Interesting Radio Recordings from Two Paper Reels, Birthday Time, An Odd Promo, Music in a Bar and at Home, A Little German, and the use of Cactus and Wood Needles

Howdy, 

I'm starting off today with something I find absolutely fascinating. I recently was lucky enough to purchase two paper reels - that is, reels without plastic backing, just paper. Both were Soundmirror reels, from the company I believe was first in producing reel tape for home buyers. Since that company was out of the reel tape business by 1952, and paper reels were gone by 1953, it's always possible that there could be recordings as much as 80 years old on such a tape. 

That's not quite the case here - these recordings are more like 73 years old - but they are fascinating nonetheless. The first one I listened to had an episode of a radio program called "Answers for Americans", which was heard on the Mutual radio network. A panel of experts answered political questions from listeners, with prizes to the listeners whose questions were used. 

Multiple online sites indicate this was a right wing show particularly focused on anti-communism, but this particular episode really just sounds like the questioners, and the experts, getting their bearings at a very scary moment - the weeks after Stalin died - when a lot of questions about any resetting of US/Soviet relations were unsettled. While I'm sure a left-wing show would have sounded much different, I doubt that a mainstream right-down-the-middle show would have been much different at that particular moment. 

Again, your mileage may vary, but boy did I enjoy listening to this. 

Download: "Answers For Americans" On Mutual Radio, Spring, 1953

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The show ended before the tape did, and at the end of it, there is this fragment of some sort of variety program. The man speaking and singing throughout mentions having starred in "Million Dollar Legs", meaning he could conceivably be one of three male stars of that movie. I certainly am not an expert in any of them, but I'm guessing it's Donald O'Connor

Download: Fragment of a Variety Show circa 1953

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The other paper reel was interesting for a different reason. The person who recorded "Answers for Americans" seemingly recorded another episode of that show or something similar, for the conversation (actually it's more like a series of short speeches) is about how a "One-World Government" would be possible, but only if it were to be a "FREE One-World Government", and I'm sure we all know whose definition of "Free" they were using. 

I believe our recordist must have left the machine alone to record, because powerhouse clear channel station WCKY, and its Country and Western format, begins showing up, interfering with the speechifying. Each station struggles to be heard over the other for a time, but eventually, the Cincinnati C & W format wins out, and the speeches are not heard at all for the last few minutes. What is heard is some down-home entertainment, also likely from right around 1953, complete with ads for worthless patent medicines, which are claimed to be able to cure oh so many ills. 

It's hard to listen to at times, but man oh man, is it rewarding in the end. And the far better radio format wins in the end, too. Well, that's what I think, anyway. 

Download: Competing Stations - "One Free World Government" Discussion Vs. Country and Western on WCKY, Cincinnati

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There is nothing written on either of these tapes' boxes, by the way. One last comment - our recordist clearly intended to record the speeches. Why on earth, after listening to the tape and determining that they had not been recorded correctly, didn't he or she use the tape again? Did the recordist enjoy this mish-mash of sounds?!?!?

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And now, for all you "Ed and Frank" fans, here is more from Ed and Frank: an hour of their drummer and electric piano noodling, as recorded at some facility where I'm guessing a lot of beer was consumed, almost exactly 69 years ago. 

Download: Ed and Frank, 7-4-57
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Or perhaps children's birthdays are more to your liking. This tape is from the 1960's, most likely 1968 based on other material on the reel, some of which I will share at a later date. It's short and (mostly) sweet.

In it, Kay's father tries to get her to talk more than she wants to, we hear some other children and then the requisite singing of "MacArthur Park". No, wait, that's wrong. It's "Happy Birthday". 

Download: Kay's Birthday

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Maybe you can make out the words "Kay's Birthday" on the back of the box: 

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A company called "Magna-Tronics", also probably sometime in the 1960's, promoted a Muzak-like product, which, rather than being for stores, was for radio stations (!) which wanted to simply program someone else's pre-recorded series of bland musical performers for AM or FM broadcast. 

I have no idea how successful this was - it seems like a fool's errand to me - but here is the promotional tape used to sell the program managers on this product. I have one other tape from this company, an actual example of the product that they sent to stations, which I will feature later. 

