BASEBALL for Opening Day, Wife Beating Songs for Children, Life at Home in the Mid 1950's, Jazz from Charlie's Party and Beyond, and the Cow Goes Moo

Hello! 

I forgot to add this when I posted this, but I have tapes for sale. I also forgot to publicize the last two batches, which sold earlier this month. But these are still available. Nothing posted to this site is on any of the tapes listed in that auction. 

And now: Let's jump right into things. Major League Baseball got an early jump again this year, with two teams starting the season today in Japan, while the rest of the teams are still playing Spring Training. My Chicago Cubs - the ONLY team that matters - have a two game series of games that will count against the Los Angeles Dodgers - who have been the Spawn of Satan since at least 1976, maybe 1973 (I'm not sure about earlier) - before both teams go back to Spring Training. 

In honor of the Cubs opening the season, here are their Artificial League (AL) Chicagoland cohorts, the White Sox, heard over very poor reception in a game against the Tigers, perhaps from 1962 

(I'm guessing 1962 because the other side of the tape was a poor recording of part of the second 1962 All Star Game, at Wrigley Field. That broadcast, in full and in better quality, is on YouTube). 

I suppose it's possible that this broadcast is also out there already somewhere, but I have no idea how to find out if it is. I'm sure someone out there will know - much quicker than I would - how to date this recording.

Regardless of the appalling lack of CUBS in this recording, it's still a lot of fun. Plus, it's always amazing and encouraging to me, when I hear old baseball broadcasts, to realize how little has changed about the game, in the (in this case) roughly 62 or 63 ensuing years. That is, except for the damnable Designated Hitter rule, which is no Spawn - it is the direct work of Satan himself.  

Download: White Sox at Tigers, 6th, 7th and 8th Innings

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~~

I was quite pleased and surprised to find a nearly complete episode of a show featuring Alan Mills from CBC radio on an otherwise nondescript reel the other day. With my folk music background and my history of working with children, Mills' voice was very familiar one to me, and this show was called "Folk Songs for Young Folk". 

I mentioned up there how baseball seems to be eternally the same in a lot of ways. Well, here we have the opposite: In what could not be a more clear example of how much times have changed, this show - which I'm guessing is from the late 1950's - is largely focused on songs about marital discord, including every grade school child's favorite subject, wife beating. It's all handled with the most pleasant and avuncular good humor, too. 

Download: Folk Songs for Young Folk with Alan Mills on the CBC

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~~

The next three segments all come from the same tape. And as much as some - perhaps many - of you may find the first part too sickly sweet, I found it deeply endearing and memorable. It is an edited version of a considerably longer tape, a tape which mainly features the cries, gurgles and other sounds made by an infant named Paulie in late November, 1955. 

I have come across many such tapes - in the days before video cameras, I think it was fairly common for parents to audiotape their newborn's utterances. But that's not the focus of the segment heard here. For whatever reason, halfway through the side of the tape, the child's mother, Betty, begins thinking out loud about the baby, about his father and grandfather, about his development so far, etc., and.... well, like I said, I found it extremely touching. I hope you do, too. 

Download: Mommy Betty and Baby Paulie, 11-28-55

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On the other side of the tape are more baby recordings, from February of 1956, then, the following curious little segment, in which Betty complains that someone who borrowed the machine may have damaged it in some way (the recordings sound fine to me) and it order to test it, she will read from the Sears Catalog. Not, mind you, the products and prices, but rather, the advertising copy no doubt on the first few pages, telling the customer how wonderful Sears is. And for someone simply doing a machine test, four minutes seems sort of... excessive? 

Download: Betty Tests the Machine by Reading from the Sears Catalog

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After she's done expounding on the wonders of the Sears company, for the rest of the reel, we get to hear a fairly wonderful example of what local radio sounded like, circa 1955. I'm guessing 1955 as that's when the baby recordings started and this is what those recordings were erasing, at least up to the halfway point or more of side two. In this case, it's the long-lived, but now defunct WMAQ in Chicago, with a bit of midwestern daytime radio, typical of the era. 

Download: A Few Minutes of WMAQ, Chicago, Circa 1955

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~~

The biggest chunk of tape I have for you today is the entire contents of a tape which came in a box that looks like this: 

The back of the box (below) says "Dixieland and Other Jazz From Our Annual Studio Party for Charlie Miller" featuring - I think I'm reading this right - Guy and Lenore Preston. If those names mean anything to anyone out there please leave a comment. Otherwise, I'm just going to let this go without further comment. 

Download: Dixieland and Other Jazz From Our Annual Studio Party for Charlie Miller, 1-7-73

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Now to my ears, where there is a definite break in the recording - at the 62:20 mark - the music returns with what sounds like a different session, even a somewhat different band, so I have broken that part of the tape out as a separate track, indicating that I think it's just a jam session from the same (or more likely, a similar) band. I could be wrong, of course, but that's how I separated out this tape. 

