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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