Mort Sahl Hosts the Tonight Show! PLUS Some Truly Odd Coca-Cola Ads

Howdy, everyone,

As you will have seen if you read my other blog, this has been a truly hectic and busy month, so I will not be typing nearly as much as I often do, allowing much more to be experienced by the listener without all those comments from me.

But first, I want to continue to the Scotch Tape Box series, and that's where I'll do most of my commenting for today. Two entries ago, I shared the box that seems to have been the one they settled on for most of the 1950's, then last time, I went a bit out of turn and showed the 10 inch reel box that seems to have been their style for quite a while in the '50's and maybe into the '60's.

Below you will find the box I believe came next, and it's a radical change from the "picture of a reel of tape" which had been the focal point, to one degree or another, from each previous design:

I believe this design replaced the iconic black-with-most-of-a-reel design some time in the very late 1950's, and was the going design for a couple of years. I say this both because of the material I've found on such tapes over the years - the likely dates of those recordings, and, most centrally: because I literally never saw one of these until I started collecting tapes in the 1980's. That dovetails nicely with the fact that my family did not have a reel to reel machine that worked well - at all - from about 1960 until the fall of 1963. There would have been no reason to buy tapes during that period.

Now, Scotch is promoting the high quality of the tape, and suggesting via the image, that it is what the studios use - and that was probably fairly accurate. This happens to be a 2400 foot reel, which was twice the length that the first reels of tape had. They had previously expanded to 1800 feet, and now made the tape even thinner and lengthened it again. The box says "Double Length - Double Strength", and while the former was absolutely accurate, the new, thinner tape was not in any way stronger - it was more fragile and more likely to stretch and damage, just as you'd imagine. It got even worse when they thinned the tape again and crammed 3600 feet on the same roll of tape, about a decade later.

~~

Okay, like I said, I'm just going to put up this rare and wonderful tape and let it unspool for your enjoyment, without commenting much at all. Here we have an episode (or I think perhaps parts of multiple episodes - I listened to it months ago) of NBC's "Tonight Show", featuring the guest hosting of Mort Sahl. The main part of the tape is an episode featuring several famous women discussing male/female relationships. I'm fairly certain this comes from the several months between Jack Paar's departure from the show and Johnny Carson's arrival, a period during which NBC had multiple guest hosts for the show. If I had more time, I'm sure I could figure out the date(s) of this recording. This is an amazing 90 minutes of tape.

Download: Mort Sahl and Guests - The Tonight Show (1962)
Play:

~~

And here's a VERY peculiar tape I heard for the first time, just this week. It features nine Coca-Cola radio, each one of them featuring a string of helpful household hints that, aside from a couple, have NOTHING to do with Coca-Cola, interspersed with the then-current jingle. I'd love to know how these were received in 1971, because hearing them today is befuddling. Make sure you remember to rub lighter fluid on the walls of your house!

Download: Nine 1971 Coca-Cola Radio Ads
Play:

~~

Finally, I again pulled out a "very short tape" from the pile of them I have by the tape recorder, and found that it was labeled ""Clock Jingles". However, that seems unrelated to the tape's actual content, which is a series of ads for several businesses - no doubt in the same market - very likely from the same advertising company. The link below lists the apparent names of the companies (and, for the first one, the radio station). I'm very unsure that I have them all right, but again, maybe someone out there can identify the location and correct names for these companies.

There are 16 1/2 jingles/ads heard here in just 135 seconds. I say "1/2" because the ad that starts at 1:04 is incomplete - it plays just as you'll hear, on the tape.

Download: Unknown - WMMM, Kettering’s Bread, Sorrow’s, First Federal & Corwin’s Ford
Play:

Two Unusual Collections and Two Very Short Tapes

Happy September!

First, I am indebted, and far from the first time, to Eric Paddon, a consistent follower, and one who often chimes in with further or clarifying information when I share media tapes, particularly vintage radio and TV involving celebrates, shows or genres of the past. Last month, I posted excerpts from two episodes of the Bea Kalmus shows, and Eric offered up detailed and fascinating commentary. You could read these on the page for that posting, but I want to share them here.


The musical that never came off "Mad Avenue" that Fairfax Mason refers to was supposed to open in the summer of 1960 starring Frankie Laine. Then behind the scenes problems resulted in it being delayed and in September 1960, the NY Daily News reported it was going to go into rehearsals in December 1960, still starring Laine, but it never did. The producer of the show sued another NY newspaper in November 1960 for libel, claiming that a June report on the show "dissolving in rehearsal" had caused investors to ask for their money back, and that apparently was why the show never opened.

While there is a superficiality to programs like this and others of the day like the weekly CBS Radio talk show hosted by Mitch Miller in this era from Sardis I do find it a fascinating time capsule of the era and it's very rare when programming like this surfaces.

Also, Mason's career clearly revolved around the narrow world of New York cabaret spots and nightclubs. That has the effect of making such people seem very obscure today because they don't leave behind a long trail of performance work in film/theater to judge their careers, but NY audiences in those days tended to have a better awareness of such people even if they were nobodies west of the Hudson. (The NY Daily News noted she had won the "most beautiful child" contest they put on in 1940 when plugging her eventual Broadway debut in "How To Succeed" While her part was small, apparently she did understudy the lead actress during her time on the show).

Thanks again, Eric!

~~

Today, I have two major items which are unrelated except that they each feature a series of internally related items, strung together in this way for reasons that are not clear to me, although I have a better idea in terms of the first set than I do for the second.

First up, a reel which contains a recording - clearly made from a record, but my copy in on a reel, of a series of numbered musical cues, played by an orchestra. Some are little more than "stingers" - very short pieces probably meant to accentuate a moment in a production (perhaps a radio production), others are introductory or transitional musical phrases, and others are considerably longer music beds. The numbering system is weird - as is the emotionless voice rattling them off . And while there are themes that recur within some of the segments, the different musical items are different enough that they'd be unlikely to all be used in the same setting. However, it seems likely that this was an album of music cues, perhaps for sale, and explained somewhere in a brochure, all of them for use whenever the producer wanted them used.

A neat little oddity:

Download: Unknown - A Collection of Numbered Musical Cues
Play:

~~

As I said, the second item I have today isn't exactly related to the above, but what it does have in common is that it's a series of related items, gathered together here for a reason I can't quite fathom.

I actually thought I'd posted this somewhere before, but I can't find it - if I did, and someone can point me to it, I'll own up!

For 15 minutes, what you'll hear here are is a series of short, suspenseful introductions to.... something. The narrator is excellent, the production values heard in the background are nice, and it seems like somethings going to happen. But as soon as each introduction ends, it goes to the start of another one, which at least in some cases seems to pick up part of the same story, some time later.

Guesses (or answers!) as to what this is about are welcome!

Download: Unknown - A Series of Suspenseful Radio Show Openings
Play:

~~

And now, a couple of very short bits. I thought I'd share the sort of thing I sometimes find buried on otherwise dull tapes (or even otherwise unrecorded tapes). Here's someone singing a familiar song for all of 35 seconds or so.

Download: Unknown - The House of the Rising Sun
Play:

~~

And finally, I have again grabbed one of my "very short reels" at random and digitized it for my ongoing series. In this case, we have an early '80's anti-smoking PSA, set to a generic version of some of the most horrific of popular music styles of that moment, and labeled "Peer Group". In honor of the departing Mad Magazine, let me just say "ECCH".

Download: "Peer Group" Anti-Smoking PSA
Play:

Whew. I think I need to play some Queen, Fats Domino or Fats Waller to clear my mind of that.