Download: Magna-Tronics Radio Station Easy Listening Promo Tape

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Quite some time ago - and I can't seem to find the post at the moment - I shared some home recordings of old-timey type music and more recent standards, recorded by some folks who clearly got together frequently and made music... and sometimes recorded it. I have a handful of tapes from these folks, and today I have a second recording by them, about 40 minutes this time, and in this case with all of their names identified on the tape box, and if I can find that box, I will add it to this post. I do have their names in the file name. 

Download: More Music at Home - Bill, Vernene, Dianne, Helen and Flavian, 3/23/62

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Well, this is not the box that goes along with that reel, but it is a box from a tape with some of the same people. They all look more or less like this: 

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And for the last reel today.... I wasn't sure what to do with this but I decided to share it. Maybe someone out there can let all of us know what is being said. As it is titled "A woman speaking "mostly" in German". And that's really and truly all I know about it. 

Download: A Woman Speaking (Mostly) in German

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And finally, here's an Acetate of the Month. It looks like this: 

As you can see. it features what is mostly a blank label from the Acetate company / recording studio, with what might be a family name written in the corner. Note the encouragement to use a "cactus or wood" needle to play this record. WHAT???? Well, a bit of internet sleuthing shows both of these are for real. That's a new one on me!

One side features a bunch of conversations - which definitely sounds like "around the house" type conversations than those that would have taken place in a studio, then a short rendition of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart". Here 'tis: 

Download: Cathedral Latin Acetate - Family Conversations and Let Me Call You Sweetheart

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The flip side is considerably longer, and I've labeled it "Some Sort of Family Skit". That's the best I can do. Maybe someone with better ears than me can make out all of what goes on here. Despite my cluelessness, I still sort of enjoy it. 

Download: Cathedral Latin Acetate - Some Sort of Family Skit

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~~

Very Short Reels will return next time!

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!

~~

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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Christmas Through and Through, Volume Three

It's that time of year again! Today's post is Christmastime, all the time. 

I'm going to start with my very favorite type of Christmas tape to find - the home recording of a family members enjoying Christmas and/or Christmas music. In this case, it's The Van Sickle Family, singing their way through about a half hour of Christmas songs and a variety of other songs. Along the way, a very small child recites "A Visit From St. Nicholas", with some help. Technically, only about half of this tape is Christamassy, but "Christmas Nearly Through and Through" doesn't have the same ring to it. 

The family members heard here are not the greatest home recorded singers you'll hear on this site (in fact, in comparison, I have some wonderful, if ragged, harmony singing cued up for an upcoming post) from a different family - but the love and fondness and good feelings come through in every moment of this tape. (And despite what it says at the very beginning, this is not Jeannie's birthday party.) 

I can't find the tape box for this one right now, but it did indicate that these recordings were made, for the most part, in 1951. 

Download: The Van Sickle Family - Christmas Songs and Other Old Favorites, Recorded Mostly in 1951

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This next recording would, under other circumstances, be my lead offering for certain. However, this material - including its video - has been made available commercially in the past. BUT, I'm including it here because this recording contains the original commercials, and that's always interesting to hear. 

Anyway, it is the sound, recorded off of TV, of Bing Crosby's very first Television Christmas Special, from December 11, 1961. Crosby, of course, continued to host these shows, off and on, for the next 16 years, even managing to host such a show in 1977 several weeks after he had died. 

Anyway, the commercials here are few and far between, but hopefully their presence leads you to agree that this recording was worth sharing. 

Download: Bing Crosby TV Christmas Special - 12-11-61, on ABC

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This one is labeled "A Christmastime Audio Letter to Larry from Charles", and I will let it's charms soothe you without further comment.

Download: A Christmastime Audio Letter to Larry from Charles

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This next one is pretty dang esoteric, and also only partly qualifies as a Christmas-related recording. I've named it "Presentation On Behalf of a Fluxgate Compass Manufacturer, and Recordings Made at That Company's 1951 Christmas Party". The two segments of this 19 minute tape are each almost exactly half of the recording. I am not sure who the man giving the presentation was presenting to, but he hems and haws quite a bit and seems to be speaking off the top of his head. It's a fairly difficult listen. After nine minutes - and the man doesn't appear to be done speaking - we move onto the party, which is considerably more entertaining, with a series of employees doing whatever the term is for the audio version of "mugging for the camera".

