More Than FOUR HOURS of Gary Owens on Armed Forces Radio, 1967!

Today's post will excite some of you for hours on end. First, I will say this: 

In the early 1980's, I became of devotee of Gary Owens' magnificent radio show "Soundtrack of the '60's". The music was wonderful, and I became familiar with a lot of oldies I hadn't heard before, particularly those from 1960-63. But the real appeal of the show was Gary Owens' insane commentary and asides between the songs. I was, of course, familiar with him from "Laugh-In", but had known nothing else of him. These shows made me a huge fan, and I filled multiple cassettes with nothing but the looniness he filled his deejay patter with. 

So now, what I've discovered in my collection, is a series of recordings made in Saigon, presumably by a soldier, in 1967, of a show called "GO: The Music Guy Show", which aired on Armed Forces Radio. Here's the slip from inside the box: 

There are actually six shows on the tape, five of them complete (or nearly complete) and the last one interrupted when the tape runs out. There are brief gaps in a couple of the others, where the recording stopped for some reason. 

Looking at the inset card again, I think I have these dates wrong - the first three are probably the "Pre-Cassette (sic) tapes, which are undated, above, and the last three are probably the ones with dates. But I'm not going to start over again and rename and link them all.... Oh, and the last two were recorded in terrible quality - very bass-heavy and hard to listen to. I have done some equalizing to them. If that is not to your liking, let me know, and I'll post them in their original form and you can have a crack at 'em. 

Anyway....

The music heard on these shows is not appealing to me AT ALL. Those of you who enjoy the Beautiful Music offerings I've put up may find this right up your alley, although I suspect this material would have been more accurately termed "Easy Listening" in 1967. I did grin at the song "I Looked Back" by Perry Como, but Como was almost ALWAYS far better than anyone else in this god-forsaken genre of music. I didn't know Gary Owens, but I've always pictured him enjoying the top 40 hits of the day over this sort of mush, so I imagine him gritting his teeth through these sessions, but I could be wrong. 

But as I expected, the star of these tapes is Gary Owens, who is, just as on "Soundtrack of the '60s", hysterically funny in his asides and bits. He throws in some historical facts here and there, and each episode has a bit of puffery about citizenship, soldiering or similar. But then it's right back to the ridiculous names, silly voices and general ridiculousness. 

This tape is a real treasure.   

Download: Gary Owens - GO, The Music Guy Show - Armed Forces Radio, 8-5-67

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Download: Gary Owens - GO, The Music Guy Show - Armed Forces Radio, 8-12-67

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Download: Gary Owens - GO, The Music Guy Show - Armed Forces Radio, 8-19-67

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Download: Gary Owens - GO, The Music Guy Show - Armed Forces Radio, Unknown Date # 1

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Download: Gary Owens - GO, The Music Guy Show - Armed Forces Radio, Unknown Date # 2

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Download: Gary Owens - GO, The Music Guy Show - Armed Forces Radio, Unknown Date # 3 (Incomplete)

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You might also enjoy the writing on the inside of the tape box: 

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Well, it wouldn't be a full post without a "Very Short Reel", and so here are some parts of a Spelling Test which popped up on a small reel of tape. This tape only qualifies (and barely) as "Very Short", because a few minutes have been edited out of the middle of it. As you'll hear, a loud hum recurs a few times. At one point on the original tape (around 2:15) the hum finally overcame the recorded speech entirely, and so I cut that part out. As a result, the test jumps from the seventh word of the ten word test directly into the answers being given, starting with the spelling of the first word. 

This teacher is sort of cruel, I think. He had the children score each other's tests and then told them they were to read out loud the score of the person whose test each of them had reviewed. Ecch. 

Download: Unknown - Spelling Test 
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Meet the Beatles! Plus More Beautiful Music, Doing the Dishes, Flood Talk, Webb Pierce, Flex-O-Matic, A Father's Gift, A Banking Milestone and A Few Minutes with Dana

Good day, ya'll, 

A quick thank you - once again - to Eric Paddon, who has again supplied a bit of detail to one of my posts. In this case, he has shared that the "Sunday in New York" program that I shared a few episodes from last time around: 

ran on WCBS Radio weekly from January 10, 1959 to July 19, 1959 per NY newspaper listings. Jordan hosted other programs at the station too and was one of their prominent personalities. WCBS was known as a "middle of the road" station until it became all-news in 1967.

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We're going to start with something that could not be more timely, given that it has been exactly 60 years this month since The Beatles arrived in America to play the Ed Sullivan Show, appear at Carnegie Hall and at the Washington Coliseum, and take the nation by storm. Oddly, I saw nothing in any media this week or this month marking this anniversary - previous "Big" year anniversaries of this arrival have been all over the news and entertainment programs. 

