The Game Shows of Election Day, 1974

Happy New Year!

I have something really fun today, a collection I'm hoping will help many of you to smile during these short, cold days. 

A bit of housekeeping, first. With regard to the British Radio Potpourri that I shared a few months ago, I received the following from a reader/listener named Adam: 

Comparing the BBC tape with the Radio Times listings on BBC Genome, the first programme is "Sound for the Movies", broadcast at 21:30 on 27th September 1961. The second is "Anniversary Portrait" from 21:00 on 6th February 1962. "Conference" was on Thursday nights throughout this period, but the listings don't give enough detail to identify the episode.

And in response to my posting the heartbreakingly short clip of the 1952 Rose Bowl game, a reader/listener named Kyle has linked me to the following clip containing the video and audio of the first half of that game, which can be found here. 

Many thanks to both of you!

~~

I have been digitizing my family's tapes for years now, with a recent focus on those tapes which belonged to me and which I filled up with whatever stoked my interest at the moment. Often, this was me and my friends being stupid, but every now and then there is gold, whether it's a recording of me pretending I'm hosting an art show, or a recording of children's television programming and game shows from 1970 and 1971, both of which I've shared at those links. 

Today, from a tape I recorded in 1973 and 1974 comes the entire second side of that tape, capturing (at 1 7/8 IPS, nearly an entire morning's worth of network Game Shows. Specifically, the date of this recording was Election Day, November 5, 1974. 

Listening to this tape, specifically the short introduction I give prior to the end of the first show taped, I found myself reflecting a lot on where I was, in November, 1974. It was a pivotal moment for me, even if I would have had no idea of that, at the time. I'm going to be a bit of a memoirist here for a few paragraphs, so if that's not of interest to you, by all means jump down to the squiggle and skip my (perhaps   definitely self-indulgent) ramblings. This tape captures a moment in my life when I was about to start on the road to becoming the adult I was going to be, and didn't know it. It's stirred up 49 years of feelings in my somehow, and I hope at least a few of you will take this ride with me. 

In November of 1974, I was 14 years old, and several weeks in Freshman year of High School, but was still much more of a child than an adolescent. I had spent a miserable time in 7th and 8th grade at the bottom of the pecking order, with brief relief having come in the class show near the end of 8th grade, where I both played in the band and had a starring role in one of the sketches. I had made some new friends during a summer school jazz band class, and the subsequent fall band classes (I played trombone), but only saw them at school at that point. 

Rather than engage more with new friends, I was sort of wallowing (albeit with a purpose) in thoughts of my old friends. All of the kids who lived on my block in my grade school years - all but one of whom had moved out of state years earlier - had had a big reunion that previous August. I was missing them terribly, and was hard at work editing together all of the 8 millimeter films my mother had taken of the gang of our street into a presentation I called "Remember When", which I showed to everyone in the neighborhood (complete with a musical soundtrack) that Thanksgiving (see, even then, I was dedicated to memorializing the past). 

The first side of the tape heard below contains a typical recording of me goofing around with my best friend John - who had been my best friend since age 3, and the only one who hadn't moved away. This recording is pointless in the extreme, containing the two of us insulting each other, making fart noises and singing an improvised song about burps, in between which I demonstrated my burgeoning abilities on piano (I hadn't had lessons since age 10, at that point). 

Anyway, in November of 1974, I was wallowing in loss, shell-shocked from middle school, working on a tribute to my own past, and engaging in aggressively dumb stuff with my childhood pal. Almost immediately after this, everything began to change. 

In early 1975, I begged to take piano lessons again, promising to practice this time, and this was granted. My piano abilities grow by leaps and bounds. I began hanging around more often with those new high school friends. John and I mutually discovered that, as adolescents, we had very little in common - in fact, I'd say that since I turned 15, I've probably seen John less than two dozen times, and not at all since I was 22. By a year after this tape was made, I was fully engaged with learning new and complex piano pieces, heavily into playing and listening to Jazz, and for the first time, was hopelessly and unrequitedly in love (ah, Sharon....). I was mere weeks away from reconnecting with a friend I'd known at church when I was 11 or 12, a guy named Andy, who would quickly go on to be my first musical partner and, for the rest of the 1970's, my closest friend. 