Download: Presentation On Behalf of a Fluxgate Compass Manufacturer, and Recordings Made at That Company's 1951 Christmas Party

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Next up, featuring vintage excerpts I found - about 11 minutes worth - of a Lawrence Well Christmas episode. 

Download: Excerpts from a Lawrence Welk Christmas Episode

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And now for an "Acetate of the Month". This brief, unlabeled acetate contains a female lead singer, with chorus, singing "White Christmas on one side, clearly recorded off of the radio. Here it is: 

Download: Unlabeled Black Acetate - Female Vocal with Chorus - White Christmas

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The flip side of this record will not play all the way through. But for completeness sake (even though it's also not Christmassy, here is that 42 second segment: 

Download: Unlabeled Black Acetate - Flip Side of "White Christmas" - Only Partially Playable

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And I'm going to finish this post with a slightly expanded "Very Short Reel" They are usually under five minutes, but I wanted to include one for Christmas, and this one is about seven minutes. It's just a few conversations recorded in someone's home on Christmas. 

Enjoy!

Download: Unknown - Conversations on Christmas

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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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Lots of New Year's Fun, A Couple of '70's DJ's, and More John Birch Than I Can Stand

Greetings, and Happy Almost New Year!

I planned to set aside some time in order to be able to make my typical extensive (or even my sometimes typical pithy) remarks about the New Year's Eve-related and other items I put aside for the last post of the year, but I got an infection last week and was laid up in a considerable amount of pain (and did a lot of sleeping) between Monday and Friday of last week, so all of that re-listening didn't happen. 

But since this is a New Year's Eve themed post, I need to get it out anyway, so I will move forward with virtually no comments except for those offered on the two most recently listened to items, both of which feature DJ' Airchecks. 

Here's one called "Don's New Year's Eve Party. It's from the end of 1958, and I will let you discover whatever charms caused me to set it aside as good enough to share on some late December day. Enjoy!

Download: Don's New Year's Eve Party, 12-31-58

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I do have a bit I can say about this next tape, as I listened to it for the first time just last month. It it a DJ Demo Reel, made up of an entire shift performed by the cleverly named "Jack Daniels" at WTMA, Charlston, South Carolina, on 5/2/72. WTMA clearly played the top 40 hits of the day, but also regularly went back in time, sometimes close to 15 years back in time, for oldies. 

This air shift tape is very aggressively "scoped", so it is an extremely choppy listen, but like most of such tapes, there's still enough here to make hearing it worthwhile. 

Download: Jack Daniels Aircheck, WTMA, Charleston, SC, 5-2-72

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This one is just labeled "A New Year's Eve Party". Again, I'm sure there's enough here to explain why I bothered to set it aside for future use. You can discover that sans further elucidation from me. 

Download: A New Year's Eve Party

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My more-or-less "prepared items" - three New Year's items and two Air Checks - were rather short. So here's something long which may well be of interest to some of you. It's a tape I listened to last year, and will never listen to it again. I have, in the past, featured many tapes from a collection of John Birch materials that I unwittingly purchased about two decades ago. Today, it's time for more - a lot more - of their particular brand of idiocy. First, there is an explanation of what you are expected to do and be when you join the Birchers and then, for the balance of this two hour tape, Dan Smoot presents several of his "reports". 

Quoting myself here from a previous Bircher posting, but Mr. Smoot, like most of his brethren, was clearly trying to present Birchers as reasonable people who were alarmed by things happening in the government of the day, while behind the scenes, the larger group's beliefs, desires and plans were off-the-charts batshit crazy.  

I think I still have a bunch of tapes from that batch, so this may not be the end of the road for them, on this site. 

Download: The John Birch Society - What's Expected of a John Birch Society Member & Several Episodes of "Dan Smoot Reports"

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Now it's time for an "Acetate of the Month"! This one has a lengthy and descriptive title which pretty much sums up the contents of its nearly five minute length. I have no date for this item, and nothing was written on it. 

