PAMS Magic, Fooling Around, Some Right Wing Fun, Sunday in New York, More BBC Stories, Dulcimer Magic, and Everybody Likes It!

Okay, so who is ready for more than three hours more of reel to reel wonderment? And I promise no long-winded self-referential observations this time. 

But first, I want to yet again thank Eric Paddon for filling in the gaps in the information about television recordings, as he has done so many times. I'm not going to copy and paste here, but if you enjoyed the games shows that I posted last time, I encourage you to go back to that posting and look at the two comments he left. Thanks!!!

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Let's start with the tape I believe will be the most popular for today's posting, as it ties into top forty radio and features the absolute masters of the Jingle World therein, the PAMS company of Texas. Here is their presentation for "series 44", from the mid 1970's, complete with a sales pitch and then, at the end, an example of every jingle the purchasing station would receive (redone with their own call letters, frequency and/or slogans, of course). Great stuff!

Download: PAMS Sales Pitch for Series 44

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From the sublime to the ridiculous. Here is a tape of a few young pals cracking jokes, playing off each other and generally goofing around. Oddly, their recording is interrupted twice by some other person recording microphone checks, and, following the second round of tests, recording a few moments of the radio. The tape ends with some truly annoying sounds. All in the space of less than ten minutes. 

Download: A Group of Guys Fooling Around (Interrupted  By Some Microphone Testing and Radio)

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At some point, probably many years ago now, I bought what turned out to be a stack of tapes (and two books) containing various recordings (and two books) generated by The John Birch Society. For those of you unfamiliar with this particular brand of American insanity, happy reading. Suffice it to say that even William F. Buckley and the ultra-conservative National Review thought they were wackos. I may share other recordings from these tapes, as I get to them, but for now, here is a short radio program, dated 1967 (see below) on the side of the box, titled "Are You Listening, Uncle Sam?". It looks like this is a single episode of a series by that title rather than a stand-alone presentation. Whoever captured these opinions and edited then into this presentation certainly wanted to present Birchers as reasonable people who were alarmed by things happening in the government of the day, but behind the scenes, the larger group's believes, desires and plans were off-the-charts batshit crazy.  

By the way, rather hilariously, this episode is labeled on the side of the box with a homonym error, calling it "Roll of Government", which I think is something they serve at Washington, D.C. breakfast joints. Anyway, I suggest not trusting your political views to people who couldn't pass a fourth grade spelling test. 

Download: The John Birch Society - Are You Listening, Uncle Sam?

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Here's something much more pleasant. This tape contains a few episodes of a show called "Sunday in New York", from what appears to be early 1959, based on the reference to the New York premiere of  Sammy Davis Jr's first starring film, and a few other things which are said. For the most part, these segments contain singer and actress Portia Nelson performing songs, and chatting briefly with Lee Jordan. However, some of the episodes also had a DJ aspect to them, in which the Portia and Lee chat about a performer and then play a record by that singer. I wonder when the last time such a program - with live, in the studio music of this sort (mixed in with records) was a regular feature on any radio station in the country. 

Download: Portia Nelson and Lee Jordan - 'Sunday In New York', 1959

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Five months ago, I shared a lengthy recording of an English author named Antony Bilbow, reading his story on the BBC. I mentioned that I had three more sets of readings on the same tape, and asked if anyone wanted to hear more. I did get one request for more, and based on the time-worn theory that if you receive one comment, there are several more people who in agreement, here is the second of the four recordings of BBC broadcasts of Antony Bilbow, reading his stories: 

Download: Antony Bilbow - Stories on English Radio, Volume 2

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When I was a regular contributor to the late great Beware of the Blog (find the last of those posts here - that post contains links to the previous ones - I also posted an additional one on this site about 18 months ago), I posted a series of tapes made by an army doctor who was living in Korea following the war there, during the mid 1950's. I recently found that I still had some previously unlistened to tapes from that collection, including the following interesting item. This is not one of his audio letters. It is, instead, a recording he made of a big band jazz concert given by a group of Filipinos from the Second Battalion Team, at a location in Yong Dong Po, Korea, in August of 1954. I think that's all there needs to be said. The music is self-explanatory, and his introduction does the rest. 

Download: The Second Battalion Team Filipino Orchestra, Live in Yong Dong Po, Korea, 8-8-54

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And now for our "Acetate of the Month". One side of it looks like this: 

Both sides feature someone playing the dulcimer. I am sure I've butchered his or her name, but it looks like "Dr. Bluice" to me. Maybe someone can correct me, as a search for that name turns up nothing - not a single hit. Anyway, one side is recorded at 33 RPM and features Slavic (or, as it says here, Slavik Folk Songs. 

Download: Dr. Bluice Plays Dulcimer - Slavic Folk Songs (33 RPM Side)

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The other side is recorded at 78 RPM, and features a tune with a name written on the label which I have not tried to decipher (it's pictured below). Again, maybe someone out there can be of assistance. 