Download: Jamming with the Band from the Charlie Miller Tape

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Here's part of the back of the box: 

~~

For our very short reel, which is the homiest of home recordings, I have come up with a title which, I think, summarizes the contents nicely, without anything else that needs to be said. 

Here it is!: 

Download: Four Minutes at Home - Two Songs, An Interview, and the Cow Goes Moo

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By Request! More Jack Eigen! Plus Ridiculous Vocals, My Favorite Poet, Igor Stravinsky, Some Relatives Visit, Steinbeck Pro and Con and a bit of Union Propaganda

Greetings! 

Before I get to this week's offerings, I want to share a very interesting comment I received regarding the last post, specifically, the tape of an adult man interviewing six-year-old Joe Hogan. An anonymous reader listener wrote: 

The man interviewing him seams to be in another room. I think this may have been some sort of studio. The clicking you here is the talkback going on and off. Back then, you had to hold down the button to talk, then release. He kept releasing it to soon. This seams like some sort of low budget production deal I think. I think Joe is listening through a monitor (the room sound when they talk) its not a direct mic feed or anything. I don't think they were related, I think he was just trying to make Joe feel comfortable. Maybe some sort of news thing for the school? Also, if you listening very carefully when he asks Joe, "Can you write?" He accidentally releases the talkback in the middle of his sentence, and you can briefly hear Joe's mic pick him up from the control room

Makes sense to me! Thanks!

~~

I have received a handful of requests for a further portion of my collection of Jack Eigen broadcasts. And this requires a bit of explanation. First, for those who haven't heard any of the other offerings in this series, my write up on Mr. Eigen can be found in this post. Suffice to say that, for the better part of twenty years, Jack Eigen was an irritant on the late night Chicago radio dial, but one that plenty of people could barely do without. As my mother once told me (and as is mentioned in that earlier post), his irritating manner was, in her view, essentially what drew people into listening to his shows. 

For those of you who have downloaded my previous Eigen offerings, I will share (as I mentioned in my last post) that I actually cheated you out of additional Eigen material when I posted what I identified as "Volume Five", last May. You see, that offering was actually the exact same tape as the one I had posted as "Volume Four", over a year ago. 

So here is the reel "Volume Five", which I will label as "Volume 5" so that your folder won't get confused and tell you that there is already a file by named "Volume Five". This is by far the longest one yet, I think. It is over four and a half hours long. Enjoy!

Download: Jack Eigen - The Jack Eigen Show, Volume 5

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I seem to have left on about ten seconds' silence at the beginning of this file, by accident. So don't be surprised at a bit of silence at first...

~~

Next up, here is someone named Bob Terry, enjoying his 50th birthday party in 1980. Someone - presumably the birthday boy, plays a lot of piano, including a few parody numbers which presumably were his own creations, and none of them terribly clever. For the last several minutes, the pianist/birthday boy and his guests try to work out a happy birthday dirge based on a familiar melody, although it seems to be a struggle to perfect what they're trying to do. That section goes on, and on, and on, and on.

Download: The Bob Terry 50th Birthday Party

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~~

The next three rather esoteric items all come from the same tape, and all were recorded in 1962 off of television. I am presenting them here in the order they appear on the tape, even though the second one is dated before the first one (presumably, the first segment erased something previously recorded even earlier, on that section of the tape). I cannot locate this tape to show you a scan of the writing on the box (I may have sold it along with a bunch of other tapes, some time ago), but the information on dates was from the box.

First up is a short segment in which two jazz performers, pianist/singer Rose Murphy and bassist Slam Stewart, promote a local appearance in Albany on WRGB, a pioneering television station in Schenectady, New York. I learn from Wikipedia that WRGB was one of the world's first TV stations, way back in 1928 (!) and the fourth commercial station to sign on, in 1942. However, it was also the station that launched the career of Rachael Ray, and that is simply unforgivable. May you rot in hell for what you've done, WRGB. 

Anyway, I was certainly familiar with Slam Stewart and his sing-along bass playing, but had not encountered Rose Murphy before. Her piano playing is fine. But her singing... Oh my God, she was GODAWFUL! I have a hard time believing her performance style wasn't some sort of elaborate dry joke, designed to see how many pretentious jazz-hounds she could make rave over an absurd, terrible  and mannered singing. Your mileage may vary. 

After a pre-recorded track featuring both performers singing and playing, there is a great instrumental featuring Stewart and then a song featuring Murphy, before just a taste of Murphy's signature song and a fade out. 

Download: Rose Murphy and Slam Stewart - WRGB - 6-7-62

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Next on the tape is John Ciardi, giving a lovely presentation - along with the legendary Alan Lomax, on The Sea Islands, This was part of a short lived CBS-TV series called "Accent on an American Summer", and this episode focused on the music of these islands, dating from the slave era and later created by the descendants of slaves.  

