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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