Some Possibly Rare and Definitely Awful Johnny Carson, Beautiful Army Music, More Phone Training

Hellooooo, 

For the first offering today, I'm going to share something I believe to be quite rare. At least, I've been unable to find a trace of this recording online anywhere. In 1969-70, Johnny Carson produced four prime time specials, consisting of big name stars doing skits with Carson, much the same as the skits he would often do during one of the segments of his TV show, except this would be an entire episode of such skits. As I said, I can't find hide nor hair of this work anywhere out there in the internet tubes. Maybe it's there and I missed it.

These shows appear to have gone over like a lead balloon. I've found two reviews of them - one from the New York Times the next day, and one from The Village Voice nearly a month later. Despite the time lag on the latter, they both seem to reflect the writers' thoughts on this particular special, and not one of the other three. For the Times review, this is obvious - the writer takes Carson to task for the adolescent and prurient nature of the material - which is absolutely a reference to this episode. As you'll hear, the skits involved are wholly stupid and about on the level of a 12 year old. For the Voice review, it mentions the same stars being in the episode as are heard here (and also references the sixth grade level of the material, a thought that occurred to me separate from the review). The Times review is here. The Voice review is here. 

Oh, and the sound quality here is abysmal. This was recorded extremely softly, and I boosted it about 500%. There is interference from jazz recorded on the other channel at times, and an astoundingly annoying high pitched whine/whistle at other times. On the other hand, the commercials are preserved, making this a nice time capsule from that aspect. The recording stops suddenly at the 52:38 minute mark, meaning we miss the final commercials and last segment of the show. 

Download: The Johnny Carson Special - 11-12-69

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There has been a lot of good response here to recordings of Beautiful Music programming. This short tape - while it qualifies in that category - is a bit different from other such programming, in that it seems to have come from a radio station or perhaps some sort of closed circuit programming which was housed in and directed at the residents of an army base. Rather than commercials, there are frequent plugs for different events and activities on the base. 

Download: Beautiful Music Programming from an Army Base Radio Station

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I called this next one "Telephone Call Examples for Service Observing People". That's a pretty weird and clumsy name, but that's how the tape is introduced. This is yet another in a large number of 1960's telephone training tapes I bought many years ago. 

Download: Telephone Call Examples for Service Observing People

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Last time around, I shared a fairly lengthy tape of WBBM-FM, Chicago, during its "Young Sound" days. Here is another tape from the same collection, featuring three Chicago stations, from roughly the same time period, marred, in this case, by a significant amount of odd and annoying echo. The stations are WBBM (again), WJJD and WNUS. 

Download: Chicago Radio, Late 1960's (with a lot of Echo) - WBBM, WJJD & WNUS

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This next tape is called "Benny Miller's Birthday Party". This is a small get together of a few friends and relatives, and I think that's pretty much all I'll say about it. No, it isn't. I'll say one thing: this seems to feature a time, place and type of people that have been completely extinguished in 21st Century America. Perhaps I'm totally wrong, and my lack of experience of this sort of gang is an accident of my place of birth, type of upbringing, education or whatever. I just wonder if any get birthday get togethers or other small gatherings sound remotely like this, anymore. 

Download: Benny and His Guests - Benny Miller's Birthday Party

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Also last time around (just like the Chicago Radio material), I shared part one of a three part series on The Supreme Court, as presented in February of 1963 on the TV educations program, "Continental Classroom". Here is part two of that series: 

Download: Continental Classroom - 2-13-63 - The Supreme Court, Part Two - Restraints on the Court

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And now, for our "Acetate of the Month". This is one that I've labeled, as you can see, "Dragnet Parody and R. M. Cunningham Narrating An Anniversary Party, Circa 1955. It starts with a parody of "Dragnet", featuring an incident which is described as having occurred at an intersection on the southwest side of Chicago, an incident described as having occurred in 1930. The suspect in the story was returning from a wedding, presumably the wedding for which the anniversary that "Bobby Cunningham" narrates, over the second half of the record. He tells stories of the wedding day and other events from around that time, including some surreptitious alcohol supplying and imbibing from the prohibition era. An odd and entertaining record. I'm guessing the record is from 1955, given the reference to a 25th anniversary and the earlier reference to 1930. 

Download: Dragnet Parody and R. M. Cunningham Narrating an Anniversary Party, Circa 1955

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A piece of paper was taped to the above acetate, as seen below, giving me the latter part of this track's name (and the "R.M." instead of "Bob"). It says 1951, but 1930 plus 25 is 1955, and I'm going with that. 