Alan Lomax should need no introduction (if for nothing else but helping to mentor Pete Seeger and first bringing him to prominence, but of course, so much more), but John Ciardi? I'm sure he's largely forgotten, if indeed he was ever well known outside of literary and poetry circles. But he was well known and beloved in the home in which I grew up, due to his having written two of our favorite books, books of poetry for children. He actually wrote well over a dozen books of poems for children, it seems. We owned "I Met a Man" and "The Man Who Sang the Sillies", and there were few books in our home that I loved more, for both the wonderful nonsense of his rhymes  (which I'm sure had a deep influence on my own lyric-writing and general sense of humor), and for the marvelous illustrations by Edward Gorey. I found the following image from my favorite of his poems, which had my favorite of the illustrations, as well: 

Genius. Absolute genius. 

Anyway, I was delighted to find this tape, as I had no idea he had done anything else but write those two lovely books. 

Download: John Ciardi on The Sea Islands - 2-14-62

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Then the tape ends with a recording of a program in which Igor Stravinsky conducts one of his own compositions, "The Flood", and which is followed by a documentary about Stravinsky. This is a much longer segment - almost 50 minutes - and it is also from 1962: 

Download: Igor Stravinsky Conducts His "The Flood", and Documentary on Stravinsky, 1962

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~~

I feel like I've done sort of a lot of typing so far, and will be below, as well, so I'm gonna scale it back for this one. This next piece of tape is "called Aunt Edith and Uncle Carl Come to Visit, 7-27-60", and I think that just about describes it. 

Download: Aunt Edith and Uncle Carl Come to Visit, 7-27-60

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~~

Now it's time for our "Acetate of the Month". Most of the time, these are 78 RPM acetates, and last from three to seven minutes, total, for both sides. But acetates were also cut at 33 1/3 RPM, long before that speed was available commercially, and they were also cut at that speed, by private users, in the 1950's and well into the 1960's (and of course, by professional studios, long after that). And those 33 1/3 acetates could, of course, be far longer than their 78-era brethren. Today's offering is 26 minutes long, and the disc itself looks like this: 

Much of the information you need to know what you're going to hear is right there in that picture. The rest is in the first moments of the sound file. The discussion is between high school students. The school Evanston Township High School (I was able to find a reference to the teacher named on the label having worked there), and the other student, discussing Steinbeck with Dick Mills, is Bill Brower.

This is, as I'm sure you're imagining, scintillating stuff. 

Download: Custom Sound Studios 12 inch Acetate - Bill Brower and Dick Mills - A Discussion of the Style of John Steinbeck, Evanston, IL, September, 1957, Side One 

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Download: Custom Sound Studios 12 inch Acetate - Bill Brower and Dick Mills - A Discussion of the Style of John Steinbeck, Evanston, IL, September, 1957, Side Two

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Here's a photo of the second side of the acetate: 

~~

Finally, a "Very Short Reel". This is a bit of propaganda - and I don't mean that negatively - from the AFL-CIO. This sounds very much like it was the soundtrack to a short film, and the closing statements further make it sound as if this was one of a series of short films, presumably all from the AFL-CIO, which perhaps were paid for and ran on television stations in five minute timeslots. 

I should explain that I made some of the files that I am sharing today, and in the recent past, and no doubt in the future, as long as six or seven years ago. I have a large collection of "not yet used" items, and this one was digitized at least four years ago. All that is to explain why I can no longer find this tape's box, either (although it's unlikely I sold this one). But the name of the file is almost certainly what was written on the box. 

Download: AFL-CIO - Americans At Work - Building Aircraft

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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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THE WIND TOP 1000 - REDUX!!!

 Hi, everyone!

Six months ago, I shared a set of recordings that I made in 1971 and 1972, of Chicago radio station WIND, AM 560, when they featured their countdown of the biggest hits of the rock and roll era. Here's part of what I wrote at the time: 

In 1970, WIND had produced a list of the top 500 hits of all time (well, when they said "all time", they meant from 1955 onwards, it would appear). They aired the entire list, from #500 to #1- before doing so, they had a contest with prizes awarded to whoever (or one of those who could) guess the top ten in the correct order. After the program aired, the list was available at local stores or you could get it by mail, which I did. In retrospect - having studied the Billboard charts my entire adult life, and done my own figuring of the top hits many times over - it's clear to me that the WIND list was based directly on Billboard's rankings, which is as it should be. 

The following year, 1971, WIND announced that the list would be expanded to a top 1000, and that they would again play them, from #1000 to #1, starting on an upcoming weekend. There would be no changes to the all time top 10, as no song in 1970-71 had been nearly big enough for that. 

