five", which I will label as "Volume 5" so that your folder won't get confused and tell you that there is already a file by named "Volume Five". This is by far the longest one yet, I think. It is over four and a half hours long. Enjoy!

Download: Jack Eigen - The Jack Eigen Show, Volume 5

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I seem to have left on about ten seconds' silence at the beginning of this file, by accident. So don't be surprised at a bit of silence at first...

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Next up, here is someone named Bob Terry, enjoying his 50th birthday party in 1980. Someone - presumably the birthday boy, plays a lot of piano, including a few parody numbers which presumably were his own creations, and none of them terribly clever. For the last several minutes, the pianist/birthday boy and his guests try to work out a happy birthday dirge based on a familiar melody, although it seems to be a struggle to perfect what they're trying to do. That section goes on, and on, and on, and on.

Download: The Bob Terry 50th Birthday Party

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The next three rather esoteric items all come from the same tape, and all were recorded in 1962 off of television. I am presenting them here in the order they appear on the tape, even though the second one is dated before the first one (presumably, the first segment erased something previously recorded even earlier, on that section of the tape). I cannot locate this tape to show you a scan of the writing on the box (I may have sold it along with a bunch of other tapes, some time ago), but the information on dates was from the box.

First up is a short segment in which two jazz performers, pianist/singer Rose Murphy and bassist Slam Stewart, promote a local appearance in Albany on WRGB, a pioneering television station in Schenectady, New York. I learn from Wikipedia that WRGB was one of the world's first TV stations, way back in 1928 (!) and the fourth commercial station to sign on, in 1942. However, it was also the station that launched the career of Rachael Ray, and that is simply unforgivable. May you rot in hell for what you've done, WRGB. 

Anyway, I was certainly familiar with Slam Stewart and his sing-along bass playing, but had not encountered Rose Murphy before. Her piano playing is fine. But her singing... Oh my God, she was GODAWFUL! I have a hard time believing her performance style wasn't some sort of elaborate dry joke, designed to see how many pretentious jazz-hounds she could make rave over an absurd, terrible  and mannered singing. Your mileage may vary. 

After a pre-recorded track featuring both performers singing and playing, there is a great instrumental featuring Stewart and then a song featuring Murphy, before just a taste of Murphy's signature song and a fade out. 

Download: Rose Murphy and Slam Stewart - WRGB - 6-7-62

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Next on the tape is John Ciardi, giving a lovely presentation - along with the legendary Alan Lomax, on The Sea Islands, This was part of a short lived CBS-TV series called "Accent on an American Summer", and this episode focused on the music of these islands, dating from the slave era and later created by the descendants of slaves.  

Alan Lomax should need no introduction (if for nothing else but helping to mentor Pete Seeger and first bringing him to prominence, but of course, so much more), but John Ciardi? I'm sure he's largely forgotten, if indeed he was ever well known outside of literary and poetry circles. But he was well known and beloved in the home in which I grew up, due to his having written two of our favorite books, books of poetry for children. He actually wrote well over a dozen books of poems for children, it seems. We owned "I Met a Man" and "The Man Who Sang the Sillies", and there were few books in our home that I loved more, for both the wonderful nonsense of his rhymes  (which I'm sure had a deep influence on my own lyric-writing and general sense of humor), and for the marvelous illustrations by Edward Gorey. I found the following image from my favorite of his poems, which had my favorite of the illustrations, as well: 

Genius. Absolute genius. 

Anyway, I was delighted to find this tape, as I had no idea he had done anything else but write those two lovely books. 

Download: John Ciardi on The Sea Islands - 2-14-62

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Then the tape ends with a recording of a program in which Igor Stravinsky conducts one of his own compositions, "The Flood", and which is followed by a documentary about Stravinsky. This is a much longer segment - almost 50 minutes - and it is also from 1962: 

Download: Igor Stravinsky Conducts His "The Flood", and Documentary on Stravinsky, 1962

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I feel like I've done sort of a lot of typing so far, and will be below, as well, so I'm gonna scale it back for this one. This next piece of tape is "called Aunt Edith and Uncle Carl Come to Visit, 7-27-60", and I think that just about describes it. 

Download: Aunt Edith and Uncle Carl Come to Visit, 7-27-60

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Now it's time for our "Acetate of the Month". Most of the time, these are 78 RPM acetates, and last from three to seven minutes, total, for both sides. But acetates were also cut at 33 1/3 RPM, long before that speed was available commercially, and they were also cut at that speed, by private users, in the 1950's and well into the 1960's (and of course, by professional studios, long after that). And those 33 1/3 acetates could, of course, be far longer than their 78-era brethren. Today's offering is 26 minutes long, and the disc itself looks like this: 

Much of the information you need to know what you're going to hear is right there in that picture. The rest is in the first moments of the sound file. The discussion is between high school students. The school Evanston Township High School (I was able to find a reference to the teacher named on the label having worked there), and the other student, discussing Steinbeck with Dick Mills, is Bill Brower.

