Danny Thomas at Tahoe, A Young Family at Home, One More Set from Antony Bilbow, Even More Hollister, Badly Recorded Top 40 and the New Lux Lotion Bar

I hoped to have this up in a more timely fashion, but I was gone for a weekend and then extremely sick for part of the following week. I hope to have yet another post up before the end of the month. But this one was sort of thrown together. I hope you find it worthwhile. 

First up, and perhaps of interest to at least some of the media-sound-collectors out there, is a recording of an episode of "The Danny Thomas Hour", which ran during the 1967-68 season on NBC and was apparently not much of a success. Each week was a different format - drama, variety, comedy - and on 2/28/68, the host presented a hour of his live act, recorded in Lake Tahoe. There does not seem to be any recording of this out there, audio or video - if there is, I didn't come across it. 

Personally, this sort of thing drives me up the wall, and I fail to understand how it was ever popular. But popular it was, and I know there are people who still love this stuff. And objectively, I recognize that this is by far the most "collectable" thing I'm sharing today, and probably recently, so it deserves the lead-off spot. And so, for those who will like it, here is that tape: 

Download: Danny Thomas at Tahoe - NBC-TV, 2-28-68

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I have, on two previous occasions, shared portions of a tape I found which contains four tracks of a man named Antony Bilbow reading stories on the BBC. Click on his name to see the previous two offerings, as well as this one. At least a few people asked to have more of these, and today I am offering up the third of the four channels on that tape. 

Download: Antony Bilbow - Stories on English Radio, Volume 3

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As I often say here, recordings Top 40 Radio from its golden era are considered precious to many folks out there, and I count myself in that number. In my last post, I featured part of a countdown show from WILS, Lansing. Now I have something considerably less wonderful, from the same collection. Both shares were from three inch wonders, tapes which contain far more recording than one might think such a small item could hold. The problem with today's offering is the resolutely awful sound quality, and again, there is only some of the deejay patter, making these recordings less valuable than many others. Oh, and like many of the machines which were designed to record ONLY those three inch reels, the recording speed was extremely variable, depending on how much tape was left on each side of the reels. 

Unlike the previous offering, this is not all from one broadcast, although there are some countdown items here. And not everything here is from WILS, but most of it is, and I can't make out for certain what the other station(s) heard is/are. Oh, and the last few minutes heard here are from yet another three inch reel that came from the same collection, one which only had a few minutes of recording on it. 

Download: WILS, Lansing, Michigan, Circa Late 1964 and Early 1965

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And now it's David Hollister Time again. I don't want to repeat myself each time I bring up his name, but the explanation for these tapes is at the start of this post, and this link will take you to all of the Hollister tapes I've shared so far. 

Today's Hollister tape has two separate sections. The first part seems to be a rehearsal for something called AORN show, from 3/2/76. I don't know what that was. It starts with multiple takes of a brief parody of "Love Will Keep Us Together". The rest is some sort of short play, performed largely straight through, with a few breakdowns. I will let you discover whatever you find to be its highlights/lowlights/charms, depending on your opinion of the material. 

Download: David Hollister and Others - AORN Show, 3-2-76

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The remainder of the tape has a pianist - presumably the composer - and a singer, running through multiple takes of a song called "Footsteps in the Snow". This is a very Broadway-esque number, as some of the other material on these tapes has been, and as such, is just as much not my thing as that Danny Thomas material up there. But your mileage may vary. 

Download: David Hollister and Singer - Rehearsing 'Footsteps in the Snow' - 6-2-76

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Now here's something I absolutely love - worth 1000 Danny Thomas stage shows. I've called this "A Young Family At Home", and it is simply about 34 minutes with a loving family, enjoying being together. The child heard the most during this tape is remarkably well spoken for someone who seems to be extremely young, and the whole thing is just one charming moment after another. The tape ends oddly, with a short, unrelated recording of something that many of us used to interact with from time to time, but which I'm sure no longer exists. 