What I didn't remember at the time, and what I just recently discovered, is that not only did WIND re-run their entire Top 1000 in November of 1972, but also that I recorded large chunks of that presentation. Not only that, but I think (without immediately going back to listen to the earlier shared tapes) that these recordings contain considerably more of the commercials and newscasts that accompanied the presentation than did the previous share. You can hear these songs anywhere, but those news and sports breaks and commercials are moments in time which are always worth hearing, especially given that the 1972 presidential election was taking place the day after this countdown ended. That election, and the local elections, are covered at length in those newscasts. 

The list was the same for both presentations that WIND aired in 1972, although interestingly, there is not really that much overlap between the songs I recorded earlier in the year, and those heard in this set of portions of the countdown. Also, this recording of the countdown has the full top ten, some of which was missing in my earlier recordings/post. 

The songs heard here - almost, but not all of them heard in their entirety - are #'s 158-110, #103, #'s101-100, #'s 95-80, #'s 56-34 and #'s 12-1. 

The recording exists in my collection on two reels - the first of these reels contains nothing but recordings of the presentation, on both sides of the tape, in monaural - four tracks in all, lasting just moments under six and a half hours - and that's a good thing, because the software I use will not make a sound file longer than six hours and 34 minutes. That limitation means this is probably the longest single sound file I will ever share here. It contains all of the songs mentioned in the previous paragraph except for #'s 12-1: 

Download: The WIND Top 1000, November 5-6, 1972

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And here is the second tape which I used to capture the countdown, in this case, the very end of that big, long show. Oddly enough, my favorite moment among all seven hours plus that I'm sharing today is a a pretty crazy short news story about the incompetent way that the BBC covered the final game of that year's world series. That segment is heard starting at the 11:15 point in the segment below. 

Other than that, I remain deeply impressed by the long-ago tastes of the American radio listener and record buyer. Aside from the songs at # 9 and at # 1 (neither of which do much for me), ten of these twelve tracks are all fantastic records, thoroughly deserving of their massive success (and, I have to add, "Singing the Blues" by Guy Mitchell is simply one of the 10-15 best records ever made). Plus they represent a pretty wide range of styles and genres. 

And certainly, this is a list that is almost infinitely better than such a list of the top 12 hits of the 51 years since 1972 would be (a list from the last fifty years would likely include such material as "I'll Make Love to You" by BoyzIIMen, "One Sweet Day" by Mariah Carey, "You Light Up My Life" by Debby Boone, "Candle In the Wind 1997" by Elton John, "Physical" by Olivia Newton-John "Smooth" by Santana, and (God help us), "Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd, none of which will ever stay on my radio for more than ten seconds if I'm physically able to change the station). 

Download: The WIND Top 1000, November 5-6, 1972, Conclusion

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Okay, for our "Very Short Reel" this week, I am cheating. 100% cheating. Because this is not the sum and total of any one tape, nor is it a small segment of an otherwise uninteresting tape. But it is quite short, and it is relevant to the material above. For here you will hear Yours Truly, Bob Purse, at age 12 and a half, telling the listener that the show is over and you can "Stop Playing the Tape" now, then going on far too long with the shtick (and proving that one CAN go on far too long in 58 seconds), as well as a tuneless little song . Who, exactly, this directive was aimed at is unknown, but it was probably the same fictional "listener" that was in my mind whenever I was recording and pretending to be the host of a show or to be doing something I imagined other people listening to (as you can hear in this post).  

Anyway, here's what's on the tape immediately after the end of the second segment, above. 

Download: "Stop Playing the Tape"

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And for those who want more than just an imaginary "Bob" to go with the above 58 second recording, here is an exceptionally unflattering picture of me, taken perhaps three months or so after that recording was made, from one of those "four-pictures-for-a-quarter" photo booths. Actually, I think, in this shot, I look like I was just about as irritating a child as I sound like I was in that "Stop Playing the Tape" segment. You can probably use this to scare your kids on Hallowe'en this year.  

THE WIND TOP 1000!

 Today, I have only a couple of sound files to share, but given that, together, they contain over six hours worth of material, I don't think I'm shortchanging anyone. And I suspect you will cheer these items, if you are among those who enjoy vintage radio broadcasts. In this case, they are from the early 1970's, complete with lots of ads as well as newscasts (well, the longer of the two, anyway), to go along with the music. 