This is, as I'm sure you're imagining, scintillating stuff. 

Download: Custom Sound Studios 12 inch Acetate - Bill Brower and Dick Mills - A Discussion of the Style of John Steinbeck, Evanston, IL, September, 1957, Side One 

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Download: Custom Sound Studios 12 inch Acetate - Bill Brower and Dick Mills - A Discussion of the Style of John Steinbeck, Evanston, IL, September, 1957, Side Two

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Here's a photo of the second side of the acetate: 

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Finally, a "Very Short Reel". This is a bit of propaganda - and I don't mean that negatively - from the AFL-CIO. This sounds very much like it was the soundtrack to a short film, and the closing statements further make it sound as if this was one of a series of short films, presumably all from the AFL-CIO, which perhaps were paid for and ran on television stations in five minute timeslots. 

I should explain that I made some of the files that I am sharing today, and in the recent past, and no doubt in the future, as long as six or seven years ago. I have a large collection of "not yet used" items, and this one was digitized at least four years ago. All that is to explain why I can no longer find this tape's box, either (although it's unlikely I sold this one). But the name of the file is almost certainly what was written on the box. 

Download: AFL-CIO - Americans At Work - Building Aircraft

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Some Rare Early Johnny Carson Tonight Show Segments, An Interview with a Six-Year-Old, Two Very Different Tapes of Singing, and "The Children's Hour"

I have something extra special to lead off with today, but first, a bit of housekeeping. 

Eric Paddon fills in the gaps yet again regarding my WOR posting, documenting that the first Long John segment is from October 6th, 1962, and that the second segment late on October 17th and early on October 18th, 1962. His comments can be found at the bottom of that post, and are most informative - I encourage you to read them. 

And an anonymous poster - apparently as much of an obsessive as I am - sent me the following comment regarding one of the items in my last post: 

Just thought you might like to know that the Michigan News tape is the 1000th individual mp3 you have put up on the Inches Per Second blog since you started it back in 2015.

The comment goes on say that the number 1000 does not include anything I posted at WFMU. Wow - 1000 items for folks to download. I'm glad I started doing this. 

Finally, a few people let me know that the last offering I shared from the Jack Eigen collection was actually a repeat (and relabeling) of a tape I'd already shared previously. It's way too late to fix that offering, but I will have more Eigen - for real this time - in my next post. 

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Today, I have something extra special to lead off the post - vintage recordings from the first year of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. My understanding is that the videotapes of 98% of Carson's first decade in the big chair were erased by subsequent programs (leading to a lack of, among other things, any video of the appearance of Lennon and McCartney announcing the start of their Apple Corps). The two segments I have for you here do not appear to exist anywhere online, so these could literally be the only existing copies. 

The first, and probably more interesting one, is a portion of an appearance by Ella Fitzgerald and, briefly, Duke Ellington, on May 13th, 1963. There's about five minutes of music at the start, and the remaining 13 minutes or so are conversation. 

Song-poem enthusiasts (and hopefully any of you out there know about my other blog), might find some fascination in Ella's comments, midway through, about Teri Thornton. Ms. Thornton appeared on The Tonight Show three times during Johnny's first several months on the air, although never after that. Unfortunately, Ms. Thornton did not have the career that Ella and Johnny thought she would attain, but she is known to those of us in the song-poem fan contigent under the names Teri Summers, simply "Teri" and several other names. 

Download: Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, 5-13-63

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On the flip side of the same reel, there is an appearance by Allan Sherman, then-currently riding high with two recent number one albums (and a third about to be released, which would be his biggest). Happily (for those who are fans - and I LOVE his first two albums, the rest.... not so much), he performs a medley of some half-finished ideas in the form of very short songs, most of which I don't believe were ever released commercially, before he goes into a number from that upcoming album, "My Son, the Nut", at the end of the recording. 

Download: Allan Sherman on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, 7-10-63

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Switching gears quite a bit, although staying with television (I think), here's tape that I just love, even though I have absolutely no idea of its source, who was involved, or exactly what's going on here. It is post announced near the end as having been "The Children's Hour", and sure enough, it appears to be a series of skits, songs, etc. performed by a group of children. Some annoying editing was done at the time of the broadcast (and again, I'm assuming this was a TV program, and not a radio show). 