Download: A Young Family At Home

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Time for a "Very Short Reel". This is simple enough - some folks spending a few minutes making a commercial for Lux Lotion Bar

Download: Making a Lux Lotion Bar Commercial

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Some Esoteric Short Film Music, A Hopeful Rock DJ, Paris and Munich, George Wallace Campaigns and Wally Cox Sells a Soft Drink

Before I get to this week's multitude of items, I wanted to encourage folks to have another look at my last post, specifically the comments. I will not repeat them here, but reader/listener Kyle, who I mentioned in that post, has again linked to some interesting sounds which have been posted by others, particularly at the site at finnley.audio. There are also two comments shedding a bit more light on singer Malcolm Dodds, who's demo of a song was featured in that point. 

~~

Okay, so I'm going to start with something perhaps a little esoteric and which comes in four parts, but with this posting, I want to acknowledge a great gift I have been given, as well as offer thanks for a previous, similar (if smaller gift). For there is a dedicated reader/listener out there named Charles, who has now, on two occasions, come across a stash of interesting reels, bought them, and then sent them to me (free of charge!), for my perusal and enjoyment. 

The first batch - which I think was between ten and twenty tapes - came my way over 18 months ago, and had been the property of, as Charles said, "a now deceased sound engineer at WABC-TV". I have featured at least a couple of these tapes here, including that Japanese language material I posted last month. But many of the tapes are still sitting where I put them upon their arrival, waiting to be heard. Such is the volume of tapes that I have. A very belated public THANK YOU to Charles for those. 

Charles has not gone at least one better. Perhaps 15 better, perhaps 100 better. I'll have a better idea after I listen to more of the tapes. Because he has purchased, and sent me, dozens of tapes which belonged to a late composer by the name of David Hollister. You can read about him here. Not only that, he has put me in touch with the relative who inherited and who sold him these tapes. She has more tapes, which she is willing to share with me, as long as I make MP3's of them, and she authorized me to share what I find on the tapes. 

So it is that I grabbed a tape off the top of the batch at random and gave it a spin on the ol' reel to reel spindles. I found its contents absolutely fascinating, and hope you will, as well, although I acknolwege, again, that the word esoteric comes to mind. But hopefully I am wrong about that. 

The tape box made it clear that the tape contained two different potential soundtracks for a film called "Organism" made by Hilary Harris. On the first side was what was apparently an original composition, using a variety of common and uncommon instruments (see the box, below). On the second side was a different conception for the soundtrack, a collage of existing electronic music, composed by a variety of composers. Both were created during the last week of January, 1975, one week apart. Here is the box:  

The finished film, which is just over 19 minutes long (a bit longer than each of these proposed soundtracks, can be found in a few different places online, including this one.

Here are the two soundtracks: 

Download: David Hollister - First Tape for Hilary Harris' Film 'Organism' - 1-24-75

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Download: David Hollister - Second Tape for Hilary Harris' Film 'Organism' - 1-30-75

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After the second of these, there was a brief section of microphone tests and piano playing, which I am assuming - perhaps incorrectly - also feature the composer, David Hollister. I am including this  brief segment, and the one following it, for completion sake. 

Download:  (Presumably) David Hollister - Microphone Tests and Piano Playing

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Following that, and until near the end of the reel, is heard the last several minutes of a live performance of an orchestral work, complete with applause at the end. The rest of it had clearly been erased by the material above. Again, I'm assuming this is a work by the same composer, but I could certainly be wrong. Perhaps if so, someone knows what this very interesting piece of music is. The odd part is that, early on in this fragment, someone cut into one channel to insert a few moments of two very familiar pieces of music, one being about as classic of a pop hit as you can get, and the other being a well-known moment of classical music, heard twice, first at a different speed as the live performance, to boot. After those two interruptions, the live performance is heard without further interference. 

