Christmas (Almost) Through and Through

As I've done just about every year, I am again offering up a Christmas post. The only difference is that one of today's tapes also contained significant (and interesting) non-Christmas related material, so I've tacked that on at the end. 

First, and perhaps most interesting culturally, is this tape I came across somewhere, featuring former first lady (and so much more) Eleanor Roosevelt reading from "A Christmas Carol" to a group of children, as well as some chatter afterwards. This came to me on two tapes, but I've joined them here.  Curiously, this tape is dated 1/25/56, but I have to think that's actually 12/25/56 or something - why would she have been reading a Christmas story in late January. 

Anyway, this recording does not seem to have been shared anywhere, outside of this offering, and I can find no reference to her having read this book on 1/25/56 or on any other date in such a setting, among her published diaries, which can be found online. Perhaps I missed it. Anyway, it's a pretty neat, rare recording. 

Download: Eleanor Roosevelt Reads "A Christmas Carol"

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Next up, a recording I've labeled "Christmas and Winter Songs and Poems with a Young Child", and that pretty much sums it up. Starting with "A Visit From St. Nicholas and progressing through some songs and some conversation, this is, as far as I'm concerned, an adorable recording. 

Download: Christmas and Winter Songs and Poems, etc, with a Young Child

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Now, let's drop in for nearly an hour of Music and Conversation at Senator Smith's house. It's 1951. I think I once tried to figure out exactly who this "Senator Smith" was - I think he was a state senator - but attempts just now to remind myself were unsuccessful. I suspect someone will chime in. 

Download: Music and Conversation, Christmas Night, 1951, at Senator Smith's House

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This one is nothing more than a short excerpt from a radio presentation of some Christmas hymns and songs, complete with a bit of historical information from an announcer. 

Download: A Short Radio Christmas Program

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On one of those tiny, three inch reels, I found this brief compendium of holiday programming, including some moments from the Glen Campbell show, among others. I've been unable to determine the year for these recordings - again, maybe someone else can figure it out. 

Download: The Glen Campbell Show and Other TV Recordings, Christmastime

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And finally, the entire contacts of a tape which starts with a chorus rehearsing some Christmas songs and goes on to include some interesting country music recordings. 

The choir rehearsal is most interesting to me for the presence of a lilting melody which I found belongs to a Mexican hymn, here translated into English. It's quite beautiful and the words are very effective. I only found one website which features the lyrics to this song in English, and that is here. It's called "Pedida de la Posada" or "The Search for Lodging".

Download: A Choral Group Rehearses Christmas Songs

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When that rehearsal is over, most of the rest of side one of the tape contains a short recording of Kenny Biggs playing country music on WEEP. I featured another tape featuring the same singer/deejay about 18 months ago. My tapes have been moved so many times that it's hard for me to know for sure, but perhaps these were from the same collection. 

Download: Kenny Biggs on WEEP, Pittsburgh

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On the other side of the tape are several recordings by a country and western band. There appear to be at least a few different sessions recorded here, but I'm guessing they are all from the same band. Perhaps someone out there will disagree. There was also music from a band on the last few seconds of side one, and I've tacked those onto the end of this section. 

Download: A Few Songs from a Country Band

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Finally, the band music heard above is followed by some VERY poorly recorded material, also from WEEP, and also apparently involving Kenny Biggs. This is music which was broadcast live over that station from The New Aurora Hotel, which was located in the extraordinarily chunkily named "The McKees Rocks Bottoms" area of Pittsburgh. Despite the poor recording - which I've attempted to improve, to little effect - I thought this was worth hearing. 

Download: Country Music from The New Aurora Hotel in The McKees Rocks Bottoms, on WEEP

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I wanted to get this out a week before Christmas, and have failed to do that already, so the Acetate of the month and the Very Short Reels feature will not be featured in this post. 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

A JFK Remembrance, A City Councilman's Ad, More Voices from a "Small" Town, A Stereo Sampler, Geraldo Plays for You, and Some Animal Voices

Happy Post-Thanksgiving to all who celebrated it a few days ago! 

