Blowout Post # 5

Greetings! 

Last month proved very busy, to the point that, for the first time in over 18 months, I only posted once that month. I'm still catching up on a lot of things, so I'm going to feature another of my "Blowout Posts", with a dozen offerings and, for the most part, very little in the way of explanation. 

But first, I want to review a few comments. Someone named E. Schad has very helpfully put names to two different tapes I featured in two different posts. It seems that they were both from a Capitol series of production music called the Hi-"Q" stock music library. The posts are here and here, and you can find the names of the tracks in the comments of each post. 

In other helpful comments, "Snoopy" has figured out that the second Jesse Coopwood tape heard here is from September 9th, 1951, an anonymous commenter has identified that the audio letter I shared in that same post was recorded about 19 years later, on September 24th, 1970  (see those comments, as well, for more information), and my Star Ads loving pal, Larry, caught something I missed, which is that Kenny Biggs, in this post, gave the date of the recording, at least for part one of the tape, as being yet another September date, in this case, September 16th, 1965. 

Finally, frequent participant "OldRadios90" wrote in to say that he'd acquired one of what he says were  "The first battery operated Solid State Recorders", the Steelman Transitape, which you can see here. Additionally, OldRadios90 shared that he has added more recordings to his archive.org page, which is an extremely worthwhile visit. You can find it here, and also in the links, to the right. 

Thanks to each of you THIS MUCH!!

And now, back to the countdown. 

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Let's start with the recording I think maybe will hold the most interest for the largest number of readers/listeners. For here we have the legendary Los Angeles area Disc Jockey, "Humble" Harve Miller. In this clip, it's June 26th, 1965, he is fairly newly landed at KBLA, Burbank, and he's not only spinning the hits, but a few b-sides, a few oldies, and tracks from Capitol's then-latest butchery of a Beatles album, "Beatles VI", which had been released 12 days earlier. There is a very brief gap in this tape at around the 48 minute point - a little bit of a PSA is missed. That's where the small amount of recording from the second side of the tape begins. The entire recording is just over an hour long. 

Download: Humble Harve Miller on KBLA, Los Angeles, 6-26-65

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Almost as popular as airchecks are vintage commercials, and here I have a tape - or rather two tapes - containing a total of five ads for Great Bear Spring Water, from the Rumrill-Hoyt company. Why some of these ads (the first three, all of which were on the same tape) have brief announcer copy before and instrumental music afterwards, I have absolutely no idea. The Great Bear Spring Company was founded in 1888, and surely had a jump of decades on most of those companies who sell bottled water. 

Download: Rumrill-Hoyt, Inc - Five Great Bear Spring Water Ads

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Here is a combo scan of the front of one of the boxes containing these ads and the back of the other one: 

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Okay, so those were my two big shares for the post, I suppose. As noted at the top, the rest of today's offering fall into the category of "Things I Think Might Be Worth Sharing, And Which Some People Might Find Interesting, But Which I Don't Have a Whole Lot to Say About"

First up, some speeches that were made at a large Bell Telephone gathering, presumably a convention, followed by some music heard at that same same event, performed by - of all things - a full mixed chorus (80 members) made up of nothing but various Telephone company employees. Those were certainly different days, corporate-wise, eh? 

Download: Speeches and Music at a Telephone Company Convention

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Speaking of corporations which produced products that many Americans used every single day, The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company produced, for almost exactly 10 years, a series called "The Greatest Story Ever Told", built around the life of Christ - at least to the degree that Jesus, when he spoke in the series, only said those things captured in the Bible. On the other hand, as you'll hear in this episode, there were at least some weeks when Jesus didn't appear at all. 

Download: The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company Presents - The Greatest Story Every Told

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On March 2, 1959, Bing Crosby hosted a television special. The recording heard here is not the complete show, but it's nice anyway. Elements of this show are available on YouTube and other video sites, but I believe the portions heard here contain material not available elsewhere. 

Download: The Bing Crosby Show - 3-2-59

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Now here's a real endurance test. A car full of friends drives from northwest Indiana to Ohio and they  record 90 plus minutes of their conversation for posterity, while en route. For those of you who choose to share their journey, you will be rewarded with a sound clip for the ages, one to use in all of your sound manipulations, when the driver exclaims "Save your farts for Ohio". The man who speaks that line - and who probably recorded this tape - was the same person behind the nudist camp which I've featured in the past, here and here. 