Download:   Fragment of a Performance of an Orchestral Work, Presumably by David Hollister

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Thank you so very much, Charles. This is beyond kind and thoughtful and I am immensely grateful. Tomorrow is my birthday - it'll be "When I'm 64" - and this was a wonderful gift, despite not having been intended as such. 

~~

Here's the sort of thing that always appeals to a good percentage of readers of this site - a Demo Reel from a DJ. In this case, he's Lance Shepherd, and I've been unable to find out much of anything. He had clearly, around the time of the excerpt shared here, worked in a variety of genres, and as he tells someone named Mike, to whom he directs some comments at the end, he really wanted to "get back into rock". Here's hoping he did. 

Download: Lance Shepherd - Demo Reel

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Here's a real oddity (or, if you prefer, a reel oddity), or at least it strikes me that way. When Canada Dry wanted to introduce their new soda pop, Sports Cola, in 1968, they turned to that well known pitchman.... Wally Cox. Now I grew up loving Wally Cox (Hollywood Squares, Underdog, and, for an earlier generation, Mr. Peepers), but he doesn't strike me as having had the greatest of sales-pitch voices or personality. But perhaps that was the joke. 

I am also amused by the sales pitch connected with this product, which was that it has virtually no caffeine. I somehow doubt that would be a big draw today. 

Anyway, in this 30 plus minute recording, Wally and his cohorts go through an inordinate amount of takes to get the ad just right. Of course, we're only hearing the sound - maybe someone kept doing something wrong visually. But the ad isn't particularly well written. Actually, the ad copy for the first section - which they work on for about ten minutes (!) - is some of the worst I've ever  heard. But again, maybe they were going for comic effect. But the sheer number of takes here is mind-numbing. 

You can find a couple of Wally Cox' Sports Cola ads (not this one), here.

If you'd like to invest 45 seconds in a little more homework, type in Wally Cox Best Friend into Google and see who was Wally's best friend, who was also the person was who considered Wally his best friend (and who, after Wally's death kept Wally's ashes with him for the rest of his life). It is not who you might expect. 

Download: Wally Cox Records a Commercial for Canada Dry Sports Cola

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I've done a whole lot of typing about the items I've shared so far, so I'm going to dial it back for the last three. Here is a couple, living in Europe, who returned from a vacation, and described their experiences for posterity in an audio diary. I have featured this couple before, in other tapes made during their travels across other parts of Europe, but this one seems to have been made upon their return home.

Download: Reflections on Our Trips to Paris and Munich, 1968

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On a three inch reel, recorded at the slow speed of 1 7/8 IPS, I discovered recordings which were largely of a 1968 episode of The Smother's Brother's Comedy Hour. Sandwiched into the middle of these recordings, however, was the polar opposite of that show, politically, entertainment-wise and just about any other way you might want to look at it. It was a promotional piece about George Wallace and his 1968 Presidential Campaign, followed by a segment of one of Wallace's speeches. Then it was back to the Smothers Brothers. Here is that segment. 

Download: George Wallace Promo and Segment of a Speech, Summer, 1968

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And now for the "Very Short Reel" for this post. This reel, at over six minutes, stretches my concept of what "Very Short" is by more than a minute, but I've been wanting to share it, and I don't have anything else as good as this, and under five minutes, ready to go.

Anyway, here is a small group playing a short instrumental Irish piece, and then a woman sings a song identified as "The Spinning Wheel", but I found the lyrics here listed as being "Spinning Song", so that's what I named the file (although I now see that there are other performances and sites where the song is called "Spinning Wheel"). The woman's name might be said, right before the name of the song, but whatever it is that the guy says, I can't make it out. 

Both performances are in front of a small audience who respond enthusiastically at the end of each piece. Their appreciation is quite well earned. 

Download: A Short Instrumental Irish Piece and a Woman Sings '"Spinning Song"

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The Return of KRAP Radio, A Bit of Basketball, Sound on Sound, A Good Friday Sermon, Commercials and PSA's

HAPPY EASTER!