After a short rendition of "School Days", the program segues into some sort of play, described later as a Scottish Fairy Tale, which takes up much of the recording. The last several minutes are taken up with various kids singing various songs, with a bit of accordion thrown in, as well. The high point for me is a single minute, starting at about 16:00, where a child (can't tell if it's a boy or a girl) sings "Hey, Good Lookin'". Pretty much this whole tape is just enchanting, I think, but I am head over heels for that one performance - I just love this kid's voice and enthusiasm. The singing puts me in the mind of the early tapes of Merigail Moreland. I wish I knew who it was.   

Unknown: "The Children's Hour"

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The above tape also contains the following short segment of a few kids singing a few songs. They are not singers on the level of those heard during "The Children's Hour", and in fact, there are some wonderfully off-kilter notes, notes which would be downright embarrassing coming from the adult, but which I find endearing when coming from small children, as well as some deliberately goofy singing. Another sweet tape. The note at 2:53 is one for the ages. 

Unknown: Unknown - Peter Cottontail, Oh Susanna and Jesus Loves Me

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And speaking of children, and of sweetness, here is yet another tape that I heard for the first time recently, which contains a man interviewing a six-year-old. That could be cause for automated avoidance by some of you, and/or concerns about sweetness overload, but that's not what I hear. The man in question seems to be - or at least claims to be - a performer in a traveling circus. His relationship with the child, Joe Hogan, is never explained. The man's name is said once, by the child - maybe it's Patrick? 

I don't know what to make of the clipped sounds at the end of a few of the man's statements - Joe (the child) also seems to have trouble hearing what the man is saying at those moments, too, so perhaps this was not done face to face. Or something. 

I enjoy the fact that the child sometimes makes a long statement (as when he says the alphabet) and breathes in without stopping talking - he says the words while he's breathing. There are tapes of me at this age, and I would do the same thing. 

What I find remarkable here, and endearing, is that this six-year-old is clearly extremely bright, fully sure of himself, and holds up his end of the interaction completely. I'll let you discover the details for yourself, but I wouldn't be surprised if this kid went on to great success in school and elsewhere. 

Download: A Man Interviews Six-Year-Old Joe Hogan

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Here's a sampling from a small stack of tapes that I got somewhere, all featuring a woman and a man rehearsing songs in 1971, per the tape boxes. I really don't now more about them than that. The following offering actually features the contents of a two full five inch reels featuring this duo. For the most part, they are working on songs I'd prefer not to be in the same county as, at the very least. I generally loathe the sort of material that's heard here. Your mileage may vary.

Download: Unknown - Rehearsing a Bunch of Songs

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Here are the relevant parts of both tape boxes in one image: 

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And finally, a "Very Short Reel". The person speaking (undoubtedly to someone on the phone) is relating a story about getting an audio letter from someone that was recorded at a speed that her machine didn't run at, when she discovers that she herself is being recorded. This is more than a bit of a cheat, as this is simply the opening minute or so of a tape which is full of other recordings - almost entirely of some home recorded, and vapid, organ playing, with a few Hawaiian numbers from a record mixed in. But this goofy little recording leads off the tape, and I thought it was worth sharing. 

Download: Unknown - "He's Tapin' What I'm Sayin"

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Blowout Post # 7!

It's time once again for me to clear the decks and post a whopping twelve different recordings in quick succession, with very little comment. Yes, it's another BLOWOUT Post, Number Seven in the series. 

A reminder/explanation: These are files that I have made over the years, from my collection, that I either have little to say about, or don't remember much about, or both. In most cases, I have not listened to these since the day they were digitized, which was likely more than ten years ago in some cases. 

In all, there is nearly six hours of recorded material in today's post. 

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Five months ago, in this post, I shared one episode of London Mirror, from a tape which contained multiple episodes of that show. I wrote quite a bit about it, at that time, and you can look back at that post for what I said at the time. Anyway, I find this program fascinating and very entertaining, so I'll lead of today's post with another episode from that same tape:

Download: London Mirror - 11-25-61

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This one says "Portion of a Trial". Again, aside from a bit of scanning, I have not re-listened to these offerings - I'm just putting a bunch of them up there and out there for your perusal. And I honestly don't remember anything about this one. Enjoy!

Download: Portion of a Trial

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Here's another recording which is well explained by its title, "Accordion Playing and A Cappella Singing". 