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And lastly, here is another "Very Short Reel". The title of this one explains this well, too. Some early elementary children sing and say nursery rhymes and/or offer birthday wishes to one of their classmates, Mike. The sounds quality is iffy as the tape was poorly stored and is damaged.

By the way, in the song "Itsy Bitsy Spider", the sun dries up the rain. It doesn't "wash away" the rain - which is what they sing here - that doesn't even make sense! Sheesh. 

Download: Some Elementary School Children - Happy Birthday Mike and Nursery Rhymes

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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 Radio Jingles, The Binderman's At Home, and a Bit of Beatles Plagiarism

Happy October 18th! Hmmm. October 18th. Someone I once loved dearly was born on October 18th. It took me all day before I connected today's date to that person. Didn't used to be that way....

Wow - that flashed me back about 46 years. Man - it was great to be 16. And... Man - it was awful to be 16. 

What... Ah, well, that's not why you called....oh, yeah, the post.....

I have something fairly fun to start off with, followed by something magnificent. Then I have a whole batch of recordings from the same tape, and stick around for some astonishing plagiarism., 

That fun segment and the magnificent segment I mentioned come from the very same tape, one that has a spine that looks like this: 

What we have here are two sets of Jingles, spliced together, from two different companies, for two different radio stations. 

The first, and longer segment, is a batch of jingles for WLBQ in Kentucky. These are from the Gwinsound company, a firm I had not heard of before I got this tape, but which seems to be fairly well known among those who collect jingles and such. These are fine, but they start to sound pretty "samey" after awhile, and they certainly don't have that extra OOMPH that need to hear in order for jingles to really resonate with me. Still, they're fun to hear and have.

Download: Gwinsound - A Collection of WLBQ Jingles

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But then we come to the other set, which is from PAMS, and which were created for W-100 (WIOO) in Pennsylvania. Immediately, the magic of PAMS is in the air, and I find these jingles irresistible - they have that certain magic sauce which always seems to exude from the work of the folks at PAMS. This is masterful stuff, engaging, fun and memorable. 

Download: PAMS - A Collection of WIOO (W-100) Jingles

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Most of the rest of this post, all but the very short reels segment, is taken from a single reel that I've owned for decades, and that I enjoy very much. It's for those of you who like home recordings, particularly people trying to be creative in their home recordings (whether successful or not). It seems to have originate in the home of someone named Bob Binderman, and his name is the only thing written on the box. He doesn't appear to be the only adult heard on the tape, but there is no evidence as to who the others might be. 

The tape starts with Mr. Binderman trying to do his best Doodles Weaver impression, in this fictional calling of an automobile race from France. The zooming car sounds at the end actually went on at least another three minutes, but I edited that part down, as it become tedious.  

Download: Bob Binderman - Calling an Auto Race in Reims, France

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Next, Mr. Binderman uses a variety of records from his collection to tell what he most assuredly meant to be a humorous story about being lost and captured in the jungle. Parts of this work better than other parts, but it strikes me as an interesting attempt all the way through. 

Download: Bob Binderman - Jungle Story

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The next short segment features a young boy telling a deliberately messed up sports report. My guess is this is Mr. Binderman's son, and that the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree. 

Download: Kid Does Mixed-Up Sports Report

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The rest of side one of the tape consisted of recordings of female pop vocalists and instrumental pieces copied from records, so let's flip the tape over!

The start of the other side could not be more different than the jokey material on the first side. For here we have a bit of poetry, in tribute to some members of the Air Force. It's introduced as the "Ode to the 309th" and ends with a song for "Bentley's Air Force", and I've attached both names to it here. 

The mention of listening to Rock and Roll would indicate this band of brothers worked together during peacetime. This does not sound like Bob Binderman, but there's no indication of who it is. Any guesses about the source of this material would be welcome. 

Download: Unknown - Ode to the 309th (Bentley's Air Force)

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The tape ends with about 20 minutes of slice-of-life recordings made in someone's home. The stories heard on the radio make it clear that we're now in 1965 (I believe that is likely at least a few years after the other material here), and we're spending those minutes with a little girl named Chrissie and her parents. 

Download: Chrissie and Her Parents - 1965

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And now, very short reels. I realized with some embarrassment that last time, I shared a Very Short Reel that I'd already offered up more than a year earlier. Somehow, I'd neglected to move it into my "already shared" folders.

So to make up for it, I'll offer up two such very short reels today. 

For the first... I've mentioned a few times that I have a whole batch of tapes which came from a radio station in Astoria, Oregon. Many of those tapes featured a "story time" show called "A Story Told with Aunt Polly", and the voice of that host also shows up on many of the PSA's and local ads that are in that batch of tapes. 