Download: The Schmidt's and Friends Drive to Ohio Via Highway 30, 1964

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Now here's a recording I've labeled "KNPT, Newport, Oregon - Ann and Len Nash at the Hi-Tide Supper Club - Two Episodes, June 25th and June 28th, 1955". And I think that probably sums up everything you need to know about it. 

Download: KNPT, Newport, Oregon - Ann and Len Nash at the Hi-Tide Supper Club - Two Episodes, June 25th and June 28th, 1955

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Here's something just a bit "different". It's an audio letter, but one made up mostly of music. The sender, in Vicksburg, is using music to connect to his recipient, Darlene, in California, with only a few comments thrown in between the songs, indicating some of them have memories attached to them, and others perhaps have lyrics which are meaningful to their relationship.  

Download: A Musical Audio Letter to Darlene

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Back to the Home Recordings we go. Here we have a gentleman who sings in an extremely old-timey style a style I associate with Irish tenors (not that I'd call him an Irish tenor) - and who offers up song after song, along with a bit of conversation with those who he is with, for some 40 minutes or so. 

Download: Unknown - Some Old Fashioned Singing and a Few Conversations

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Now let's travel to Valley Forge, PA, home to an organization of American Baptist Churches, and enjoy a short radio program that group produced at some point, titled "Audio Mosaic"

Download: Audio Mosaic (From the American Baptist Churches, Valley Vorge, PA)

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Only the tiniest of indications of the contents made it onto this box: 

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And as always, we'll finish up with the "Very Short Reels" segment, in this case, since I'm plowing through so much stuff, I'll offer up two. 

First is what I find to be an utterly charming little tape of a small child introducing her father, who then plays a solo on trombone, and then the two of them do a trombone/vocal duet on another standard. He's not very good, and she can't sing at all, but it's still mighty cute, and her little laugh at the end is worth the price of admission. This actually showed up at the very end of a lengthy tape filled with bland recordings of 1950's and 1960's big band jazz, jazz with all of the life sucked out of it, so it was a nice dessert after a bland meal. 

Download: Daddy Plays "All of Me", Daddy and Daughter Sing "Red Roses for a Blue Lady"

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And here is the simply titled, "Two Girls Sing Three Short Songs", to which I'll only add that the second song is actually sung by only one of the girls: 

Download: Two Girls Sing Three Short Songs

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AUGUST BLOWOUT POST - EVERYTHING MUST GO

 Greetings, my friends. 

I'll tell you a little secret: this site is a LOT of work. I have, at one point or another, listened to everything I post. And if it's been a while and I want to share something interesting, I listen a second time. And all that listening, and all that writing and all that linking takes a lot of time. 

I don't mind, and I'm certainly not complaining - I am overjoyed that I've found a way to share my lifelong fascination with reel to reel recording with those who appreciate my finds. But sometimes it's overwhelming to try and get out two posts a month in the style that I prefer. 

Plus, I did an inventory last month, and I found that, over the years (going back to the WFMU days), I have - in my file named "not yet used" - nearly 400 discrete sound files that I've made from reel tapes, all of which I at least considered for this site, and WFMU before that, which are, as you might guess, "not yet used" on this site. And that number continues to grow, as in a typical month I newly save more items than I share. 

So I'm thinking that when I'm short on time, I will just put up a big batch of files, with little text - perhaps those things that I don't have a lot of explanation to give, or just things I think are interesting enough to share, but perhaps not worth the time it takes to type out a bunch of words. Paradoxically, it will be easier to share 12 files without saying much of anything, than it is to write a bunch of words about five files. So that's what's going to happen here. 

Please let me know what you think of this format. If you like the idea of getting more content and less blather from me, my feelings won't be hurt. And if you find this to be just too much at once, let me know that, as well. 

But first, just a bit of housekeeping. I received a very interesting note from an anonymous poster, yesterday, with regard to what I labeled as "Walkie-Talkies" in my last post. Well, I stand corrected. Here's what was written to me: 

The "walkie talkies" are actually CB radios. The dutiful use of call signs (K- or W- followed by two letters and four digits, different syntax than amateur radio calls) would seem to date this well before the "Breaker Breaker" craze of the mid 1970s. If I was to guess, I'd say mid- to late-1960s.
Unfortunately all of the FCC's records of CB radio call signs were apparently destroyed in the 1980s once the nearly-always-ignored requirement to obtain a CB license was finally put to rest. Otherwise, you might be able to identify some of these talkers!
Even recordings from the 1970s craze are rare, so these pre-craze reels are especially rare and fascinating to hear as the original pre-internet "social media."

Thanks for that clarification and history lesson. Most interesting!