Download: Accordion Playing and A Cappella Singing

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Here is a tape featuring about five and a half minutes of news as broadcast in Michigan in 1954: 

Download: International, National and Local News from Michigan, 1954

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I have, on several occasions, delved into a collection I own which came from someone who worked for multiple TV networks (and possibly elsewhere) in the 1960's, including a bunch of tapes featuring dubbing or looping in dialogue for shows and movies. I can't find the box for this tape at the moment (I digitized this at least a decade ago), but it said something about "Figard" on it, and I've been unable to find out what that might mean. But it could be the name of the program or movie which was being worked on, here. 

Download: More Dubbing for a TV or Movie, Possibly "Figard"

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Somewhere along the line I managed to pick up a set of tapes by someone who led various sized dance bands in the late 1960's at local parties and events. This one is referred to, on the tape box (see below) as Kendall's Ork (with 8 members), but not all of them show this name for the group, and each performance seems to have a different number of guys on the bandstand. This particular performance is from the Winchester Nurse's Association's shindig on 9-25-59. Maybe you were there!

Download: Kendall's Ork (8 Members) - Winchester Nurse's Association - 9-25-59

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Lemme ask ya somethin'. Do you like Insurance Assessors? Put your hands together for Insurance Assessors! I bet at least a few of you were bopping to that great 1994 hit "The Insurance Assessor Mambo" when it got all the way to number one on the Billboard Insurance Songs Chart that year. 

For all of you Insurance Assessor fans, here's an Insurance Assessor reporting his findings on a variety of buildings that he insurance assessed. 

Seriously, I do like to throw in something like this every now and then, just to give a fuller picture of the ridiculously wide range of tapes that I come across. 

Download: An Insurance Assessor Reports His Finding

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Here's another easy one to describe. It's called "Three Songs by a Barbershop Quartet". The description I have for it is that it is three songs sung by a quartet, barbershop style. 

Download: Three Songs by a Barbershop Quartet

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And yet another easy one to explain. It's called "A Young Girl, A Baby, and Their Dad". In this one, you'll hear.... oh, never mind. 

Download: A Young Girl, a Baby, and Their Dad

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Yet another one I'm not going to have much of anything to say about. Here's "An Evangelical Preacher", who is preaching, evangelically. 

Download: An Evangelical Preacher

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And now, for an "Acetate of the Month". In this unlabeled recording, a group of family and friends sing the pop hit "K-K-K-Katy", and then a woman reads a short paragraph of nonsense, then a man tells a story about a small woman trying to remove a large boulder. The sound quality gets fairly poor in the last 45 seconds or so of this recording. 

Download: Audiodisc Unlabeled Acetate - K-K-K-Katy, Humorous Recitation and Boulder Story

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I have, on two previous occasions, here and here, I am, here again, featuring one of the many tapes I somehow became the owner of, which feature an amateur songwriter named Marge Magenheimer. This one qualifies as our "Very Short Reel" for this posting, although some of what's said indicates that it probably came from what was originally a longer tape. But this was all that was on the tape when I got it. There is a bit of pop song singing, then a dedication of sorts from a family member or friend, followed by a short statement from Marge. Then a pianist plays one of Marge's songs. 

Download: A Few More Minutes with Marge Magenheimer and Friends

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Vintage WOR from Fall, 1962: Beautiful Music, Long John, Jean Shephard and News, Plus Bud's Kids and More David Hollister

For the third post in a row, I am largely featuring one very long tape. This one will be quite magical, I think, for a good number of people who come to this site. Because after a short segment of home recorded material (which I quite like), the remainder - over five hours of it - contains vintage recordings of WOR radio in New York, including a bit of Beautiful Music-esque programming, a whole lot of Long John Nebel, and sandwiched between those Long John segments, a vintage newscast and nearly an hour of the much beloved Jean Shepherd. All of this except for the opening segment are from a couple of nights in the fall of 1962. 

Without further ado.....

The tape begins with a short segment, recorded most likely several years after the remainder of the tape. On the box, this is labeled as being "Bud's Kids". It starts with a child singing a few things (including the Nationwide jingle still used today), then segues into another child interviewing people (a younger child and an adult), largely about pollution. This very obviously erased about eleven minutes of what was originally on the tape. 

Download: Bud's Kids - A Bit of Singing, Pollution Talk and More

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As soon as the kids are done, we are transported back to 1962. The talk radio segments make it clear that it was the fall of that year, what with talk of the upcoming mid-term elections and conversations about the 1963 cars, among other things - a few ads for TV presentations which appear to have been from 1961 (including a show starring Leslie Neilson), would have to have simply been reruns. There is no way these conversations are from 1961. 

But before all that, we are treated to a few minutes of Beautiful Music, or something approaching it, at least, on a show called "Music from Studio X". 