A bit of personal history here. I had a brief flirtation with Top 40 radio around age 10, and still have a very nostalgic love for the hits of the summer and fall of 1970. But in the following years, while most of my peers were likely just starting to become enamored of top 40 radio, and become lulled into a sense of complacency by the dubious charms of the likes of The Carpenters, The Osmonds, Carole King, Chicago, Cher, John Denver, James Taylor and their ilk (I recognize that your mileage may vary on the "complacency" and "dubious" part, but for me, that's only a toe in the barrel of the ecch that was the pop music of the early '70's), I fell headlong into the local oldies station, WIND, 560 on your dial. I found much more to appreciate in the sounds of the 1950's and 1960's than on contemporary radio (although WIND did sprinkle the biggest hits of the day in, here and there), and by the end of 1971, I barely knew any of the current hit songs, but was well versed in music from before I was born. (Perhaps the sole exception to my ignorance of then-current hits, and a record I swoon over to this day, was Melanie's "Brand New Key", which surely says something about me, although I don't know what.)  To this day, my single favorite year for popular music is 1957 - three years before I was born. 

In 1970, WIND had produced a list of the top 500 hits of all time (well, when they said "all time", they meant from 1955 onwards, it would appear). They aired the entire list, from #500 to #1- before doing so, they had a contest with prizes awarded to whoever (or one of those who could) guess the top ten in the correct order. After the program aired, the list was available at local stores or you could get it by mail, which I did. In retrospect - having studied the Billboard charts my entire adult life, and done my own figuring of the top hits many times over - it's clear to me that the WIND list was based directly on Billboard's rankings, which is as it should be. 

The following year, 1971, WIND announced that the list would be expanded to a top 1000, and that they would again play them, from #1000 to #1, starting on an upcoming weekend. There would be no changes to the all time top 10, as no song in 1970-71 had been nearly big enough for that. I recorded nearly five hours of this programming, along with the ads and newscasts which went with it, over that weekend, including two lengthy portions (#'s 260-233 and #'s 60-7), as well as two brief segments (#'s 93-92 and #'s 2-1). Unfortunately, I missed #'s 6-3 near the end of the countdown, but if I can find my copy of the list among all of the detritus I've collected in 62+ years of life, I will update this post. 

I recorded the 1971 segments at the extremely low-fi speed of 1 7/8 IPS - you will no doubt note some poorly recorded moments and wobbliness to some of the sounds here. 

The following year, WIND updated the top 1000 yet again, and I recorded a relatively short segment of the program during the evening - a period in which there were very few ads and no newscasts, so this segment may be of somewhat less interest if that is the appeal. I captured #'s 33-17 in a 90 minute segment. If you listen to both broadcasts, you will find that no 1971-72 hit song was big enough to enter the station's top 33, as #s 33-17 in 1972 are exactly the same 17 songs as #'s 33-17 in the 1971 broadcast. 

I'm going to share the shorter, and probably less interesting of the two recordings first, even though it came later, and then share the massively entertaining 1971 recording. 

Download: The 1972 WIND Top 1000 (33 Through 17)

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And here is the massive, four-hour-51-minute portion of the 1971 WIND Top 1000 broadcast. It starts with about 45 seconds of trying to find the correct station, and then another 75 seconds on a sports talk program, but starting at about the two minute point, the remainder of this massive track is all WIND. Be sure to listen for the point at which my older brother leaned into the microphone and offered a brief critique of the song playing at that moment, which was Santo and Johnny's "Sleep Walk". ENJOY!

Download: The 1971 WIND Top 1000 (260-233, 93-92, 60-7, 2-1)

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(A side note: I also recorded some of at least one of these countdowns onto cassette tapes, and if I can find those, I'll share them here, some day, if no one objects to cassettes being offered up on a reel to reel site.)

~~

Okay, you short-tape lovers, I haven't forgotten about you. Here's a one minute radio ad for HBO's cable premier of the movie "Multiplicity", created by a company called "Superdupe". You wouldn't know it from this creative and forceful ad, but the movie in question was neither a critical or box office hit. Maybe that's why they worked so hard to promote it - there was no significant built-in audience.  

Download: Superdupe - HBO's Multiplicity Ad

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A Radio Station's Birthday, a Right Wing Meeting, More From Our Young Man in Japan, and Some Rye Sounds

I have another cornucopia today, with four disparate tapes, three of considerable length, and, of course, a "very short reel".

First is a tape I made myself, on the day that local (and legendary) Chicago Top 40 powerhouse broadcast an hour-long special in honor of their 25th anniversary, some time in the spring of 1985. The station had switched over to Top 40 on May 2nd, 1960, and was easily the best station of its genre for most of the following two and a half decades. 

It was certainly the station my older brother listened to all the time, in the bedroom we shared, when I was a little kid (six years his junior). It vied for my attention (along with the inferior WCFL) when I was a pre-teen, and it became my station again when I started driving my own car at age 17 in 1977. The 60's were the magic years, though, with deejay feuds, funny commercials, content created just for the station, and wonderful music. 

By 1985, I would hardly have called much of the music wonderful or magical, but a station retrospective was always worth hearing, and I'm sure I taped it with much enthusiasm. What you hear here is the entire contents of the tape - there is a gap at the end of side one where I turned the tape over, and the special ends about three minutes before the tape does, so we get to hear an oldie coming out of the show credits, and then the start of the then-current number one hit in town, before the second side runs out. 