Download: Dr. Bluice - Dulcimer Music - 11-28-53 (78 RPM Side)

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And finally, our "Very Short Reel". And this time, that phrase is a total misrepresentation, but I want to share this 30 seconds of gold. For this is not the entire contents of a short reel of tape. This is an excerpt from a tape of more than three hours. But again, I really want to share it. 

Here's a bit of backstory: In the early '70's, Diet Rite Cola introduced a new jingle, with the sales pitch being that "Everybody Likes It" (not even those who feel a need to diet). After the jingle had been in the ether for long enough for all TV viewers to be familiar with it, the ad company went around and filmed everyday people doing everyday things, while singing the jingle. Then they edited small excerpts from each of these into commercials in which the jingle was sung by six or more different people. I was very happy to find one of these on Youtube not long ago, and you can see that one here (for some reason, it starts a second time and then is shown in chopped up form). I'm particularly partial to the girl kicking her legs on the bed and the guy in the hard hat with a ridiculous scratchy voice. 

But there was one version of this commercial that I simply loved, at the time. All these years later, I could still hear the woman with an English accent near the end, and several of the singers who are just a bit off key throughout. So I was overjoyed to find a recording of just that commercial on a reel of tape which otherwise captured a TV broadcast of a "Movie of the Week". And now I'm sharing it with you. 

Download: Diet Rite Cola - "Everybody Likes It" Ad

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The Game Shows of Election Day, 1974

Happy New Year!

I have something really fun today, a collection I'm hoping will help many of you to smile during these short, cold days. 

A bit of housekeeping, first. With regard to the British Radio Potpourri that I shared a few months ago, I received the following from a reader/listener named Adam: 

Comparing the BBC tape with the Radio Times listings on BBC Genome, the first programme is "Sound for the Movies", broadcast at 21:30 on 27th September 1961. The second is "Anniversary Portrait" from 21:00 on 6th February 1962. "Conference" was on Thursday nights throughout this period, but the listings don't give enough detail to identify the episode.

And in response to my posting the heartbreakingly short clip of the 1952 Rose Bowl game, a reader/listener named Kyle has linked me to the following clip containing the video and audio of the first half of that game, which can be found here. 

Many thanks to both of you!

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I have been digitizing my family's tapes for years now, with a recent focus on those tapes which belonged to me and which I filled up with whatever stoked my interest at the moment. Often, this was me and my friends being stupid, but every now and then there is gold, whether it's a recording of me pretending I'm hosting an art show, or a recording of children's television programming and game shows from 1970 and 1971, both of which I've shared at those links. 

Today, from a tape I recorded in 1973 and 1974 comes the entire second side of that tape, capturing (at 1 7/8 IPS, nearly an entire morning's worth of network Game Shows. Specifically, the date of this recording was Election Day, November 5, 1974. 

Listening to this tape, specifically the short introduction I give prior to the end of the first show taped, I found myself reflecting a lot on where I was, in November, 1974. It was a pivotal moment for me, even if I would have had no idea of that, at the time. I'm going to be a bit of a memoirist here for a few paragraphs, so if that's not of interest to you, by all means jump down to the squiggle and skip my (perhaps   definitely self-indulgent) ramblings. This tape captures a moment in my life when I was about to start on the road to becoming the adult I was going to be, and didn't know it. It's stirred up 49 years of feelings in my somehow, and I hope at least a few of you will take this ride with me. 

In November of 1974, I was 14 years old, and several weeks in Freshman year of High School, but was still much more of a child than an adolescent. I had spent a miserable time in 7th and 8th grade at the bottom of the pecking order, with brief relief having come in the class show near the end of 8th grade, where I both played in the band and had a starring role in one of the sketches. I had made some new friends during a summer school jazz band class, and the subsequent fall band classes (I played trombone), but only saw them at school at that point. 

Rather than engage more with new friends, I was sort of wallowing (albeit with a purpose) in thoughts of my old friends. All of the kids who lived on my block in my grade school years - all but one of whom had moved out of state years earlier - had had a big reunion that previous August. I was missing them terribly, and was hard at work editing together all of the 8 millimeter films my mother had taken of the gang of our street into a presentation I called "Remember When", which I showed to everyone in the neighborhood (complete with a musical soundtrack) that Thanksgiving (see, even then, I was dedicated to memorializing the past). 

The first side of the tape heard below contains a typical recording of me goofing around with my best friend John - who had been my best friend since age 3, and the only one who hadn't moved away. This recording is pointless in the extreme, containing the two of us insulting each other, making fart noises and singing an improvised song about burps, in between which I demonstrated my burgeoning abilities on piano (I hadn't had lessons since age 10, at that point). 

Anyway, in November of 1974, I was wallowing in loss, shell-shocked from middle school, working on a tribute to my own past, and engaging in aggressively dumb stuff with my childhood pal. Almost immediately after this, everything began to change. 