Download: WOR, Fall, 1962 - Music From Studio X

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That show goes straight into a long (no pun intended) segment of the Long John show, hosted by Long John Nebel. I have posted Long John material once before, and post, with more text about him, and a link to more information on him, can be found here. In this particular episode, the main guest is a representative of the  B'nai B'rith, as well as several other religious leaders and spokesmen, for a wide ranging discussion centered on religion. 

I enjoyed the fact that no one could call into Long John's show, but instead, had to submit telegrams to him, via a downstairs office, which would then be brought to him. 

But the chintzy commercials here may be my favorite part of this recording, particularly the collection of 50 great melodies from classical music on two LP's - lowbrow music appreciation masquerading as highbrow art. I am reminded of the fantastic parody of this product, which that WFMT, the classical station in Chicago, did in the mid-1960's, called "Great Square Inches in Art", where you got God's finger from the Sistine Chapel and the Mona Lisa's smile. 

Download: Long John on WOR, Fall, 1962 - Religion and Related Subjects

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That recording takes up the remainder of side one, and part of side two. The moment it's over, we are taken to another evening from the same time period, and this time, we hear a newscast and then, the deeply beloved, even revered Jean Shepherd takes over for the rest of the hour. You can read about him here, including how he had few if any advertisers for a time, and almost lost his job. Sure enough, there are no commercials in this more than 45 minutes of radio performance. 

I had never heard Shepherd before this. Honestly, I had avoided him, because I linked him in my mind as the writer of the stories which became "A Christmas Story", a much beloved film which I watched once with my family - all of us found it to be wholly awful. Obviously, your mileage may vary, and taste in movies and and humor is as enormously varied as can be. But despite its reputation for verisimilitude, I didn't find a moment of it believable, endearing or funny. So, as much as I dived into Bob and Ray and other contemporaries of Shepherd, I took a pass. 

That was clearly a mistake. This segment is mesmerizing. He does not seem to know or care exactly where he's going, or how he's going to get there. Stories lead from one into another and the outcome - and when it's going to arrive, is always in doubt. This is pure magic, and just about as entertaining as anything I've ever posted here.  

Download: WOR, Fall, 1962 - Newscast and Jean Shepherd

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The tape ends another 106 minutes of Long John, the episode which immediately followed the above Jean Shepherd segment on some long ago 1962 overnight. In the case, the subject is cars, something I rarely need to hear a group of people talk about (with the exception of Tom and Ray, who worth hearing because they were Tom and Ray, not because they were talking about cars). 

Download: Long John on WOR, Fall, 1962 - Car Talk

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By the way, here's all it says on the box: 

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Okay, so two months ago, I shared the very exciting news that I had been gifted with a box full of tapes that had belonged to a composer named David Hollister. Read all about the gift, the tapes and the composer here. 

Today, I'm offering up the contents of the second tape that I grabbed out of that box. The writing on the back of this box looks like this: 

This tape was pretty much a mess. Recordings start and stop, sometimes in the middle of musical phrases, and the next recording picks up 15 seconds or two minutes later, with backwards material from the other side coming through in the mean time. Segments seem to end haphazardly, there is an introduction of a program of materials written by Mr. Hollister, material which seems to have already been heard on the other side of the tape, none of which follows the introduction! This tape is all over the place. I have edited it down to one continuous segment of what appears on the tape, in the order it appears on both sides, with all of the backwards material edited out. 

There is all sorts of material here. For my money, if you want to hear what's really interesting, jump to the 22:30 point and listen to most of the last ten minutes of this tape, wherein a baritone sings with piano accompaniment. This material starts fairly normal but becomes more and more esoteric, and finally, downright bizarre. By minute 25, the pianist is performing a playful series of rather ugly combinations of keys, and the baritone's singing features fart sounds and nonsense syllables. More odd vocalizing follows, but none of that prepared me (or will prepare you) for the song which ends this segment, and which runs from 30:40 to 32:08. And that is ALL I'll say about it. 

Download: David Hollister and Others - David Hollister Variety Tape # 1

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And finally, today's "Very Short Reel". If you can figure out why this 139 seconds of tape was recorded, you are more observant and clever than I am. Herein, a man narrates an extremely short slide show presentation, featuring someone named The Right Reverend Richardson Reid. Perhaps I am spelling it or hearing it wrong, but I can find no reference to him. 