I'm going to start with a sequel to a post I made just over four years ago, in which I shared a tape of some high school students and their fake radio station, KRAP Radio. Well, I recently found another tape of KRAP radio parody material, and thought I'd share it, as well. 

As it happens, in that post, I mention that the students involved in this project seemed to be from High School Radio Station KDBG, and by chance, I posted more material - real radio recordings, not this pretend stuff - from that station in my last post, so clearly, all of these tapes must have come from the same reel purchase, at some point. 

This is far more entertaining than the real broadcasts, I think.

Download: KRAP Radio - The Station That Is Full of It

Play:

And here, for your further enjoyment, is the rest of that same reel - presumably some of the same kids, engaging in some reel to reel weirdness. 

Download: Material After KRAP Radio - Weirdness from Some High School Students

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We are in the midst of the annual insanity around College Basketball. I personally find the idea of caring about a college basketball team - and certainly caring about who wins a college basketball game - bizarre in the extreme. I would enjoy watching college basketball about as much as I would watching golf or soccer: 30 seconds would be more than enough, especially when one could be watching baseball, tennis or bowling (Three Cheers for Jason Belmonte!). Or streaming Monty Python episodes for that matter,

But anyway, in honor of this yearly event, and for those who do enjoy amateur basketball, here's a tape containing, within its 33 minutes of radio recordings, some moments from the 1958 Illinois State High School Basketball Final, some postgame coverage, and then a very short part of a newscast, some of which is also about that basketball game. 

Download: Excerpts From the 1958 Illinois State High School Basketball Final, Postgame and Newscast

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Now here's a tape I really enjoyed, not least because, prior to the late 1990's, every time I recorded one of my songs, I used the tape recording method known as Sound on Sound, where you record one track and then bounce back and forth between the two monaural tracks adding more sounds to your recording. Depending on the machine used, you may end up with a stereo recording in which one track alone has the final additions, or you may end up with one track which contains all but the last thing you added, and the other track which has is delayed a split second and contains your entire production, meaning your performance is in mono. The latter is the case here. 

Whoever recorded these guitar pieces appears to me to have only made a basic track and then overdubbed them once. But they are well done and, to my ears, quite enjoyable. 

Download: Unknown - Guitar Performances Using Sound on Sound, Volume 5

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Here's the list of songs you will hear, from the tape box, although the first song is not "Chattanooga Choo Choo", it's "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe": 

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With today being Easter, and of course Good Friday having just passed two days ago, here is a brief Good Friday sermon. What makes this recording remarkable is that it comes from a reel of paper-backed tape, the likes of which was phased out as a product around 1951 or so, meaning that this recording likely comes from the dawn of reel to reel recording, and is likely somewhere around 73-75 years ago. It ends sort of suddenly, and far from sure it was over when the tape ran out, yet it also ends with several seconds of silence, so maybe it did end like that. 

Download: Unknown - A Good Friday Sermon (From a Paper Reel)

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Here is a short collection of commercials, all of which are parts of series already heard on this blog. However, none of these specific commercials have been shared - just others from the same collection, a huge collection of ads, mostly from the Pacific Northwest, which I bought a few decades ago. 

Download: A Collection of Commercials

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Here is a recording of a radio broadcast of a play written by Woody Allen, titled "God". This is a recording from legendary Chicago radio station WFMT. It starts with a very short excerpt from the play, and then the announcement of the sponsorship, a commercial, a bit of introduction, then the play. There is a break about half way through and the second half of the play. There are credits at the end. 

Download: Woody Allen's "God"

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"Mélange": noun. a mixture; confusion.

I labeled the first half (plus) of this tape "Weird Melange of Sound". See if you agree. A little bit more than halfway through this tape, we hear a moment of an audio letter, and then more randomness, before the audio letter comes back at 7:37 and we hear its contents for nearly six minutes. Most of that duration contains a woman speaking to her mother, talking about her mother-in-law and griping about someone else in her family, before requesting a return tape. 

