The Young Sound of '68, Bishop Sheen Talks to Teenagers, The Supreme Court in 1963, a Combo in 1966, TV School, and THE RETURN OF PETE!

Greetings! 

It's been almost a month since my last posting - again due to stuff here at home - and I may not get another post out this month, so I'm going to share a LOT of stuff here, five and a half hour's worth. 

Just a few quick comments before I get to this week's offerings. Regarding a short tape I included in my last post - the end of a broadcast day at an Indiana station - Chad offered up the following: 

Wow! That's almost certainly the only extant recording of WHFS, which only appears in radio directories from 1956 through 1958. There were a lot of short lived FM radio stations in the early days, the technology being new and slow to catch on. Airchecks of any radio station from this era are rare, FM Radio airchecks of this era are nearly non-existent, to begin with but to find one from such a short lived station is practically a Holy Grail!

In that case, I am extremely glad to have found/shared it. 

Regarding an item in a post three months ago featuring a lot of unknown music as heard on powerhouse Top 40 station WINS, Ken had this suggestion: 

One other thing that occurred to me after my post above. Murray the K was on WINS. He had a nightly feature where he'd play 5 new records and listeners would vote on them. The weekday winners would be in the "finals" on Saturday night. This meant that he was playing 25 new records each week, many of which were never heard again. I'm willing to bet a lot of those unknown tracks are from those shows.

Thanks, guys, and thanks to everyone for such great comments. I appreciate your visits, your reading and your listening. 

~~

Full radio airchecks - of any vintage and any format - seem to be a favorite of many of you out there reading this site, so I will start with a couple of recordings, found on either side of a reel of tape, of a rather esoteric and fairly short lived format, one that I can't believe was ever successful. And it happened right here in Chicago. 

The station was WBBM-FM and it was the late 1960's. You can read about it right here. The powers that be wanted to appeal to young people - I would guess those under 25 - but not play any of that icky rock and roll. So - and I'll paraphrase Wikipedia here - one would hear bland instrumental cover versions of recent hits, pop instrumentals (distinctly on the Herb Alpert end of things), and rock-adjacent-but-not-really-rock vocal hits such as those from Petula Clark.

They called this "The Young Sound". Yeah. "The Young Sound."

I don't have the ratings books from 1966-1970, but "The Young" of Chicago could not possibly have been listening in droves to "The Young Sound" on WBBM in 1968. They weren't MOR-ons. 

The first side of this tape seems to have been made "open air" in someone's home - you can hear all manner of conversation and noises in the background and sometimes close to being in the foreground. Not so on the flip side. The first side is likely from 1968. The second side is definitely from September 18th, 1968, based on some of the news reported therein. The deejay is Bud Kelly. The linked Wikipedia article makes it sound like Bud Kelly was the ONLY deejay there. 

Download: Bud Kelly on WBBM-FM, Chicago, 'The Young Sound", circa 1968 (with background sound)

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Download: Bud Kelly on WBBM-FM, Chicago, 'The Young Sound', 9-18-68

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~~

On to some live show-band stuff. In addition to the comments above, I also heard from frequent poster and friend of both of my blogs, Timmy, who expressed his undying love for bar/lounge acts. I'm not sure this is exactly up his alley, but if not, it is probably close. 

I have recently discovered that I have a treasure trove of tapes featuring the performances of a troupe variously identified on these tapes as "Styles" and as "The Jack Dodd Shaffer Quintet". I may not have that latter name quite right, and the different stage names may have depended on how many members were in the band (it appears to have varied) or perhaps the name changed during their existence as a group. And I don't have a name to attach to this particular performance, as the name of the combo is not on the box and doesn't appear to be spoken during the recording. 

All of the tapes feature the same basic shows, with some variety as to the particular songs played and the sketches and humor included. 

That's right, sketches and humor. The act, on most of these tapes, contains set pieces, some of them rather lengthy, all of them moronic and most of them built around vapid jokes of a sexual nature that barely qualify as adolescent humor. I'm sure it was all a bit risqué for the 1960's, at least in some environs. Perhaps those who thought this stuff was funny and/or cutting edge were the same people who thought 17 year olds in 1968 wanted to hear Petula Clark and instrumental version of the Doors. It all ties together, doesn't it? 

Anyway, there is A LOT MORE where this came from, if anyone is interested, or even if no one is interested. So now, for your dining, dancing and laughing pleasure, here they are, the whatever-their-name-was-band, straight from New Year's Day, 1966 at Dick's Rancho Inn in Millbrook, New York. I can't find the tape box at the moment, which is odd, because I just digitized this tape three weeks ago, but the above information is written on the box, and I'll add a scan, when I find it. 

This is for you, Timmy! And if you, or anyone else wants more, let me know: 

Download: Unknown Combo - Music and Comedy at Dick's Rancho Inn, Millbrook, New York, 1-1-66

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And speaking of music that some people can't get enough of, and others wish there was none of, I now present the second of two features on PETE! In my last post, I shared one tape that Pete made, in which he apparently collected a bunch of his older tapes, onto a five inch reel. 

On this tape, Pete did the same, with some comments here and there. But this time, for whatever reason, Pete frequently chose to sing along with the tapes he was copying, with the original on the left channel and the new, further vocal accompaniments on the right channel. The thing is - and here I will quote what I wrote last month: "These performances are, to use the technical term, awful. And it does not appear that Pete was particularly aware of this."

I wrote a lot more about Pete in that last post, and I won't repeat that or go on about him here. The following are the two sides of this tape. The first side, as indicated by its title, contains some other, non-Pete recordings at the end, including the odd juxtapositioning of a bawdy, double entendre 78 RPM record with a religiously themed record. 

Download: Pete - Pete's Hootenanny, Part One (and a Bit of Potpourri)

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Download: Pete - Pete's Hootenanny, Part Two

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As with the other tape, Pete chose to fill nearly every inch of the outside of the tape box with writings about the tape's contents, as you can see: 

Additionally, he included four scraps of paper and cardboard with further information. Well, three with further information and one with a partial ad for Volkswagen. 