As I was sitting at my work desk around 12:15 or 12:30 PM on Friday of last week, it occurred to me that it was almost exactly at that moment on that same date, 61 years earlier, that John F. Kennedy was shot and killed. I shared this thought on Teams with, well, my team, to a big round of no response. 

But it did remind me of this tape, which I think is perfect to lead off today's post, seeing as how it also aired on an anniversary of that event, and served as a commemoration of that event. Here, from 1968, is that tape: 

Download: Commemoration of the Death of JFK - Radio Broadcast - 11-22-68

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And now, just a bit too late to tie in with the recent election, here are a group of folks making multiple attempts to get a lengthy political advertisement just right. The subject of the ad is a then-alderman in the Chicago City council, a Republican (sometimes, the only Republican) in that Democratic Party dominated council, and apparently quite a thorn in the side of Mayor Richard J. Daley. His name was John Hoellen, Jr. You can read about him here. It took me quite a while - and some help from an outside source - to find out who the subject of this promotional song was, as his name is misspelled on the tape box. Have a look: 

You'd think the people who were hired to perform on a commercial in support of someone who know how to spell his name. On the other hand, I would also agree with the tape box that this material is "Junk". I'm going to say that this was probably recorded in support of Hoellen's 1963 race for re-election to the council, as the song is a ham-fisted knock off of the 1962 hit "Big Bad John". You can get the gist of this session by listening to the first five minutes or so, since the entire tape consists of nearly identical, thudding performances of the same two minute, fifteen second commercial. Most of them were recorded at 15 IPS, the last few were at 7 1/2 IPS. 

I'd have to guess that Hoellen was re-elected in spite of this material, rather than in anyway because of it. 

Download: Unknown - Recording a Political Ad for "Big Bad John Hoellen"

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Just over eight years ago, I posted a set of raw tapes from the production of a PBS television episode, titled "Life in a Small Town". At the time, I wrote this: 

For today, here's an interesting reel, one which captures the raw tapes for a show - I believe a local PBS show from the Maryland area - called "People In Process". I can find no references to this show, but admittedly haven't looked that hard.

The investigation here (such as it is) is into how people in a small town view life in a small town. That they chose the city of Annapolis, Maryland, which is the capital of the state, strikes me as weird, especially given that the town had 30,000 residents in the late '60's and early '70's, which is when I'm guessing this is from. Perhaps it's because I was raised in a town of 4000 people, but 30,000 people isn't a "small town" to me.

Today, I have another reel containing more raw tapes from that same production (actually, a comparison of the two boxes shows this to be the early recorded of the two). Here 'tis: 

Download: People in Process - More Raw Tapes for "Life in a Small Town"

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And here's that box: 

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In the early days of reel to reel recording, and in particular, the early days of stereo (which was introduced on reels in 1957, a year before it made its way onto records), tape recorder manufacturers and companies producing pre-recorded tapes, provided their customers with sampler and demonstration tapes to indicate the wonders of reel to reel sound. I've shared many of these before, and here it yet another, from the Replica label. Replica releases some amazing albums, a few of which are in my collection. But as far as I can tell, they did not dive very deeply into the Reel to Reel market. This sampler's narrator mentions that they had only produced seven tapes so far (each of which is "sampled" here), and I cannot find anything online to indicate that the reel division of their label made it out of 1958, or beyond 8-10 releases. 

Download: New Adventures in Sound - A Stereo Sampler From Replica

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Reaching into the past of this blog yet again, six months ago, I featured some segments from a tape of 1961 BBC musical programming. Here is another segment from that same tape, in this case, "Melody Hour with Geraldo and His Orchestra. Play It, Geraldo! (or should that be "Conduct It, Geraldo"?):

Download: BBC - Melody Hour with Geraldo and His Orchestra- Circa Summer, 1961

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Finally, I'm going to stretch the concept of a "Very Short Reel" today. I started off focusing on tapes which, in their entirity, were under five minutes. Then I started featuring segments of tapes which were under five minutes, even if the segment was part of a much longer tape, and recently I've been pushing that limit to six minutes. Today, I will revert to an entire tape - a large reel with only 7:22 of recording tape on it, but, as noted, will extend the definition of "short" to 7:22. 