Sadly, the station had barely four years to go as a music station. The switch by most listeners to FM (for music, anyway), meant the station started telling hosts to talk more and spin records less around 1988, and by the fall of 1989, music had been eliminated entirely. There was a mix of opinion among the station's hosts, at first, but before too long, it was all right wing talk, all the time. As a result, I haven't listened to WLS in at least 25 years.  

By the way, the glitch a few seconds in is on my original tape of this show. I probably restarted it after a few seconds or something. 

Download: The WLS 25th Birthday Special -1985

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Speaking of Right-Wing Politics, here's a tape that at least some may find fascinating, especially if you like the sort of "fly-on-the-wall" listening in to things that appeals to me. Not that these folks didn't know they were being recorded, but just that they probably thought the number of people who would hear the recording would likely be in the single digits, or low tens, at most. 

This is a recording of a meeting of "We the People", and primarily, their special guest speaker. I'm dating this to early 1965. The Johnson/Goldwater election of November, 1964, seems to be in the relatively recent rear view mirror, and a few other references seem to confirm the time period, if not the date. 

This is a lengthy recording - just over 105 minutes, but it's worth a listen if you're a student of the period, interested in the way the political parties saw each other in 1965 (or perhaps more accurately, how the Goldwater faction, and those to the right of that group, saw most everyone else). 

Oh, and for those who like to play with sounds and make montages and the like, this is chock full of good source material. I've used parts of it myself. 

Download: A Meeting of "We the People", circa Early 1965

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Last time around, I offered up part of a collection I have found, consisting of audio letters from a young man in Japan, to a family member back home. I remain confused as to whether this person was just a student or also a soldier, and if only the former, why he was in Japan, and why there are so many references to military things. Again, maybe someone out there has a better idea. 

In this one, he mentions that it is "Saturday, the fourth" but doesn't give a month. Given that it's also clear the year is 1967, I don't know what month we're in, as there were three months with a Saturday the Fourth that year. 

I hope these are interesting to folks, as I have well over a half-dozen of them, so let me know whether to continue with them. 

Download: Audio Letter from a Student-Soldier in Japan, Saturday the 4th (Month Unknown), 1967

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Finally, this post's "Very Short Reel". This one is a bit longer than most, running just over six minutes, but it's still a small reel, containing what these short reels often do, a Demo Reel. In this case, a voice actor named Michael Rye offers up "The Rye Sounds". 

Download: Michael Rye - The Rye Sounds

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What's "In the Bag"?, Greetings from Germany, A Few Moments on WLS and More

Helloooo.....

What a cornucopia of sounds I have for you today, all of them seemingly from about 1958 to about 1969. 

First up, another of my "old favorites", the reels I filed away, in some cases decades ago, before I started sharing things online, but which I believe to be very much worth sharing. 

In this case, it's an impossibly rare recording of (most of) a local Chicago TV attempt at a game show along the lines of "What's My Line?" and "I've Got a Secret". I've owned this tape for about 30 years, I think. 

As far as I can tell, "In the Bag", only existed as a pilot episode, and a video of it exists in at least one library of such ephemera. The sites I read didn't seem to indicate that the show ever aired, but it clearly did, as you can hear a promo for another June, 1958, show at the end. 

Anyway, if you want to hear the results of someone taking the genius of "What's My Line" and making it stupider, especially when you throw in the always ridiculous Irv Kupcinet for flavoring, you are bound to get a great deal of enjoyment out of "In the Bag". 

The start of this tape is a bit confusing - we hear the tail end of "In the Bag", followed by a bit of a promo for "What's My Line", another promo and part of a commercial. Then we miss the start of the actual episode, and jump into the episode which is already under way, with celebrity guest Jimmy Durante, who's secret is guessed right away - probably not what they'd hoped for when they involved so great a star....

Download: "In the Bag" - CBS, Chicago, June, 1958

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Next, as a bit of a sequel to last week's lengthier WLS excerpts, here is a sort of medley of two bits of the same WLS, about seven years later. This comes from a longer tape which unfortunately - and like a lot of radio tapes - features only the songs, with the DJ banter, commercials and other items heard on the station edited out. Undoubtedly, our (teen?) recordist only wanted the song, which is usually the case. As everyone out there has probably heard (or doesn't want to hear) the songs of 1969 as the sounded over AM radio, minus all the "fun" stuff, I didn't share the entire reel.

But two segments on the tape have a bit of the whole story. The first part is from early 1969, and features, primarily, a newscast, while the second segment, after the fade, is from later that same year: 

Download: WLS, Chicago, 1969, News and Top 40

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Now... at some point, I seem to have purchased the audio letter holdings of someone named Larry - you can catch his last name on the tape, I think. I have at least six or seven audio letters that he received, from multiple people, during the 1960's, and I may have already featured one before. 