Download: Very Short Slide Show Narration - The Right Reverend Richardson Reid

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WJJD: The Music of the Stars, Can You Hear My Heartbeat, Some Private Humor and a Bit of Stroh's

For the second post in a row, I'm sharing the contents of only a small group of tapes, but as with the last post, those contents are quite lengthy - nearly five hours in total. This was not by design - it just so happens that some of the more interesting tapes I've grabbed recently had really long segments on them, which I thought would hold some appeal. Based on what I've been listening to this week, the next post may very well be the same again. 

The lions share of this post's content comes from a ten inch reel of tape which was recorded at the ultra slow speed of 1 7/8 Inches Per Second. Even with the recording being only on one side, which it was, that still worked out to just under 4 1/2 hours of recording. 

And every moment of those four hours plus turned out to be recordings of the Chicago radio station WJJD, during its "Music of the Stars" format. Specifically, these recordings were made on the last two days of March, 1985. I know this is not quite the "Beautiful Music" format that some of my reader-listeners crave, but I hope it's close enough to make these recordings worthwhile. One benefit here is that these recordings go straight through, without edit, and therefore contain all the commercials and all of the newscasts that were broadcast during those timeframes. 

WJJD existed with those call letters for nearly 75 years. It was the first rock and roll station in Chicago, flipping to Top 40 four years before the eventual winner in the format, WLS. After a few more format changes, they had settled on the "Music of the Stars" format. For most of its existence, the station could only broadcast during daylight hours, but this changed in 1982. However, as soon as sundown hit, the station's output wattage was dropped precipitously, to avoid conflict with a larger station at the same frequency, out west. As you will hear at the end of the first segment featured here, the sound quality as evening approached took a sudden and decisive turn for the worse, and after about a minute of that, the recording stopped, and picked up again the next day, with the second segment below.

I knew a lot of this stuff already, having grown up in the Chicago area, but if you want the information in a more thorough fashion, the Wikipedia page for the current station at that frequency has it. 

"The Music of the Stars" presented a sort of interesting mélange of performers, everything from Big Band stars to Perry Como to The Chordettes, to Dionne Warwick and Petula Clark. All of it certainly Middle of the Road from today's perspective, but by the same token, not all of it enjoyed by the same audiences during each of those performers' heydays. My guess is, for example, that in 1967, people listening to Harry James were not also listening to Petula Clark. But maybe I'm wrong. 

The first, and longer segment features Gene Janson, with whom I am unfamiliar. The other segment features Bernie Allen, who I fondly remember from my childhood as one of the key voices at WLS, AM 890. 

Download: WJJD, 'The Music of the Stars' With Gene Janson, 3-30-85

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Download: WJJD, 'The Music of the Stars' With Bernie Allen, 3-31-85

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Switching gears pretty forcefully and hoping not to damage the transmission too severely, I will now ask a question: If you were one of the first owners of a brand new reel to reel machine at the dawn of the format, what would you record? On this page, I've posted organ music, radio recordings, light conversations, and even a mix tape (click on this link: "Paper Reels", and you will get a line up of all the posts that featured such early recordings, including this one).

Here is yet another very early recording. This is found on a tape manufactured by Soundmirror, a product of The Brush Development Company, and this particular brand (and this design) is said to be the first commercially available reel tape in America. So this recording probably dates from around 1947. Only a little over one-third of the reel is used (the initial machines could only record on one side of the tape), so this is likely the only recording ever made on this tape. 

And what did those present do? Well, they talked, a little, and that can be heard here. But for much of this tape, one man present - probably the owner of the machine - had his friends and/or family members put the microphone inside their clothing and recorded their heartbeats. Perhaps he was a doctor.....

Not the most scintillating thing I've ever shared, but it holds some fascination for me. You have this new toy, which cost A LOT of money - the blank tapes themselves each cost in the neighborhood of $50 or more in today's money, and your method of demonstrating it - and using that $50 worth of recordable material - is to let people hear their hearts beating. Hmm. 

Download: Very Early Recordings, Circa 1947 - Light Conversations and the Recording of Heart Beats

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And now it's time for our "Acetate of the Month". And this acetate is from just a short 83 years ago, and features recordings from some radio show that apparently ran on Tuesdays, as the recordings are from June 17th and June 24th of 1941. Both feature a sad-sack-in-the-army type comedian named Lynn Borden. Please know that I am not sure of the spelling of this comedian's name. It's spelled two different ways on the two sides of this acetate, and I've looked for him under Lynn, Lyn, Lin and Linn, to no avail. He seems to have disappeared into the ether. 

And that's no surprised because he is painfully unfunny. I have the feeling the audience reaction was being goosed, perhaps quite a bit, by recorded laughter: note the woman laughing herself into hysterics while the audience is still applauding and before he's said anything. What would cause that response from an actual audience member? 