And this is really worth hearing. A young man - sounds like he is perhaps in his mid to late teens - starts the tape by impersonating my choice for the worst section of "The Wizard of Oz", that being the "If I Were King of the Forest" segment. He then goes on, for whatever reason, to portray several creatures from the animal kingdom, each with its own vocal delivery and name. That's all well and good, but when he's done, we hear the last few seconds of what he was erasing with his animal talk - a much more serious and rather intimate sounding discussion of a most intimate experience he'd had. I very much would have preferred to hear what sounds like it much have been a pretty fascinating little vocal essay in complete form than hearing the animal bit which erased it.  

Download: A Boy Impersonates a Series of Animals (and a bit more)

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Guest Post: Some Great 1950's Rarities - Jazz Radio, Lee Hazen, A & P, Rod Serling's Music Show & The Midwestern Hayride

Today, I have something special for everyone. Since the summer of 2019, I have been in an email exchange with a man named Matt, who has a vast reel to reel collection of his own. He has been nice enough on two occasions to send me 1800 foot reels full of some of the treasures from his collection. I don't think I understood after he sent the first one that he meant for me to share whatever I wanted to, on this site (and I need to go back and revisit that tape, now that I do understand that), but he made this clear to me a few weeks ago regarding the most recent tape he sent. And so that's what I'm going to do. I'm also going to turn over the comments, for the most part, to him, and I will share those excerpts that I've chosen, from his tape to me, in the order in which they appear on the tape. It made for a somewhat shorter post than usual, so I have tacked on a few of my own items at the end. 

The first segment features DJ Bill Marlowe appearing on WILD radio, Boston, on Halloween of 1959. Here's what Matt wrote: 

Bill Marlowe was a Boston "star" who did remotes, pitched everything, and was quite the personality. The reel was marked "Marlowe aircheck" on an old reel of Irish. I have a feeling it's a tape of another tape. It was given to me by a friend who used to trade airchecks with me . I have another Marlowe check but it's MOR schlock. He jumped around a bit, ending up at WRKO radio in Boston? NYC?  I recall reading something about a riot that happened at a dance party that Marlowe was giving. He hated Rock and Roll...Silly Billy !

I will only add that this tape has been "Scoped" (that is, edited down to mostly focus on the DJ), rather haphazardly. There are longer portions of some songs than you would typically hear on a "scoped" reel, and some commercials play in their entirety while others are cut almost completely. It makes for a slightly choppy listen. 

Download: Bill Marlowe on WILD, Boston, 10-31-59

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Next up, a short tape of some guitar music, made by a young man named Lee Hazen, who would go on to do a lot of significant work in the ensuing years. Here again is Matt: 

Lee Hazen made a "demo tape" of some of his recording career since the 50's. The recording of his Lambretta was recorded on an Ampex A 122 at the ripe age of 14. After that he shifted from being a frustrated musician to a top shelf recordist  He started his career at Criteria, then King and finally ending up at Woodland sound. His first major recording job was "The Escorts" who later became the Allman Brothers .In 2002  Lee sold that first recording (master) that was a live show with the Beach Boys at Ormond Beach ,Fla to the Brothers ex roadie.  His first real paying job was with the Nashville songwriters guild working for Glen Snoddy. The two guitar pieces were Lee's compositions from his days at the guild . If you look him up on the net you will find a lot about him  He eventually had his own studio  at his house in Hendersonville 'TN Where he recorded and produced England Dan and John Ford Coley's Hit "I really want to see you tonight". We were good friends until his death a few years back.  Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt, Leon Russell, Lonnie Mack ,Dan Fogelberg were some of the few who he either mastered or recorded. Perhaps you recall "Little Black Egg" by the Nightcrawlers?  His neighbor was  Crystal Gayle and when I would visit he would take me to see Lawrence Welk's guitar player who lived up the street.  That cat could play at age 80!