He also wrote on the inside of the box: 

~~

Bishop Fulton Sheen was, during his lifetime, one of the most famous men in the country. Read about him, if you'd like at the link I just shared. So when I found a tape called "Bishop Sheen Talks to Teenagers", I figured it was probably a recording that was readily available online. But... that doesn't appear to be the case, unless my searching simply failed to turn it up. This recording appears to be from a television broadcast, rather than a record, so maybe that's why it's not out there somewhere (unless it is). This actually goes in a few directions I wasn't expecting, before landing on the same old reciting of expectations that I knew were coming at some point. Here is that tape: 

Download: Bishop Sheen Talks to Teenagers

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"Continental Classroom" was - to directly quote Wikipedia this time - "a U.S. educational television program that was broadcast on the NBC network five days a week in the early morning from 1958 to 1963, covering physics, chemistry, mathematics, and American government. It was targeted at teachers and college students and many institutions offered college credit for courses of which the broadcasts were the main component." 

I have featured the program here before - at some point, I obtained a LARGE collection of tapes made of a wide range of media recordings, including, in several cases, episodes of this show. 

With the Supreme Court in the news seemingly every three days nowadays, I thought I'd share the recordings of a three part series on the court, which aired in February of 1963. I'll share one segment per post for the next three posts. Here is the first one: 

Download: Continental Classroom - 2-12-63 - The Supreme Court, Part One

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~~

And now for an EXTREMELY Short "Very Short Reel". At 43 seconds, it's not the shortest segment featured at the end of a post, but it's close. I've called it "A Brother and Sister and Their Dad". And I'll let you enjoy its pleasures without saying anything else. 

Download: A Brother and Sister and Their Dad

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Toastmistresses, A Fairly Generic Rock Band, Pete and his Musical Limitations, The End of the Broadcast Day, and MR. PERSONALITY

Hi, everyone, 

Well, I said things might slow down here and, as I wrote in my most recent post on my other blog, they sure enough have. I want to explain that an immediate family member has received a serious diagnosis and has had two surgeries since my last post. Since I posted to my other site, things are looking up, and hopefully in June I can get back to two posts a month, or... I might not. I hope you will continue to visit and view, read and listen whenever I do post. 

A few comments, first: 

In my last post here, I offered up, without much comment, a short recording from Armed Forces radio, which I included only for completeness sake, as I was much more interested in the material on the other side of the tape. However, I received the following comment, from Chad S. about that Armed Forces material, which indicates that it is far more interesting than I thought: 

At the very end of the Armed Forces Radio Service tape is a brief ID of "VOUS" that gets cut off by the end of the tape. This would appear to be the actual call letters of the American Forces radio station in St. John's and later moved to Argentia, Newfoundland, Canada. Older Newfie stations can still retain their VO- calls from before the province joined Canada in 1949. The base at Argentia shut down in 1993, but it appears the tiny 250 watt station shut down some time before that.

This tiny clip is an absolutely amazing find and possibly the only extant audio of this station!

https://www.radioheritage.com/llri50-post/

And, as I expected, Eric P. returned with a couple of comments on the baseball recording that I posted, including the following: 

1-We start with the ending of the 9/12/59 CBS Game of the Week TV audio (Tigers-Yankees) with Dizzy Dean and Buddy Blattner announcing that we heard an earlier portion of on the other tape posted.

2-At the four minute mark, we find ourselves at the end of the Bottom of the 3rd inning on August 20, 1959, again Yankees-Tigers. This is the Tiger radio network and the announcer is George Kell. Action is continuous through the Bottom 6th to the end of the tape. The Tigers pad their lead from 6-2 to 11-2 in a game they ultimately won 14-2. The station ID is WKZO-Kalamazoo.

Thanks to Eric and Chad, and to everyone who comments, and everyone who listens!

(As an aside, I have, just in the last couple of days, found another tape with over three hours of baseball recordings on it - I have not listened to it yet, as I just digitized it yesterday - but will share it here in the future.)

~~

Let's start with a tape which reflects a couple of different things which have not existed for a good many years. It is a tape featuring two speeches by members of the "Toastmistress Club", as heard during what appears to have been a radio broadcast. As it says on the page linked, the Toastmistresses had their own club from 1938 until 1985, so this tape could not be less than 40 years old. It's clearly older than that - my other out-of-date thought is that such speeches being broadcast on the radio places this in the early 1960's at the latest. 

Three other things about this tape. First, much of the recording is marred by being doubly recording - some classical recording can be heard throughout more than the first half of the tape, as well as a bit of announcer talk at one point. And second, the machine on which this broadcast was recorded was not working well at all, and the speed of the recording goes up and down, wreaking havoc on the women's voices. And third, not only is the beginning of the first speech missing, the recording starts and stops a couple of times, causing us to miss bits of each speech. 

The last 50 seconds of this tape feature some children being children, followed by a very brief moment of another radio broadcast. 

Download: Two Short Speeches by Members of Toastmistresses (and a bit more)

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Next up, I know nothing about this tape - or this band - beyond what I think is stated after the first song: that this is Miss Patsy Van Simon singing with a band. I could well have that name wrong - feel free to write in if you think you're hearing it better, or especially if you think you know who this is (beyond the name). Anyway, it's a combo playing just about the sort of repertoire you might have heard from a bar band or a wedding band at some point, especially if you weren't paying too much for them. 

There is no audience here, but they are clearly going through said repertoire, and at the end, in the absence of a crowd, they applaud themselves. So was this a demo? I doubt it. A rehearsal? That seems more likely. 

Download: Miss Patsy Van Simon and Her Band

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And now something extremely esoteric. A fellow named Pete - he says his last name a few times here, but I'm not sure I'm hearing it right (as with the above) - had recorded a set of (apparently small) tapes at some point earlier in the 1960's. He mentions multiple dates on these tapes - the tape box reads 1967 - and I'm guessing there are recordings from multiple year copied here. These are all tapes in which {ete sang (badly) with his guitar (tuned and played badly) on one side and without his guitar on the other. At some point, Pete apparently decided to simplify his collection and made copies of his tapes onto another tape, with minimal comment as to their content. That's what we have here. 

The first side, as this tape came to me, starts off with Pete calling it "Side Two", but that may mean side two of whichever older tape he was copying, since on the other side, he refers to it as "This Side", in comparison with the other side of the tape. I may be overthinking this. 

