To Be a Young Woman in the Age of Aquarius.... With Some Pabst!

Today's main feature is a two part trip into the world of Audio Letters, with at least a bit of overlap in terms of the when and who of those letters. 

Both of these letters were recorded on tiny three inch reels of tape, which I've found to be the primary venue for audio letters, at least starting in the mid 1960's and forward. And both of these come from young women, circa 1969-71, at least that's my best guess (only one is dated). I don't have a lot to say on these, but I think it's best to let the listener discover their highlights, anyway. 

I'll start with the one I don't have a date for, because it is much better recorded and easier to listen to, and for me, at least, more interesting. The speaker is a young woman on the east coast, whose year of teaching has just finished and she has traveled from her school to wherever she was headed. She has been in a lot of places, based on what she says during her letter, and is planning on going on further trips in the future. Perhaps one or more of you out there will tease out more clues than I have, from what she has to say, regarding when this may have been recorded, or even more details. 

Download: An Audio Letter From a Young, World-Traveling Teacher

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The other young woman's letter is, I believe, from a bit earlier - this one is named and dated, with a piece of paper taped to the reel: "Lynne, March 19, 69". The sound quality here is a step above abysmal - either her microphone or the tape recorder, or, more likely both, were crappy. 

There are a bunch more fascinating things to hear in this one, for a amateur sociologist or anyone who likes these "fly on the wall" sort of recordings. 

Download: Lynne - Audio Letter, March 19, 1969

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Switching gears fairly aggressively to something totally unrelated, here is a nice little tape of 17 commercials from the late 1970's, produced by everyone's friends at Young and Rubicam, for Pabst Blue Ribbon!

Download: Young and Rubicam - 17 Pabst Blue Ribbon Commercials

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Now, as you may have heard, Christmas is coming. So in this and my next two posts, we'll have some Christmas material. 

I recently obtained two ancient, three inch Scotch brand reels, each labeled as being from a Christmas in the mid 1950's. I played them this week, and was quite surprised to find they were recorded at the super-slow speed of 1 7/8 inches per second, which I didn't think was an option on tape recorders until the next decade.  Even at that slow speed, there was only space for about six minutes of recording on a side of these particular tapes, and only the first side was used. 

The tapes were labeled 1953 and 1955, and the contents make plain that those dates are correct. In each of them, a fairly young child decided to record greetings for the rest of the family, without their knowledge. Listening to this tape, I thought it was a young girl, but both the tape boxes say "Tex" on them, and some of the gifts mentioned on the other tape sound more like those given to boys, than girls. The 1953 tape is actually greetings for both Christmas and New Years, so I'll save that for a few weeks. 

Here is the 1955 tape. As mentioned by the speaker, it was prepared nearly two full months before Christmas, on November 4th of that year, and this is confirmed by the writing on the box. 

I find this deeply endearing and sweet.  

Download: Unknown - Merry Christmas 1955

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That leaves us with our "very short tape" of the week. Today's feature is something different - not a demo reel, not a commercial, not even anything complete. This little fragment was at the end of a smallish reel. Whatever proceeded this remaining few seconds of "Star Dust" - likely more of the same of what you're going to hear - was erased by some epically bad, unlistenable static. Whatever was meant to be recorded over it... well, the machine didn't work, or something. 

All that was left on the tape was the end of a homey rendition of a song which was once, as I understand it, the most recorded song ever - surpassed, I would guess, by "Yesterday". And I'll say it... "Star Dust" is an infinitely better song than "Yesterday". 

Download: Unknown - "Star Dust", with Guitar and Vocal (Short Fragment)

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Biggest Post Ever? Over Three Hours of Sound!!

Good day! 

I can't be sure without checking every previous post, but I think this is the most material (in terms of duration of the various offerings) that I've ever put into one post. The items are widely varied and largely esoteric in nature, so I suspect that most will find only some of this interesting, but it is a nice cross section of the sort of things I might come across if I grab a pile of tapes at random. 

First up, and certainly the piece among all of them here which has some historical interest. What you're about to hear is the full contents of a Ten Inch Reel of tape, all of which seems to have been recorded with TV shows (and perhaps a bit of radio), primarily in November of 1950, based both on the contents and on the label on the tape. 

First up is some sort of talent show or other program featuring performers of various ages. I am particularly enamored of the small child who sings the second song. Two versions of the St. Louis Blues follow, perhaps from the same show. 