Download: Lee Hazen - Demo Tape, 1961

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The next section of Matt's tape qualifies as our "Acetate of the Month", as it clearly originated on an acetate, even though it came to me on a tape. In the 1950's and 1960's, prerecorded ads were often recorded on acetates which would be used for a week or a month or, to promote whatever the store or business wanted to promote at that moment. I have dozens of these, Matt did not offer up anything worth quoting in this case, but indicated that he has hundreds of them. This undated acetate contains four ads for the A & P grocery store chain. 

Download: Four A & P Ads

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The next segment may be the most fascinating here. That's because it is an early television effort from Rod Serling. "Melody Showcase" appeared on WLW, Cincinnati, and Serling was one of the writers AND one of the performers on this "Let's Put On a Show" styled program. If Serling wrote the genuinely awful and campy sounding transitions here - as phony in terms of feigned enthusiasm and staginess as can be - well, then he certainly got a lot better in the ensuing few years. They come from a large amount of material Matt was gifted with after a friend who had worked at that station had died. Here's what Matt had to say: 

In a corner of the basement was a stack of paper tapes. On direction was mostly preacher talks and a few bits of choral religious singing. When flipped over, they were tapes from the skimmer at WLW. One tape dated from 1953 was "Melody Showcase", with the then-new writer Rod Serling in attendance. He started in Cincy at Channel 12 but moved to what was then Channel 4 - WLW - soon before the recording was made. He tried to be funny but you can tell he wasn't really into such campy fluff.

I think this is amazing stuff, as awful as the actual contents can be at times. Of course, "America's Got Talent" and "The Masked Singer" currently rack up fantastic ratings, so it doesn't seem like this country's overall taste in programming has improved in 70 years. 

Download: Melody Showcase, WLW, Cincinnati, Circa 1953

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The rest of that same "Melody Showcase" tape contained my favorite item from the entire tape that Matt sent me: a few minutes of rehearsal from a local show - from the same station, of course - "Midwestern Hayride". Here's Matt again: 

Midwestern Hayride was a regional powerhouse that at times rivaled the Grand ole Opry in listenership . They were a national NBC TV summer replacement I think in 1956 or so . I have about 8 tapes from the 1950's. One is from the control room of the TV station which is a real hoot. Bonnie Lou was an excellent yodeler and cut a few sides . One charted on the country charts but I can't recall when. From the early 50's to mid seventies WLW Crosley/Avco owned 4 TV /Radio Stations-Cincy, Columbus, Dayton ,Indy and a radio only in Atlanta.   Midwestern Hayride was a weekly program and always had a good book until the demise of country musical programs .

Download: Rehearsal Session for 'Midwestern Hayride', WLW, Cincinnati, Circa 1957

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Now, I love that entire segment, but far more than the rest of it, I adore the arrangement and performance of a song heard in pieces - and then almost complete - in the first half of the tape, a song called "The Lord is a Busy Man". I first heard Matt's tape about three weeks ago, maybe a bit more, and I have listened back to this particular song (the nearly complete run through) nearly every day since. I've isolated it here as a single offering in case some of you do not care to listen to the entire 12 minute segment above but might be willing to hear a two minute song if I rave about it. 

Lyrically, this is just cutesy. Presumably, these lyrics about what The Lord does every day weren't meant to be taken seriously - I'm sure the point was meant to be on the relationship with humanity. But the words are absolutely not the point for me. It's all about that arrangement. WOW. The small backing combo is rocking and swinging their hearts out, and that close vocal arrangement.... well, nearly every single word of the song has four part harmony, most of them sung with all the voices inside of the same octave. Tight, wonderful harmony, nearly all of it based (for all you musicians) around sixth chords. And I'm telling you, I LIVE FOR SIXTH CHORDS. And then those magical moments of unison shouting - especially near the end, when one of the musicians shouts out encouragement....the whole thing is amazing. I had taken an MP3 of this tape on a walk with me and when I got to this song, I was SWOONING. I mean, it just about knocked the wind out of me, and I'd be surprised if it doesn't soon notch its way into my top 100 list of all time (yes, I have such a list). 

And it's definitely the arrangement and certainly not the words: there are other versions of this song out there - it seems to date to about 1955 - and they do nothing for me. 

