Being a Woman Through the Years, Late '70's Top 40, "The Children's Hour, Some Woozy Sound, Joerg Rothweiler's Greatest Hits and Dick Clark Gets It Wrong

I have a handful of comments to catch up with from the last few months. I got a few thanks for the beautiful music posting - you're quite welcome! Please pay attention, everyone, I really do try to honor requests. And regarding my observation in that post, that a Beautiful Music station I sampled seemed to have no actual commercials in an hour of broadcasting, Chad offered up the possibility of the tape having been edited, but then also added this interesting observation:

I also think most beautiful music on FM stations in the 1950s through 1970s never made much money in terms of advertising. The technology was new and took decades to reach full acceptance and availability especially in cars which were still being sent from the factory equipped with AM-only radios well into the 1980s. I suspect that most were holding a spot on the FM dial until the technology matured, which seemingly took 25 to 30 years from its introduction post WWII! Since AM-FM simulcasting was prohibited at the time, it made sense to put orchestral music on the FM dial for the mature hi-fi audience and left the pop music formats for the transistor radio set.

Eric wrote in to let me know that the WFMU blog, which is where this feature got its start, and which I've linked to own my home page and within many posts, has been taken down, as the host site has gone out of business. Posts are available at the Wayback Machine, but whether the downloads will work from there is a different story. If there's anything at that site that I posted that you'd like to have a copy of, let me know and I'll include it here. 

"Snoopy" and Eric (maybe the same Eric as above, I'm not sure), offered up thoughts on the Kingsport Radio tape, as well as the Death of Eisenhower programming included in this post. I'm going to combine their comments into one comment here. I hope that's okay: 

The Kingsport station is WKPT which as the newscasts show was an NBC affiliate in this era (it switched to ABC affiliation in the 70s). The morning program host we hear after the initial newscast is Charlie Deming who was known as the "Gloom Chaser". He started at WKPT in 1945 and was with them continuously until his death in 1974. If you can get past the first 5 minutes of church choir music on the Kingsport TN radio tape, there's quite a bit of interesting news and commercials from Friday, March 6, 1964; at 27:45 a comedy bit by prolific voice actor Paul Frees. 36:16 changes into something, not the radio broadcast - some comedic theatre, I can't tell what. Really interesting lost media. The NBC specials on President Eisenhower's death are clearly TV audio recordings from March 28, 1969. First, coverage after the news broke and then an 11:30 PM special. Edwin Newman anchors both of them.

Regarding the damaged player piano rolls, from a post one month ago, I wanted to make sure I linked everyone to this insane music that reader/listener Kit linked me to. I absolutely encourage everyone to read about and listen to what was shared in the following comment. 

Gosh, what a spectacular ending to the player piano piece and to your October postings. As if Conlon Noncarrow had a commoner sense of humor.

Finally, I'd like to deeply thank the anonymous writer who confirmed for me that Vaughn Monroe was an exceptionally bad singer. I like your term, "Baritone Sludge". 

And now, on with the countdown!

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I'm going to kick of this post's offerings with a remarkable tape of an episode of "The Columbia School of the Air". In a quick web search, I have found scattered references to this CBS radio show, but nothing in detail. One magazine article from 1946 indicates the show was in its 13th year at that time. 

This episode, as the dialogue makes clear, is from 1948, and this program was transcribed - that is, it went out to stations on a disc, perhaps an acetate. This tape is a recording of that disc - the tape itself is not from 1948, otherwise it would have, by definition, been on a paper reel, but from some time at least a bit later. It came to me in a metal can with the following written on the edge:

This is a radio drama, portraying woman seeking civil and other rights from 1848 to 1948. What I find remarkable about this program is that 1948 was hardly a good time for progressive thought and action, and this program is nothing if not progressive in many ways, not the least of which is in its matter-of-fact portrayal of a Black woman, Sojourner Truth, as simply another participant in the search for equal rights, and an equal to the other women in the room during that scene. But there are several other elements to this programming that pleasantly surprised me, as well. 

Download: The Columbia School of the Air - Being a Woman - Circa 1948

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(This is, by the way, the second tape I've featured from a large stack of metal-canned tapes with that writing on the side. I'm trying to recall what the first one was - something about school, I think - but it's fuzzy, and I'm pretty sure it was not from "The Columbia School of the Air". If I figure it out, I'll update in a future post.)

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I have a lot less to say about the next tape. This is for all of you - and that includes me - who enjoy recordings of any era of Top 40 radio. This nearly 90 minute example is from WRBR in South Bend Indiana, from the early fall of 1979. It's got many of the hits you might imagine from that time period, plus a goodly number of oldies. 