Some instrumental music follows, including a band-backed performance by a man playing tuned drums - which is unfortunately interrupted by some far less interesting orchestral music. This in turn is followed by a barbershop quartet and then something called "The United States Overture". That number is again interrupted, this time by some more faceless orchestral stuff. This goes on far too long - and I almost cut it out, but decided to leave the tape intact - and suddenly the channel is changed and we get to hear some delicate violin music. 

Everything prior to the violin music may fall under the general heading of "Band", which is what is written first on the tape (see below), and if so, it's from earlier in 1950, September to be exact. The rest is labeled as being from November 12th of that year. However, what has come so far doesn't all sound like "band". 

Anyway, this violin music turns out to be a performance from The Ed Sullivan Show, and this is when the tape gets interesting for me. If you want to skip to this point, it's around the 32 minute mark. This episode aired shortly after a song called "Our Lady of Fatima" by Phil Spitalny took the nation - or some part of it - by storm. The song is performed live by that Phil's organization, and Ed's comments follow, with an interview of the song's composer and some comments that seem to indicate that Ed assumes the rest of the country was Catholic, too. A special arrangement of "The National Emblem March" follows, then Ed's final credits. 

The next thing on the tape is a recording of a complete performance of an musical arrangement of "The Emperor's New Clothes", put together and conducted by Harry Simeone, later to become well known for his record of "The Little Drummer Boy". This appears to be a TV broadcast of the short musical, and it lasts about 17 minutes. While I've been able to find an album release of this material, I can find no reference to it ever having been a TV show, or part of one. My guess is that both this, and the Ed Sullivan segment are extremely rare, and may not exist as recordings other than on this tape.  

The tape finishes with some Negro Spirituals, done by various members of a African-American vocal group, with condescending comments by the (presumably white) host in between. 

Download: Various Artists - November, 1950, TV Variety on a Ten Inch Reel

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And here is the listing from the reel itself: 

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Next up, and by far the longest tape shared here, features an odd moment in which a mixed choral group was rehearsing their repertoire. This tape is part of the batch that I found when I came across the wonderful Marigail Moreland tapes. The link between those tapes and this one is that the composer of the song "Why" which recurs on those tapes (sung at various times by Merigail Moreland, Don Moreland and others) is part of that repertoire. Not only that, the presence of that song, during the rehearsal, is highlighted on the tape box (which is also where I got the date), a clear indication that it came from the same person who was the original owner of the Moreland tapes. The segment is nearly 96 minutes long

This is truly a moment in time - if there are still people singing music in this style today, I'm certainly unaware of it. It's a genre that I believe has at least nearly (if not completely) ceased to exist. There are some interesting moments here, in terms of the arrangements, song choices and brief conversations between songs, but admittedly, listening to the whole thing is a slog. But rather than edit it down to my favorite moments, I thought I'd let you find whatever you might like in it. 

Download: A Mixed Choral Group Rehearses, 1963

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A few months ago, I mentioned a type of tape I come across sometimes, one which features short bits of a large variety of unrelated segments, and offered up an example, calling it a Hodgepodge. 

Today, I have another example. This one starts with a truly horrid version of "A Hard Day's Night" which is quickly cut off for a recording of a large number of very loud birds, who sound only slightly less like The Beatles as the group at the start of the tape. 

After nearly four minutes of that, we have some small children, interacting with a few adults and singing a few songs, mostly religious. But I particularly like the misheard/misremembered words sung during the brief rendition of "America the Beautiful". But this enjoy this whole segment - the kids sound very sweet. 

This is suddenly interrupted by an off-the-radio recording of "Master Jack" by Four Jacks and a Jill, one of the more peculiar hits of its era, before a return to the children for one more song, then some polka music off the radio, before the tape ends with a bit of microphone testing. 

Download: A Hodgepodge - Fake Beatles, Birds, Children Talking and Singing, and a Few Records

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Next, here is a fragment of a sales presentation. I have no idea how long the original presentation was - this was at the start of the second side of a tape which was otherwise taken up by 1940's era dance music (some of which can be heard bleeding through at a lower speed). 

Download: Unknown - ABC Newspapers' Business Model

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Finally, our very short reel. I thought I'd shared this before, but I can't find it. If I did, apologies for redundancy. First, here's what's on the box: 

Well, that bit of writing didn't prepare me for the downright oddness encountered on the tape. This is barely 95 seconds long, and as the box says, it contains two takes, but I'd love to hear what it was used for: 

Download: Star Spangled Cable

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