I hope it lives up to all that for you, dear listener. This is utter perfection in vocal and instrumental arrangement.

Download: Midwestern Hayride Rehearsal - The Lord is a Busy Man

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Thank you SO MUCH, Matt, for everything here. And folks, he's promised there's more if I want it. I certainly do. 

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And now, we're back to things from Bob's collection. I'll round out this post with two items, one VERY long and one VERY short. Sticking with the 1950's theme, here is a two hour audio letter from Mr. and Mrs. Cox to their son Billy, dated October 9th, 1955 (John Lennon's 15th birthday, by the way). Along the way, they go through myriad subjects, don't they? And that's really all I have to say about it!

Download: Barbara Cox and Her Husband - Audio Letter to Son Billy, October 9, 1955

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And as (almost) always, I'll finish with a "Very Short Reel". I have, in several cases recently, shared an excerpt from a longer reel of tape - often the only thing of interest among many minutes or hours of recording. But in this case, I've gone back to the original concept of this feature: this is from a seven inch reel which contained only a little tiny bit of tape. And on that tape was just over five minutes of a guy playing guitar. There are two pieces here - I hesitate to call them songs. During the performances, the guy playing is sort of mumbling something, but I really can't tell if he's singing a melody or just humming notes that fit with his three chords. The second seems more likely to be a recognizable song, but I don't recognize it. So if anyone out there recognizes an actual tune in either of these two performances, please let me (and all of us) know. 

Download: Unknown - A Guy and a Guitar

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Vintage TV Variety with George Gobel, Some Paranormal Material, The Piano Man, A Few Minutes with Sonja, More David Hollister and Cracking Corn

 Greetings!

I like to get two posts out every month, and this being the night of the 31st, I am speedily putting this one together, so I won't have too much to say. 

Vintage television programming seems to be among the more popular things I offer here, so here's something fun: The George Gobel show for the last week of 1958. George Gobel, I suspect, is largely forgotten today by anyone under 60 years old, but he was quite popular in the 1950's and into the early 1970's, had his own variety show, and appeared frequently on the tonight show and other talk and variety shows, including a stint on The Hollywood Squares. 

This episode was a bit of cross promotion, with the entire cast of "Leave It to Beaver" appearing on the show, as well as Eddie Fisher and Maureen O'Hara, among others. This recording is of the entire show, complete with commercials, so enjoy a flashback to nearly 66 years ago. 

Download: The George Gobel Show, 12/30/58

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I really don't know anything about this next recording. It is from the same tape from which I took the most recent recordings of Jack Eigen and the recordings I posted last month featuring Arthur Godfrey. meaning that it is from sometime around June of 1969. It is a documentary exploration of the paranormal. 

Download: Paranormal Radio Show, Circa June, 1969

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Now here is a fairly lengthy tape which may well put you to sleep, or else perhaps you'll find it interesting, entertaining, soothing, who knows. This is a tape, seemingly from the very early 1980's, in which a man plays the piano and runs through a whole bunch of piano-man type songs. There are standards from way back when, songs I don't recognize, and songs which, at the time, would have been quite recent. 

This comes from the very same tape which featured "The Bob Terry 50th Birthday Party", which I shared one month ago, so it's quite possible that this is also Bob Terry, but I have no proof of that, so I'm not labeling it as such. 

Download: A Piano Man Runs Through His Repertoire

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This next tape, all of eight minutes long (exactly) features a little girl named Sonja (or perhaps Sonya) singing some of her favorite songs and telling a few stories. I'm sure this is fingernails-on-a-blackboard for some people, but I love this sort of stuff. I'd listen to this all day before I'd willingly spend time listening to the piano man I shared above. 

Download: Sonja Sings, Tells Stories and Talks

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For this next tape, I refer you back to my first post about David Hollister, the composer whose tapes I have been gifted with. This is the third tape I've shared from that Hollister collection, and the second which has a variety of recordings on it. 

