More Vintage Baseball, The 1961 Oscars, Marge and Her Songs, More from Japan and the Trip to Vegas

Howdy Doody, everyone,

Last time around, I finally provided the New York Yankees tapes which had been a subject of discussion for a month or more. And that got me to thinking about how I have my own vintage baseball recordings. 

These are not nearly as historical (or complete, for that matter) as the Yankees/Red Sox games shared last time around, but they are a piece of my own history. 

I have no memory of falling in love with baseball, but it must have been a very sudden thing. I turned nine during the much-discussed CUBS season of 1969, and have no memory of it, or the excitement it caused. 1970 must have been my pivotal year. Because by opening day of 1971, I was enough of a fan that I feigned being sick on that opening day, in order to see the entire first game of the season. I'm sure my mom knew I wasn't actually unwell, but she seems to have gone along with it. 

And what's more, I taped parts of the game - essentially, all of the innings when the CUBS were up to bat. During the recording, especially in the early innings, you will hear me chiming in with comments and outbursts, as well as very soft conversations with my mother. 

Interestingly, play-by-play man Jack Brickhouse left the game in the later innings, in order to catch a plane to Los Angeles, in order to call a game for the then-fairly-new Chicago Bulls. I had no idea that they had a very good team in what was then their fifth season, but they were in the latter stages of the playoffs, and indeed, would lose the series with the Lakers, three games to two, that very night. So Brickhouse called two games in two different sports, half a country apart, in one day. 

Here is the tape.  

Download: Chicago Cubs Vs St Louis Cardinals - Opening Day, 1971 - 4-6-71 (Excerpts)

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The next day, I raced back to the TV to capture the end of the second game of the season, which decidedly did not go the way the first game had gone. As you'll hear, Brickhouse was back to Chicago by that following afternoon, to call another Cubs game. 

Download: Chicago Cubs Vs St Louis Cardinals - Second Game, 1971 - 4-7-71 (Final Innings)

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The latest nominations for Academy Awards, for films released on 2022, were just named a few days ago. And so what better time than now to share with you this lengthy recording of what I believe to be the entire 1961 Academy Awards telecast. I can't find that this is generally available anywhere, so this may be a particularly interesting recording for some of you.

Download: The 1961 Oscar Telecast

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Here is a tape which is one of a seemingly endless group of tapes which came from the collection of someone named Marge Magenheimer. Ms. Magenheimer (I'm going to type "Marge" from now on) seems to have written a couple of songs, and the tapes in question contain endless versions of those two songs in various settings and tempos, and with various singers.

This particular tape starts with Marge introducing an exciting moment in her life, when one of these songs, "Take Me In Your Arms" (copyright June, 1954) was to be performed on the radio by a pianist, followed by that radio broadcast. Then Marge sings the song with the piano. The radio performer then plays another of Marge's songs "You're a Lucky So-and-So", and she again sings over the broadcast. I can't tell for sure if she was part of the recorded broadcast, or singing over instrumental renditions of her song. I think it's the latter - that she was singing along with either a radio broadcast or a dub of that broadcast. 

There follows an instrumental version of Marge's third song, which might be called "So Long, Baby". 

The recording than appears to switch to a live recording by Marge, accompanied by perhaps another pianist, this time everyone performing live, in another rendition of "So Long, Baby". Or maybe this is still over a tape recorded backing. Anyway, this performance (really two shots at it, back to back) goes on for approximately three days. Or seems like it. 

Download: Marge Magenheimer and Friends Sing a Set of Songs - Circa January, 1955

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Returning to a project I've been working on for several months now, probably over a year, here is yet another audio letter from our young man in Japan, circa 1967. I'm still unclear as to exactly what he was doing there - certainly a student, not so certainly a soldier, but I'll keep the identification as a "student-soldier" consistent with the previous postings. 

Download: Another Student-Soldier Tape from Japan, 9-16-67

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And now, here's a tape I just listened to this week. The tape actually has about five short conversations on it, but all but one of them are recorded so poorly (low volume) and with enough low hum that no amount of fiddling on my part seemed to be able to make them decipherable. The one section that can be heard features a few folks, one of whom is a woman named Bill (not Billie, "Bill" - that's a new one on me), discussing a trip to Las Vegas, as well as the drive home, at some earlier time in their lives. 

Download: Bill and Friends - The Trip to Vegas, etc

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Our "Acetate of the Month" could not look more bland: 

But contained on that plain black disc with its plain black label, is heard a men's singing group, performing six songs all about the Sigma Chi fraternity. Here's the entire record: 

Download: Men's College Singing Group - 6 Sigma Chi Songs - One Side

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Download: Men's College Singing Group - 6 Sigma Chi Songs - Other Side

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And finally, our "Very Short Reel" for this posting. The tape label promises to only provide us with a 60 second, Post-Christmas-Sale (from 1998) for "Car Stereo One" somewhere in or near Toledo, and that ad is heard, but the tape was previously used for two ads for Fritz Gifts & Collectibles Inc., of  Monroe, MI, just 20 short miles from Toledo. So left on the tape is the clunky introduction to those ads, 47 seconds of the first of the two ads, and two seconds of the second ad, so you'll hear those in sequence after the Car Stereo ad: 

Download: Car Stereo One & Fritz Gifts and Collectibles - December, 1998

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All That Baseball, Audio Letters, Some Dubbing, Superman, A Short Concert and Some Ads!

  HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I want to start with a bunch of housekeeping and thanks. 

First, thanks to everyone who continues to read and listen to my posts, and especially those who comment. I understand the purpose of the anonymous comment feature, but I sure wish I had a way of knowing how to respond individually to many of these comments which come through anonymously, or with a name, but no e-mail address. Please know I read and appreciate all of them. 