These performances are, to use the technical term, awful. And it does not appear that Pete was particularly aware of this. In fact, I have another tape (which I'll share later) where Pete consolidates even more of his old tapes onto another reel, copying them onto the left channel, while he sings along with himself, anew, on the right channel. 

These go out to a reader/listener with whom I have been having a delightful email exchange with, about terrible records and performances. Enjoy!

Download:  Pete - Pete Sings With His Guitar, One Part

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Download: Pete - Pete Sings Without His Guitar, Another Part

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Pete wrote all over the tape box and also put stickers on both sides of the reel, to sum up everything captured on this tape. See?: 

 

  

He also included copious notes, four pages of them. Here is one: 

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Here's a neat little reel I found recently. Shortly before her father's death, then-Princess Elizabeth made a trip across Canada, which, based on what I've just read, was supposed to have been made by the king, but he was too ill. This little tape simply captures a variety of reports made before and during that visit, and ends with a speech by the princess just before her departure from the country. The tape ends just as she starts speaking in French, so we unfortunately miss the point at which John Astin rushed the stage and began kissing her up her arm, saying "Princess, You Spoke French!"

Download: Coverage of Princess Elizabeth's Visit to Canada, Fall, 1951

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The next tape is little more than a fragment - under eight minutes of radio recording. But it does feature something rarely heard these days (except from those relatively few remaining AM stations which are licensed for daylight broadcasting only). It's the end of the broadcast day, as heard on WHFS, South Bend, IN, on some long-ago day (or rather, night). You'll hear some classical music, then some station ID backdrop music with an announcer ending his show ("The Wax Museum"), and previewing his next episode (which sounds like an interesting broadcast, actually). Then another announcer does Marine Corps ad, offers up some items of interest about the station and closes up shop for the night with the National Anthem (complete with a moment of un-syncopated rhythm where there usually is syncopation). They were not returning for broadcast again until the next day at 1 PM. What's that about? 

Download: WHFS, South Bend, IN - End of the Broadcast Day

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Nearly every post, I end with a "Very Short Reel", and this week is no exception. But before that, here's a "Very VERY Short Acetate" - all 91 seconds of it - as my "Acetate of the Month". I labeled it as "Man Speaks About 'Protocol M'", and at that time, I did not find anything more about it. I've now searched again, and discovered that the man is reading an editorial from Time Magazine, dated 4/19/48. You can read it here. The acetate space runs out just before the man finishes his reading. 

Download: Unlabeled Black 6 Inch Acetate -Man Speaks About "Protocol M"

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And now for the aforementioned "Very Short Reel". This tape, of just under five minutes, starts with a man introducing himself as "Mr. Personality". He then babbles on for a few minutes, telling some ancient jokes along the way, in a very poorly recorded segment. Then the sound improves, and it's Christmastime - a group of folks test the microphone and levels, and continue this process, and to discuss it, for far longer than seems necessary to me. 

Download: Mr. Personality and Checking the Levels

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Even More Baseball, The "Do You Remember" Dance, The Country Music Story, and "Don't Sit On My Mother's Violin"

As I alluded to in my last post, I don't have a lot of time to write as much as I often do, or to get an acetate of the month ready, either. 

I do, however, want to make sure I refer people back to the comments about my last post. There are multiple posts explaining the details of the baseball offering in that post, and expressing a good deal of excitement over those contents. I'm glad to have shared them. There is also a shorter note expressing an equal amount of excitement over the posting I linked to, in that post, from Kyle - a post of Easy Listening Programming from the 1960's. 

There is lot of text in those comments, so I'm not going to repost them here, but I encourage you to have a look at them if that sort of thing is of interest to you. 

~~

I'll start with the segment that I know some people are waiting for - the remaining "Badly Recorded Baseball". This tape is considerably shorter than the one I shared last time, and at its worst, is nowhere near as bad as the worst parts of the last reel, but through much of it, there is a ton of static as well as interference from another station. But I look forward to the feedback on this one, which I'm sure is coming, and which will no doubt contain details about just what game(s) are heard here. 

Download: More (Largely Badly Recorded) Baseball, circa 1959

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Next up, both sides of a smallish reel of tape. The tape itself was a standard five inch reel, enough for recording perhaps a half-hour of material at 3 3/4 IPS, but it was two smaller reels spliced together, and the (shorter) one at the start of side one (and end of side two) was unrecorded. Side two was the more interesting of the two sides, but first.... on the recorded part of side one was the modestly (at best) interesting excerpt from The United States Armed Forces Radio Services, featuring some classical performances. 

Download: Brief Excerpt from The United States Armed Forces Radio Service

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The real (and reel) fun from this tape is on the second side, though, where some kids recorded themselves being kids. There is a brief performance of the hit song "Short Shorts", a longer segment of the song "Chances Are" - both of which likely date this tape to early 1958 - and then some general silliness. 

Download: Unknown - Short Shorts, Chances Are and Don't Sit On My Mother's Violin

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My longest offering this time around is one of those live performances I share from time to time. I don't know the name of this band, but it was undoubtedly a local dance band which played at various events, in whatever area Troy High School was/is in. I have a handful of tapes from this outfit, each one saying how many "men" worked the gig - in this case, as you can see below, it was "eight men". This is from Thanksgiving, 1956, and a dance apparently titled "Do You Remember?", if the writing on the tape box is to be believed. Travel back with me to a very different era and enjoy this anonymous dance band: 

Download: Unknown Band - Performance at Troy High, Thanksgiving, 1956 ('Do You Remember')

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In January, 1971, a series called "The Country Music Story", hosted by Johnny Cash, ran on American television. Someone recorded large portions of one episode, and here is that recording.

Download: Segments of 'The Country Music Story' With Johnny Cash, January 1971

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For my "Very Short Reel" this time around, I have a tape labeled "Interacting with a Bit of the 'Sgt Pepper' Album", and I think that sums it up fairly well. Here are a few folks, presumably at home, and presumably enjoying what was, at that moment, a still recently-new album.