Download: Audiodisc Unlabeled Acetate - New Year's Eve - White Christmas, Joking and Noisemaking, Let Me Call You Sweetheart

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Finally, our "Very Short Reel" for the end of the year. And again, I listened to this one last month, just after I listened to "Jack Daniels". A DJ going only by the name "Jonathan" seems to have put together a tight demo reel highlighting specific aspects of his work - a phone call from the loser of a contest, a live commercial read and just a bit of DJ patter over the end of a few songs, the starts of a few others, and a prize winning phone call. All wrapped up in three minutes. 

Download: "Jonathan" - Short Air Check Sampler from WGOW-AM, Chattanooga, Tennessee

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WJJD: The Music of the Stars, Can You Hear My Heartbeat, Some Private Humor and a Bit of Stroh's

For the second post in a row, I'm sharing the contents of only a small group of tapes, but as with the last post, those contents are quite lengthy - nearly five hours in total. This was not by design - it just so happens that some of the more interesting tapes I've grabbed recently had really long segments on them, which I thought would hold some appeal. Based on what I've been listening to this week, the next post may very well be the same again. 

The lions share of this post's content comes from a ten inch reel of tape which was recorded at the ultra slow speed of 1 7/8 Inches Per Second. Even with the recording being only on one side, which it was, that still worked out to just under 4 1/2 hours of recording. 

And every moment of those four hours plus turned out to be recordings of the Chicago radio station WJJD, during its "Music of the Stars" format. Specifically, these recordings were made on the last two days of March, 1985. I know this is not quite the "Beautiful Music" format that some of my reader-listeners crave, but I hope it's close enough to make these recordings worthwhile. One benefit here is that these recordings go straight through, without edit, and therefore contain all the commercials and all of the newscasts that were broadcast during those timeframes. 

WJJD existed with those call letters for nearly 75 years. It was the first rock and roll station in Chicago, flipping to Top 40 four years before the eventual winner in the format, WLS. After a few more format changes, they had settled on the "Music of the Stars" format. For most of its existence, the station could only broadcast during daylight hours, but this changed in 1982. However, as soon as sundown hit, the station's output wattage was dropped precipitously, to avoid conflict with a larger station at the same frequency, out west. As you will hear at the end of the first segment featured here, the sound quality as evening approached took a sudden and decisive turn for the worse, and after about a minute of that, the recording stopped, and picked up again the next day, with the second segment below.

I knew a lot of this stuff already, having grown up in the Chicago area, but if you want the information in a more thorough fashion, the Wikipedia page for the current station at that frequency has it. 

"The Music of the Stars" presented a sort of interesting mélange of performers, everything from Big Band stars to Perry Como to The Chordettes, to Dionne Warwick and Petula Clark. All of it certainly Middle of the Road from today's perspective, but by the same token, not all of it enjoyed by the same audiences during each of those performers' heydays. My guess is, for example, that in 1967, people listening to Harry James were not also listening to Petula Clark. But maybe I'm wrong. 

The first, and longer segment features Gene Janson, with whom I am unfamiliar. The other segment features Bernie Allen, who I fondly remember from my childhood as one of the key voices at WLS, AM 890. 

Download: WJJD, 'The Music of the Stars' With Gene Janson, 3-30-85

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Download: WJJD, 'The Music of the Stars' With Bernie Allen, 3-31-85

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Switching gears pretty forcefully and hoping not to damage the transmission too severely, I will now ask a question: If you were one of the first owners of a brand new reel to reel machine at the dawn of the format, what would you record? On this page, I've posted organ music, radio recordings, light conversations, and even a mix tape (click on this link: "Paper Reels", and you will get a line up of all the posts that featured such early recordings, including this one).

Here is yet another very early recording. This is found on a tape manufactured by Soundmirror, a product of The Brush Development Company, and this particular brand (and this design) is said to be the first commercially available reel tape in America. So this recording probably dates from around 1947. Only a little over one-third of the reel is used (the initial machines could only record on one side of the tape), so this is likely the only recording ever made on this tape. 

And what did those present do? Well, they talked, a little, and that can be heard here. But for much of this tape, one man present - probably the owner of the machine - had his friends and/or family members put the microphone inside their clothing and recorded their heartbeats. Perhaps he was a doctor.....