Well, here is the owner of that voice, Polly Columbo, no doubt wearing a raincoat, searching for clues as to whodunnit, and gathering together some of her work into a demo reel. I get a great kick out of the fact that she does voice over introductions for both "Pipeline" by the Chantays and "Baby Snakes" by Frank Zappa during this segment, and not only that, but back to back

Extra points for anyone who knows another link between The Chantays' "Pipeline" and Frank Zappa. 

Download: Polly Columbo's Demo Reel

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But I've saved the best - or at least the oddest - for last. 

This comes from a longer tape of AM, Top 40 radio that I myself recorded in the fall of 1970. The tape is very choppy and not worth sharing as a whole - bits and pieces of songs, etc. But at one point, I did capture a Certs ad which is astonishing in that those who created it simply took a Beatles hit - from about 18 months earlier - and rewrote it to be about Certs. It's got the same melody, it's got essentially the same instrumentation, and even the music bed under the voice over is the same SOLO from that Beatles' hit. 

I wonder at what point this sort of blatant plagiarism stopped being something advertisers could get away with. 

Download: 1970 Certs Ad

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VIntage Top 40, Military Corn Flakes, Some Silliness and Prize Fights

ANNOUNCEMENT!!! ANNOUNCEMENT!!! ANNOUNCEMENT!!! 

I have four disparate selections from the archives today, but first, I wanted to do a little promotion: 

Some of you own, or are aware of my "The Many Moods of Bob" collection, an album of comic songs which I put together in the late '90's, and which went up online on the Happy Puppy label several years later. Well, since that time, I have continued to write and record both comic and serious songs, although a lot more of the former, recording them whenever I had enough time. And now, after 19 years, this 19 track album is available. It's called "A Few More Plans". 

There's a wide variety of material - songs set to psychedelic style, calypso, jazz, rhumba, gospel, and much more, all featuring my style of humor and songwriting. Three of them have been featured on the Dr. Demento show in recent years. Mostly, it's me: my voice and my keyboard (and a few other instruments in places), but a few tracks feature family members and a friend.

Mixed in are four instrumentals. One of these - the title track - is a fairly insane trip through sound which wouldn't be out of place as the accompaniment to a silent movie. The other three instrumentals are simply revved up versions of songs I've been playing forever. There's also a remake of a beloved, very obscure commercial (of all things), a remake of a song-poem, and a rendition of a song my brother once dreamed, during a nightmare, more than 50 years ago. 

I have been writing and recording songs - serious and decidedly not so - since I was 16 years old, and I believe that, as a set of material, this is by far the best project I've ever produced in those 40-some years, and I would love it if you'd have a listen. It's located here: 

https://bobpurse.bandcamp.com/releases

You can listen to all the songs for free on the site, and read the lengthy notes attached to each song (under "lyrics" - there was no other way to do it), and if you'd be so kind as to buy it (which allows the download of the material and all the notes and the front and back covers), it's only two dollars.

One more thing: I'm not really on social media, for a variety of reasons, and I would very much like it if  - on the chance that you enjoy the material - you'd consider putting up links to my project on whichever of these sites you are part of. If you choose to do that, I'd really appreciate it. 

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First up, and probably the most appealing to the largest number of readers/listeners out there, is a lovely 20 minute blast of vintage top 40 programming from early 1961, at WCOL, Columbus, Ohio. I never get tired of this stuff. 

Download: WCOL, Columbus, Ohio, Winter, 1961

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Next up, a truly bizarre little story from a woman, recounting a story from basic training that I've dubbed "Kerosene Corn Flakes". The story is told more than once, for some reason, and rather than edit it down, I've decided to share the entire seven minute segment, which came to me on a three inch reel of tape, not marked as to its contents. 

Download: Unknown - Kerosene Corn Flakes

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I've just noticed that each of my segments for the week, in order, is shorter than the previous one. In this case, we have a group of friends just goofing around and being silly. There are brief renditions of at least three songs here, the latest of which is from 1964, which may help date the tape. I actually wish there was more of this, but it's only three minutes long. And that's all I know about it! 

Download: Unknown - Three Minutes of Silliness 

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And finally, as promised, the second installment of my "very short tapes" feature. I got a few bits of feedback on this, and it looks like there might be significant interest in this. Again, I pulled one from the middle of the pile, at random, and got two promos for the 1996 Tyson-Holyfield fight, along with the other fights on the card. This was not the "Don't Go Biting My Ear" fight, which was the following year - it was the first match-up. 

Download: Two Tyson-Holyfield Promos

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