Some 1961 BBC Musical Programs, Norman Rockwell, Erskine Hawkins, Music and Images, and Entertainment from Margie

I am desperately late in posting this time around - it's been three full weeks since the last post. I was hoping to get to some comments, but I just want to get this up and to y'all. Today's post is largely made up of the contents of two very different reels of tape, one from England and one from Chicago.

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From England, I have what I consider to be a simply wonderful collection of nighttime radio music shows from the BBC in 1961, each of them quite a bit different from the others. 

First up on the reel is a show which came about because of the fad, just around that time in Britain, for Trad Jazz, Dixieland under another name. There's a great movie out there called "It's Trad, Dad", and the famous Cavern in Liverpool was originally a Trad Den which allowed rockers like The Beatles to play lunchtime shows. 

Note that, half way through this 52 show, the program segues into "Pick of the Pops" with Alan Freeman. As Trad Jazz faded in popularity, "Pick of the Pops" became its own show, and a big hit with the kids. 

Download: Trad Tavern, Spring, 1961

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Next up is "The Starlight Room", which presents another batch of Jazz, and featuring, in this episode, Dakota Staton and Woody Herman, the latter also being interviewed on the show. The opening moments here are rather poor sound quality, but it quickly improves. 

Download: The Starlight Room (BBC Program)

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And finally, a show which truly demonstrates how very different radio (and the world itself I suppose) was in 1961. Host Sandy MacPherson took letters from listeners and welcomed each of them into his "club", honoring their requests along with a few details at times about those listeners, and responding to those requests either with songs from records, or - and this is where things truly seem ancient - playing songs for them live... on his theatre pipe organ. How quaint. That's the word for it. Quaint. 

Download: Sandy's Club (BBC Program)

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And now for something completely different. I have dozens of tapes which once belonged to a collector of radio and (especially) TV sound, from the late '50's and well into the '60's. Most of these tapes are meticulously numbered and have detailed information about what is contained on them. I have excerpted many of these tapes before - they tend to have very dry material (lectures, speeches) interspersed with more interesting material (live performances, interviews, tv specials), and that's the case with today's tape. One side had the radiation demonstration I featured last time, followed by a recording of a broadcast of a movie, while the other side contained a documentary on the life and works of Michelangelo, sandwiched in between two other segments that I found much more interesting, the latter of which was followed by another very interesting, if short segment, which was not mentioned on the box at all (something that is very unusual for tapes from this person's collection. 

This happens to be tape number 100 in the series. I continue to slowly work my way through them. 

Anyway, that second side of the tape starts with this fragment of an interview with Norman Rockwell, conducted by what sounds like a teenage girl: 

Download: Brief Interview with Norman Rockwell

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Then comes Michelangelo, and then comes a rather fascinating recording, and it's another one which shows how much media (in this case, television) has changed since the early 1960's. If I've deduced this correctly, "Patterns in Music", recorded from a Chicago TV station around Christmastime some year, was nothing more than music off of records, played while still images from photos were shown on the screen. Narration is offered, before and after each piece of music, talking about the photos and tying the pieces together with each other and with the photos. On this episode, the theme was various colors. 

Download: "Patterns in Music" - Undated Chicago .Area Television Music and Photos Program

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When the person recording stopped the machine, the end of a previously recorded segment was left - not mentioned on the tape box. I've identified this as a brief interview with Erskine Hawkins, but what's left actually starts with promotion for Joe somebody (I can't make out the last name) who was appearing locally - at the Thruway Motel (!), and then suddenly we're treated to an Erskine Hawkins track and then the last two minutes are, indeed, a few moments with Mr. Hawkins. A bit confusing, but that's what it seems to be. 

Download: Brief Fragment of an Interview with Erskine Hawkins

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Even after all this time, I have only a basic idea in some cases of what people coming to this site will be thrilled to hear and what will get passed over. There may be very little, or great interest in the contents of the above sets of recordings for example. 

I do, however, recognize that the next recording is not going to be for everyone, and that it won't even be close. But.... I just love this kid. Here we have a child named Margie who is entertaining herself (and later, is joined by her sister or perhaps a friend), by singing a vast repertoire of songs, reciting a bit of a play she was in at school, and demonstrating her rudimentary skills on the piano. 

She is pretty much tone deaf, but clearly would have no idea of this, and her abilities on the piano amount to little more than one note at a time. But she is HAVING SUCH A GREAT TIME. And she clearly envisions herself entertaining some unseen audience on the other end of the microphone. I love her little asides, like when she puts the microphone down to play piano and says "goodbye" to it, when she apologizes for not knowing which book her piano piece is in, and when she asks for a round of applause for... herself. And then, nearly two-thirds of the way through, she gets to really famous song, sung complete with an inexplicable (slight) accent. 

Again, I adore this girl, and this is probably my favorite new-to-me tapes that I've heard this year. To be honest, that's probably because she reminds me of... me at that age, except that I wasn't tone deaf. This sounds remarkably like the tapes I made of myself around that age, only far more entertaining. 

Download: Margie Sings, Plays Piano and Talks

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Finally, a "very short reel". This is a complete cheat, as the segment below is an excerpt from a four hour tape, but I really want to get this posted!

I have a group of tapes that someone made off of an Indiana radio station around 1979-1980. They contain episodes of American Top 40, an end of the year countdown, and other programming from a couple of local stations. Contained on at least two of them are episodes of Robert W. Morgan with "The Special of the Week", hour long episodes, heavy on the interviews, looking at a then-popular act. The two I've listened to so far covered the careers of George Benson and The Who. Your mileage may vary, but I have zero interest in the George Benson, and I enjoy perhaps six tracks in the entire career of The Who. So these were not interesting shows to listen to for me. 

But I did enjoy the introduction to the episode on The Who, less for Morgan's reworking of Abbott and Costello (although it's worth hearing), than for the fake letter that he used to set up the bit, specifically the name of the fake letter writer. Here is the segment that led off The Special of the Week featuring The Who. 

Download: Robert W Morgan - Who's On First

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Oh, and The Who were hardly the first groups to record a concept album. The Almanac Singers (featuring Pete Seeger) made several of them in the 1940's, including albums encouraging the US to stay out of World War II and collections of songs in the support of Unions), and Frank Sinatra had a few in the 1950's, as well. The "Manhattan Tower" album and its sequels and imitators come to mind, too.