Recordings from the Very Dawn of Home Reel to Reel Recorders

Howdy, everyone, and a very happy (upcoming or otherwise) New Year to you and yours! Be sure to go all the way to the bottom of this post before leaving to see my family's unique Christmas Card.

I'm going to ask your indulgence today, as I seriously geek about a tape that I recently bought. Maybe this will hold the same fascination for you, maybe not, but this tape is as rare as they come. I'm going to go on at length, so I hope you'll allow me this geekiness. Let me explain:

As I've written about multiple times elsewhere, part of my fascination with reel to reel tapes and recordings began with my own family's recordings, which went back to 1952 (I was born in 1960), and the behemoth tape recorder on which they were recorded. No one else I knew, when I was growing up, had recordings of any sort that captured their family life, or the things they liked to listen to, from the 1950's. And until this month, my family's first recording, from December of 1952, was the oldest home/family reel recording I'd ever heard, from anyone.

Not anymore. I just purchased a small set of reels, among which were included a set of paper reels (that is, magnetic tape backed by paper, rather than some type of plastic, a format which was phased out at least by 1952), some of which contain home recordings. And the first tape I played from this collection contains recordings which are audibly (and confirmed by the writing on the box) dated to Labor Day of 1949, just over 70 years ago.

I can't imagine how much a reel tape machine cost (in 2019 dollars), in the late 1940's. Recall the initial price for VCRs, and for CD players (and CDs) when those formats were new. I know the first CD I bought cost nearly $30, and some of the players cost a thousand dollars in the early days. Such is the price of new technology. And this family's machine had to have been bought by the summer of 1949. Three years later, in 1952, when my father bought a used studio model, the "new" price for the model he bought was $400, about $4000 in today's dollars. (Dad really must have really wanted the new technology, since he was a relatively new husband and father just starting out on his life's work at the time.) I suspect that in 1949, the cost was even steeper.

Virtually no one outside of the Nazis (who invented reel tape technology) and the American companies (which "borrowed" and studied the technology after the Allies brought it home, for the first few years after the war) knew anything about this technology before 1948.

I recall that the great folk and blues singer Lead Belly, during what became known as his "Last Sessions", recorded in the late fall of 1948, can be heard asking if they don't have to break after five minutes of recording - an artist who had spent much of the decade in various recording studios had never seen a reel tape machine before 1948, and expected to have to stop after every song for a change of disk. The notes to the album refer to the machine used as having been "experimental".

And I also recall that it wasn't until 1949 that Les Paul acquired his first reel to reel machine, and proceeded to revolutionize recording, inventing effects and procedures and making some of the best records ever made in the process.

So this family acquired a reel to reel machine roughly the same time, or a few months after Les Paul began fiddling with his Ampex machine.

Just to clarify, I'm sure that plenty of radio stations, recording studios and, of course, the reel to reel manufacturers had plenty of these machines by 1949. And I have a handful of reels from that era which contain radio broadcasts and records. But nothing from a family's living room.

I would venture a guess that no one else in this family's town, city, county or general region had one of these. To take it a step further (and perhaps I'm underestimating here), I would guess that, in the summer of 1949, the number of private citizens that had a reel to reel machine in the home was numbered in the dozens or hundreds. But this family had one. And I have their tapes.

They are not, I will hasten to add, all that much fascinating as hunks of recording. The first part of the tape has some very dull popular and religious music, and the family sections are bland enough that, were it not for the age of the recordings, I probably wouldn't have considered sharing them. And yet.... wow. Just wow. 1949.

Okay, so what exactly does this thing sound like? Well, here's that opening section, containing just untder nine minutes of the music I just mentioned:

Download: Various Artists - Variety Music
Play:

And here's the meat of the recording - a family with small children, encouraging them to talk - say prayers, say their names, say other things, etc., first on Labor Day, 1949, and then once again, two years later, on October 3rd, 1951. This section runs 23 minutes, and contains a couple of minutes of some more music at the end, which I didn't feel like separating out. I do get a kick out of the fact that the children's prayers, clearly recited on a regular basis, include a wish for such folks as The Easter Bunny, but otherwise, this is garden variety home recording stuff. except, again, 1949. If these children are still around, they're probably in their mid 70's now:

Download: Unknown Family - 1949 & 1951 Recordings
Play:

(Incidentally, as an aside for those who are as geeky as me about this - these 1949 tapes (there is also another one, containing nothing but bland music) are recorded in a fashion that must have been phased out VERY quickly, as they are only the second and third tapes I've ever played which are recorded this way. Rather than whole track mono (where the entire track is used going one direction, very common in the early days), or half track mono (where one half of the tape is recorded on going one direction, the other half recorded on when you flip the tape over - the typical "mono" recorder style of the 1950's and later), the tapes I'm referring two are recorded on half the track, but right down the middle of the tape, leaving the outside quarter on either side blank. On my stereo machine, the recording comes in on the right channel on both sides. Those who understand reel tape recording will follow me, and I'm wondering if any fellow geeks are familiar with this recorder style - it would have used only half the available space, but also only allowed you to record on one side. Very peculiar and unusual.)

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For those of you who didn't find that scintillating, I have a sort of sequel to a post I made back in March of 2018, from a network radio series called "The American School of the Air". That posting featured a rather exploitative play-let about a cad trying to take advantage of a young woman, followed by a remarkably (for its day) frank discussion about sex ed. That program was from the subset of episodes of the series called "Opinion Please". I have a stack of tapes from this show.

Today's tape comes from the subset of episodes called "Tales of Adventure", although I don't find it remotely adventurous, and I have a hard time understanding exactly what was supposed to be educational here - it was, after all, "The American School of the Air". The play this time is called "This Football", and if there is a message, it seems to be, "don't use derogatory names to insult older first generation Italians who have no idea how to be a supportive parent". However, even though there is a plot point involving an insult, nothing is really done about it as far as using this event as a teaching tool, within or outside of the play. In fact, this is more of a soap opera than anything educational.

Please enjoy "This Football":

Download: The American School of the Air - This Football (From "Tales of Adventure")
Play:

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Next, here's the latest tape I pulled from the stack of "Very Short Reels". In this case, it is a pair of 30 second ads for Dairy Queen. The box it was housed in is scanned below the sound files, but the writing on the box, which is for a 60 second commercial, doesn't match the contents of the reel. And someone has also screwed up the second commercial, as you'll hear less than a second into it.

Download: Dairy Queen - Two 30-Second Ads
Play:

And finally, as promised, and few days late, here is my family's Christmas Card. Just so you know, for most of the last several years, my family has been using the Christmas Card concept as a jumping off point for a bit of performance art. Each of us has supplied ideas in the past - this was was mine. There's a lot going on here... I'm in the middle, with my adult kids on either side of me and my wife on the far left. On the right is my daughter's boyfriend.