Download: Unknown - Interacting with a Bit of the "Sgt Pepper" Album

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A Whole Lotta Hard-To-Hear Baseball, Some Cello Music and THE LAND OF OZ

First, I want to thank all of the people who wrote in, asking for more baseball, regardless of the sound quality. Your wish is my command. See below. 

Today's post has fewer items in it, but just as much in terms of length of recordings as have other recent posts. There are some things going on in my personal life which may impact just how much time I have to give to sharing and writing here for the next month or more, so the long baseball feature comes in handy. The next post may well be one of those blowout posts where I share a bunch of stuff without having much to say. 

I also want to share a couple of comments. First, with regard to the tape I shared in my last post, featuring a remarkable number of non-hits and near-musical-mysteries heard on (and taped from) powerhouse Top 40 station, WINS, Ken said: 

Here's a theory about the wide variety of music and number of obscurities on that WINS Tape. Back then I would tape songs off AM Radio in the same way, cutting out the DJ patter wherever possible. Not only that but it would get to the point every so often where I'd only "need" the more obscure records and only tape those, i.e I already had all the hits on tape. It's quite possible the taper was doing the same thing.

And then Kyle, who has been doing much the same sort of thing that I do, offered up links to his latest finds: 

I have 2 home recordings one of WLS-FM and a home recordings of Christmas from 1948 shared with permission of one of the family members the links are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vLlh1Dl7kQ and the WLS recording is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qnOlwoHPq8 

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Rather than begin with the baseball, I'm going to start with the tape I listened to this month that I personally found the most interesting. The only writing on the box appears on the side: 

And the contents of this 10" reel tape were consistent with that description. For this tape contains a two-part, one hour dramatization of the second of L. Frank Baum's Oz books, The Marvelous Land of Oz, very clearly made for radio broadcast at some time and in some place. I am not familiar with this book, although this version of it does intrigue me enough that I might consider reading the Oz books. But according to the summary on that Wikipedia page, everything heard in this dramatization does occur in that novel, although some events have been moved around in time, and large chunks of the story have been deleted entirely, a necessity, I'm sure, when working within an hour framework.  

I don't know that I think this is very good, per se - the performances are sort of ham-fisted and even the recording quality is not all that good (the opening few minutes are marred by some worn tape - I'm not talking about that section, just the overall mix). There does seem to have been some money put into this, judging from the quality of the music - although much or all of that that could have been from stock music cues.

One thing that's interesting to me is that there is nothing in this recording, or the box, that explains when or where, or for what station(s) or other purpose, this recording was made. I'd sure like to know. Anyway, it's a fun listen and I hope you enjoy it. 

Download: Unknown Radio Troupe - The Land of Oz, Act One

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Download: Unknown Radio Troupe - The Land of Oz, Act Two

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Now for the tape which a half-dozen of you asked for. Two posts ago, I shared some vintage Artificial League (AL) baseball broadcasting, featuring the White Sox and Tigers, from 1962, and I mentioned that I had a LOT of truly horrific sounding baseball from the same era. I wasn't going to share it, due to the sound quality, but was begged to. Okay, but you were warned!

Here is what I wrote to my closest friend, back in January and February, when I first scanned this tape: 

I have come across a tape which has the endings of a couple of radio broadcasts of Detroit Tigers games from 1961 - 4 20-61 and 4-21-61 so far (haven't listened to all of it yet). Just the final innings of each for some reason. 

However, the recording quality is TERRIBLE. The signal is weak - so weak you can't make out what's being said at times - and during large parts of it, there is interference (or perhaps some sort of double recording) of a different game entirely. As I've listened more to that baseball tape, the "interfering" broadcast has gotten louder than the Tigers broadcast (after the Tigers' game - it seems to be a recording of whatever followed the game), and now I can tell it's Big Ten Baseball - first day of the Big Ten matchups season, Illinois Vs. Indiana. Presumably also 1961, although I could easily be wrong. so that at moments you are listening to two sports broadcasts at the same time at roughly the same volume. 

The above notes were written before I finished listening to the tape - the first paragraph was written after listening to a shorter segment of it, and part of the second paragraph was an addendum after listening to more of it, but I'm pretty sure I was not done with it at that point - it is, after all, nearly two and a quarter hours long. At this point, I don't recall exactly what's on there that isn't captured in those paragraphs - although I do recall that in some later segments it's VERY soft and trying to boost it made no real difference, at least to me (perhaps you'll have more success). I just know that I'm not going to listen again!

But for those of you for whom this is manna from heaven, enjoy!

Download: Badly Recorded Baseball, circa 1961

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And finally, another entry from the David Hollister Tapes. If you don't know what this is about, please click on that lit-up phrase, which will bring up the first post in this series, and which will explain it. Short version - I have been gifted with a box of many tapes which belonged to - and contained the works of - a late composer named David Hollister. 

In this particular reel, we are treated to what are apparently outtakes from a recording session made for something related to "Bremen Coffee", perhaps a commercial for that company? I really don't know. The cellist's name is shown on the tape box, that portion of which is reproduced here:  

Please note that this is NOT the performance tape!

Download: From the David Hollister Tapes - "Bremen Coffee" Cello Music - Outtakes

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Please let me know if you would continue to want to hear these tapes - or if you would prefer not to, for that matter. I've already listened to the next one I pulled out of the box, and it had some VERY interesting material, so I will at least be sharing that one, but if there is no interest, I don't have to continue this particular series, much as I'd like to....

~~

The Very Short Reels feature will return in my next post. 

A Tragic Industry, Some Funny Recipes, Children at Home, The Summer of '64 and More

First off, I'd like to than Eric Patton - yet again - for identifying details that I didn't have the resources (or, in this case, didn't take the time) to dig up. The baseball recording from my last post is from a game played on July 3, 1962. 

To Eric and anyone else who is interested: This particular collection of reels contains two more tapes of baseball broadcasts from roughly the same era (very late 1950's or very early 1960's). However, the recording quality is as bad as I've ever heard on a tape, and worse than anything I've ever heard here short of shortwave - they sound like they are coming over shortwave, and broadcasts simply start and stop at random. At one point, I realized I was listening to a broadcast of a collage baseball game. If there is interest, I will post these. But... they are lengthy (one is two hours, twelve minutes and the other is 55 minutes) and REALLY hard to listen to. Let me know!