Download: Unknown: Weird Mélange of Sound, Followed by a Short Audio Letter

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And now, our very short reel. And it is extremely short - 55 seconds - and contains someone offering up a brief tribute to the very clearly remarkable Enrico Toti, a one-legged cyclist and World War I hero who you can read about here. With apologies to Rudyard Kipling and his poem about Gunga Din, our unnamed speaker offers a re-written version of that poem, in praise of his hero, giving it three recitations in less than a minute. 

Download: Unknown: Tribute to Enrico Toti

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Meet the Beatles! Plus More Beautiful Music, Doing the Dishes, Flood Talk, Webb Pierce, Flex-O-Matic, A Father's Gift, A Banking Milestone and A Few Minutes with Dana

Good day, ya'll, 

A quick thank you - once again - to Eric Paddon, who has again supplied a bit of detail to one of my posts. In this case, he has shared that the "Sunday in New York" program that I shared a few episodes from last time around: 

ran on WCBS Radio weekly from January 10, 1959 to July 19, 1959 per NY newspaper listings. Jordan hosted other programs at the station too and was one of their prominent personalities. WCBS was known as a "middle of the road" station until it became all-news in 1967.

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We're going to start with something that could not be more timely, given that it has been exactly 60 years this month since The Beatles arrived in America to play the Ed Sullivan Show, appear at Carnegie Hall and at the Washington Coliseum, and take the nation by storm. Oddly, I saw nothing in any media this week or this month marking this anniversary - previous "Big" year anniversaries of this arrival have been all over the news and entertainment programs. 

And here, to commemorate the events of that week, is a real audio time capsule, a radio program that must have been put together on the fly. It aired on New York powerhouse Top 40 station WINS-AM. Since it had only been clear that The Beatles were going to be "a thing" for a few weeks at that point, this program had to have been cobbled together in a matter of days, as it clearly aired within the first few days of The Beatles' arrival. From the sounds of what is said here, it would appear that this special aired before the Beatles had played a live show anywhere but perhaps on The Ed Sullivan Show, if that. 

The entire show is not captured here, and I'm not sure how much was missed. When the tape starts, the program is already in progress. The documentary then is heard throughout the first side of the tape, about 26 minutes of it. There is a short gap at that point, then you hear the concluding few minutes from the other side. 

The documentary includes interviews with the band members, a piece featuring some American musicians' reactions and thoughts about the group, interviews with fans, a bit of history of the group, interviews with people who give their input as to why the group is so popular, etc. A couple of the band's early songs are heard. The narrator of the show is Murray the K. The show (as was the bands' first Capitol album) is called "Meet the Beatles"

Enjoy!

Download: "Meet the Beatles" - A WINS Radio Special, February, 1964

Play: 

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Now, as much as I suspect that will greatly appeal to a lot of people, here is another type of radio broadcast that I have been requested to share, whenever I come across it. The appeal here is more of a mystery to me, but I really strive to offer up what people want to hear. And so, here is a 30 minute slice of some Beautiful Music programming (containing a few items I was surprised to hear amongst such programming) from a station, WFMB, in Springfield, IL. The recording cuts off just before some news is about to start, so there is no way to date this particular segment. 

Download: WFMB, Springfield IL - Beautiful Music Programming

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Almost exactly five years ago, I featured a recording session for a product called the Cannon Flex-O-Matic. And now, here we have eight of the completed ads for that same product. 

Download: Eight Completed Ads for the Cannon Flex-O-Matic

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Now, here's a short home recording that is best summed up by its title, "A Few Minutes with Dana": 

Download: A Few Minutes with Dana

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Next, here's an episode of "The Webb Pierce Show", featuring the country star and his guests in a half hour or so of music. There were actually two TV shows by that name, both apparently produced at WSIX, Nashville, about a decade apart. There's some really great stuff here. The songs performed here, as well as the presence here of the start of "Stop the Music", a game show which aired in the mid 1950's, proves that this recording is from the 1955 edition of the show, rather than 1965 version. 

