Late September Cornucopia!

Greetings!

First, thank you to those who chimed in with comments and or condolences about my basement calamity. I appreciate it.

I have five reels/segments of reels today, with no particular theme, and none of them stand out as being the most exciting or most interesting (although perhaps one wins the "least interesting" prize), so I'll just start describing and posting them here in random order.

With politics all over the news these days, perhaps the most relevant of these clips is one from early in the 1964 primary season, specifically, January 31, 1964, and an interview with the eventual nominee, Barry Goldwater, on "The Jack Paar Program" for that evening.

We certainly have come (or gone) a long way in terms of what constitutes an acceptable and appropriate interview - on both sides of the conversation - between a host and a politician, in the ensuing 56 years.

Download: Jack Paar - Interview with Barry Goldwater, 1/31/64
Play:

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Probably my favorite of today's five-spot comes from almost exactly 11 years before that Goldwater interview. In this case, it's a family named The Robertsons, mom, dad and two boys, reaching out to friends via this new contraption called a reel to reel tape recorder to make a new thing called an audio letter on tape.  Very, very few people had home recorders in 1953. What a revolutionary thing this must have felt like.

Most of this audio letter is taken up by the couple's sons, who go on longer than either parent wants them to, and continue after they've been asked to stop because they're almost done.

I find this whole thing utterly charming and endearing, and hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Here is the back of the four inch reel tape box - a size I don't believe Scotch made for very long, by the way:

And here is the actual recording:

Download: An Audio Letter from The Robertsons - David, Douglas, Margie and Pete - January 27, 1953
Play:

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I did mention that one segment might be the least interesting, and here it is. Tedious might actually be a better word. This track combines two things I've shared in the past - the slide show narration, of which I've offered several, and the hard-to-get-through boring tape, which I've only offered up occasionally, including last time around.

This tape comes from our friends at the General Telephone Company of California, and it is a 36 1/2 minute narration of a slide show about..... well.... "Wiper Springs on Stroger Two Motion Switches". Doesn't that sound scintillating? I've listened to the entire thing and have no idea what they're talking about, or what it has to do with telephones.

The tape begins and ends with machinery sounds, but almost the entire thing is the slide show narration.

ENJOY!!!

Download: General Telephone Company of California - Wiper Springs on Stroger Two Motion Switches (slide show)
Play:

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Next up, some Beautiful Music. This sort of thing does not "do it" for me, but every time I post this stuff I get thankful, grateful comments, so as I come across more if it, I will certainly post it. This segment is fairly short - just under 16 minutes - and I don't think it's a single, uncut 16 minutes, as there seems to be at least one edit in there. Happily, there is a commercial break included. The station is WFMS, Indianapolis, which seems to have become a Country station in the early 1970's, so this is probably from the 1960's.

Download: WFMS, Indianapolis, Beautiful Music Programming
Play:

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And finally, this week's Very Short Reel.

This is a voice actor / voice over actor demo reel. These sort of reels were sent by the boatload to companies across the country to peddle the vocal wares of a variety of voice over people and actors looking for some extra change. I have dozens of these, or maybe even hundreds.

The one I pulled out at random today is by Neil Kobin, and I'm thinking this is from the 1970's. Here is Neil Kobin's Demo Reel:

Download: Neil Kobin's Demo Reel
Play:

And the box cover: