New Year's Through and Through

Greetings, 

I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday season, whatever it is you celebrate or don't celebrate. I have a batch of recordings which all (except maybe one) have end of the year and/or beginning of the year theme. 

Here's hoping for a fabulous 2024. 

Whatever happens next year, though, it will happen without one of my favorite people in the world. Tommy Smothers died this week, and I want to just say a word or two here. That's because I think The Smothers Brothers - in addition to what they did for the expanding of boundries in television (and for letting Pete Seeger back on the air) - they were, in my opinion, one of the half dozen greatest comedy acts of the 20th century. I'm probably forgetting someone or some team, but I'd put them with Monty Python, The Marx Brothers, Shelley Berman, George Carlin and David Letterman and the staff of "Late Night" on that short list. 

And specifically for Tommy, I'd say that I'm not sure anyone ever had better comic timing or a more fully realized comic persona. And he was a hell of a guitar player, too, something that flew under the radar, but of which he was very proud. 

My favorite political site, Electoral-Vote.com has a nice write up about Tommy, saying far more than I want to here, and doing it better than could. 

Here are my two favorite Smothers Brothers tracks, both of which make my personal all-time favorite top 200 tracks ever recorded: Mediocre Fred and Crabs Walk Sideways.

Also, please keep reading after all of the new year related offerings below, as I am debuted my latest recording, a parody song I've been working on, off and on, for the last seven months or so. 

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Presumably, this first offering will be the most interesting to a good many of the people who are nice enough to frequent this site. It is a partial recording of the KFRC, 610 AM in San Francisco, broadcast of the top hits of 1967. This is far from the pristine (or complete) recording I'd wish it to be - the recording quality is relatively poor - noticeably bass heavy, despite some attempts at my end to rectify it, and it does not contain anywhere near the entire program, or even a single segment - it starts with # 92 and then, 103 minutes later, we hear the end of the number one song of the year. More songs were skipped than were heard. Still it's a piece of top 40 radio history, and that's worth something. 

Download: KFRC, San Francisco - The Top 100 of 1967 (Portions)

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Incidentally, if you do a search for the gentlemen (and his home town) who stamped his name onto this tape box, you will find his obituary. It popped up as the first item found for me. He was 42 years old when he recorded this. I would have thought a fan of top 40 music in 1967 would have been half that age or less. 

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The next two files come from the same tape, and were recorded, first, as 1955 became 1956, and then again, a much longer segment featuring some of the same people, which appears to have been recorded sometime later on New Year's Day, 1956. I do not know anything more about this tape. In fact, I digitized this tape eleven months ago, and do not actually remember what happens during either segment. So we'll all be surprised. 

Download: At a New Year's Eve Party, 1955 into 1956

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Download: A Group of Friends Goofing Around, Circa New Year's Day, 1956

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In my last post, I had what I called "A Post-Christmas Tape From Canada to Lenore and Her Family in Bermuda". Well, here is a sequal of sorts, another audio letter to Lenore. My labeling of these tapes is a bit confusing, or maybe not, based on the labeling of each. But whereas the other tape was labeled "from Canada to Lenore in Bermuda", this one is labeled "To Lenore from Family in Bermuda". A quick spot check of segments of the tape does indicate that this seems to be a tape to Lenore from a different group of people than are heard in the previous tape, and these people were definitely in Bermuda, apparently from a time before Lenora lived there, or between times that she lived there. What we probably have here are two tapes to the same person from two different groups of people. 

Regardless, just as the other tape was made after Christmas, this one was made a day or two after New Year's Day. 

Download: A Post New Year's Tape to Lenora From Family in Bermuda

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And here's a tape I've labeled simply "Party - Lynn and Gene", which is probably self explanatory. I don't know that this is from a New Year's Eve party - chances are it's not - but it still fits the theme of celebrations. 

Download: Party - Lynn and Gene

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And now for a Very Short Reel that I wish was longer. Although perhaps the longer version of this tape - and this segment - is readily available elsewhere, I don't know. It's a short moment from All American New Year's Day tradition. I was thrilled, a few years ago, to find a Scotch tape of the earliest design, labeled thus: 

Perhaps that's hard to read. It says Reel No. 1, Date 1-1-52, Stanford 7 - Illinois 40, Rose Bowl Game. Unfortunately, I found that nearly the entire reel had been erased with much less interesting material, leaving just 140 seconds of this football game broadcast recording. A real pity. Anyway, here it is. 

Download: The 1952 Rose Bowl Game - Short Fragment

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And now for something completely different. About six years ago, something inspired me - something insistent - to write a parody lyric for the song "Up Up and Away" by the Fifth Dimension. This is not even a record that I like - not when it came out when I was seven, and not now - and although I've written and recorded parodies in the past, all but one were of records that I love. Anyway, it wasn't until April of this year that I decided to make a track of my parody. 

Anyone my age or perhaps even 10-15 years younger will likely know the song this is based on, but for those who don't, the original can be found here. 

I decided along the way that I wanted my music track to sound as close to exactly like the original Fifth Dimension track as I could possibly get out of my Midi set-up, and I think I succeeded to the point that the track sounds like a Karaoke track. It is not - I built it from the ground up, instrument by instrument. I worked on it off and on, sometimes on weekends, mostly when I took days off from work. It took me over seven months! 

I am very happy with the final product.... except that I can't settle on which prospective title is better, the one that reflects the original song's title ("Come, Come in and Play") or the one which better reflects the text of the parody ("My Curio Filled Room"). Regardless, I hope you enjoy it, and would love to hear comments, including thoughts on the better title. 

Download: Bob Purse - My Curio Filled Room (AKA Come, Come In and Play)

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Christmas Through and Through, Volume Two

Happy December, everyone, 

As I've done nearly every year since I started this project, the first post of December will be entirely Christmas related. I have four personal recordings from families or family members, and four recordings of professional presentations of Christmas material, and will go back and forth between the two. 

First up is a tape that just about defines family Christmastime. It is simply 42 minutes or so of "Fly-On-The-Wall" recording of a family enjoying the opening of presents and the joy of being together, recorded on Christmas in 1956, according to the tape box. 

(The last few seconds contain a musical performance which the Christmas recording had been erasing.)

Download: Unknown Family - Christmas, 1956

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A very different celebration of Christmas now, a professional and downright staid presentation, from the oh-so-serious and classical music oriented "Voice of Firestone", which started in the early days of radio, moved to television as one of the first regularly scheduled network shows (a very small network of stations) in 1943 (!) and lasted, in one form or another, into the 1960's. This is a recording of a TV broadcast from 1958. 

Download: Voice of Firestone, Christmas Special, December, 1958

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Next, here's an audio letter from an entire family, made at Christmastime. It last just over an hour, and a whole bunch of folks get to be chatty, sing if they want, and pass along everything you could imagine to the recipient of this tape. Imagine in the days before Zoom, even in the days before cheap long distance phone calls, getting this 62 minute tape from your loved ones far away, and getting to spend an unexpected hour with them. That's one of the (many) magical things about reel to reel tape. 

The opening moments are poorly recorded, but that gets fixed after 30 seconds. 

Download: A Christmastime Audio Letter from the Family

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Back to the professional musicians! And I thought this was pretty durn keen. "Sing It Again" was a BBC Radio show which, as far as I can tell, ran at least from some time in the early 1950's into the 1970's. There's no date on this Christmas episode, but it features some very effectively arranged songs, close to half of which I'd never heard before. The Cockney-flavored song that starts at about 5:25 is particularly fun. 

Download: "Sing It Again" - A BBC Christmas Presentation

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Here's another audio letter, in this case made on Christmas and on December 26th, from a family in Canada who was recording the tape for Lenore (or maybe it's Lenora - I hear her addressed both ways here) and her family (The Abbots) in Bermuda. The tape seems to have slowed to a stop a couple of times while it was being recorded. This is just another very sweet recording from another era.  

Download: A Post-Christmas Tape From Canada to Lenore and Her Family in Bermuda

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Here's just under 20 minutes of Chicago Radio programming, from an unknown date and station, which I thought was sort of cool. The music is just from records - although for the most part ones you don't hear much these days - but between the records there are a couple of local stories, a detailed one about the delivery of Christmas trees, and a brief one about roasted chestnuts

Download: Unknown Chicago Radio Station - Christmas Programming

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And this may be an all-Christmas post, but that doesn't mean we won't have an "Acetate of the Month". This one is Christmas related. Or at least, I assume it is, as it is labeled "Xmas, 1940", as you can see below. Its contents are downright disjointed, and I cannot make out any part of it which clearly has anything to do with Christmas. It does start with someone discussing what a dad might like - which could mean Christmas - but then it goes through a man praising for a child, that child speaking about a sporting event, then a mom speaks haltingly about stars (and then some organ music drowns him out). This is a pretty weird one. 

Download: Xmas, 1940 - Universal Acetate

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And finally, our "Very Short Reel" for this post. I'm stretching the concept a bit, as I usually define "very short" as being under five minutes. But I wanted to make this post "all Christmas", and the shortest Christmas related segment I currently have is just over seven minutes. This is a tape from The Simpsons of Springfield (!) to Larry and (I think) Paul. I actually find this tape more than a bit odd. 

After a personal greeting, almost the entire remainder of the tape seems to be a copy of a recording that the sender made off of a radio broadcast - some music, Christmas thoughts from two What follows the introduction seems to be a recording of a bit of a broadcast of some music, followed by some Christmas thoughts from two different people, then some music box music. Then the sender comes back in for a moment with Christmas wishes. 

For all the time it took this person to make and send a Christmas tape to his friends, the actual contents he chose to include seem oddly impersonal. Sort of like sending a Birthday card to someone and inserting into it a bunch of pictures of other people celebrating their birthdays, instead of inscribing it with your own personal thoughts, 

Download: Brief Tape of Christmas Greetings From the Simpsons

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Vintage BBC Documentaries, The Return of Joe Gerossi, Unusual Sounds, Some Wild Piano, and Christmastime Is Here Again

Two posts in six days!!! Christmas must have come early! (And that's actually foreshadowing for this post....) 

I'll start with something off the beaten path. Here is everything that's contained on a reel of tape made by someone in England, featuring three programs, two documentaries and a show about policy. 

The first show, taking up about the first 27 minutes of the tape, is a documentary about the story of sound coming to the movies. The second was labeled on the tape as a review of Queen Elizabeth's 1961 visit to Africa, although the program expands into a more general review of many aspects of the Queen and her reign. This program mentions her tenth anniversary on the throne, so must actually have been broadcast in 1962. Most likely, all three shows are from 1962 (I can't seem to find the tape box at the moment, as I digitized this one some four years ago.) Finally, starting about an hour and 14 minutes into the tape, a program called "Conference", which in the episode heard  here was concerned with British Defence Policy (given that the show and the person recording it were English, that's how it was spelled on the box). The tape runs out before this show ends. 

Download: British Radio Potpourri - History of Sound Film, Queen's Visit, British Defence Policy

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Next, do you remember Joe Gerossi? The gregarious barber who I have featured three other times, here, here and here? Well, here I have a bunch more from Ol' Joe. And although this is the fourth such posting, it's labeled "Volume 2". Why? Because this one features Joe and his friends and perhaps family, and is thus more of a sequel to the first posting than to the other two (both of which largely or entirely featured Joe on his own).

Let me just say: This Tape Is A Mess. The sound goes in and out, there are problems with the speed of the machine recording it in spots, and there are other spots where newly recorded material did not fully erase older material (which was a problem on another one of Joe's tapes, too - he must have had a lousy tape recorder!). There are some truly winning moments here, and some others which go on too long, or should never have been kept in the first place. But I think Joe has some fans, so I thought I'd share another batch of recordings that he made. 

Download: Joe Gerossi and Friends - Various Recordings, Volume 2

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Incidentally, this reel came with THREE different slips of paper claiming to contain descriptions of what was on the tape and in what order. I present them here in case you'd like to see if you can tell who is who, and what is where: 

 

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This next segment is a five minute oddity I've labeled "Unusual Montage of Late 1970's Media Sounds". I have no idea for what purpose this might have been created, and aside from that, I think the title suffices as an introduction to this interesting compilation of sounds: 

Download: Unusual Montage of Late 1970's Media Sounds

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AND NOW - with the exception of a short reel at the end - IT'S TIME TO MOVE INTO CHRISTMAS MODE!!

I have so many Christmas related items that I won't possibly be able to squeeze them all into one post in the middle of December. So with Advent beginning in three days, I'm going to get ahead of things and share four Christmassy items with you.

I'll start with the one which, to my ears and in terms of what I prefer, is by far the most interesting of the next four tapes. In it, a man, perhaps a patriarch, for lack of a better term (or perhaps not), spends some time "Interviewing the Family on Christmas Night". I find this fascinating and endearing, and I hope you will enjoy it, too. 

Download: Interviewing the Family on Christmas Night

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For those of you who enjoy manly men singing Christmas music with Mitch Miller's idiosyncratic echoey production - with a few female vocals thrown in - here is a Christmastime episode of "Sing Along with Mitch!: 

Download: Sing Along with Mitch - A Christmas Episode

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And here's a tape of three songs - none of which are related to Christmas - but which were offered up as an sort of musical Christmas Card by some unknown folks, folks who very likely were living in Indiana (on 52nd Street), from the sound of things. At first I thought this was a musical audio letter to someone ("Honey") who was far away, but upon a closer listen, I'm pretty sure that the male singer present IS honey, and that the woman who speaks first is addressing him following a return from.... somewhere. The sound quality is more than a bit rough, but the homey qualities and the clear affection in the voices of all involved make this a sweet, short offering.

Download: Merry Christmas to Honey - Three Songs

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And finally, a neat little tape (well, I think it is, anyway) of a rehearsal of Christmas Songs by a high school choir. I picked up several tapes of this group some time ago, in a batch of tapes purchased from God knows where, and this was the first one I listened to. 

Download: A High School Choir Rehearses Christmas Songs

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This is all it says on the box: 

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Finally, it's time for our "Very Short Reel". This one is sort of intriguing. This is a small reel of tape, containing a recording of two piano pieces, recorded at the professional speed of 15 Inches-Per-Second. Only the second piece is identified (on the side of the box), listed as "Down Yonder", but the first, shorter piece is clearly "Who's Sorry Now". The pianist on the first piece is listed as Tom Slade, and the second piece is listed as a duet between Tom Slade and Milton Jackson. The performance of "Down Yonder" is upbeat, and jazzy, rollicking, features elements of other familiar tunes, and is just a whole lotta...... 

Wait, Milton Jackson? Surely not the legendary jazz musician? I doubt it, but I can't figure any way to determine this one way or the other. The date certainly makes it possible, but that's hardly an unusual name.

Here are two images from the box. This was, unfortunately, one of the tapes whose boxes got damaged in a pipe leak in my basement several years ago. For the most part, the tapes were undamaged, as is true for this reel (reel to reel tape tends to be pretty hardy), but the box is a mess. 

Here is the side of the tape box, which is admittedly hard to read in this scan. It reads Tom Slade (Down Yonder) 10-13-54

And a portion of the back. Again, hard to read. It says: 

Reel # 3, 10/13/54, 15 IPS

1. Tom Slade, Piano

2. Tom Slade and Milton Jackson, Piano

And here's what it sounds like!

Download: Tom Slade and Milton Jackson - Who's Sorry Now and Down Yonder - 10-13-54

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A Passel of Jazz Stars, A Turkey Give Away, The Biggest Hit Shows of 1963, Some Chatty Girls, Beer and Cars, and the Approach of Christmas

 Greetings! A belated Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American readers/listeners, and a giant THANK YOU to everyone who stops by to read and listen, on this date and any other. 

I'm going to start with something I think is pretty special, and which I don't think is readily available elsewhere (although I admit I could be wrong about that, but I have looked). Short clips are available on YoutTube and elsewhere, but this is nearly the entire dang thing. 

It's the third of at least four "Timex All Star Jazz Shows", which aired on CBS in the late 1950's, and featuring a roster of some of the biggest names in Jazz from the '30's, '40's and '50's. The first and second of these shows seem to be more well represented online than this one, the second one actually came out on vinyl, and at least elements of the first and second one were available at one time on CD. But this third one seems much rarer. 

Anyway, if you're a fan of jazz, this is undoubtedly right up your alley. While the more progressive movements in jazz present in 1958 are not represented here (and I wish Dizzy Gillespie, for example, had been invited), it's still, as I said, pretty special stuff. 

Download: The Third Timex All Star Jazz Show - 11-10-58

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As long as we just celebrated Thanksgiving, I thought the time was perfect to share this short segment, in which we hear a radio station in Fairmont, West Virginia, doing a rather goofy Thanksgiving Turkey Give-Away. These are from an actual broadcast. Rather, this is a work tape in which the calls are edited together with ads, and prepared for airing at the times indicated in the introductions to each call. The gimmick behind this giveaway is worth the price of admission. I do not have a date for this recording.

Download: Fairmont, West Virginia, Thanksgiving Turkey Give-Away Phone Calls

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Those of us of a certain age - and I'm not sure what that age is - will remember when the fall network TV season was not only announced with a flurry of ads and promos, but also led off with each network previewing their fall shows with an hour long special in which each show was highlighted. I previously shared an ABC production of this type from 1964, and here, now, is a similar type program from CBS, presented in late September, 1963. CBS had enormous success that year, as nine of the top ten programs of the year aired on that network. 

Download: CBS Opening Night - Preview of the Coming Season - 9-23-63

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For those of you who enjoy fly-on-the-wall recordings, I have the self-explanatory "A Few Girls Talking, Circa 1960". The recording quality here is far from the best - you really have to turn up the sound and listen closely to make out what's being said at times, and the last two minutes or so of this 15 minute segment is sort of a hodge-podge of silence, near silence and fragments of conversation. But.... this sort of thing is gold for me. 

Download: A Few Girls Talking, Circa 1960

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And now for our Acetate of the Month. Here's a two sided record from radio station WNEB, in Worcester, Mass. On one side, a folky-type guitar strummer sings about Harr Ford, and his vocalizing is heard on either side of the sales pitches on three different ads, dated for April 29th, 1961. 

On the flip side are two fun, fun ads for Schaefer Beer, ads which not only promote the beverage in question, but also for an upcoming Jimmy Durante television show, a program which aired on August 9th, 1961. 

Download: WNEB (Worchester, Mass) Acetate -Three Harr Ford Ads, 4-29-61

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Download: WNEB (Worchester, Mass) Acetate -Two Schaefer Beer Ads

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With Thanksgiving over, it's getting to be that time. What better way to ring in the Pre-Christmas madness than with a "Very Short Reel" featuring the Kings of Radio Jingles, PAMS, with two different collections of Christmas Jingles for two different radios stations on the same reel. First, there are 50 seconds worth of jingles for WWDC (in Washington D.C.,  of course), and then more than two minutes of jingles for KLIF (in Dallas), ending with several jingles that countdown to the big day. 

Download: PAMS - Christmas Reel for WWDC and KLIF

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More L.A. Radio, Jazz on Shortwave, Two Very Different Sales Presentations and The Edge of Night

First up, a quick shout out to commenter "Snoopy" for identifying that the "Reviewing Stand" episode I posted a few weeks ago is from March 23, 1964, based on the report on the death of Peter Lorre. He also made some funny observations about the WIND Top 1000 programming from a month ago. Oh, and Snoopy, that noise at 82:37 is just me being exactly who I was, much of the time, at that age. 

And thanks to both a commenter George and another, anonymous person for expressing their enjoying of my own pièce de résistance, the "Stop Playing the Tape" segment at the end of that same post. 

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I have made a decided effort, after receiving a few requests, to push to the head of the "listening" line the remaining few tapes I acquired featuring Los Angeles (well, technically in this case, Hollywood)  DJ's. This is not my typically practice, as I try my best to grab things at random to scan and see what's on them, but these are special tapes. The box for this tape claims that both of these (unfortunately brief) segments are from 1967, but one of them is clearly from 1968, given that the date is mentioned at one point - actually, I sort of took a stunned breath when I heard that date, given that it came shortly after a round-up of Robert Kennedy's political progress. May 8, 1968 - not quite a month before his death. 

Anyway, I find it interesting to note how much of these two segments are NOT made up of Top 40 music. I haven't used a stop watch or anything, but the duration of the ads and news reports seems at least to be equal to the amount of music hear here. I also got a kick out of the jingle at the very end of the Frank Terry segment, a clear ripoff of the Doublemint Gum jingle. How did they get away with THAT? 

Anyway, here are Frank Terry (on one side of the tape) and the legendary Robert W. Morgan (on the other), perhaps five months apart from each other, heard on KHJ. 

Download: Frank Terry on 93-KHJ, December, 1967

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Download: Robert W Morgan on 93-KHJ, May 8, 1968

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Due to my postings of Shortwave broadcasts, most of which have been from Australian stations, I've been in occasional contact with Thomas Witherspoon of The Shortwave Radio Audio Archive, and he has reposted several, if not all of my Shortwave postings. 

Here are two more, which I recently came across. These are both segments of episodes of "The Voice of America Jazz Hour", circa 1980, each of which features live recordings of Jazz performers in concert in Europe. I suspect that the recordings shared within this programming might be quite rare, if in fact these tapes were made for VOA and not generally broadcast or released elsewhere. However, it could also be that these performances are actually from released albums, or at least that these performances were later released. By some weird coincidence, these two segments are both 35-36 minutes, even though the show original ran an hour. 

The styles of jazz performance heard here are not at all similar the styles within jazz that 1I prefer, and I therefore know nothing about these performers nor have I tried to research them or these performances. But perhaps some of you out there have a taste for this, and I don't ever want to limit this site to things that I want to hear. If anyone has information to share about these recordings, by all means, do, and I'll pass it along. 

Download: The Voice of America Jazz Hour (over Shortwave), One Episode

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Download: The Voice of America Jazz Hour (over Shortwave), Another Episode

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The next two items both fit the definition of "Sales Pitches", but beyond that, they have absolutely nothing in common. The first is a slick piece of advertising, no doubt the soundtrack to a film, selling (the history of and) the purchase of a weapon of war as nothing less than the cost of maintaining freedom in that modern world (whenever that was - I'm guessing the late 1950's).

The weapon is the Lockheed F-104, and to hear the narrator tell it, it doesn't belong to Lockheed, it belongs to the free world, and to any free country who wants it. Price seems to be no object - somehow I doubt that. The sales pitch actually ends with several minutes extolling freedom - I don't think the product is mentioned in at least the last two minutes of this thing. A rather remarkable document. 

The opening minutes of this tape are in very poor sound quality, but this improves after about 90 seconds. 

Download: Unknown - "Wings of Freedom" - A Short Presentation on the Lockheed F-104

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From the other end of the "Sales" spectrum, here is a low-fi and low-energy presentation about all things file cabinet. 

Download: A Presentation on File Cabinet Sales, 1959

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And now, the "Very Short Reel" for this post. Here we have a couple who have apparently been enjoying (or at least watching) an episode of the seminal soap opera "The Edge of Night", catching, in this recording, the last few moments of the episode, then chatting (with the commercials turned low) about what to have for dinner (eggs, it would seem), then recording the closing credits of the show. Since the announcer mentions a change in scheduling for the following Monday, July 1st, it would seem that (based on the Wikipedia page for this show), that this recording was made on June 28th, 1963. 

Download: Meal Talk and 'The Edge of Night', June 28, 1963

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Blowout Post # 6

I've been doing these Blowout Posts when I'm finding I don't have the time to check and listen to stuff I want to feature. I'm also using them to make a dent in the ridiculous backlog of digitized sounds that I've made for myself (and yourselves). My "Interesting Reels" file has a sub-file named "Not Yet Used", and it has, at the moment, 376 items in it!

For today's Blowout Post, I went back to some of the older items in that folder, "older" meaning that they are sound files I made quite some time ago. I have, for the most part, not listened to these since the month I made them, which in some cases may be five to ten years ago, and I'm not going to listen to them again now (beside just a taste, in some cases). I'm just going to trust that I was right to think they might hold interest for someone, and slap 'em up there, 12 different items from 11 different tapes, plus our "Acetate of the Month". Just under five and a half hours of sound!!!

That's the story: aside from the titles and whatever I might recall about them, I am sharing these files with barely any memory of what's on them. I only know that. at some point, I thought they were worth keeping, in order to share them some day. Hope I was right! With a few exceptions, I'll have very little to say about them. 

Here we go!

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I'm starting pretty much at random, with a tape containing the sounds from part of a television production of the famous short story "The Lottery", which appeared on a TV show called The Robert Herridge Theater, from April, 1960, close to half way through the show's brief, 1959-60 run. Details of the episode are on this page. This seems to be something of a raw tape from the recording session of the second and final act of the show: 

Download: Robert Herridge Theater - The Lottery

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This one is labeled "Weird Collection of Naval and Gun Rules and Regulations", and I don't know that anything more needs to be said!: 

Download: Weird Collection of Naval and Gun Rules and Regulations

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Here are two family members, a guy and his aunt, who spent some time recording a series of old timey violin and piano square dance style songs. It seems that the man would periodically visit his aunt, who, as he mentions at one point, was around 90 years old at the time of these recordings, and they would enjoy making music together. I think I have a few tapes by these folks, but this seems to be the only one I digitized. 

Download: Aunt Rhoda and Her Nephew - Violin-Piano Square Dances At Home

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Now, if you're like me, you sit around some days unable to stop wondering exactly what are problems of small forest ownership. Yes, that's how at least five or six of my days every month were spent, until I found this tape. It changed my life: 

Download: American Forest Institute - Problems of Small Forest Ownerships

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Here's an audio letter - I don't recall any of the details, really, except that it starts with a child named Ted (hence the labeling of the "performers" of the track), that the children are heard off and on throughout, and that I found both the children's presence and the New Yawk area accents of everyone involved fairly annoying (hence the rest of the track title) - although calling it merely "annoying" barely scratches the surface. 

Download: Ted's Family - A Fairly Annoying Audio Letter

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From what I recall to have been a particularly old reel of tape - from the early '50's - here are two segments featuring a preacher identified as "Brother Brown". First, he offers some fairly typical testimony, and then he engages in a bit of Faith Healing: 

Download: Brother Brown Gives Testimony

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Download: Faith Healing with Brother Brown

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I have, in my collection, a handful of tapes featuring a Chicago radio personality named Buddy Black, who broadcast from the Edgewater Beach Hotel for WGN. I have previously featured a birthday tape he received. Here he is engaging in three on-air phone calls and stocks and finances: 

Download: Buddy Black - Three On-Air Phone Calls

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And no blowout post would be complete without..... well, at least THIS blowout post is not complete without an episode of Sing Along with Mitch. As it says, this is possibly, maybe even probably, from December 14, 1961. 

Download: Sing Along with Mitch - Possibly 12-14-61

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By this point, those who are still with me are almost undoubtably saying, "Wait, I came here to learn about Skinner Sealed Spool Valves. Where's the information about Skinner Sealed Spool Valves?"

Wait no longer. Here's part three. For those of you who missed parts one and two, there will be make up sessions in November at the Hyatt. 

Download: Skinner Sealed Spool Valves, Part Three

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~~

Now here's a radio program about.... Radio Programs. This is one of those things were people sit around talking about how great it used to be. In this case, it's a discussion of Old Time Radio, from a year - 1964 - when what we now call Old Time Radio had only started ceasing to be about six or eight years earlier. The show was called "The Reviewing Stand" and involves a couple of stars of Old Time Radio, as well as the much beloved Franklyn MacCormack. This is the second tape in this post which originated at radio station WGN: 

Download: The Reviewing Stand - A 1964 Discussion of Old Time Radio

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~~

It's time for an "Acetate of the Month"!!! YAY! Here's what today's acetate looks like - sorry one side is a bit blurry:

Anyway, I do not know who these jazzmen are (or were), but here's what they sounded like, on that 10 inch Recordisc, precisely four years to the day before my sister was born, on July 14, 1946. As noted on the label, these are copies of another disc, which likely explains the rather wobbly and low quality sound of the disc: 

Download: Unnamed Band - Blues At Half Price

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Download: Unnamed Band - Lady Be Good

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~~

And as always, let's finish with a "Very Short Reel". Here, courtesy of Impact Sound Studios, is an ad for Quick and Reilly of Palm Beach. AND, nicely tying together the post, the contents of this ad hearken back to the earlier Buddy Black tape, since this deals with investments, as well as to the audio letter, since it features another person with an only slightly less annoying, fingers-on-chalkboard, New Yawk accent: 

Download: Impact Sound Studios - Quick and Reilly, Palm Beach Ad

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THE WIND TOP 1000 - REDUX!!!

 Hi, everyone!

Six months ago, I shared a set of recordings that I made in 1971 and 1972, of Chicago radio station WIND, AM 560, when they featured their countdown of the biggest hits of the rock and roll era. Here's part of what I wrote at the time: 

In 1970, WIND had produced a list of the top 500 hits of all time (well, when they said "all time", they meant from 1955 onwards, it would appear). They aired the entire list, from #500 to #1- before doing so, they had a contest with prizes awarded to whoever (or one of those who could) guess the top ten in the correct order. After the program aired, the list was available at local stores or you could get it by mail, which I did. In retrospect - having studied the Billboard charts my entire adult life, and done my own figuring of the top hits many times over - it's clear to me that the WIND list was based directly on Billboard's rankings, which is as it should be. 

The following year, 1971, WIND announced that the list would be expanded to a top 1000, and that they would again play them, from #1000 to #1, starting on an upcoming weekend. There would be no changes to the all time top 10, as no song in 1970-71 had been nearly big enough for that. 

What I didn't remember at the time, and what I just recently discovered, is that not only did WIND re-run their entire Top 1000 in November of 1972, but also that I recorded large chunks of that presentation. Not only that, but I think (without immediately going back to listen to the earlier shared tapes) that these recordings contain considerably more of the commercials and newscasts that accompanied the presentation than did the previous share. You can hear these songs anywhere, but those news and sports breaks and commercials are moments in time which are always worth hearing, especially given that the 1972 presidential election was taking place the day after this countdown ended. That election, and the local elections, are covered at length in those newscasts. 

The list was the same for both presentations that WIND aired in 1972, although interestingly, there is not really that much overlap between the songs I recorded earlier in the year, and those heard in this set of portions of the countdown. Also, this recording of the countdown has the full top ten, some of which was missing in my earlier recordings/post. 

The songs heard here - almost, but not all of them heard in their entirety - are #'s 158-110, #103, #'s101-100, #'s 95-80, #'s 56-34 and #'s 12-1. 

The recording exists in my collection on two reels - the first of these reels contains nothing but recordings of the presentation, on both sides of the tape, in monaural - four tracks in all, lasting just moments under six and a half hours - and that's a good thing, because the software I use will not make a sound file longer than six hours and 34 minutes. That limitation means this is probably the longest single sound file I will ever share here. It contains all of the songs mentioned in the previous paragraph except for #'s 12-1: 

Download: The WIND Top 1000, November 5-6, 1972

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And here is the second tape which I used to capture the countdown, in this case, the very end of that big, long show. Oddly enough, my favorite moment among all seven hours plus that I'm sharing today is a a pretty crazy short news story about the incompetent way that the BBC covered the final game of that year's world series. That segment is heard starting at the 11:15 point in the segment below. 

Other than that, I remain deeply impressed by the long-ago tastes of the American radio listener and record buyer. Aside from the songs at # 9 and at # 1 (neither of which do much for me), ten of these twelve tracks are all fantastic records, thoroughly deserving of their massive success (and, I have to add, "Singing the Blues" by Guy Mitchell is simply one of the 10-15 best records ever made). Plus they represent a pretty wide range of styles and genres. 

And certainly, this is a list that is almost infinitely better than such a list of the top 12 hits of the 51 years since 1972 would be (a list from the last fifty years would likely include such material as "I'll Make Love to You" by BoyzIIMen, "One Sweet Day" by Mariah Carey, "You Light Up My Life" by Debby Boone, "Candle In the Wind 1997" by Elton John, "Physical" by Olivia Newton-John "Smooth" by Santana, and (God help us), "Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd, none of which will ever stay on my radio for more than ten seconds if I'm physically able to change the station). 

Download: The WIND Top 1000, November 5-6, 1972, Conclusion

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Okay, for our "Very Short Reel" this week, I am cheating. 100% cheating. Because this is not the sum and total of any one tape, nor is it a small segment of an otherwise uninteresting tape. But it is quite short, and it is relevant to the material above. For here you will hear Yours Truly, Bob Purse, at age 12 and a half, telling the listener that the show is over and you can "Stop Playing the Tape" now, then going on far too long with the shtick (and proving that one CAN go on far too long in 58 seconds), as well as a tuneless little song . Who, exactly, this directive was aimed at is unknown, but it was probably the same fictional "listener" that was in my mind whenever I was recording and pretending to be the host of a show or to be doing something I imagined other people listening to (as you can hear in this post).  

Anyway, here's what's on the tape immediately after the end of the second segment, above. 

Download: "Stop Playing the Tape"

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And for those who want more than just an imaginary "Bob" to go with the above 58 second recording, here is an exceptionally unflattering picture of me, taken perhaps three months or so after that recording was made, from one of those "four-pictures-for-a-quarter" photo booths. Actually, I think, in this shot, I look like I was just about as irritating a child as I sound like I was in that "Stop Playing the Tape" segment. You can probably use this to scare your kids on Hallowe'en this year.  

A Fake Newsman (and his wife), A Letter Home, A Real Newsman and His Guest, A Stereo Preview, a Kid Sings Along and More!

We'll get to today's fun in just a moment, but first, a couple of words about the last post. . 

A few commenters suggested, more strongly than I did, that Mike Starr Reading the News was definitely a demo tape. And I was also corrected that I was not hearing an echo effect, but rather, tape echo. Thanks to all those who chimed in about other aspects of the post, too. I'll try to have more of everything asked for.

~~

Today, I want to start with a fairly goofy tape, one some of you may find even stupid. But it's harmless, and cute, if you're of a mind to view it that way. 

But first, just in case you're not old enough - or, if you're younger, you have enough knowledge of the history of television - I'll mention that Edward R. Murrow was perhaps the foremost television news journalist of the 1950's, and if nothing else, deserves hero worship for being the person who started the end game for those opposing Joseph McCarthy.

Anyway, here we have a couple of Chicago area residents, transplanted to Gainesville, Florida, I'm assuming due to some sort of alternative prison sentence, alternately portraying not just Edward R. Murrow, but Mrs. Edward R. Murrow, too, in each case, interviewing the spouse of the opposite gender. 

Have at it, Edward and Joan Winters: 

Download: "Mr. and Mrs. Edward R Murrow" Interview Edward and Joan Winters of Gainesville, FL

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When the tape is turned over, the nature and purpose of this recording becomes clear. The jokey A-side of the tape was for the amusement of a friend left behind in the infinitely superior city of Chicago, someone named Joe. And that second side of the tape contains the following audio letter to Joe in Chicago.  

Download: Audio Letter from Ed in Gainesville to Joe in Chicago

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~~

Now, let's go to an actual newsman, one who was almost as revered in his time as Murrow, and who was actually one of a team known as "Murrow's Boys". That would be Howard K. Smith. Some many years ago now, I bought a huge lot of tapes which included, among its myriad TV-broadcast related  treasures (many of which I've shared), a batch of raw tapes of Howard K. Smith interviews, one of which I shared back in 2018. These contain not only the interviews themselves, but also the recordings, after the interviews, done so that the camera could capture Smith asking the questions. Here's a little inside TV for those who don't know: In interviews such as these, the camera just takes shots of the interviewee. Then, the interviewee either stays or a double sits in his or her seat while the camera moves behind his/her shoulder and the interviewer asks the questions again, exactly as were asked during the interview. Then the two shots are stitched together as if the questions and answers all took place at the same time. 

The tape is labeled "Rangerone Sync", and the same phrase starts off the tape. This is apparently the name of a tape recorder brand which was used specifically to sync these recordings to the video. 

Download: Howard K Smith - Rangertone Sync - Cuban Interview with Gabriel Cardenas

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~~

And now, yet another preview tape. In the early days of reel to reel tape, labels producing pre-recorded material were hot to demonstrate to buyers and potential buyers just what they could expect from this new wonder of audiophile-level recording. The Omegatape label was one of the first in this field, starting up in 1954, and here we have one of their earliest releases, which is little more than a series of short excerpts from the label's releases, covering several genres, with an odd segment in the middle of the tape to be used "for head alignment". 

Download: Omegatape D - Preview of Available Pre-Recorded Tapes

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~~

Last time around, I shared another tape of some guy singing atrociously bad to the pop hits of the day, and, remarkably, I got a request for more of the same. I know I have some more, maybe of that same guy, but had trouble tracking it down. In the meantime, however, I do have a tape of someone else who can't really sing, singing along with the radio. However, in this case, it's a small child, certainly someone younger than 10 and maybe quite a bit more. The child is named Terry (or Terrie or Teri) Clark, and as opposed to that guy from last time around, I find this tape deeply endearing. But then again, I've worked my whole life in one way or another with kids, and this sort of thing was bound to resonate with me. I hope you enjoy it, too. 

Download: Terry Clark Sings Along with the Radio, 1958

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~~

Perhaps the most "fun" item I have to share this week is this recording of the TV show "You Asked For It" from around 1954. Clearly, in the early days of television it was sufficient to televise novel events and exhibitions and have a successful show. For me, the most interesting segment here is the first one, "Basketball on Roller Skates". Surprisingly, this seems to be a "sport" which has been tried out in the early 1900's, in the 1990's, and, clearly, as is heard here, in the 1950's, without catching on very much at any point. 

Anyway, the whole show is fun, but that was the most interesting part for me. 

Download: You Asked For It, Circa 1954

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~~

Next, for all of you who adore the dubbing tapes I've shared over the years (which are also from that treasure trove of TV reels that brought the Howard K. Smith tapes), here's another one. These are tapes of the producers and actors of a production looping in retakes of dialogue, to be overdubbed into the previously recorded scene, for whatever reason. I have no idea who the actors here are, or the production. The only thing the box makes clear is... this was recorded on a Thursday. 

Download: Dubbing on a Thursday

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~~

And finally, our "Very Short Reel" for today, in this case, a small wisp of a tape containing an unknown news reader updating his listeners on a tragedy that took place in Tehachapi, California on July 21st of 1952. 

Download: Newscast Fragment - The July, 1952 Tehachapi, California Earthquake

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Antony Bilbow Reads His Stories, Mike Starr Reads the News, Great Musicians Vs. Tone Deaf Singing, A Few Soldiers in London, and Not Singing "Let Me Go, Lover"

Howdy, 

I'm back from COVID and ready to share more of my enormous collection! But first, a follow up to my last post. 

For what I'm sure is more than the dozenth time, thanks to Eric Paddon for identifying that the brief clip of Tic Tac Dough that I shared last time comes from February 13th, 1959, and that, while the show had already gone through it's period of being "crooked" by that point, the winner of that show came by his successes honestly. And he won the equivalent of $1.5 million during his run on the show. All of this information is better explained in a couple of comments Eric made on the post linked above. 

Thanks to everyone else who has commented, as well. In answer to a couple of those comments, I will continue to make a priority of listening to and sharing DJ airchecks which are in my collection. 

~~

To start, something a little different. Many years ago, I bought a batch of tapes which had belongs to a "tape club", a batch of mostly old time radio recordings, which a circle of people who would exchange with each other, each of them labeled - usually with up to six hours of recordings of episodes of one show - Jack Benny, Bob and Ray, Mr. Keen... whatever. I'm sure these tapes became available to me because of the dying out of the reel to reel format and particularly, the growth of the internet - for the most part, nowadays, the contents of most these tapes can be found online, either for free or for sale on multiple websites. I've listened to some of these tapes over the years and some remain unexplored, so far, in my basement. 

But one of these tapes, labeled "Worthington", contains recordings of a BBC program which, as far as I've been able to discover, don't appear to be easily found online - I've found references to them, but nothing else. Technically, the show is not "Worthington", that's just the name of the lead character - a dog - in two out of every five stories. The shows are actually 15 minute stories, read by a man named Antony Bilbow, and written, for the most part, by Mr. Bilbow and his wife. I believe this fellow, 95 years old as I write this, is the same person as you'll hear on this tape. The stories are quite wonderful, in my opinion, and British through and through. They would apparently run in the morning on English radio five days a week, with Monday and Friday's shows featuring stories about Worthington the dog. 

Anyway, the tape is recorded in quarter track mono, six stories to a track, which means I have 24 of them, lasting a total of six hours. Here is the first side, left channel of the tape. If anyone would like to hear more of these, just let me know. 

Download: Antony Bilbow - Stories on English Radio, Volume 1

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Here is the part of the tape box which lists the stories on the first side, left channel, as heard above: 

~~

Next up, in two segments containing at least three different recordings, we have someone named Mike Starr. He was, if this tape is to be believed, a news man and general voice-over/commercial announcer at a station called WHBM (named after its owner's initials) in Xenia, Ohio. You can read about the station's history and current status here. I say "If this tape is to be believed" because elements of this tape are so amateurish as to make me wonder if this isn't a demo tape submitted to the station. Primarily, I'm referring to the comical level of reverb heard throughout, and the way that reverb gets turned up to a distracting point during the latter parts of this tape. 

Anyway, part one of this offering - by far the longer of the two - features Mike Starr giving a lengthy newscast which, based on a couple of the stories involved, appears to date from January 7, 1967. This is followed, in this same segment by several commercials, the first of which is Christmas related, so cannot be from the same date as the newscast. A couple of the commercials don't even sound like the same announcer to me. And it is during these commercials that the reverb gets cranked up, seemingly at random, a few times. But maybe it's real. What do you think? 

Download: WHBM News and Ads with Mike Starr

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Sorry about the clicking throughout - I digitized this five years ago, and I believe that those noises are on the original tape. If I track down the tape at some point, I will double check and replace these files. 

Anyway, after several unrecorded minutes on that same tape, the following short bit of goofiness featuring a man who I believe is still Mike Starr, interacting with his dog. 

Download: Mike Starr at Home with His Dog

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~~

Looking backwards into the previous decade, and for those of you who enjoy Big Band music, here is half of an hour long program featuring Harry James, fronting his band on something called "Palladium Dance Time" on July 27, 1954 - presumably, these particular performances of these tunes have not been heard since this broadcast. The reel of tape this was recorded on only allowed a little more than 30 minutes to a side, at 7 1/2 IPS, so that's where the recording ends. 

Download: Harry James and His Orchestra - Palladium Dance Time, 7-27-54

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~~

And now for the polar opposite to the above. Instead of a half hour of master musicianship, we have a very different half hour.... Yes, it's another recording of someone who absolutely cannot sing, and who recorded himself singing along with various records by Elvis, and a few others, apparently some time in 1959. If you can stand listening long enough, you will hear the same fellow demonstrating that his talent as a vocalist was roughly equal to his talent as a guitarist. 

I don't know why, but I am absolutely fascinated by these sorts of tapes - I have at least three which I believe feature this same guy, but I have others, as well - and I sit and listen to them with amazement, wondering 1.) why anyone, even an excellent singer, would record him or herself singing along with a series of records, and 2.) if this guy had any insight, at least after listening to these tapes, that he was tone deaf. 

I completely understand if this is not of interest, but as I said, it holds a peculiar hold over me. 

Download: Singing Along Badly (and Playing the Guitar Along Badly) With Elvis and Others, circa 1959

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~~

And now for our "Acetate of the Month". I think this one is fairly self-explanatory: 

A reporter the U.S. Army Radio Service interviewed a few soldiers from Chicago, for playback on a Chicago station (WGES), on June 21st, 1945. Here is that recording: 

Download: US Army Radio Service 12 Inch Acetate - World War II Broadcast - London to Chicago - WGES- 6-21-45

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~~

And finally, yet another "Very Short Reel". In this case, we have a little girl named Debby (or, perhaps, Debbie" who is being encouraged by her parents to sing a song, specifically "Let Me Go, Lover" (which likely dates this tape to very late 1954 or early 1955, when that song was a hit). Debby would rather pound on her toy xylophone. This goes on for precisely 75 seconds, at which point the recording turns into daddy asking mommy to name all the colors found in their couch, a topic which takes up the final 23 seconds. 

Download: Debby Doesn't Want to Sing 'Let Me Go Lover' and How Many Colors

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More LA Radio, More Jack Eigen, Some Wasted Study Time, Some Perry Como Time, and Just a Bit of Tic Tac Dough

Hello, 

First, I want to thank my pal Stu and another, anonymous commenter, who both identified that the Stan Freberg speech I posted two weeks ago is from 1958. The clues were right there in his words, but I didn't pick up on them. Thanks!

~~

This post is very media-recording oriented. I think those tend to be among the most popular things I share, so perhaps this will be particularly enjoyable for many of you. And then there's Jack Eigen....

I'm starting today with some requests. First, because, when I mentioned to a friend that I have a bunch more tapes of deejay Humble Harve and other vintage west coast radio recordings, I was quickly asked to share another one of those reels. So, without further ado, here is more Humble Harve on KBLA in what was probably April of 1966!: 

Download: Humble Harve Miller on KBLA, Burbank, Circa April, 1966

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The rest of the tape is recorded with a segment of a show hosted by Gene Weed on KFWB. And while the tape box (reproduced below) indicates that this tape is ALSO from 1966, whoever wrote that was wrong. This is clearly from 1962. Not only are none of the songs from after 1962, there is a commercial/promotional contest involving the then-brand new Walt Disney release, "Bon Voyage", which was released in the spring of that year: 

Download: Gene Weed on KFWB, Los Angeles, 1962

Play:

~~

I also have a correspondent who has been asking for more Jack Eigen. You can find all of my Eigen posts by clicking on his name in the Labels at the bottom of this page. Like the other tapes I've shared, this is a compilation of excerpts from Eigen's late night Chicago shows. I have somewhere between 18-22 of these, I think, most of them, like this one, well over two hours long. 

Download: Jack Eigen - The Jack Eigen Show, Volume 4

Play: 

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Next, for those who might be fans of the late, somewhat lamented TV variety show, here's an episode of Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall, from the end of October, 1964, featuring Anne Bancroft, Stanley Holloway and the incomparable Victor Borge: 

Download: Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall - with Victor Borge, Anne Bancroft and Stanley Holloway - 10-29-64

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~~

Now here's an oddity, perhaps only appealing to a few of you, certainly fewer than the offerings above. Somewhere along the line, I managed to get ahold of some recordings of what sounds like a college study group and/or a group of college students working on a specific project or projects. They are pretty dry, and I haven't shared them before. I thought this one was a little more interesting, because it sounds like they are waiting for more people to show up, and discussing how they aren't getting anything done, while also quizzing each other about what they need to study. But as far as I can tell, nothing actually DOES get done. (Also, someone leaves the machine on for several minutes after everyone leaves, and we get to hear a bunch of ambient noise from outside the room for awhile.). 

I've dated this "probably 4/25/79", but "possibly 4/25/79" would have been better. It may also be 2/19/82. The box is sort of confusing - there's actually a third date, crossed out, too. Here's a scan of it. 

And here's that tape: 

Download: A Student Study Session, Probably 4-25-79

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~~

Finally, here's our "Very Short Reel" for this post. Here is a short excerpt that someone captured, of the end of an episode of "Tic-Tac-Dough", one of the shows which was later caught up in the "rigged game shows" scandal. Bill Wendell (best known to people my age as the first announcer on David Letterman's late night shows) was the host for almost exactly one year, from October 1958 to October 1959, so this tape comes from that period. He was not the host when the (known) discredited contestants appeared, but he was the last host of its 1950's iteration, and appeared on the show while it was being investigated and being cancelled. 

Download: Short Fragment of an Episode of Tic-Tac-Dough

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