Not the most scintillating thing I've ever shared, but it holds some fascination for me. You have this new toy, which cost A LOT of money - the blank tapes themselves each cost in the neighborhood of $50 or more in today's money, and your method of demonstrating it - and using that $50 worth of recordable material - is to let people hear their hearts beating. Hmm. 

Download: Very Early Recordings, Circa 1947 - Light Conversations and the Recording of Heart Beats

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And now it's time for our "Acetate of the Month". And this acetate is from just a short 83 years ago, and features recordings from some radio show that apparently ran on Tuesdays, as the recordings are from June 17th and June 24th of 1941. Both feature a sad-sack-in-the-army type comedian named Lynn Borden. Please know that I am not sure of the spelling of this comedian's name. It's spelled two different ways on the two sides of this acetate, and I've looked for him under Lynn, Lyn, Lin and Linn, to no avail. He seems to have disappeared into the ether. 

And that's no surprised because he is painfully unfunny. I have the feeling the audience reaction was being goosed, perhaps quite a bit, by recorded laughter: note the woman laughing herself into hysterics while the audience is still applauding and before he's said anything. What would cause that response from an actual audience member? 

Anyway, here are both sides of the acetate, capturing two of his appearances. I have a couple of other acetate recordings featuring this same guy, if anyone is interested. Just let me know!

Download: Presto Acetate - Private Lynn Borden - 6-17-41

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Download: Presto Acetate - Private Lynn Borden - 6-24-41

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And we'll close with yet another "Very Short Reel". Here's a vintage ad (not dated) for Stroh's beer, an ad titled "Craftsman" from the advertising firm of Doyle, Dane, Bernbach, Inc. 

Download: Doyle, Dane, Bernbach, Inc - Stroh's 'Craftsman' Ad

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Some Great 1960's Top Forty Radio Jingles, a 1955 Supper Club, The Today Show, More Shortwave, Baby-O, Available Postcards, and Shoving Off

 Let's start today's post with what I'm almost certain will be the most well-received of the several items I'm sharing. This is a reel of tape which contains just under an hour of Top 40 radio jingles, with a few bits of radio production music thrown in. There are multiple stations represented here, and all of this material seems to date to the mid 1960's. See how many hit records you can identify which were being copied - just short of copywrite infringement, and sometimes well over that line - within some of these jingles. 

The stations will become apparent quite quickly, and there are several minutes of jingles from each station. At least some of this material comes from the magnificent PAMS corporation in Texas (there's a brief PAMS jingle about five minutes in), and I wouldn't be surprised if all of it does.  

Download: An Hour of Top 40 Radio Jingles

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Here is the part of the tape box which has information as to the tape's contents, although I think the sides were reversed by the time it came to me, as it starts with WABC. 

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Almost exactly a year ago, I featured a husband and wife team - Ann and Len Nash - who appeared at a supper club, and who promoted their appearances at that club - and the club itself - on radio station KNPT, all of which took place in Newport Oregon. Today, I have two more of these fifteen minute programs for you. As with the first offering, these are from 1955, although in this case, they are not specifically dated. 

Download: Ann and Len Nash from the Hi-Tide Supper Club, Newport, Oregon, Some Time in 1955, on KNPT

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This particular tape box had a slightly damaged insert containing all of the details of these two shows: 

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With politics in the news nowadays seemingly every day of the year, it always seems like a good time to share something politics related. And so, herewith, a self-explanatory lengthy title for a short segment from a January, 1963 edition of "The Today Show"

Download: Two Segments of The Today Show, 1-14-63 - Arthur Schlesinger Interview, Two Senators Preview State of the Union

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Periodically, I have shared parts of the large collection of shortwave recordings, most of them of Australian programming, which I picked up... somewhere, at some point. I've shared most of it, at this point, but have a few tapes left. I held off on this because the quality is fairly poor, then near the end becomes abysmal, but I thought I should share it, since there is an audience for these recordings. The newscast heard here makes it clear (specifically, the golf results, among other stories) that at least part of this tape is from the second week of March, 1968. 

Download: Even More Australian Shortwave

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And now, here are a couple of folks, identified on the tape box as "A. Quinn and Blonde" making several attempts to record a song called "Baby-O", and dated 1958. I think this scan of the back of the tape box is just barely readable. 

