Some 75 Year Old College Baseball, The Return of Dr. Bill, Ronnie Hall Sings, An Excitable Audience, Goofing Around and Some Scrap Metal

Hello everyone, 

There are a LOT of comments I've received lately which are fully worth sharing here - more information about things I've posted, clarifications and corrections. But I've again waited until the end of the month and I like to get to posts out each month, so that will have to wait. Maybe I need to start building the next post tomorrow. 

But I do want to ask a question for anyone who might know: I have found in my collection a nearly complete recording of the radio broadcast coverage of the legendary "Immaculate Reception" football game from 12/23/72. This is the Pittsburgh radio call, and while commercials (and half time) were not recorded, and the person recording also began editing the time in between plays at the end to save tape, the entire call from start to finish is on the tape with the exception of a few moments between those plays near the end.  

My question is: Is this available already? Does it circulate or is it posted somewhere online? I've been unable to find it, but would only like to share it if it truly isn't already out there. Again, those who know - let me know!

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Speaking of SPORTS - I have something sort of amazing here. It comes from a paper reel - the sort of tape produced only between the mid 1940's and about 1951, with paper, rather than plastic backing. And while a professional baseball broadcast from that era would be great, something even more esoteric was on this tape: a local college baseball broadcast between two teams from Portland, Oregon! Sadly, there is only about 20 minutes of it here, comprised of portions of two innings, but talk about obscure! Presumably, this is from at least 70, if not 75 years ago, probably closer to the latter, given it being on a paper reel. What are the chances of this existing at all? I thought this was beyond cool. 

Download: A College Baseball Broadcast - University of Portland Vs Lewis and Clark College

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Now, I should mention that the recordings of the two inning segments heard here are not heard back to back on this tape. For whatever reason, the person recording the game ran the tape forward several minutes before starting to record the second segment. I have joined them. 

For the sake of completeness, if nothing else, here is what was otherwise being erased by the baseball segments. This short recording is heard between those two baseball segments. The recording quality is nothing short of abysmal and if someone with a better handle on sound editing wants to work on this, please do. But what you will sort of hear are two men speaking before an audience. Because I was born in 1960, I grew up with the voice of Richard Nixon frequently resonating in my ears for many years, and I'm fairly certain the second speaker is Nixon, presumably near the beginning of his career, just before or after he was Vice President. See what you think. 

Download: Very Poorly Recorded Segments of Speeches

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During the years I was posting on WFMU's Beware of the Blog I featured a series of tapes made by an army doctor in Korea following the end of the war, audio letters sent to his wife. I even included one which captured the highlights of a vacation the two of them took after he retired. Unfortunately, those offerings are no longer available, as Beware of the Blog has gone dark. But for those of you who might have liked them, and for those who didn't know about them but are intrigued, here is yet another of those tapes, one I never shared on WFMU. It's one of the longer ones from the collection.   

If anyone lets me know that there is interest, I will be happy to repost any of the previous WFMU offerings here, not just of these audio letters, but anything which was once available at that site and now is gone. 

Download: Audio Letter from an Army Doctor in Korea - 4-20-54

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More than four months ago, in this post, I features some recordings from a TV show called "The Children's Hour". I now know a bit more about where those recordings came from, or at least why. Since then, I have discovered that I have, in my collection, at least two tapes made of television appearances, local and national, by someone named Ronnie Hall, who was a graduate of that program. Here, from 1957, are some recordings that someone - mostly likely a family member - captured of young Ronnie Hall on some local TV shows and also on the Lawrence Welk show, which would have been a huge deal around 1957. 

Download: Ronnie Hall - Various Television Performances, Circa 1957

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Several years ago, I posted photos of what happened to over 100 of my as yet unlistened-to tapes when a pipe broke and spewed water on them. The box for this tape was unfortunately among those reels. However, you can still make out some of the writing on this box (which is not true for all of the boxes that went through that experience: 

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In my last post, I featured a pop-hits-heavy performance by a high school concert band. Now, here is a tape (labeled "Jazz Band") which was clearly from the same source - the tapes were together, on the same brand of tape, in my collection. Here, again, there are a few pop songs, more than we ever played in my high school jazz band (where our repertoire had exactly zero current pop hits). I don't think all the pieces they play here pop hits, in this case, but I also don't recognize all of the tunes. 

But even more interesting here is the level of engagement of the audience, particularly in their response to the various elements of the Theme from "Shaft" and their explosion of applause at the end of that and other numbers.

Download: A Mid '70's High School Band Concert with a Very Receptive Audience

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Now it's time for our "Acetate of the Month". This one is VERY short and almost as hard to listen to as those speech segments near the top of this post. I've named it "Three Guys Goofing Around" and it comes from a small unlabeled acetate. The contents are barely a minute long, but are rewarding enough for inclusion here, if you can bear with/get past the sound quality. 

Download: Tru-Tune 6 Inch Acetate - Three Guys Goofing Around

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And now, here's a Very Short Reel. This is, honestly, excerpted from a much longer tape, but I wanted to share it by itself. The tape was in horrible condition - plastic was flaking off of it as I copied it digitally and there were multiple breaks - I ended up throwing it away after listening to the digitized version. Most of it was instrumental classical music from "The US Steel Hour" (the radio version of that show), with sound cutting in and out, muddy at best for the most part. You'll hear some of that here, too. But I thought this Public Service Announcement about scrap metal was worth preserving. 

The show's Wikipedia page is largely about the television series which started in 1953, but it states that both shows only featured plays, which is interesting as this recording was most definitely a presentation of music. 

Download: Scrap Metal Plea from US Steel, from the US Steel Hour, circa 1951

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