To a person named Kyle, who wrote that he is reposting some of this material to YouTube: I appreciate you doing that, and I found a couple of those postings. I would love it if you would include, in your re-postings, a link back to my site. That would give a little bit of publicity to the site, and to the additional material people can find here. Just a request. 

I also want to direct folks to the comments of my last post. "Old Guy", who has commented several times, and an anonymous poster (who might also have been "Old Guy") did some digging into the wonderful "Christmas 1978" tape that I shared. Between the two of them (or the one of him) they/he found out exactly who this family was, and provided more information on daughter Ginger, who was Miss South Dakota of 1977. Have a look. 

Next, I am very much overdue in directing folks to the YouTube page run by a frequent commenter to this site who goes by the name Timmy. His page is chock full of great - and often quite lengthy - radio broadcasts of the sort that people really like, based on what gets responses here. These date from the 1960's all the way into the 2000's. I listened last month, for example, to a great overnight appearance/interview by Flo and Eddie, a nearly three hour show from January 1st of 1977 on KLOS. His posts can be found here. Timmy has been a great pal and a true friend of my blogs. 

I also was lucky enough to encounter a gentleman named Charles who has a fascination with (and an enormous collection of) acetates, and who has been buying some of those from me (which I've mentioned a couple of times that I've been selling). He was delighted to find out who he was buying from, having been a reader of my posts at WFMU for years, and I was equally delighted to let him know I was still in business, here. He was kind enough to send along some fascinating looking reels that he had sitting around, which had belonged to a staff person at WABC-TV in New York. I have not delved into them yet, but if they contain what the boxes say they do, you will probably hear the contents of some of them, eventually, right here. 

Finally,  I want to make mention of a new correspondent - whose name I'm not sure I've yet been told - who is something of a kindred spirit to me, and who also has what sounds to be a massive collection of a great variety of sounds, some of which he has already started sharing with me (including an American's audio letter back home from Australia) and which, once I listen to it, I may request that he allow me to share some of it here. I am very much looking forward to whatever else our conversations may reveal. 

Oh, and one last thing - that final gentleman who I just wrote about, passed along some information I think is very helpful and worthwhile. He wanted to make sure I shared that libraries will transfer old media to digital formats for free, or, as they do in my local library, teach you how to do it and then let you do it for free. I'm sure there are some which will do this with reel tape, but most will do it with 8mm film and video tape. 

Thanks to everyone above, and anyone who I've forgotten to shout-out to. 

And now, back to the countdown: 

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Okay, I'm gonna start with the subject of much comment, e-mail conversations and requests and offer up the full baseball game recordings which I alluded to in an October post. At this point, I have no idea if these are the recordings which are already traded in baseball collector circles or if they are recordings of a different station than those traded tapes. I do know that the game I thought was from 5/31/61, and is labeled as such on the tape box, is actually from 5/30/61, and that means that both of these games DO circulate in those trading circles. But on the off chance that these are versions of those broadcasts unknown to the great number of baseball collectors out there, here they are. 

One note before anyone gets to the end of 5/30/61 and is frustrated - the tape runs out just before the last out of the game. The game probably continued for fewer than a half-dozen pitches (perhaps only one) after the recording here ends, but... the entire game is not here. 

Here's the relevant detail from the tape box:  

And here are the two games: 

Download: New York Yankees vs Boston Red Sox, September 25, 1960

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Download: New York Yankees vs Boston Red Sox, May 30, 1961

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Okay, on to things I haven't been asked to share. I have several tapes- all from the same collection - which feature people doing dubbing work for films or television shows. At some point - which I can't seem to find right now - I shared at least one of these tapes, and someone told me what was going on, which is that dialogue is being re-recorded to be looped into the existing film or video soundtrack. . The tapes never have anything written on them which identifies the work being "corrected", and by their nature are quite choppy and nearly random. Have a look at the box, which seems to actually say "Pubbing", rather than "Dubbing": 

This one is more interesting than most, to me, because of the interruptions at a few points by sounds in the studio and in the street outside. 

Download: Dubbing - with Some Interruptions

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If anyone is interested in hearing more of these, I have at least a half dozen more. 

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Now, here's a tape I've been sitting on for nearly three years. But I never shared it, for whatever reason. It is a compilation of audio letters from a medical resident - his name is in the track properties - to his family. The early tapes captured here have fairly poor sound quality, but it get considerably better after about 30 minutes or so. At the end of the tape is a bit of odd music which was contained on the other channel of the tape at one point. 

It's been a long, long time since I listened to these all the way through, so I don't actually remember any details at all, but I remember that this tape was quite captivating. I hope you will find it the same. 

Download: Compilation of Tapes from a Medical Resident to His Family

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Okay, so here's a tape called "A Concert By a Male A Capella Group". And that's the pretty much everything I know about it, although I will say that a bit past the 30 minute point, they sing a wordless song which will familiar to many people who found themselves enjoying a certain viral YouTube video several years ago. At the end, they sing two songs I just adore, "Hawai'ian War Chant" and "Dry Bones"

Download: A Concert By a Male A Capella Group

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Okay, I truly don't understand what's happening here, and this is another one I've been sitting on for years, with no real reason for the delay. I'll just call it a Superman parody, apparently in front of an audience, and invite any of you who'd like to offer up any insight into it, to do so, please. 

Download: Unknown - Superman Parody

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And finally, our "Very Short Reel". And I suspect this will the favorite offering of the post for some of you, as it is a short reel sampling the commercial work of a company called "Com-Track, Inc." Dating from the spring of 1968, it contains some melodies and slogans which will be very familiar to those of us who were around in those days, for some of the most iconic American brands imaginable. 

Download: Com-Track, Inc - Sample Reel - 4-26-68

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