My life in November of 1973 probably pretty dang closely resembled my life in November of 1974 (with the exception of working on those film clips). But my life in November of 1974 was just about to be turned upside down and did not in any way resemble what it became in late 1975. If a picture is worth a thousand words, these two pictures are worth much more than twice that. Not too long ago, I posted a picture of myself at age almost 13, looking quite a bit more than a little overwhelmed by life. 

Here, now is how I looked in my official Eighth Grade Photo, looking like a deer in the headlights, and absolutely showing the effect of two years of bullying. 

Here, by contrast, is the happy-go-lucky kid I was by a year later. This picture is a bit later than that, and is low quality (as it's scanned from a class photo, rather than an individual shot), but it still tells the story. 
 

I have no idea if that was interesting or not, but listening to this tape took me down that rabbit hole of memories, so I thought I'd write about it. Many thanks to all of those of you who traveled down this long and winding road with me just now. 

~~

Okay, catching up with all of those who skipped all that stuff. 

This tape contains the game shows I chose to watch and record on November 5th, 1974. It was a golden age of daytime network television, when it was clogged up with gab fests, court shows, outrage panderers and local programming. The morning lineup was DOMINATED by Game Shows. Fun, varied, interesting game shows. Hosted by people who actually knew that the game was the star, not by movie and TV stars slumming and making the entire endeavor about them. And I wish it was still that way - both that game shows were on all morning and that they were hosted by actual game show hosts. 

I did not capture the shows intact - there are edits in all of these shows. Mostly, commercials were skipped, sometimes they are there. Sometimes, the recording simply stops in the midst of a question or answer, and picks up at a later point, or that cut segues into the next show. At times, you hear me talking or making noise, and my mother arrives home at some point and fixes me lunch - you can hear her say at one point that she hopes I am hungry because the hamburgers are big. 

If you'd like to see a grid of what was on American network television that day, you can find it here. 

The tape begins with the announcement of the date and that I am sick. I go on to tell where everyone is - my use of "Mommy, Daddy and Billy" was either because I was being silly or a bit of regression due to not feeling well. I hadn't been calling them by those diminutives in several years at that point. Oh, and here's the cat you'll hear meowing during that introduction. She was the prettiest and best kitty cat ever. 

By the time I started recording, "Name That Tune" (on NBC) was almost over. 

Download: 1.) Introduction and the End of Name That Tune

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I pre-announce the next show as "High Rollers", but it's actually "Winning Streak", also on NBC and starring the far-and-away best game show host in history, the phenomenal Bill Cullen. 

Download: 2.) Winning Streak

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Next, I jumped over to CBS for "Now You See It". 

Download: 3.) Now You See It

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The perennial favorite "The Hollywood Squares" followed. We're back on NBC and it's 10:30 Eastern Time now. 

Download: 4.) Hollywood Squares

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Again sticking with NBC, it was then time for "Jackpot"

Download: 5.) Jackpot

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Still with NBC, the most peculiar game show on this tape (to my ears, anyway, "Celebrity Sweepstakes" followed at 11:30 AM, running for only 25 minutes so as to make time for news. 

Download: 6.) Celebrity Sweepstakes

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With that show having ended early, I switched over to ABC at 12:55 for the end of their show, "Split Second" (a show which is now rebooted on Game Show Network). When that was over, I switched over to local (unaffiliated) powerhouse station WGN and captured some commercials. 

Download: 7.) End of Split Second and Commercials

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With the last waning minutes of the tape, I captured the first few moments, and some later moments, of what was then the most popular show in Chicago television, Bozo's Circus. 

Download: 8.) Bozo's Circus

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Well, that's the tape! I suspect that these are the only recordings of these particular episodes in existence, as most of these shows were erased with subsequent shows, that being the practice at the time. While a few episodes of each show (and more of Bozo) exist out there, it is unlikely that they are these particular episodes. 

~~

And it wouldn't be a complete post without a "Very Short Reel". Here are some folks struggling to sing "Scarlet Ribbons", a song which I've always found to be massively pretentious. It breaks down about half way through these 73 seconds of tape, and good riddance. 

Download: Unknown - Practicing "Scarlet Ribbons"

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This Tape is a Goldmine!!!!

 Hello, everyone, 

Today, I have something I think is quite special. I'm going to give quite a bit of backstory, and then get to today's offerings, most of which come from the same tape. That tape is one that I made, over 50 years ago. 