And here, to commemorate the events of that week, is a real audio time capsule, a radio program that must have been put together on the fly. It aired on New York powerhouse Top 40 station WINS-AM. Since it had only been clear that The Beatles were going to be "a thing" for a few weeks at that point, this program had to have been cobbled together in a matter of days, as it clearly aired within the first few days of The Beatles' arrival. From the sounds of what is said here, it would appear that this special aired before the Beatles had played a live show anywhere but perhaps on The Ed Sullivan Show, if that. 

The entire show is not captured here, and I'm not sure how much was missed. When the tape starts, the program is already in progress. The documentary then is heard throughout the first side of the tape, about 26 minutes of it. There is a short gap at that point, then you hear the concluding few minutes from the other side. 

The documentary includes interviews with the band members, a piece featuring some American musicians' reactions and thoughts about the group, interviews with fans, a bit of history of the group, interviews with people who give their input as to why the group is so popular, etc. A couple of the band's early songs are heard. The narrator of the show is Murray the K. The show (as was the bands' first Capitol album) is called "Meet the Beatles"

Enjoy!

Download: "Meet the Beatles" - A WINS Radio Special, February, 1964

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Now, as much as I suspect that will greatly appeal to a lot of people, here is another type of radio broadcast that I have been requested to share, whenever I come across it. The appeal here is more of a mystery to me, but I really strive to offer up what people want to hear. And so, here is a 30 minute slice of some Beautiful Music programming (containing a few items I was surprised to hear amongst such programming) from a station, WFMB, in Springfield, IL. The recording cuts off just before some news is about to start, so there is no way to date this particular segment. 

Download: WFMB, Springfield IL - Beautiful Music Programming

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Almost exactly five years ago, I featured a recording session for a product called the Cannon Flex-O-Matic. And now, here we have eight of the completed ads for that same product. 

Download: Eight Completed Ads for the Cannon Flex-O-Matic

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Now, here's a short home recording that is best summed up by its title, "A Few Minutes with Dana": 

Download: A Few Minutes with Dana

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Next, here's an episode of "The Webb Pierce Show", featuring the country star and his guests in a half hour or so of music. There were actually two TV shows by that name, both apparently produced at WSIX, Nashville, about a decade apart. There's some really great stuff here. The songs performed here, as well as the presence here of the start of "Stop the Music", a game show which aired in the mid 1950's, proves that this recording is from the 1955 edition of the show, rather than 1965 version. 

Download: The Webb Pierce Show (and a Bit of Stop the Music)

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Just up there a li'l bit, about 90 words or so ago, we had a short home recording with Dana. Now, here's another one, a brief (six minute) slice of life with a woman (identified early on as Marge Miller) and (presumably) her husband, as dishes are washed and a bit of homey conversation is engaged in. 

Download: Dishes and Conversation with Marge Miller and Her Husband

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With flooding out west in the news in recent weeks, here's a tape from 1955 featuring Senator Prescott Bush, patriarch of a political family you may be familiar with, being interviewed about flooding that was being told "The worst disaster to ever hit the state of Connecticut".

Download: Senator Prescott Bush Interview About the Flooding in Connecticut, 1955

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And now it's time for our "Acetate of the Month". And this takes a bit of explanation. In 1973, my mother and I visited her oldest brother, Harry Godwin, at his home in Memphis. I've written a bit about Harry before, but he was a larger than life figure, who, being nearly a generation older than my mother (17 years older), fashioned himself in more of a grandfather role to me than an uncle (particularly as I had never known either of my grandparents. 

(That Wikipedia stub overstates his musical career a bit - he was, first and foremost, a manufacturer's rep, and only began working in music - as a lyricist and as a jazz promoter -  in his late forties. I believe it also gets his birthday wrong.)

During that visit, which perhaps I will write about elsewhere someday, I was delighted to find a drawer full of homemade acetates, mostly the five and seven inch variety, which Harry and his children had made in the 1940's and 1950's. Harry allowed me to tape record them for my posterity, during that visit, and so I did so, introducing each of them myself with a tiny be of explanation

And so, we have a hybrid here - a reel to reel tape of an acetate. In this case, as you'll hear, Harry tells a familiar story for his younger children (he had six kids from two marriages) on one side, then dedicates a short Robert Louis Stevenson poem to one of those children on the other side. 

Download: Harry Godwin - The Three Little Pigs and The Lamplighter

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And finally, a "Very Short Reel". Here's an ad celebrating 60 years of banking in northern Arkansas. 

Download: First Federal, Arkansas, 60th Anniversary Ad, 1994

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