Download: WRBR, Top 40 Radio, 9-16-79

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"The Children's Hour" was a radio program sponsored by Horn and Hardart (the pioneer company in terms of fast food) which ran on radio for more than 20 years, before starting up on TV for at least a few years, in 1948. The Wikipedia page for the program indicates it was only seen in Philadelphia and New York City, and it lasted until 1959. As with "The Columbia School of the Air", I've been unable to find out much of anything else about the show. The show featured juvenile performers, some of whom went on to stardom and/or long careers, in a variety of skits and plays.

What I have here is a tape of just under an hour, containing segments, some short, and some long, from this show. The recording is frustratingly haphazard - songs are cut off, scenes are excerpted without relevance to the larger plot, and one of the lengthier segments seems to be building towards.... something... when the recording is stopped and picked up at a later point, possibly even a later episode. But still, I found it a fascinating listen. 

Then there is this, from the Wikipedia page: "Fred Rogers worked as a stage manager on the show, which he later described as 'terrible' for forcing children to perform."

(Note: I have included a few moments of a performance of "My Funny Valentine" which leads off this tape, just prior to the "Children's Hour" recordings.)

Download: Segments of Episodes of "The Children's Hour"

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Okay, the following my be the very opposite of appealing to the broadest audience possible. Call it "Narrowcasting". I know I have at least one reader/listener (the aforementioned "Snoopy" who loves anything I share that has a woozy or deeply imperfect sound quality to it. And so perhaps I have targeting this solely at one person, but I hope others will find something to enjoy here, too. 

Anyway, every now and then I come across a tape where one set of recordings didn't completely erase a previous set of recordings, so that two completely different things are heard, often at roughly the same volume, at the same time. In this case, we have some classical music which is recorded on the same piece of tape which also contains a variety of spoken word segments from radio station KFAB in Omaha. This 30 minute slice of sound is not precisely what is heard on the tape - I have edited out segments from what was a longer tape, during which the sound of two recordings is not present. That helps explain the difference between this segment and the one just below it. 

Download: Doubly Recorded Segments

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On the flip side of this tape, I found that one spoken word segment - partially heard in the first half of the above recording - was heard backwards, without the classical music interfering. I have turned that segment around and present it here. This segment was preceded and followed by more classical music, which I have removed, leaving the following twelve minutes. There are a few announcements and some commercials and such, but most of this segment features an interview with operatic soprano Helen Traubel, and, as mentioned, much of this interview can be made out amongst the double recordings in the previous segment. 

Download: More from the Tape with the Doubly Recorded Segments - Interview, Etc. - KFAB, Omaha

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And now it's time for our "Acetate of the Month", which looks like this: 

I don't know anything about this besides what you can see above. It features a combo, presumably led by Joerg Rothweiler - perhaps they are the Black Derby's or perhaps they worked at a place called The Black Derby's (either way, that apostrophe seems misplaced, and possibly Derbies would be a better spelling). There are performances of three disparate songs, all done Dixieland style. Maybe someone else knows more about this record and can shine some light on its provenance. 

Download: Midwestern Recording Studios, Inc 10 inch Acetate - Joerg Rothweiler - Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey, Battle Hymn of the Republic, The Dark Town Strutter's Ball

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And now for a "Very Short Reel". In a few recent posts, I have shared tapes from a relatively new acquisition - a box of tapes of commercials, some of which (including all that I have shared so far) from the Needham Harper Steers company. In this case, we have four ads for the same group of products that I featured in the first Needham set I shared, Mueller's Pasta.

Download: Needham Harper Steers - Four Mueller's Pasta Ads

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And now, for a little something extra. This is the mint on your pillow, the free handful of candies at the cashier's stand, the flowers from the audience after a great performance. It's only "Waffer Thin". It's not really a "Very Short Reel", even though it is extremely brief, as its source is a tape lasting well over an hour.

It's just a moment in time from an episode of a syndicated weekly Dick Clark oldies program, containing a factual error so blindingly wrong and idiotic I'm amazed no one picked up on it before it got out onto the program. You'll hear Dick Clark, being smarmy and know-it-all-y and talking down to his audience as usual, reading his copy and clearly not even noticing that he's just said something astonishingly stupid. That he makes this particularly error (and level of error) while simultaneously regaling the audience about all the names that they should know, but don't, well, that's just icing on the cake.

Download: Dick Clark Fact Check

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