The backstory: I've already shared in multiple places that the tape recorder was among my favorite "toys", even as a five and six year old. And there are seemingly endless recordings of me, me with my brother and me with my friends, on my family's tapes, starting from when I was about those ages. 

On Christmas, 1969, the year I was nine, I was gifted with the first reel of tape which was to be mine, all mine. I had it completely filled, mostly recording at the super slow speed of 1 7/8, and for some of it, recording in mono on all four channels, by the end of January, 1970. That's well over six hours of recording in about five weeks. 

By the fall of 1970, I was on my third "all mine" tape, and I announced at the beginning of it that this tape would be used to record things of interest off of the TV. I recorded an entire broadcast of an obscure animated cartoon ("Hoppity Goes to Town"), parts of "The Wizard of Oz", and parts of a few other broadcast movies. 

Around age 16, after cataloging all of my family's tapes, I then went through all of my personal tapes (about 36 of them, by that point), writing down what was on them, and where on the tape (per the counter on our reel machine) each section began and ended. For the earlier tapes, this had to be an exercise in tedium. Most of the recordings were pretty unlistenable by anyone who wasn't me, and wasn't me in grade school. I was a severely hyperactive child, prone to simply talking to myself, or pretending I was presenting a (usually very uninteresting) show, or even just banging on things with other things, like a reject from a Spike Jones cover band. 

There were periodic highlights, a few of which I'll share in the future, but mostly, these are probably less interesting than banging ones head against the wall. I know this because, about six months ago, I started digitizing these tapes and listening to them all the way through, doubtless for the first time since I was 16. 

But the one labeled "Bob Tape # 3" surprised me. For one thing, I never got finished documenting its contents, and skipped over the second side (both channels - which were recorded separately) completely. And that second side contained magic I didn't expect. For those of you who are not into vintage media (in this case, TV, mostly local TV) recordings, this is probably not the post for you - or you can skip down to the Acetate of the Month and the Very Short Reel. 

But if what I've described floats your boat like it does for me - and it floats my yacht - this is a treasure trove. A goldmine. A picture of much of what a ten year old might well have been watching - including a lot of child-focused commercials - during the period September 1970 to January 1971, in the Chicago market. 

Mostly, I'm going to share these in what appears to be chronological order, from the fall of 1970 to January of 1971, as they appear on side two of the tape. Then at the end, I have a bit of a hodgepodge, a single track made up of several short segments from 1970, from the first side of the tape. I wanted to get this post out today, which is the last chance I'd have until next weekend, and I didn't have time to chop that group of recordings up, the way I did with the other segments heard below. 

Two thing before I explain what each track features. First, at times I was quick to turn the machine off and then on again. Sometimes this was done in quick succession, maybe two or three times within ten seconds. Other times, I wasn't interested in capturing whatever the next thing turned out to be, often a segment or commercial, and didn't return to recording until a few minutes later. So parts of this are quite choppy.  

I should also mention that, in a few of these cases, the shows in question were children's shows which featured a variety of entertainments, some of them cartoons. I have edited out the cartoon soundtracks, which are mostly to films which are quite commonly available. 

Okay, let's start. First up is Ray Rayner. If you're not from Chicago, or not over 50 years old, I encourage you to read about Ray here. Ray was a legendary performer in a genre that has completely disappeared - the local morning kids show. And his show, on WGN, was more than that. He featured traffic reports, sang songs, did comedy bits (literally lip-synching to records), showed the local sports highlights, comment on current events (lightly), did crafts, hosted animal segments, and showed cartoons. At times (as you'll hear later), he simply engaged in conversations about a point of interest with his offstage crew. And in doing this, he BLEW AWAY all of the competition for ratings, among morning TV shows in Chicago. If you can find clips of him online, you will be absolutely befuddled by what he was doing. But it was wonderful, and as a child, Ray was something of a hero to me. I even recorded a song of sorts about him once, after he retired. 

Segment one is nearly seven minutes from a Ray Raynor broadcast. The sports results make clear that the date was 9/10/70. We start with the sports results and highlights (and you can hear me repeat the standings, then hear the wonderful Jack Brickhouse in the highlights), as well as the weather. After a cut, we hear Ray singing a song. He may sound like an amateur, but he had a long string of successes, concurrent with his morning show, as an actor in local dinner theatre. We finish with some commercials, interrupted at one point by yours truly. 