At least three of them are from an audio correspondent in Germany, and it's at least somewhat likely that they never actually met. I should explain that, starting in the 1950's, a mailing list (perhaps even a magazine) was developed that contained the names and addresses of people all over the world who wanted to be "reel pals", a la the pen pals of the old days. I don't know exactly how this worked, but perhaps each person's interests were listed - and languages - so that you could pick an appropriate person to send your three inch audio letter to. 

I'm pretty sure Larry was one of those recipients. And so, from late August of 1963, here's an audio letter - which also features some appropriate music - from Germany to Larry. 

(Incidentally, I believe the microphone test at the start of the tape was recorded later, perhaps by Larry himself, but I left it on, because it was there.) 

Download: Audio Letter from Germany to Larry - 8/31/63

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Another recent addition to this site, by request, is the "Acetate of the Month". And today I have one that can only come from a point at which recording acetates were on the way out. 

I would put money on it that this brief, unlabeled recording, which almost certainly comes from 1964 or so, was made at a booth at a store, or an event such as The World's Fair, because home acetate machines were simply no longer a thing in the mid 1960's. And I personally have memories of those "store acetate booths", which remained a thing into at least the late 1960's. 

Anyway, this is a charming, if quite short, performance (appropriately, it's 64 seconds long) of "I Saw Her Standing There", by a group of kids who are clearly having a good time. 

Download: Kids Sing "I Saw Her Standing There"

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And finally, as part of yet another series, here is our "Very Short Reel" for today. As you can see, it's labeled "Guided Missile Effects" on the three inch box: 

As I didn't actually have the box in front of me when I saved the digital version of this tape's contents, I attached a simpler title: "A Series of Explosions". And here it is!

Download: A Series of Explosions

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Bob Sirott Gets His Start in Radio, Political Commercial Sessions, Male Ad Voices and More!

I hope you're all ready for another set of interesting items from the archives. Today, we're heavy on the media side of things. 

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Bob Sirott is a Chicago Media legend and survivor of dozens of careers within a career. He has been through too many jobs and media lives to count. For my money, he was at his best in his first big name job, which was as top 40 DJ at Chicago powerhouse WLS for about eight years, ending in 1979. I was enamored of him enough that I made a point of recording his entire farewell show on WLS, which I might share some time here. Since then, he's been on TV and radio and radio and TV in any number of settings, culminating, perhaps, with his current job, holding what was once the single most plum job in Chicago radio: morning drive at WGN.  

Honestly, he ceased to be interesting to me a long, long time ago, and all of those jobs have been more establishment and corporate over the years, which is something I suspect is hard to avoid in such a career. But I respect his longevity, and have fond memories of listening to him as a teenager in the '70's. 

His biography on Wikipedia states his radio start point was on another Chicago station in 1971, but I have, for years, owned a tape that demonstrates that this is incorrect. Because someone filled both sides of an 1800 foot reel - nearly 100 minutes of a Bob Sirott aircheck - from December of 1967, on WRSV in Skokie, just north of Chicago. With his semi-recent hire at WGN, I made a point of digging the tape out to share for everyone. 

At first, I thought it was funny that the owner of the tape labeled it "The Bob Sirott Show", as it seemed to be, largely, simply Sirott doing a faceless job of performing a faceless task: spinning MOR and Beautiful Music records of the era. 

But eventually, it becomes clear that the show did have a "personality", as Sirott gets a few "bits" in, and even re-references one of them later in the show. Oddly, he makes it clear that his was a one-night-a-week job, and even odder (to me, anyway), is that the phones were apparently lighting up with requests for this tedious blandness. Bob Sirott would have been 18 at this time - I sure this was his very favorite music. 

Anyway, it's an interesting listen, to a format of music which hasn't existed in a very long time, and a glimpse into the very earliest days of a very big name in Chicago media. 

(Oh, and I should mention that there is some competing noise, singing, whistling and such on one channel for the first 30 seconds or so. I didn't want to edit out the start of the tape, so I just left it as-is.)

Download:  Bob Sirott Plays MOR of WRSV, Skokie, IL, 12-4-67

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On to something I find even more interesting. The next two segments both come from a tape which is labeled as seen below: 

The box seems to be a set of commercials promoting Democratic Governor Shapiro of Illinois, who had only been governor for five months in October, 1968, in a series called "Mark of Cain", promoting his election to a full term that fall. But that's not really what's featured on this tape. Well, there is one "Mark of Cain" ad, but not four, and the first third or so of the tape is actually made up almost entirely by commercials (from the same election cycle) for the much better remembered Birch Bayh, Democratic Senator of Indiana. Most of the tape is a mixture of raw sessions from the Bayh commercials and finished product, with the single Shapiro commercial edited into the middle of the section, and a few stray moments the could be from something else. 

