Greetings!
If you read my other site, then this might not be news to you, but the reason for the delay this month is that my main computer, a desktop, was attacked by malware a few weeks ago, and that has made it hard for me to do some of the things I need to do to share these sound files with you. I have been slowly putting this post together, but it has been a slog. Today is the first time I've been able to utilize the blogger site from my main computer, and my Gmail account (from which I excerpted some comments below) for the first time in nearly a month.
Supposedly, the next step we are taking will succeed in removing the last vestiges of this attack from our computer and I can go back to twice a month posting here, and three times a month on my other site.
And I've really wanted to get this one out to you for a while, because it is, again, a guest post provided by a man named Matt, who I have been talking to via email for over seven years now. Here is the first post that was generated by the material Matt sent me, from two years ago. Recently, he sent me reels with three more hours of material on them, and that's what I have for you today. I'm going to share them in the order that they appeared on those tapes, with just a few short moments excised due to the extreme poor quality of the sound, and one segment which I have attempted, to a degree, to speed correct. Other segments also have sound quality issues, but I thought them good enough, and certainly interesting enough, to share anyway.
As always, thank you Matt. I am deeply obliged and fantastically thrilled to have made your acquaintance.
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The first offering is by far the longest, at a full hour. This is a rebroadcast of material - one station playing back something that occurred years earlier at another station. The introductory segment heard here explains it well, but in essence, these are the current, and many former, on air staff from station WCPO in Cincinnati, talking with each other and reminiscing during what was literally the last hour of their format, their jobs and their call letters, after the station had been sold, in January of 1966.
Download: The Last Hour on WCPO, Cincinnati, January, 1966
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Next up is a 1961 recording which will also qualify as our "Acetate of the Month", along with a couple of other items here, which were received by me on reel-to-reel but which clearly were originally on record. And this one is an internal promotion - sort of a short industrial musical, albeit one using existing melodies for the (brief) songs - for Hotpoint appliances, from 1961. I think this is my second favorite item, of the items Matt shared with me, this time around.
Download: 1961 Hotpoint Promotion
Play:
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This next one, also from an acetate, is a bunch of hooey - Honeywell trying to convince its salespeople, and through them, their clients, that they could predict the weather six months or more in the future, down to the day and the region. It's 66 years later (I did the math on my 66th birthday this year) and we still can't say what the exact temperature will be and what precipitation to expect in eastern Iowa seven months from now in the third week of April. Did anyone buy this bunk?
It's sort of entertaining, though.
Download: Honeywell Weatherwatch - Predicting the Weather for 1960
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In Matt's previous offering, my favorite segment was the Midwestern Hayride excerpts, and in response, he sent me more from this program, and from some other, otherwise unidentified country music radio recordings from the same year, 1953. Matt offered the following behind-the-scenes information to further fill in the picture:
Midwestern Hayride was performed by artists on the WLW payroll. Chet Atkins and Homer and Jethro met their wives at the station and Chet and Jethro married one of the Johnson sisters who are local to my rural area. They used to gather at our neighbors place with Johnny Cash and other C and W notables for "woodsheddin".Jethro Burns (an amazing picker!) is buried in our township cemetery.
Download: Midwestern Hayride, Segments from February, 1953 and Other 1953 Recordings
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This next segment may well be the most interesting for some of you. It's a hodgepodge of sound, all recorded on a paper reel, the earliest reel to reel format, which was phased out by the early 1950's. In this case, there is a Chevy advertisement, a news report on a fire and a man giving play-by-play as if he is live at a ballpark, but he's actually recreating it based on wire copy as it arrives.
Here are Matt's comments on this tape:
Ok. recording from 1949 is all from the same reel, a Brush metal with Brush tape. It was from long dark WNAO, which was a AM station in Raleigh ,N.C. The tapes came from the garbage pile of the late station manager, George Case. He started in 1928 at WCKY in Cincy at the ripe old age of 16 . He told me they did "recreations" via teletype or telegraph as the microwave link had not been developed for anyone except the national networks until much later. The recreation is pretty obscure even though it's short.
Download: 1949 Variety on Paper Reels - 1950 Chevy Ad, News Report on Fire, Baseball Recreation
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Since I liked the Midwestern Hayride so much, Matt also provided some even older country music radio, from a precurser to the Hayride, "The Boone County Jamboree", from the late 1940's, followed by some more live music which he does not know the source of. Matt wrote:
Boone County Jamboree was a show on WCKY. It predated Midwestern Hayride but didn't have the 4 station reach of the Crosley BC network. WCKY was polarized so the majority of its 50 Kw signal was "squirted" south covering Kentucky.
Download: The Boone County Jamboree, Circa Late 1940's
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Download: Unidentified Live Recording
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My favorite item here is this set of six accounts for a variety of savings and loan facilities, dated 1961. These are also heard from what was originally an acetate, and clearly all come from the same company, even though they promote several different S & L businesses. Elements of these ads remind me of my beloved Star Ads.
Download: Six Savings Account Ads, 1961
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This is followed on Matt's tape by yet another acetate ad, in this case a brief one which is not complete as heard here. It's for the World Book Encyclopedia. We had this product when I was growing up - it was deliberately written at about a sixth grade level so as to be ideal for use by families with any children from junior high age and up.
Download: World Book Encyclopedia Ad, 1964 (Incomplete)
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Switching gears fairly radically from the era and the styles of the rest of this post, sandwiched between all that stuff is a "scoped" aircheck from James Francis Patrick O'Neill (apparently known as JFPO) from WLW in Cincinnati, some time in 1970. The sound quality here is quite poor, and the speed varied wildly, on the tape I received. I have tried to correct as much of the speed issues as I can.
Download: James Francis Patrick O'Neill on WLW, Cincinnati, 1970
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And (almost) finally, some more "Midwestern Hayride", in this case, rehearsals that Matt has acquired somewhere and somehow.
Download: Rehearsals for "Midwestern Hayride"
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And here is one, solitary entry from my own collection, a VERY, Very short reel (12 seconds), featuring a few moments of a phone call. And that's it.
Download: An Extremely Short, Incomplete Phone Call Recording
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