Incidentally, this tape was part of the enormous haul I made decades ago, of what turned out to the tapes belonging to (and largely featuring) Larry Taylor, tapes which I have featured here and here, and which also included the amazing "Dora Hall in Memphis" tapes, which I excerpted in my final post at WFMU. A. Quinn is (I think, based on other tapes I'm remembering from this collection) Art Quinn (and certainly not Anthony Quinn), but other than that, I couldn't tell you anything about him. 

There are some entertaining moments here.

Download: A. Quinn and Blonde - Baby-O - Several Takes, Summer, 1958

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How about an Acetate of the Month?!??! Both sides of today's acetate are shared here, and this is what it looks like: 

And in fact, that's what we have. A man who is "shoving off" for the Navy, spending both sides of the record "talking to Irene". Irene is his wife and he also has an infant daughter. At certain points, this is a remarkably touching recording. Let's hope he came back safely. 

Download: Philco Safety Record Acetate - Shoving Off - Talking To Irene, 3-23-44, Side One

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Download: Philco Safety Record Acetate - Shoving Off - Talking To Irene, 3-23-44, Side Two

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And now it's time for our "Very Short Reel" of the post. I have this little segment identified as "Sally Everett Discusses Available Postcards", and beyond that, I can't tell you a thing about it. Maybe someone out there will do a little digging and discern who it was she was working for, and where these postcards were being sold. 

Download: Sally Everett Discusses Available Postcards

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Bob Hope's Murder, A 75 Year Old Mix Tape, A Lot More Jack Eigen, The Irish in America, 1970's Folkies, Cheesiness from a Night Club and "Whatever Happened"?

Okay. so I have a bit more time today to do a little housekeeping. 

First, I would like to direct you to the posting of the four hours of Gary Owens, where a commenter named Kyle has written a few comments in which he links to some interesting audio that he owns, on YouTube. 

Second, thanks to the anonymous poster who let me know I'd failed to upload the scan of the sheet from the Asian television recording. I attached it, and it's there now. Thanks to another anonymous poster regarding the same scan, who told me that the writing refers to a Japanese historical drama, Shishi no Jidai, which aired in 1980. That's almost certainly the part of the tape I didn't share, and which came after what was pretty clearly some sort of variety show. 

And finally, thanks to MackdaddyG for some kind words of great support, and to Eric Carlson, who wrote, regarding the short tape of Erskine Hawkins (in a couple of separate comments):

The beginning of the Erskine Hawkins tape is a talk with singer and pianist Joe Boatner who arranged the song Amour Secret with the Royal Ink Spots released on the Montreal based Rusticana label in 1961. When the Saints was the flip side of Amour Secret also arranged by Joe Boatner.

For only $5 per person you could "ring in the New Year" of 1962 at the Imperial Dining Room of the Thruway Motel in Albany, New York, with both Erskine Hawkins and His Orchestra and The Ink Spots with Joe Bottner as spelled in the advertisement in the December 17, 1961, Albany Times-Union.

Really, thanks to everyone who takes the time to listen and read, and extra thanks to those who comment. 

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Warning, rant ahead. Feel free to skip forward two paragraphs if you're not interested. I hope I don't aggravate those I just thanked...

But do you want to know a secret? I consider myself a connoisseur of comedy. I own hundreds and hundreds of comedy albums, I have written comedy pieces and performed both written and improvised comedy. I write funny songs. From about the age of eight or nine and until I left home and got married, I went to sleep every single night listening to one of several dozen of my favorite comedy albums playing on my turntable.  

I don't "get" Bob Hope. I seriously don't understand what there is to "get". I consider him one of many "anti-comedians", people who makes life less humorous by their presence, and in their failed attempts to be funny. I have been exposed to his "humor" for most of my nearly 64 years, and yet have never once having cracked a smile, let along laughed, at anything he ever said. I aggressively don't get it. I find myself constitutionally incapable of sharing a Bob Hope rarity without mentioning that. Not that you asked....