In early 1975, I begged to take piano lessons again, promising to practice this time, and this was granted. My piano abilities grow by leaps and bounds. I began hanging around more often with those new high school friends. John and I mutually discovered that, as adolescents, we had very little in common - in fact, I'd say that since I turned 15, I've probably seen John less than two dozen times, and not at all since I was 22. By a year after this tape was made, I was fully engaged with learning new and complex piano pieces, heavily into playing and listening to Jazz, and for the first time, was hopelessly and unrequitedly in love (ah, Sharon....). I was mere weeks away from reconnecting with a friend I'd known at church when I was 11 or 12, a guy named Andy, who would quickly go on to be my first musical partner and, for the rest of the 1970's, my closest friend. 

My life in November of 1973 probably pretty dang closely resembled my life in November of 1974 (with the exception of working on those film clips). But my life in November of 1974 was just about to be turned upside down and did not in any way resemble what it became in late 1975. If a picture is worth a thousand words, these two pictures are worth much more than twice that. Not too long ago, I posted a picture of myself at age almost 13, looking quite a bit more than a little overwhelmed by life. 

Here, now is how I looked in my official Eighth Grade Photo, looking like a deer in the headlights, and absolutely showing the effect of two years of bullying. 

Here, by contrast, is the happy-go-lucky kid I was by a year later. This picture is a bit later than that, and is low quality (as it's scanned from a class photo, rather than an individual shot), but it still tells the story. 
 

I have no idea if that was interesting or not, but listening to this tape took me down that rabbit hole of memories, so I thought I'd write about it. Many thanks to all of those of you who traveled down this long and winding road with me just now. 

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Okay, catching up with all of those who skipped all that stuff. 

This tape contains the game shows I chose to watch and record on November 5th, 1974. It was a golden age of daytime network television, when it was clogged up with gab fests, court shows, outrage panderers and local programming. The morning lineup was DOMINATED by Game Shows. Fun, varied, interesting game shows. Hosted by people who actually knew that the game was the star, not by movie and TV stars slumming and making the entire endeavor about them. And I wish it was still that way - both that game shows were on all morning and that they were hosted by actual game show hosts. 

I did not capture the shows intact - there are edits in all of these shows. Mostly, commercials were skipped, sometimes they are there. Sometimes, the recording simply stops in the midst of a question or answer, and picks up at a later point, or that cut segues into the next show. At times, you hear me talking or making noise, and my mother arrives home at some point and fixes me lunch - you can hear her say at one point that she hopes I am hungry because the hamburgers are big. 

If you'd like to see a grid of what was on American network television that day, you can find it here. 

The tape begins with the announcement of the date and that I am sick. I go on to tell where everyone is - my use of "Mommy, Daddy and Billy" was either because I was being silly or a bit of regression due to not feeling well. I hadn't been calling them by those diminutives in several years at that point. Oh, and here's the cat you'll hear meowing during that introduction. She was the prettiest and best kitty cat ever. 

By the time I started recording, "Name That Tune" (on NBC) was almost over. 

Download: 1.) Introduction and the End of Name That Tune

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I pre-announce the next show as "High Rollers", but it's actually "Winning Streak", also on NBC and starring the far-and-away best game show host in history, the phenomenal Bill Cullen. 

Download: 2.) Winning Streak

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Next, I jumped over to CBS for "Now You See It". 

Download: 3.) Now You See It

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The perennial favorite "The Hollywood Squares" followed. We're back on NBC and it's 10:30 Eastern Time now. 

Download: 4.) Hollywood Squares

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Again sticking with NBC, it was then time for "Jackpot"

Download: 5.) Jackpot

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Still with NBC, the most peculiar game show on this tape (to my ears, anyway, "Celebrity Sweepstakes" followed at 11:30 AM, running for only 25 minutes so as to make time for news. 

Download: 6.) Celebrity Sweepstakes

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With that show having ended early, I switched over to ABC at 12:55 for the end of their show, "Split Second" (a show which is now rebooted on Game Show Network). When that was over, I switched over to local (unaffiliated) powerhouse station WGN and captured some commercials. 

Download: 7.) End of Split Second and Commercials

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With the last waning minutes of the tape, I captured the first few moments, and some later moments, of what was then the most popular show in Chicago television, Bozo's Circus. 

Download: 8.) Bozo's Circus

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Well, that's the tape! I suspect that these are the only recordings of these particular episodes in existence, as most of these shows were erased with subsequent shows, that being the practice at the time. While a few episodes of each show (and more of Bozo) exist out there, it is unlikely that they are these particular episodes. 

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And it wouldn't be a complete post without a "Very Short Reel". Here are some folks struggling to sing "Scarlet Ribbons", a song which I've always found to be massively pretentious. It breaks down about half way through these 73 seconds of tape, and good riddance. 

Download: Unknown - Practicing "Scarlet Ribbons"

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