~~

I'd like to start with something pretty awful, but awfully fascinating, too. It's an interview, very likely from the 1950's, with someone named Captain Hill (along with "Jimmy") on a show which I think might be called "The Pepperell Forum" - but that's just a guess, as the name of the show is said very quickly. The host is Major Barren (and again, I'm guessing at the spelling of his name). 

The subject of this abomination is "The Sealing Industry", aka the killing of seals, including baby seals, for their pelts and other materials. While I understand that this is basic necessity for people such as the Inuit, that's not what's under discussion here, and in any event, the killing of seal pups - discussed here - has long since been outlawed. 

I guess I'm both horrified and mesmerized - in the way one might be at looking at a terrible car crash - at the tone of this interview, which is very much clinical and informational. At one, point the interviewer does make mention of something terrible or awful happening, and I thought maybe he was going to acknowledge that they were talking about something incredibly cruel. But no, he was talking about an outing for hunting that ended in the deaths of multiple hunters. Oh, that. 

And to the contrary of any thoughts of awfulness contained in the practice itself, at the end of the show, we are told that the we've been hearing about "The Fabulous Sealing Industry". 

Download: The Pepperell Forum - The Fabulous Sealing Industry

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How about a palate cleanser. I was requested some time ago to share more tapes from my own childhood, and I was absolutely delighted to find the following short tape not too long ago, on a tape I had not listened to since I was a teenager (at which point I had catalogued what was on said tape), and which I have no recollection of EVER hearing before. 

I believe I've about eight years old here (putting this in 1968 or 1969), recording on what may have been the first tape given to me to be my very own - a three inch reel, recorded at the ultra slow speed of 1 7/8 IPS, in quarter track mono (different recordings on all four tracks) so as to get the most recording time out of it. Most of it was nearly unlistenable goofing off, save for some very nice interactions with my older brother. But in one segment, heard below, I read a series of recipes. I would love to say that I was this creative or deliberately funny to have written all of these fake recipes tongue-in-cheek at age eight, but that's absolutely not the case.

No, I'm reading from some source. I don't know where I got these from, but I'm guessing it was a book. And listening to the tape, I'm fairly certain this was a book - or perhaps an article - featuring a series of recipes dictated by kids my own age or younger. They are silly, funny, ridiculous and delightful. I love this tape. 

Download: Bobby Reads Kid Recipes

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Now it's time for some other children, perhaps a decade before the above - at least, I'm guessing it's the late 1950's), being silly, being fun... being kids. It's apparently both the week between Christmas and New Years (or thereabouts) AND around the time for one of the children's birthdays, judging from the various conversations heard here. 

This tape was in the same stack of tapes as was the one from which came the "very short reel" in my last post - the segment with the section about the cow going moo - and it could well be that both tapes came from the same family. 

Download: Kathy, Jackie, Michael and Others - Home Recordings, Christmas and Birthday Talk and More

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Here's something common to this blog but just a little bit different. It's a tape made from New York Top 40 powerhouse WINS in the summer of 1964. Normally, I'd be drooling over this, as would a certain percentage of my readers/listeners. However, this is one of those frustrating tapes where the taper made every effort - very effectively - to cut out all DJ voice overs, patter and commercials, and just get the songs. 

The reason I'm sharing it anyway (since it only contains the songs, many of which are extremely commonly available) is that I was sort of taken aback by the sheer variety of music heard on such a leading Top 40 station that summer. I am a huge record collector and have been studying the charts, and pop music in general, for more than 45 years. Yet there were close to a dozen songs within this two hours of recording that I'd never heard before. 

And were it not for the lists of songs included in the box, I'd have had to do a lyric search to find out what they were, and I'm quite certain some of them would not have been found online by that search. I was also sort of dumbfounded that The Beatles didn't show up until about 90 minutes into the recording, and even then, they appeared first in a version of one of their songs by The Boston Pops. Really? On WINS? The actual Beatles don't show up - during a tape made while they were dominating radio and the world - until eight songs from the end of the tape. 

I know that at that time there was a plethora of local and regional hits heard on many regional stations, but I guess I didn't expect that to be the case so much for what was perhaps the most powerful Top 40 station of its day. The tape box says something about "Tip Top Talent Hunt" - perhaps that's the explanation - that portions of this tape were recorded during was some sort of "potential future hits" programming. But on the other hand, the more obscure records heard here are played throughout the length of the tape...

Here's that portion of the box: 

One final note: I was sort of stunned by the out and out theft of others' material heard early on in this tape. The third song on the tape is identified as "Rules of Love", and even the compiler here didn't know who the artist is (an online search finds a single hit for the lyrics, and attributes them to The Orlons, which makes sense given the weird bass singer heard on this track). This record is literally "What'd I Say" rewritten with new lyrics. Note for note, section for section and nearly chord for chord. Astonishing. Three songs later comes "Moon Maid", a deeply unlikely tribute to a side character from the Dick Tracy comic strip which owes its existence to "Alley Oop". A little less ridiculous in terms of plagiarism, but only by degrees. (Youtube proves this one to be by "Billy Dee & The Debonaires", by the way.)

Download: WINS, New York, Summer, 1964

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And here are the lists - I believe you can open/save these and make them bigger. I made them small to save space: 

      

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And now, a little Ed and Frank. I have, in my collection, a small group of tapes featuring said duo, performing live at who-knows-where, each of them with little stickers on the reel with their names, the date, the speed of the tape and, on this tape, at least, the words "electric piano". And that's all I know. 

Actually, I find this stuff pretty damn unlistenable - it is electric piano... and brushed drums, with the very occasional vocal thrown in. Now, when I write what I'm about to write, I'm not talking about billed duos who actually have a full band behind them, or folk singing duos who don't need anything more than a acoustic instruments and voices: 

But with those exceptions, two person "groups" are, in my experience, pretty ridiculous, painfully limited and generally awful - looking at you, The White Stripes - and Ed and Frank are no exception. 

Download: Ed And Frank, 7-4-57

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For my "Acetate of the Month", I've selected a record featuring a presentation of William E. Fitzpatrick, being honored as the "Rochester Citizen of the Day" on some unnamed radio station and by an unnamed announcer. The date is August 1st, 1951, and the record looks like this. 