Anyway, here are both sides of the acetate, capturing two of his appearances. I have a couple of other acetate recordings featuring this same guy, if anyone is interested. Just let me know!

Download: Presto Acetate - Private Lynn Borden - 6-17-41

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Download: Presto Acetate - Private Lynn Borden - 6-24-41

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And we'll close with yet another "Very Short Reel". Here's a vintage ad (not dated) for Stroh's beer, an ad titled "Craftsman" from the advertising firm of Doyle, Dane, Bernbach, Inc. 

Download: Doyle, Dane, Bernbach, Inc - Stroh's 'Craftsman' Ad

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New Year's Eve in July, Some Music Shows from 1958, and a Brief Mish-Mash

Greetings!  Today's offerings come from a far smaller number of tapes than usual, but within those tapes, primarily from the first one, there is a total of over five hours of material here. 

But first, a couple of comments. 

Reader/listener Kyle has again identified a site which contains a lot of information on the history of multitrack recordings, and the writer's history with sound on sound and later methods. It has a few home recording examples in the second part. You can find that site and those recordings here.

And then I also want to thank "Snoopy" and another anonymous poster, who both chimed in with appreciation for, and information about, respectively, the avant-garde music and the DJ tape by Lance Shepard, and their comments can be found at the end of that post, here. And Eric Paddon, who can always be counted on to offer up some interesting and relevant history on media recordings, added some thoughts to the Today Show tape I shared last time around. 

Thanks, everyone, as always!

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I was going to save the following tape for a New Year's Eve post, but I realized that I have too many countdown tapes to save all of them for one post. So instead of Christmas in July, this will be New Year's Even in July, complete with part of a nationally syndicated countdown of the top hits of 1980, as heard on WRBR in South Bend, Indiana.

Unfortunately, this is not the entire countdown, but it is the more than four hours of it that could fit on a 2400 foot tape at 3 3/4 IPS. Doubly unfortunately, most of the commercials are cut out. And triply unfortunately, this production, from some organization called Opus, and titled Opus 80, is an adult contemporary (or "soft rock") version of the top hits of 1980. So there is a LOT of dross among the occasional excellent record, more than even would have been the case in a general Top 40 look at the hits of 1980, and a lot of songs heard here would not have been anywhere near a top 100 from Billboard's main pop chart. 

To choose one example, Al Stewart's "Midnight Rocks" scores on this countdown - nationally, on the Billboard all format Hot 100, it got only to number 24 in its actual chart run, not nearly big enough to be one of the biggest 100 hits of the year.  There are a bunch of vacuous quotes and brief interviews throughout. 

Here's the side of that box: 

A small portion (about an hour) of this very countdown is available elsewhere online, but I couldn't find that anything further of it is out there, so I thought I'd share what I have. 

Download: Opus 80 - A Countdown of the Soft Rock Hits of 1980, 12-31-80 WRBR-FM, South Bend, IN - One Section.mp3

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Download: Opus 80 - A Countdown of the Soft Rock Hits of 1980, 12-31-80 WRBR-FM, South Bend, IN – Another Section.mp3

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And now, a step backwards of 22 years (or more) to a show centered around a singer named Patrice Munsel. This comes from the fellow named Charles that I wrote about at a bit more length in this post (sorry about linking to it twice). This is not from the same batch related to the composer that I wrote about there, it's from a previous set of tapes he sent me, which I am also glad to be able to share at this time. 

I'd never heard of Patrice Munsel, but you can read about her show here, and from there you can link and read about her. In short, she was an operatic soprano whose husband worked in TV and got her a show. As you'll hear, the show was a mix of Ms. Munsel singing on her own, guest performers and comedy sketches. As you can see on the tape box, below, this tape contains two such episodes from April of 1958, one of them loosely Easter themed. These are not the entire shows - commercials are cut, for one thing, but even accounting for a few minutes of commercials, the two episodes heard here add up to about 30 minutes, which was the actual length of a single show, at the time. So these are excerpts. 

Download: The Patrice Munsel Show - 4-4-58

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Download: The Patrice Munsel Show - 4-18-58

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On the other side of the tape, there are more excerpts, this time from "The Patti Page Show". Patti Page I have heard of and am familiar with. However, while the tape box says these recordings are from 1958 - and they could well have been made that year - the show actually aired in 1956 and 1957, with reruns airing a year later. These are recordings of those reruns. "Including the final show", with Patti's comments making clear that she did not expect it to be her final show. 