Download: Ray Rayner and His Friends - 9/10/70

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The longest segment comes next, and (after a moment of some other show) it's a portion of "Bozo's Circus", probably from the same month. Again, this was a HUGE show in Chicago, with a ticket waiting list of over five years at times, and a massive TV audience. Ray Rayner was one of the clowns, Oliver (although he left the show the following year), with Bob Bell as Bozo, Roy Brown as Cookie, and Ringmaster Ned Locke, one of the sweetest personalities ever to appear on TV. 

This segment fascinates me, mostly for the opening bit. In the end, it's a shaggy dog joke related to Cookie drawing pictures while everyone else sings (and the joke is not worth the wait). But it's that singing that amazes me. For we are told that everyone is going to sing "Swingin' On a Star", from 1944 (26 years earlier). It's clear from this performance that nearly all of the children present know the choruses (in which the words change) well enough to sing along (and there would have been no point in having the words in front of them - most of these children were not old enough to read). Can you imagine a group of five year olds actively singing along to a hit from 26 years ago today? "It's All Coming Back to Me Now? One Sweet Day? I don't think so. Truly a moment captured in time. I love it. 

Part of a Sugar Crisp commercial follows, but then we cut to a few minutes of Herb Alpert style music. I'm not sure what this would have been, but I left it in. Then we hear a tedious skit about a flea circus, followed by a real treat, a Tony the Tiger ad (featuring Thurl Ravenscroft, of course). The show returns with the focal point of every Bozo episode, the Grand Prize Game. A McDonaldland commercial follows (by the way, I had a visceral, nearly hatred reaction to those McDonaldland commercials, when they debuted, which I believe was earlier in 1970 - I never did warm up to them). 

Download: Bozo's Circus, circa Fall, 1970
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What follows may be the rarest thing on this tape. It's a recording of most of an episode of a short lived game show called "Words and Music", hosted by Wink Martindale. You can read about the show here. The show only lasted 94 episodes, and debuted on 9/28/70, so we've moved forward a bit in time for this recording. The segment is pretty well self explanatory. Unfortunately, is this case, the commercials are cut. 

Download: Words and Music (game show), circa Fall, 1970

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This slides almost right into an episode of What's My Line. But first, we get to hear a legendary commercial for the local ABC news team. I've literally never forgotten the portrayal of the hapless weather girl in this ad. It's really good. The What's My Line episode features Joe Frazier as one of the guests. That he is introduced as the Heavyweight champ - which he was, starting in early 1970 - but also that he just had a song (a 45) released - which happened in late 1969 - makes me suspect this broadcast was a rerun. 

Download: What's My Line?

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The game show segments keep getting shorter. Here's a two minute chunk of "Beat the Clock", and a bit of a commercial that followed: 

Download; Beat the Clock, Late 1970

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And now we move into 1971. This nearly five minute segment captures the sign on, and opening segments, of a morning of broadcasting on WBBM, the CBS affiliate in town. We start with the national anthem, opening legal and promotional statements, as well as the opening and closing announcements for "Thought for the Day" - I chose not to record the actual thought itself. We then get a preview of the evening's broadcasts, nicely dating this recording to January 9, 1971. At the end, our announcer introduces the news, which we do not hear. But we do hear his name - George Menard - amazingly, the same George Menard who was heard at times during those late 1940's daytime radio shows I shared as part of the Porter Heaps collection, last year. 

Download: WBBM TV Sign-On, Preview, Etc, 1/9/71

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We end the main part of this series with 93 seconds of odds and ends from the end of that part of the tape. I have NO idea what the first part of this section was supposed to be. Maybe someone else can enlighten us. Then there is another McDonaldland ad. And I hate the very sound of it. 

Download; Early 1971 TV Odds and Ends

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So I mentioned above that there were other 1970 recordings elsewhere on the tape. They are, like some of those above, from September of that year. I have not, and will not have the time to chop these up, so I'm posting them here, because I really want to get this posted today. 

This montage is just over 15 minutes long, and here is what you'll hear. 