By the way, Shapiro was defeated, Bayh was re-elected. 

Download: Recording Commercials for Senator Birch Bayh and Others

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And then, in case that wasn't enough, and very happily, in my opinion, someone, surely from the same ad agency, spliced on a presentation of the company's Male Ad Voice Talent, arranged alphabetically, for the first half of the alphabet, anyway. 

I've featured several of these before, both here and at WFMU. As with those previous demo tapes, there are some absolutely hugely famous names heard here, and I find it funny to think that some of the actors heard here - including the likes of Oscar winner Burl Ives - might be able to command enormous fees for movie and TV work, but got to be pimped out along with 20 other guys in the advertising equivalent of speed dating. 

There are also some racial and ethnic portrayals here which wouldn't get past the drawing board today. 

Download: Male Ad Voices Demo Tape, A Through M

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And then there's this little three inch reel

Now, I don't know if this next set of material is rare or collectable at all, but I listened to it for the first time this week and thought it was enjoyable. I know that Ed Sullivan shows have been packaged, repackaged and re-aired in a dozen ways, and some Smothers Brothers' episodes have been released on DVD, as well. But it seems at least possible that these little segments might not be otherwise available, so I thought I'd share the contents of this tape. 

Side one, heard first, features three performers from the October 6, 1968 edition of the Sullivan show, including Flip Wilson and Dionne Warwick, but highlighted - well, at least I think so (and so did whoever wrote on that tape box) - by Tiny Tim's performance, and the introduction of Tim's parents in the audience. The tape runs out, unfortunately, during his performance. 

Side two features an equally short segment from the Smothers Brothers' show from the same night, featuring a sad tune from Nancy Sinatra, a goofy jug band turn from Nancy with Tommy Smothers, and part of Pat Paulson's then-current campaign for president. 

Download:  Ed Sullivan Show (Flip Wilson,  Dionne Warwick, Tiny Tim), and The Smothers Brothers' Hour (Nancy Sinatra and Pat Paulson) - 1968 

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And finally, this posts "very short reel". I have a LOT of tapes from a radio station in Astoria, Oregon. I bought a batch of them perhaps 15 years ago, in one of my earlist eBay purchases. A lot of them have since been sold, mostly episodes of a storytelling radio series. I have shared a few of the "short reels" I got with that batch, and here is yet another one, a PSA sponsored by the clunkily named K-TEK C.N.C. Machines company. This is truly "very short" - just 37 seconds. 

Download: K-TEC CNC Machines Astoria, Drunk Driving PSA, July 1987

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The Supremely Irritating Jack Eigen

First and foremost, Happy Father's Day to all of you fathers out there, and to the fathers of everyone reading this!

It occurred to me a short time ago that I've neglected to post any of the tapes I have of Jack Eigen. This is a real oversight, because I know there are multiple people who visit this site who are particularly interested in radio recordings, and because I have a LOT of Jack Eigen.

The main reason it didn't occur to me is that I actually sold the reels on which these recordings were housed, several years ago. But before I did so, I made copies of all of them. And there were a lot of them.

Jack Eigen was an enormously popular late night radio talk show host on Chicago station WMAQ (not WCFL, as I originally wrote) for 20 years, 1951 to 1971. I'm actually not sure I understand why - I find him abrasive and, as indicated, supremely irritating. This is not based - as it would undoubtedly be today - on a political point of view or deliberate crassness. No, I just find his personality aggressively unappealing. When I first got these tapes, more than 20 years ago, I remember asking my mom about him, and she said that they would listen to him "all the time", and adding that his annoying qualities were one reason that people listened. It was a feature, not a bug.

You can read a few bits about Jack Eigen here and here.

Regardless, these tapes are fascinating in that they present a world of show business, talk show style and radio presentation which all ceased to exist a long time ago.

This is a LONG tape, containing excerpts from several of Eigen's broadcasts - I have not re-listened to this whole tape, this time around, or even 1/10th of it. I'm guessing that buried within are references that will tell you when it is from. Like most of the tapes I can share from the Eigen collection, this is well over three hours long. I've labeled this one "volume one", simply because it's the first one I prepared for posting here - I have no idea what order they truly belong in.

I'm going to guess that there are those of you who want to hear more of this, and if so, by all means, ask - let me know. I have upwards of 25 of these tapes, or if you prefer, somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 hours plus of Jack Eigen. Some of them are interspersed with latter day episodes of the Arthur Godfrey show (of the same vintage) and also episodes of "Theatre Five", which was an afternoon half-hour radio drama in the mid '60's, but most of them are pure Eigen - and yes, that means I have 75 plus hours of this stuff....

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