This tape box has stuff written all over it. Here is the back of the box and the two panels from inside the box: 

I am truly rushing this post out, so I have not taken the time to try and match up what's on the tape with what's on the box - some of the writing above seems to contradict what other parts of the box say is on the tape. And it's only a 50 minute tape - I'm not at all sure it lines up with the writing completely, and perhaps not at all. Perhaps someone out there will figure it out for all of us. 

Download: David Hollister Variety Tape # 2

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The "Very Short Reel" feature is taking this post off, but I do have an "Acetate of the Month", and it's a "Very Short Acetate of the Month". This is from a "Voice-O-Graph 6 inch acetate, which was typically a record that you could make in a booth at a restaurant or a department store of the like and take home with you. I've written before about how we made one in downtown Chicago with my beloved grandmother and managed to damage it beyond repair before we got home. 

Anyway, here we have some kids singing a song I don't recognize, followed by a few chorus of the "Jimmy Crack Corn" section of the song "The Blue Tail Fly", sung to a melody I also don't recognize. It's all of 63 seconds long. 

Download: Voice-O-Graph 6 Inch Acetate - Unknown Song and The Blue Tail Fly

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Top 40 Radio in 1963, Lawyers Entertain in 1953, Arthur Godfrey in 1969, Testing the Microphone in 1967, North Dakota Knickerbockers, and an Arrogant Blue-Nose Browbeats a Citizen.

I'll start off with some good old Top 40 Radio recordings, as those seem to be among the most popular things I share. Here is just over an hour of such programming, from WEAM, a powerhouse in Arlington, Virginia. One caveat - Vintage Top 40 recordings are usually the most interesting to folks due to the material between the songs - the commercials, the DJ patter, etc. That's what you'll get in the first 32 minutes here. The second side of the tape (the final 32 minutes) are far more edited and mostly feature the local and national hits of the day. 

I remain amazed, as I always am by tapes of this vintage, by the fact that the standard procedure on these stations seemed to be to play one song, then a commercial, then another song, then another commercial, etc. 

And maybe I'm just being dense (which is not at all unlikely), but I cannot for the life of me figure out the point of one line in a cigarette commercial, one which (I was actually impressed to hear) encouraged only adults to smoke. It features the following line: "Lucky Separates the Men from the Boys.... But Not From the Girls". Huh? 

Download: WEAM, Top Forty Radio, Arlington, Virginia, 1963

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Now, here's a tape which is a real time capsule, and a fascinating look at a very specific time and place. For here we have 30 or so minutes of various entertainments as they were provided to a convention of lawyers in 1953. There is a small vocal group with piano who sing a few songs at the start, and later a folk singer type who sings some slightly bawdy material, then, at the end, a bit of a racy story - the sound quality gets poor near the end and the tape runs out before we get to the end of the story.

This was clearly a room full of nothing but (or very nearly nothing but) male lawyers, which is no surprise, given the date. And as befits a show geared towards a very male group of highly educated professionals, in 1953, the centerpiece of this tape, and clearly the bit which was meant as the highlight of the entertainment, is what I would, in retrospect call its lowlight: a sketch in which a group of lawyers present what a lawyers' coffee klatch / card playing session would look like if all of the lawyers behaved and talked as their wives do, when at their own get togethers. Ho ho ho. It's cringeworthy.  

Download: Entertainment at a Lawyers' Convention, 1953

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Here's a short, fun little tape I listened to for the first time recently. I don't know if this was a syndicated program or if The Knickerbockers were local to North Dakota, but for 11 1/2 minutes, they provided a performance of what were, even in 1951, some old-timey songs for the listeners of WDAY. The show was called "Harmony Lane", and the reference to the recent death of a songwriter (who also was a professional boxer!) nicely provides us with a date for this program. 

Download: Harmony Lane, with The Knickerbocker Four on WDAY, North Dakota, 1951

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I have been periodically sharing the contents of several tapes which feature Chicago radio icon Jack Eigen, including in my last post. What I'd forgotten about those tapes (until I pulled them out) is that they also contain some recordings of the syndicated program hosted by Arthur Godfrey. The show ran for under an hour (I would assume after a newscast). 