Oh, and I also added a really nice newspaper clipping to that same post, one that was in the box that contained the WRC 40th Anniversary highlights. 

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I'm going to do things upside down today, before I get to the main "blowout post" I described above, and share the three items which fit in with my regular features. 

First up, here's the contents of a neat, 12-inch acetate, in our "Acetate of the Month" feature. And with school starting for most children between last week and next week, what could be better than Miss Arlene greeting her room full of Kindergartener. On one side of the record, she greets them - and they greet her - in English, and on the other side, they greet each other in Spanish. 

Download: Kindergarten Class - Miss Arlene Greets Children in English

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Download: Kindergarten Class - Miss Arlene Greets Children in Spanish

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And let's get that "Very Short Reel" out of the way, too. It looks like, during the 1958-59 season, CBS TV ran various re-runs under the title "Stars In Action", or rather, "STARS..... IN.... ACTION!!!!". Here we have what I believe is the recording of various voiceovers being put onto the backing music. 

Download:  "Stars In Action" Main Title Voiceovers

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And now, nine more items, some of them quite lengthy, from my collection: 

By chance, a bunch of the files I chose are recordings of TV shows. So let's stay on the TV side of things to start. Here is the sound off of an entire TV special, a preview of ABC's fall, 1964 Prime Time programming, hosted by Bing Crosby. Crosby himself was the star of a new ABC sitcom that fall, one which didn't make it to the end of the season. 

Download: 1964 Preview of ABC's Fall Season, Starring Bing Crosby

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Now, did you ever wonder what a random woman speaker might have said, in 1970, about what the job of secretary of the future... say, 1980... would consist of and look like? Has that thought kept you up at night? I know it has for me. So I was relieved to find this 43 minute speech, on a tiny, three inch reel of desperately thin recording tape, recorded at 1 7/8 IPS. 

Download: Unknown - The Secretary of the Future, 1980, as Predicted in 1970

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Or perhaps 55 minutes of Fiddle Music, played by 90 year old Aunt Rose, with a much younger male relative on piano, recorded in Maine, among other spots, is more your speed today: 

Download: Fiddle Music with 90 Year Old Aunt Rose, from Maine and Elsewhere

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Here's that tape box: 

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Returning to TV, here are some "wild track" recordings (Raw tapes, I think) from an ABC program about Japan, from the 1960's: 

Download: Wild Track Recordings for ABC program on Japan

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And here's a portion of that tape box: 

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The next tape almost qualifies as a "Very Short Reel". The title pretty much explains this 5 1/2 minute segment: Robert Recites His Lines and Plays His Accordion, Spring, 1958

Download: Robert Recites His Lines and Plays His Accordion, Spring, 1958

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And guess what, there's writing on this tape's box, too!

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Here's the tape I find the most interesting of all of those I'm sharing today. Your mileage may vary. I have in my collection several tapes recorded by an American couple living, I believe, in Germany, who made several trips to other parts of Europe during the late 1960's and early 1970's, and made recordings each night, while on those trips, summarizing their experiences from that day.In most cases, they used more than one reel - always three inch reels, with the thinnest, lengthiest tape available, and recorded at 1 7/8 IPS, as with the secretary speech, above. Here is their audio diary from 1969, capturing part one of a trip to Spain: 

Download: Audio Diary - Trip to Spain, September & October, 1969

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Here's the tape, and the identification of its contents: 

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Last time around, I offered up some vintage country music television. This time around, it's more of the same, not from the 1950's, but from 1966, specifically, an episode of the Jimmy Dean show from January 16th of that year. 

Download: The Jimmy Dean Show, January 14, 1966

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At some point, I came to own a few tapes connected to the Northrup Corporation, one of which you'll now have the chance to hear here. It's a rather odd compendium of various media reports and coverage of Northrup related stories. 

Download: Compilation of Northrup-Related Broadcasts, Summer, 1954

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Here's what that tape box looks like: 

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And finally, the longest of all of the items I'm sharing here, which may be of some fascination to certain readers/listeners, and of absolutely no interest to the rest of you. This is an early 1950's revivalist-style church service, from a paper reel (that is, a reel made prior to 1952 featuring recording tape attached to paper backing). 

Download: An Early 50's Revivalist-Style Church Service

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Again, please let me know if you like, or dislike, this format. It is definitely a way to get more of what I have out there to you, the reader and listener, but it's also a ton of stuff to listen to. I'd also be interested in knowing which of the categories covered here are of interest, and not of interest, for future posts.