However, your mileage may very much vary, and even more regardless, many out there may really enjoy hearing the sort of cornball humor that passed for big budget TV special entertainment in the mid-1960's. And so, herewith I will share this recording of a TV special that Bob Hope and the folks at NBC produced in October of 1966, titled "Murder at NBC" and featuring, per IMDB, a veritable who's who of comedic talent of that era (of varying quality, to be sure), including Milton Berle, Don Adams, Red Buttons, Johnny Carson, Jack Carter, Bill Cosby, Jimmy Durante, Don Rickles, Rowan and Martin, Jonathan Winters and more. 

But is it funny? Not to me, anyway. Not for a second. This sort of show is exactly is why the 1970's versions of George Carlin and Richard Pryor had to happen. And why the Monty Python's Flying Circus really had to happen.  

Download: Bob Hope's "Murder At NBC" - 10-19-66

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This next 32 minute slice of reel to reel is more interesting for what it is than for what it contains. For this may be one of the earliest examples ever made of what's long since become known as the Mix Tape. This recording exists on a paper-backed reel, of the sort only produced from around 1947 until about 1951. What's more, it appears on a reel manufactured by what I've come to understand was the first brand to market reel tape to the general public, Soundmirror (by The Brush Development Company). What's more, this particular tape box is, I believe, that company's first design. So the tape itself is perhaps 77 years old or so. Here is the tape box: 

On the tape, a man provides someone with a series of musical performances, most from records (including a couple which have skips) and at least one from the radio. My guess is that this recording was made before 1950, meaning it is at least 75 years old. Maybe someone out there can identify the specific records heard and either confirm that is possible, based on their release dates, or rule it out. 

Anyway, since 78s and Acetates generally could only fit about 4-5 minutes of material to a side, and since wire recorders were a brief niche method of recording, I have to guess that this is one of the earliest "mix tapes" you're ever going to hear. Enjoy!

Download: A 75 Year Old Mix Tape

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And here's the lineup, from the back of the box: 

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I had a request for more Jack Eigen, and as I have literally dozens of hours of the man's work, I am happy to oblige. I wrote about him at length in this post. If you want to hear more, than simply click on his name in the labels at the bottom of this post (or put "Jack Eigen" in the search bar at upper left (this will not work on a cell phone)). Either way will bring up all of the previous Eigen posts. 

Download: Jack Eigen - The Jack Eigen Show, Volume Five

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I have a ton of recordings from various television productions, many of which I've shared over the years, including some featuring Howard K. Smith, as this one does. And on the box, it specifies that this was a "Rangertone Sync" interview. I guess the "Rangertone Sync" is a method by which a reel to reel recording is automatically synchronized with the film/video being made at the same time. Here he is speaking with Mr. Farley about the Irish in America

Download: Howard K Smith - Rangertone Sync - Interview About Irish in America with Mr. Farley

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The next tape is nothing more or less than a few people singing together, performing songs that I researched a bit and found were recorded, respectively, by Dan Fogelberg and Linda Ronstadt. 

Download: Unknown Folkies Sing Dan Fogelberg and Linda Ronstadt Songs 

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Back when I was posting at WFMU, I shared a few tapes feature a Chicago musician named Larry Taylor. This link will take you to the second of those posts, which itself contains a link to the first one, In my final post at WFMU, I shared some amazing excerpts from Larry Taylor's work with everyone's
favorite Solo Cup Magnate's wife (and notable person of limited singing talent), Dora Hall. 

The dozens of Larry Taylor tapes that I acquired in the late 1980's also contained multiple tapes featuring a local nightclub entertainer named Rocco Greco, who presumably was a friend of Mr. Taylor. These are uniformly cheesy and interminable, at least to my ears. I once even found a locally produced 45 RPM single, complete with cheesy picture sleeve, released by Mr. Greco. 

I recently came across a tape which seemed to be separate in my collection from the Larry Taylor tapes, but I'm almost certain it started out in that batch, and that the performer heard for most of this recording is, indeed, Rocco Greco. 

Oh, and here is his obituary, which curiously does not mention his work (although the memorial comments do). 

Download: Some 1962 Night Club Type Entertainment, Possibly Featuring Rocco Greco

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And finally, our "Very Short Reel". Here is someone named "Malcolm Dodds", with what was almost certainly a demo reel of one of his performances, a song called "Whatever Happened". 

Download: Malcolm Dodds - Whatever Happened

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