Vintage Demo Reels, A 1950's Comeback, Super Bowl Predictions, Shutting Down, and the EBS Gets Musical

 First, let's get this said: 

HAPPY YOKO ONO'S 90th BIRTHDAY!!!

I hope your Yoko Birthday Eve family gatherings went well last night, that they continue apace today, and that your holiday meals this evening will be festive. Remember, for good luck in the rest of the year, be sure to eat some chocolate cake in a bag. 

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Before continuing, I wanted to comment on a segment of my last post. In the middle of that post, I offered up some music from Marge Magenheimer. What I didn't realize until later, is that I'd shared ol' Marge and her music before. But at the time of the earlier sharing, I had no idea who she was, and likely had only heard the one tape (I have at least eight that I've heard since then). So I thought I'd direct anyone who is interested to this post, where I featured a segment of what I called a unknown singers rehearsing a few songs over and over. That's Marge and her friends, featuring some of the same songs as heard in my last post, among others. 

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I have another interesting and varied batch of reel highlights for you today, and I'll start with the set which I suspect will be the most popular of this post. It's a set of airchecks from a deejay with the intoxicating name of Jack Daniels. 

If you research this fellow, you will mostly find a North Carolina deejay named Jack Daniel. This is not the same person. The NC fellow does not appear to be old enough to have been on the air in the early 1970's. In fact, I can find very little about this Jack Daniels, aside from a few mentions deep within radio tribute sites and archived pages of old newspapers. 

Regardless of all that, somewhere along the way I became the owner of two of his demo reels, one dated April 26, 1971, at which point he was at WEEL in Fairfax, Virginia, and a much shorter demo reel from his time (around March of 1970, it would appear) at WINX in nearby Washington, DC. The latter one, as you can see below, was described as a "Humor Show" on the side of the box: 

I do wish that today's top 40 stations (or what passes as top 40 today) would play this much of a mix of old and new, rather than entirely new. 

Download: Jack Daniels' Demo Reel, WEEL, April 1971

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The most interesting thing to me about this WINX tape is that the station had put an absolute flop of a Bee Gees single, "If Only I Had My Mind on Something Else" (from their brief Barry and Maurice only period), into rotation. Daniels even comments on the relative weakness of the song! Oh, and that B.J. Thomas song doesn't sound like anything that would ever have been a hit - that it reached # 26 can only be attributed to it being the follow-up to a massive # 1 record, "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head":

Download: Jack Daniels' Demo Reel, WINX

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Jumping back in time nearly 20 years, here is an ultra rare recording of a completely forgotten television show, "The Comeback Story", hosted by George Jessel. This show told the story, each week, of someone who was once popular in his or her field, who hit a losing streak, but who was now, "BACK". You can read about the show, and its 19 episodes, here. This particular episode, from October 30th of 1953, centers on violinist and bandleader Harry Horlick. The first 15 seconds here appear to be from a recording of a different show. 

Download: The Comeback Story - Harry Horlick - 10-23-53

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Here's a tape I don't recall anything about. It looks like I digitized it close to a decade ago - where the original box is, I haven't a clue. But something on the box, I assume, let me know the family involved was from Georgia. And beyond that, it is self-explanatory - a group of folks singing The Beach Boys' hit "Shut Down". 

Download: Unknown Georgia Family - Shut Down

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I had hoped to have this post up one week ago, but in reality, that was never going to happen. So here, a week late, and in terrible sound quality, is a little three inch reel of tape containing a 1973 recording of Joe Namath discussing the then-upcoming Super Bowl VII, and predicting the outcome: 

Download: Joe Namath - Joe Namath Previews Superbowl VII

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And finally, our Very Short Reel of the post. This is one I just heard for the first time earlier this month, but I knew immediately that I had to share it right away, as it literally made me laugh out loud. Here's a station (or a production team) who took the required introductory text to the Emergency Broadcast System tests, and set them to music, and goofily catchy, silly music at that. Two bits that sound exactly like ads or promos if you aren't listening closely. They are absolutely great, particularly the second, longer one: 

Download: Two Emergency Broadcast System Test Jingles

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