And it sounds like this: 

Download: Audiodisc Acetate - Rochester Citizen of the Day - William E Fitzpatrick - 8-1-51

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The flip side simply says "NG" for No Good (see below), but contains the same material, told in three seconds longer than on the usable side. For whatever reason, this version was not considered suitable for airplay. 

Download: Audiodisc Acetate - Rochester Citizen of the Day - William E Fitzpatrick - 8-1-51 (NG Side)

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And now for the "Very Short Reels" entry for this week's post. And technically, this is part of a slightly longer reel (15 minutes or so), as this section comes after a short period of some dull recordings of commonly available music off of full albums played on the radio. A young woman gives the date and is excited about the upcoming Perry Como Kraft Music Hall show with Eddy Arnold - this allowed me to identify the year as 1967. Here is that show. Then there's time for a bit of talk about the music she'd just shared and just a little bit of family news and personal goings-on, and talks just a bit about some situation familiar to both her and the recipient of her outreach. 

Download: A Short Audio Letter - 1-25-67

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BASEBALL for Opening Day, Wife Beating Songs for Children, Life at Home in the Mid 1950's, Jazz from Charlie's Party and Beyond, and the Cow Goes Moo

Hello! 

I forgot to add this when I posted this, but I have tapes for sale. I also forgot to publicize the last two batches, which sold earlier this month. But these are still available. Nothing posted to this site is on any of the tapes listed in that auction. 

And now: Let's jump right into things. Major League Baseball got an early jump again this year, with two teams starting the season today in Japan, while the rest of the teams are still playing Spring Training. My Chicago Cubs - the ONLY team that matters - have a two game series of games that will count against the Los Angeles Dodgers - who have been the Spawn of Satan since at least 1976, maybe 1973 (I'm not sure about earlier) - before both teams go back to Spring Training. 

In honor of the Cubs opening the season, here are their Artificial League (AL) Chicagoland cohorts, the White Sox, heard over very poor reception in a game against the Tigers, perhaps from 1962 

(I'm guessing 1962 because the other side of the tape was a poor recording of part of the second 1962 All Star Game, at Wrigley Field. That broadcast, in full and in better quality, is on YouTube). 

I suppose it's possible that this broadcast is also out there already somewhere, but I have no idea how to find out if it is. I'm sure someone out there will know - much quicker than I would - how to date this recording.

Regardless of the appalling lack of CUBS in this recording, it's still a lot of fun. Plus, it's always amazing and encouraging to me, when I hear old baseball broadcasts, to realize how little has changed about the game, in the (in this case) roughly 62 or 63 ensuing years. That is, except for the damnable Designated Hitter rule, which is no Spawn - it is the direct work of Satan himself.  

Download: White Sox at Tigers, 6th, 7th and 8th Innings

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I was quite pleased and surprised to find a nearly complete episode of a show featuring Alan Mills from CBC radio on an otherwise nondescript reel the other day. With my folk music background and my history of working with children, Mills' voice was very familiar one to me, and this show was called "Folk Songs for Young Folk". 

I mentioned up there how baseball seems to be eternally the same in a lot of ways. Well, here we have the opposite: In what could not be a more clear example of how much times have changed, this show - which I'm guessing is from the late 1950's - is largely focused on songs about marital discord, including every grade school child's favorite subject, wife beating. It's all handled with the most pleasant and avuncular good humor, too. 

Download: Folk Songs for Young Folk with Alan Mills on the CBC

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The next three segments all come from the same tape. And as much as some - perhaps many - of you may find the first part too sickly sweet, I found it deeply endearing and memorable. It is an edited version of a considerably longer tape, a tape which mainly features the cries, gurgles and other sounds made by an infant named Paulie in late November, 1955. 

I have come across many such tapes - in the days before video cameras, I think it was fairly common for parents to audiotape their newborn's utterances. But that's not the focus of the segment heard here. For whatever reason, halfway through the side of the tape, the child's mother, Betty, begins thinking out loud about the baby, about his father and grandfather, about his development so far, etc., and.... well, like I said, I found it extremely touching. I hope you do, too. 

Download: Mommy Betty and Baby Paulie, 11-28-55

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On the other side of the tape are more baby recordings, from February of 1956, then, the following curious little segment, in which Betty complains that someone who borrowed the machine may have damaged it in some way (the recordings sound fine to me) and it order to test it, she will read from the Sears Catalog. Not, mind you, the products and prices, but rather, the advertising copy no doubt on the first few pages, telling the customer how wonderful Sears is. And for someone simply doing a machine test, four minutes seems sort of... excessive? 

Download: Betty Tests the Machine by Reading from the Sears Catalog

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After she's done expounding on the wonders of the Sears company, for the rest of the reel, we get to hear a fairly wonderful example of what local radio sounded like, circa 1955. I'm guessing 1955 as that's when the baby recordings started and this is what those recordings were erasing, at least up to the halfway point or more of side two. In this case, it's the long-lived, but now defunct WMAQ in Chicago, with a bit of midwestern daytime radio, typical of the era. 

Download: A Few Minutes of WMAQ, Chicago, Circa 1955

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The biggest chunk of tape I have for you today is the entire contents of a tape which came in a box that looks like this: 

The back of the box (below) says "Dixieland and Other Jazz From Our Annual Studio Party for Charlie Miller" featuring - I think I'm reading this right - Guy and Lenore Preston. If those names mean anything to anyone out there please leave a comment. Otherwise, I'm just going to let this go without further comment. 

Download: Dixieland and Other Jazz From Our Annual Studio Party for Charlie Miller, 1-7-73

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Now to my ears, where there is a definite break in the recording - at the 62:20 mark - the music returns with what sounds like a different session, even a somewhat different band, so I have broken that part of the tape out as a separate track, indicating that I think it's just a jam session from the same (or more likely, a similar) band. I could be wrong, of course, but that's how I separated out this tape. 

Download: Jamming with the Band from the Charlie Miller Tape

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Here's part of the back of the box: 

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For our very short reel, which is the homiest of home recordings, I have come up with a title which, I think, summarizes the contents nicely, without anything else that needs to be said. 

