Vintage College Top 40 Radio, Birthdays at the Dawn of Reel Recording, a Bit of Football and Some Compelling Selling

Greetings! I hope you haven't melted. 

I have a delightful set of rare recordings for you this time around. 

I'll start with the one I suspect will be the most interesting to the largest sub-section of this blogs listenership. It's another tape I've owned for decades, but one which I digitized just this week. The entire tape (well, one side of it, the other one is blank) contains portions of a mid-morning program that aired on a college radio station, WRBU, at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois.

A young woman is the DJ, and while she is earnest and a had a voice which is pleasure to listen to, she seems to have needed quite a bit of seasoning if she was going to pursue a career in that area. She talks over the opening lines of several of the songs, and her quips between the songs range from entertaining to inane, to.... well, I'm not sure what to call the moment when she opines that there was "quite a dispute" over how to categorize Simon and Garfunkel's music. 

The first 56 minutes here contain her entire shift from May 14, 1969, while the remaining 11 minutes are from two days later, May 16, 1969

Download: "The Coffee Break Show" - WRBU, 610, Peoria, May, 1969

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And now for something completely different. I was extremely happy to line up a paper reel (i.e. a commercially sold recording tape from prior to about 1952, with paper backing to the recording surface, rather than paper), and find that each side featured a birthday celebration for a member of The Smith Family of Connecticut. 

What's more, one family member took it upon himself to be the Master of Ceremonies for the recording, and managed to keep the recording interesting throughout by interviewing various family members, offering up commentary, and generally speaking, maintaining the event as a sort of presentation. 

On one side of the tape is the celebration of the birthday of a man who (as becomes more clear on the other side) was named Senator Joe Smith, of Connecticut. I have done a fairly deep dive, but am unable to find out who this Joe (or, most certainly Joseph) Smith was. There was a Representative Joe Smith of Connecticut, who also had several other political positions, but he was, according to Wikipedia, born in America, while the man honored here was clearly - based on his accent - an immigrant. I suspect he was a state senator some time in the 1940's, a position not likely to have a huge footprint on the internet. 

Regardless of all that, here he is fêted by family and friends on the first day of March, 1951, just a short 70 years ago or so. 

Download: Birthday Celebration for Senator Joe Smith of Connecticut - 3-1-51

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On the flip side is another birthday celebration, and while I've labeled it 1952, I'm not sure that's correct. The person being celebrated on his birthday is Norman Smith, Senator Smith's son, on his 21st birthday, and nearly the last thing heard on this side is a date, part of which is talked over, but at the end he definitely says "1952". 

On the other hand, during the Senator Smith celebration, it is mentioned that the Senator's son recently had a birthday, and is now an adult, and that his celebration is on the other side of the tape. So either this recording is actually from 1950, or this is a different son, and a different recording, than the one described on the other side. You listen, you decide! 

And if anyone can find Senator Joe Smith in the historical record, I will update this site with my thanks to you!

Download: Birthday Celebration for Norman Smith's 21st Birthday - 1952

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Now I'm going to use an obscene phrase..... BULK ERASER.

This evil contraption has been the bane of my reel collecting pastime. If someone has an old tape, and he or she does not wish to simply record over the old material, a bulk eraser can be used to wipe the tape (nearly) clean of previous recordings before use. 

I have found many, many tapes where I can just make out enough to know what used to be on the tape, and how fascinating it would have been, if not for bulk erasers. I have actually seen auctions on eBay of batches of tantalizingly old reels, perhaps even with something intriguing written on them, only to be confronted with "tapes have been bulk erased before sale". NOOOOOOOOOO!

If I had unlimited genie wishes, one would be to banish all bulk erasers. 

Anyway, that's a set up for what you're about to hear. Bulk erasers, in my experience, do a poorer and poorer job of performing their task, the closer you get to the middle or hub of a reel of tape. So it is that I found a tape which, at one time, probably contained an entire broadcast of a 1959 pro football game, recorded at 1 7/8 IPS on a 2400 foot reel of tape -  a speed and length which would absolutely have fit the whole game (in fact, the flip side is recorded at the same speed, and has over four hours of material). 

What you will hear, below, is the portion that didn't get erased beyond listenability - essentially the first 30 minutes of the broadcast, which is largely the pre-game stuff, with only a bit of the game itself, which was on 11/20/59, and was between the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears. The recording starts out fairly strong and slowly but surely fades away into near silence - I have boosted the sound considerably, particularly at the end, where the actual sound was miniscule. 

Download: Green Bay Packers at Chicago Bears, November 20, 1959 (pre-game and short segment)

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And finally, here's a very enjoyable "Very Short Reel", a 140 second blast of sound promoting a radio voice over/commercial spokeswoman talent named Florence Brown, extolling her "Compelling, Selling Touch". 

Download: The Compelling, Selling, Florence Brown Touch

Play: 

And here is the box for that tape!