Download: The Patti Page Show, Excerpts from 1958 Including Final Show

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And now, a very short reel. The name of this file makes clear what is on it - a series of short recordings all heard back to back on the same reel of tape. What I tend to refer to as a "Hodgepodge". The most interesting and entertaining thing here is the brief segment of the brilliant Bob and Ray at the beginning - unfortunately the start of the routine is missing, but its easy enough to figure out what's going on. That recording is from NBC's "Monitor", on which Bob and Ray were regulars, for a time. The rest of the tape is sort of hit and miss - a bit of piano, a bit of a speech and an NBC promo. 

Download: Short Hodgepodge - Bob and Ray on "Monitor", Piano, Speech Segment, NBC Promo

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Some Great 1960's Top Forty Radio Jingles, a 1955 Supper Club, The Today Show, More Shortwave, Baby-O, Available Postcards, and Shoving Off

 Let's start today's post with what I'm almost certain will be the most well-received of the several items I'm sharing. This is a reel of tape which contains just under an hour of Top 40 radio jingles, with a few bits of radio production music thrown in. There are multiple stations represented here, and all of this material seems to date to the mid 1960's. See how many hit records you can identify which were being copied - just short of copywrite infringement, and sometimes well over that line - within some of these jingles. 

The stations will become apparent quite quickly, and there are several minutes of jingles from each station. At least some of this material comes from the magnificent PAMS corporation in Texas (there's a brief PAMS jingle about five minutes in), and I wouldn't be surprised if all of it does.  

Download: An Hour of Top 40 Radio Jingles

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Here is the part of the tape box which has information as to the tape's contents, although I think the sides were reversed by the time it came to me, as it starts with WABC. 

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Almost exactly a year ago, I featured a husband and wife team - Ann and Len Nash - who appeared at a supper club, and who promoted their appearances at that club - and the club itself - on radio station KNPT, all of which took place in Newport Oregon. Today, I have two more of these fifteen minute programs for you. As with the first offering, these are from 1955, although in this case, they are not specifically dated. 

Download: Ann and Len Nash from the Hi-Tide Supper Club, Newport, Oregon, Some Time in 1955, on KNPT

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This particular tape box had a slightly damaged insert containing all of the details of these two shows: 

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With politics in the news nowadays seemingly every day of the year, it always seems like a good time to share something politics related. And so, herewith, a self-explanatory lengthy title for a short segment from a January, 1963 edition of "The Today Show"

Download: Two Segments of The Today Show, 1-14-63 - Arthur Schlesinger Interview, Two Senators Preview State of the Union

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Periodically, I have shared parts of the large collection of shortwave recordings, most of them of Australian programming, which I picked up... somewhere, at some point. I've shared most of it, at this point, but have a few tapes left. I held off on this because the quality is fairly poor, then near the end becomes abysmal, but I thought I should share it, since there is an audience for these recordings. The newscast heard here makes it clear (specifically, the golf results, among other stories) that at least part of this tape is from the second week of March, 1968. 

Download: Even More Australian Shortwave

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And now, here are a couple of folks, identified on the tape box as "A. Quinn and Blonde" making several attempts to record a song called "Baby-O", and dated 1958. I think this scan of the back of the tape box is just barely readable. 

Incidentally, this tape was part of the enormous haul I made decades ago, of what turned out to the tapes belonging to (and largely featuring) Larry Taylor, tapes which I have featured here and here, and which also included the amazing "Dora Hall in Memphis" tapes, which I excerpted in my final post at WFMU. A. Quinn is (I think, based on other tapes I'm remembering from this collection) Art Quinn (and certainly not Anthony Quinn), but other than that, I couldn't tell you anything about him. 

There are some entertaining moments here.

Download: A. Quinn and Blonde - Baby-O - Several Takes, Summer, 1958

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How about an Acetate of the Month?!??! Both sides of today's acetate are shared here, and this is what it looks like: 

And in fact, that's what we have. A man who is "shoving off" for the Navy, spending both sides of the record "talking to Irene". Irene is his wife and he also has an infant daughter. At certain points, this is a remarkably touching recording. Let's hope he came back safely. 

Download: Philco Safety Record Acetate - Shoving Off - Talking To Irene, 3-23-44, Side One

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Download: Philco Safety Record Acetate - Shoving Off - Talking To Irene, 3-23-44, Side Two

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And now it's time for our "Very Short Reel" of the post. I have this little segment identified as "Sally Everett Discusses Available Postcards", and beyond that, I can't tell you a thing about it. Maybe someone out there will do a little digging and discern who it was she was working for, and where these postcards were being sold. 

Download: Sally Everett Discusses Available Postcards

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