0:00: A few short commercials, with conversation in the background, followed by some messed up sounds from the TV (with my mother's amused response). 1:02: More of Ray Rayner, including another song, and some of those random conversations I mentioned earlier. Yes, this was Chicago's favorite morning show, by far. 2:52: More commercials

Then at 3:50: A lengthy segment of Bill Jackson's "Cartoon Town". This show, which aired on UHS channel WFLD, was the afternoon counterpart to Ray Rayner's show, although not as popular, and much more focused on entertaining children. In this segment, Bill is interacting with his character "Blob", a blob of clay which he would decorate, and which would talk to him via taped groans and other sounds. The Old Professor was another character. You'll hear me interact with the TV at one point. After a bit of some commercials, we have another Bill Jackson segment, the start of one where he would create a drawing out of a viewer's initials.

At 9:03: a further moment of Bill Jackson gives way to an ad for Girl Scouting (which is interrupted by a channel change to another Thurl Ravenscroft/Tony the Tiger ad and several other ads, including the unforgettable Baby Go Bye-Bye, and a tie in to H.R. Pufenstuf (which I hated even more than McDonaldland). The promo for Red Skelton dates all of these recordings to September of 1970, by the way). Finally, at 13:20: A few moments of the Saturday morning show, "Tomfoolery", which I LOVED, and which I recorded on other tapes several times. 

Download: Odds and Ends from September, 1970

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Incidentally, buried in the middle of all this media recording, on this tape, is a perfect example of the sort of thing I was wont to do when recording myself. It is mercifully short, so I am going to share it here. I do not have any idea what my "stand-up" bit - or whatever it's supposed to be - meant. Clearly, I knew what I was saying, as I go through the routine (one line) twice and act out the audience reaction, but... I have no idea. 

Download: Bobby - The Any Pokabuuh Show, Featuring Bill Banana

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~~

Now it's time for our Acetate of the Month. 

If you've been with me for a long time (or have heard my podcast on the subject), you know that I am very much in thrall to an album called "Musical Memories of Camp Bryn Afon", recorded in northern Wisconsin in 1965. 

What I've never shared with more than a couple of people is that I also have several acetates from another (unknown) camp, recorded in the late 1940's, but containing performances which have considerable similarities to (and some differences from) the Camp Bryn Afon recordings. I bought them all at the ALS Mammoth Music Mart (which I've also written about a lot), at least 30 years ago. Today, I will share both sides of one of those. It looks like this: 

As you can see, the acetate was recorded on August 16th, 1947, perhaps in honor of how Elvis would die just 30 short years later on that date, but probably not. 

Keep in mind that summer camps would have (and probably still have) all campers divided up into two teams, designated by colors. On Camp Bryn Afon, it's the Blue and the White. At this camp, it was the Gold and the Blue. Today's offerings are Gold Team songs. 

The "Gold Razz" is a series of rewritten pop hits, much the same as on the Camp Bryn Afon" album, but here performed as a medley, and given the acetate sound quality, I can't always make out what they're singing about, but I do know that "Stormy Weather" is turned into a complaint about Pink Eye (Conjunctivitis). There is also a reference to the St. Vitus Dance. It's pretty long for a 10 inch acetate - over three and half minutes, and there's quite a bit of variety. At one point there is an annoying hum, followed by some speed problems. This is on the disc and is not a result of my digitization. 

I love the energy of these performances, in much the same way I love the CBA album. 

Download: Girls' Camp - Gold Razz, 8/16/47

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The flip side contains two far shorter songs, back to back, the "Gold Entrance" (to the tune of "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!) and the "Gold Fight Song" (to the tune of "Waitin' For the Robert E. Lee). 

Download: Girls Camp - Entrance Song and Fight Song

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If anyone is interested in hearing more of these, I have several acetates from this camp. Just let me know.

~~

And finally, our Very Short Reel™. With primary elections very much in the news these days, I thought I'd share this little set of two advertisements, which the speaker appears to have recorded and put on the air with his own money. It seems he very much believed his friend belonged on the school board. 

There are several "Mountain Home School Districts" in the US, but I'm guessing, based on the speaker's accent, that this election was in the one located in Arkansas. 

The first ad indicates that the election was the next day. The second ad indicates that the election was on the day of the broadcast. 

Download: Tony Taylor Says Vote for Mike DeMass

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