Here it is!: 

Download: Four Minutes at Home - Two Songs, An Interview, and the Cow Goes Moo

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Five Segments of Music on the Radio, 1965-1973

This is going to be a fairly simple post. I decided to gather together some of the tapes I've listened to lately which contained radio programming which primarily featured music and share them here, one after the other, with my typical sort of comments in between. There is AM and FM reflected here, Country, Top 40, Christian and what later became known as "Music of Your Life". As indicated above, the recordings on the tapes are each from somewhere between 1965 and 1973. And between them, there is just under six hours of radio recordings here. 

I'll start with a tape of just over 20 minutes, as heard on an unidentified station in 1967. I actually think it's a bit odd that the DJ never, in the course of this recording, mentions the station call letters - unless I somehow missed it. That's almost unheard of. I'd say that perhaps this was a syndicated show, but then, at the start of the segment, the DJ mentions that he's on tape today, indicating that he was usually broadcasting live. I do enjoy the small segment where he indicates that his upcoming scheduled live appearance has been cancelled, seemingly because not enough people showed up to the last one!

Download: Country Music Radio - Unidentified Station, 1967

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Staying in roughly the same time period - in this case, it's 1966 - we flip down the dial to WILS, a powerhouse Top 40 station in Lansing, Michigan. This 45 minute blast from that epochal year is not the ideal aircheck - the sound quality is poor, very poor at times, and whoever was recording the songs did not always record the DJ patter. 

This is not the case of a tape which has methodically had the DJ chatter eliminated - I have plenty of those and they are not terribly interesting, aside from hearing what regional hits there were in a given time and place - but it's not a straight-through recording of the station, either. There are lots of edits, more in some sections than others. But I found it highly enjoyable anyway, if not as enjoyable as some other tapes of this sort. And I hope you'll enjoy it, too. 

Download: WILS-AM, Lansing, MI, Spring, 1966

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Now for the longest segment here, nearly two and a half hours, which I believe is actually segments of multiple broadcasts. The station was WYON, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, just about 70 miles down the road from WILS in Lansing (above), and this is the station that had the early version of "Music Of Your Life", although I don't think that format ever featured the likes of John McCormack, or some of the other artists heard here. 

As you'll hear, this programming, in this case an evening show called "Afterglow - Music Just For You", featured a pretty wide variety of popular music, even though things such as Rock and Roll and R&B/Soul were completely avoided, and very little Country Music was heard, either. 

That sounds limiting, and yeah, sure it is, in a way. But on the other hand, here we have The Clancy Brothers, Lawrence Welk, Lobo, The Mills Brothers, Jan Garber Andy Stewart (a double play of Andy Stewart!), Perry Como, Harry James, Lenny Dee and Big Tiny Little, among dozens of others. 

This one is also somewhat choppy - ads and newscasts are cut, and plenty of times DJ patter is cut as well, but in other spots, the broadcast is heard for several minutes uninterrupted. Well, we can't have everything. 

Download: WYON, Grand Rapids, MI, Circa 1973 - "Afterglow - Music Just For You"

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Moving Way Out West, two years earlier, and into another type of broadcast altogether, here we have a show which aired on KHOF, Los Angeles, on November 11, 1971. At that time, the station was apparently owned by FBN - "The Faith Based Network", and here we have 35 minutes of their morning programming. Commercials and other things which aired that morning appear to have been edited out - there are short gaps between the segments (which I cut down to the merest of seconds here). It was Veteran's Day, of course, but why would that be mentioned within a religious show, huh? I'm also puzzled by what makes trumpet solos religious (I know, I know, the original song being played is a religious song, but still...). Otherwise, I have nothing else to say. 

Oh, yes I do. This came to me on one o' them big ten inch reels, complete with a sheet indicating what was on the tape. That's reproduced, below. I also have at least two more episodes of this show, from that same time period, if anyone is interested. Actually, I have them even if no one is interested. 

Download: Religious Music Programming from KHOF, Los Angeles (FBN - The Faith Based Network), 11-11-71

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Finally - and perhaps this is the most fun of the five tapes - here are some recordings made in Pittsburgh in 1965. There are two stations reflected here, both featuring the Country Music of the day, and I caught the names of Roy Scott on WPIT (730 AM), and Bobby Hudson on WEEP (1080 AM). Wikipedia tells us that WPIT was, and still is, a Christian radio outlet, but clearly, in 1965, anyway, they offered Country Music for four hours every afternoon, and horse racing coverage (and perhaps other sports) in the evening. WEEP, which is now WNNL, began playing Country Music that very year, 1965, and became a powerhouse in the format. 

These segments are a bit more cohesive than the tapes shared above, but commercials, news and some chatter has still be excised out by whoever recorded this material. There is enough sports reporting that the tape can be narrowed down to September of 1965 (Joe Torre was suspended for bumping an umpire). And there are a couple of magical jingles here. The simple one at 37:30 for the weather report is one of my favorite jingles ever. 

This is right about the point that the trends in Country Music starts losing me - I'm much more a fan of the 1950's sounds than the dominant styles heard here - with the exception of the phenomenal Roger Miller, who is not heard here. Even still, I found this hugely entertaining. Enjoy!

Download: Country Radio, September, 1965 Roy Scott on WPIT and Bobby Hudson on WEEP

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Very short reels will return next time!

Some Great 1950's Jingles, Bobby Helms in Canada, Recording For the Fun of It, A Glee-Free Glee Club and More!

Let's start off with what I'm guessing will be the most popular offering from today's posting. This tape is labeled as being a group of highlights for someone named Joan Wile, who is featured on each of the records on the tape. Happily for all of us, these recordings turn out to be some absolutely wonderful and vintage radio jingles, from stations all around the country. The tape box had a mailing address for Ms. Wile on it (not copied in the scan, below), in a very fancy location in Manhattan, with a zone ("New York 19") rather than a zip code, marking this as being a tape from prior to 1963. Listening to these jingles, I'm guessing the late 1950's is more accurate. 