I have said repeatedly that I don't particularly enjoy Jack Eigen's shows and don't fully understand the appeal. But Eigen's shows were award-worthy compared with these late-era Godfrey shows (and, I'm guessing, the same could be said about earlier examples of his show, which ran for decades). Godfrey has a small band of sycophants who laugh at all of his cringeworthy jokes (as bad as any of the laughing goons heard today on hundreds of local morning radio shows), does live, boring reads for a variety of cheap products, and generally provides morning entertainment seemingly designed to put the listener back to sleep. Ecch. 

I suppose my reaction to these shows could also be influenced by having read many things about what an enormous jackass Godfrey was. 

I have more of these - please let me know if you want to hear them. And why. 

Download: The Arthur Godfrey Show, 5-22-69

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Here's a fun - and then later, a bit boring - fairly brief tape, presumably from 1967. I'm honestly including this one mostly for completeness sake - what's on the other side (below) is MUCH more interesting. But the opening segment, in which a couple of kids sing two fairly disparate top 40 hits from 1967, is pretty entertaining. From there on out, it's sort of a slog through a lot of microphone tests, first with interminable "number" tests and then checking the levels via reading of local news reports. Then you'll be ready for the fireworks on the other side of the tape... 

Download: Unknown - A Few Hits from 1967 and Lots of Microphone Testing

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I really shared the above tape for a sense of completeness, as it is the second side of the tape which is more interesting, and I would say, by far the most compelling recording I am sharing today. 

The Women's Christian Temperance Union, which was founded in Ohio but has been based in Evanston, IL for more than a century, was one of the premier driving forces behind Prohibition, if not the single biggest driver of the movement that led to it. And of course, what the bluenoses at the WCTU couldn't foresee in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century was that Prohibition would give rise to the ever increasing success organized crime, a problem that has never left us since.  (As I've mentioned in passing, my maternal grandfather was the spokesman for the WCTU in the 1920's and early 1930's (prior to his moving on to radio work and nationwide media prominence), to my mother's eternal embarrassment.)

Anyway, even though this is from the flip side of the tape above, I can't assume it's also from 1967. Because the flip side also contained some extremely badly recorded excerpts from 1950's Liberace TV episode. So it really could be from any point from the mid-1950's on. 

Regardless of the date, this is an amazing and despicable recording. A Mrs. Mars, of the WCTU, calls a locally prominent man (he doesn't seem to be a politician, but he seems to be a citizen of some significant influence). I am not sure I've gotten his name right - it sounds like Lusford, but could well be something else. Mrs. Mars records the call and makes no mention of this to the man she is calling - I don't know if that was illegal at the time or not. My supposition is that she wanted to have proof of whatever it was he might say, should she later wish to undercut his influence or catch him in a later contradiction or lie. She seems to have no problem recording herself engaging in her own inexcusable behavior - no doubt because she had no problem with engaging in that behavior. 

As I always say, your mileage may vary, but I hear a bully, one who is self-assured of being holier than thou about just about everyone, capable of using her influence to undercut anyone she doesn't approve of. She draws lines in the sand. For example, one candidate for office was one arrested for bootlegging (which by definition must have been at least 20, possibly 30 years earlier). And she seems to have spies in Mr. Lusford's place of business, as she knows for a fact that another candidate of questionable integrity recently visited that building, and stayed there quite a long time. Mr. Lusford must tell her at least three times that he didn't see the man, but she is not impressed. There are other questions of the "when did you stop beating your wife" nature along the way. 

I was reminded several times of Joe McCarthy's methods while listening to this tape, and I know that similar browbeatings have taken place over the years in Congress and elsewhere by people with certain agendas. 

Have a listen.

Download: Mrs. Mars of the WCTU Calls Mr. Lusford

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And now it's time for the "Very Short Reel" for this post. It's getting to be time that some people might be thinking about what they'll be doing on the last night of the year. So here is an ad agency named "Sound Resources" with two ads - a 60 second one and a 30 second one - for the Treasure Island Casino's New Year's Party. I advise calling first - I sort of doubt the details heard in this ad still apply. 

Download: Sound Resources - Treasure Island Casino's New Year's Party

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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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