And they are simply magical. At the end of the tape, as indicated in handwriting on the box (below), and on the other side of the tape, is a single commercial, in this case for a anti-dandruff concoction with the deadly sounding name of "Dandricide". Unfortunately, this commercial is not quite complete AND has a short gap in it, as well, as you will hear. But still pretty marvelous, you-shoulda-been-there sort of stuff. 

Download: Joan Wile - Radio Station Jingle Demo Reel

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The provenance of this next item is a bit hard to discern. It is an interview with country singer and one-time (short lived) pop music star Bobby Helms (along with, briefly, his wife), by someone whose name might be Armel Shaw, which is a guess at the spelling. The interview is from Canada, and was recorded while Helms was performing in a local venue, probably in 1967. 

However, it doesn't seem to be from a single radio station. Rather, it appears to be that Mr. Shaw was a freelancer who perhaps simply recorded interviews with the stars as they passed through town and then sent the tapes out to radio stations - perhaps (again perhaps) with some sort of arrangement in place whereby they would play them, perhaps just in the hopes that they would do so. I dunno. 

After the interview the tape contained much of the contents of a 1967 Helms compilation album, followed by the brief bit you'll hear at the end, asking folks to record their comments on the interview. This seems to indicate that the tape was passed from station to station, rather than individual tapes being sent all at once to all stations (since he asks that comments be recorded only after other commenter's recordings as bypassed). A very peculiar method of getting one's work out to the listening public. 

Download: Armel Shaw - Canadian Interview with Bobby Helms, Circa 1967

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Now here's a fellow who, I'm guessing, had either a brand new console organ for his living room or a new tape recorder, or perhaps both. And, as he says (and I've titled it) he's going to try it out for the fun of it. Things get off the ground swimmingly with the most disjointed version of "Alley Cat" that you've ever heard. Near the end of this performance, he curses his playing and comments that "I started out wrong". He remained wrong, too, but doesn't seem to have noticed. This segues into an equally scattered, equally beat-less version of "Ramblin' Rose" (I do note that there definitely is a beat in the accompaniment, but there is no attempt to follow it in the melody). A short song I don't recognize follows, and then, after a brief discussion, "On Top of Old Smokey" in another tempo-challenged rendition finishes off the set. 

Unknown - Trying Out the Home Console Organ for the Fun of It, Once

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In the box for a 10 inch reel of tape I found the following concert program: 

Yes, the Vanderbilt Glee Club. I often find that Glee Clubs were, in the past at least, engaging in performances of material that have nothing gleeful about them. This would be one such example. There is no date anywhere on this sheet or the box. 

Indeed, on the tape is that exact program. Only it's not from the concert - or if it was, no one attended, or else no one was impressed enough to applaud. More likely this is a recording of the program - either of a rehearsal or a deliberately recorded run through in order to have a good copy of that program. So there is no audience. This tape is in mono in this sound clip because I do not have a machine that plays two track stereo, a fairly short-lived format which existed from about 1957 to 1960 or thereabouts. 

Download: The Vanderbilt Men's Glee Club - Undated Performance with Organ Interludes

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What comes next on that tape might actually be the second most fun item in today's posting. For the rest of the tape, we have the sort of thing I always identify as a "Hodgepodge" - a motley collection of unrelated recordings in a relatively short space of time. This material was on the rest of side one, and then on the start of side two. 

First, as soon as the Glee Club recording ends, there is a small orchestra flourish, the end of some piece. Then we seem to eavesdrop on a moment during a rehearsal of some sort. It's hard to hear, but the conversation includes a reference to a gospel reading. 

Then, at the one minute mark, someone plays scales on the piano, very heavily and loudly, in octaves, before launching into a sedate version of the hymn "Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!". And then does the octaves and the hymn again. And again. A total of six times, throwing in a short bouncy version of another hymn (which I can't think of the name of) in the middle. 

Now we're up to minute six and onto the brief recordings on side two of the tape. This section is poorly recorded, with a prominent hum (which I've minimized some). There is some bland background music playing, and a few people have a conversation about the recording they're making and the best way to capture it. After two and a half minutes, the music segues into a classical piece that I'm guessing someone will recognize, and that lasts until the other channel of the Glee Club tape (heard backwards on my machine - which I didn't include) interrupts it, and the Hodgepodge ends. 

Download: Hodgepodge Following the Glee Club Recording

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And now another entry in the David Hollister Tapes. If you don't know what these are about, I explained them in this post, and with today's post, I have now shared four of these tapes. 

This one is dated 6/4/80 and 8/3/80, and as it says of the box, its contents are apparently the practicing of three songs "for <a> contest". The three songs are "One Woman Man" (not the ridiculous Paul Anka song, but an equally ridiculous obscurity), "Travelin' Light (heard in two versions, a shorter version early on the tape, and a version with a lengthy verse at the end of the recording - the later to the two sessions, making me think that the song was expanded on in the meantime), and "Marvelous Massage". 

Personally, I find this material fairly awful - and "Marvelous Massage" to be award-winningly hideous - and I suspect that all three are someone's originals, whether Hollister or someone else. Having heard his other material, my guess is that these songs are the work of the vocalist, who is unidentified on the tape box. I will let the listener make his or her own judgments as to this vocalist's abilities.  

Anyway, I have generally enjoyed the Hollister tapes, and although I didn't enjoy this one, I thought I'd share it as another example of their contents. Please let me know if you do or don't want me to continue to delve into this collection. 

Download: From the David Hollister Tapes - Rehearsals of Three Songs, 6-4-80 and 8-3-80 - "For Contest"

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And now, here's our "Acetate of the Month". This is a ridiculous little record, featuring "The Band of America" conducted by Paul LaValle, playing "The Dwight D. Eisenhower March". Nothing actually too ridiculous about that - he was a war hero and certainly worthy of a march. But as you'll hear, the conceit here is that the man's initials were D-D-E, so the song is based, of course, on a musical phrase using those tones. Yay! Let's march! 

Download: NBC Reference Recording Acetate - Band of America, Conducted by Paul LaValle - The Dwight D. Eisenhower March

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And finally, here's a "Very Short Reel". Here we have someone reading from a book - almost certainly a novel. I haven't done a lot of digging, but with what I did do, I was unable to find what book is being read. Perhaps someone out there knows, or can figure it out: 

Download: Reading from an Unknown Book

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