Download: The Webb Pierce Show (and a Bit of Stop the Music)

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Just up there a li'l bit, about 90 words or so ago, we had a short home recording with Dana. Now, here's another one, a brief (six minute) slice of life with a woman (identified early on as Marge Miller) and (presumably) her husband, as dishes are washed and a bit of homey conversation is engaged in. 

Download: Dishes and Conversation with Marge Miller and Her Husband

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With flooding out west in the news in recent weeks, here's a tape from 1955 featuring Senator Prescott Bush, patriarch of a political family you may be familiar with, being interviewed about flooding that was being told "The worst disaster to ever hit the state of Connecticut".

Download: Senator Prescott Bush Interview About the Flooding in Connecticut, 1955

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And now it's time for our "Acetate of the Month". And this takes a bit of explanation. In 1973, my mother and I visited her oldest brother, Harry Godwin, at his home in Memphis. I've written a bit about Harry before, but he was a larger than life figure, who, being nearly a generation older than my mother (17 years older), fashioned himself in more of a grandfather role to me than an uncle (particularly as I had never known either of my grandparents. 

(That Wikipedia stub overstates his musical career a bit - he was, first and foremost, a manufacturer's rep, and only began working in music - as a lyricist and as a jazz promoter -  in his late forties. I believe it also gets his birthday wrong.)

During that visit, which perhaps I will write about elsewhere someday, I was delighted to find a drawer full of homemade acetates, mostly the five and seven inch variety, which Harry and his children had made in the 1940's and 1950's. Harry allowed me to tape record them for my posterity, during that visit, and so I did so, introducing each of them myself with a tiny be of explanation

And so, we have a hybrid here - a reel to reel tape of an acetate. In this case, as you'll hear, Harry tells a familiar story for his younger children (he had six kids from two marriages) on one side, then dedicates a short Robert Louis Stevenson poem to one of those children on the other side. 

Download: Harry Godwin - The Three Little Pigs and The Lamplighter

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And finally, a "Very Short Reel". Here's an ad celebrating 60 years of banking in northern Arkansas. 

Download: First Federal, Arkansas, 60th Anniversary Ad, 1994

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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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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. 

~~

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: 

~~

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: 

~~

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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An Anti-Medicare Screed, Another Japanese Missive, A Lovely Hodgepodge, Mrs. Isono, and More Mitch Miller Than Anyone Can Stand

Howdy, Y'all. 

Oh and BOOOO!

Last time around, I asked if anyone knew the link between Frank Zappa and "Pipeline" by the Chantays. Well, I had a couple of questions about that, and here is the obscure answer. It comes from an interview I have on tape, I believe it's with Dr. Demento, but I could be wrong. I don't have an exact quote, but in the interview, Zappa says more or less: 

"It was one of the first time I was in a 'real' recording studio with booked time and a song to record." He goes on with something along these lines: "we had to wait for awhile - the producer needed to finish working on a record he KNEW was going to be hit - Pipeline, by the Chantays - before we could record..."

~~

Also, I heard from frequent commenter "Snoopy", who said he'd really like to hear the entire Bob Binderman car race segment, which I edited in order to remove what I thought was about three minutes of mouth-made car noises, with no narration in between. It turns out it's actually 2 1/2 minutes, but for Snoopy, and anyone else who is interested, I have re-posted that bit, unedited this time, at the bottom of this post. 

And now.....

~~

With politics in the news all day, every day here is America this week, we'll start with a flashback to an earlier day, and the hot button issue of 1962 - whether to offer government insurance to certain portions of the population. The bill at the time was the King-Anderson Bill, and the Medical establishment was dead set against it, as heard in this presentation from the head of the AMA -  a response to a much flashier presentation the Kennedy administration had given a short time earlier, as you'll hear. This particular bill was defeated, but a similar bill was more successful a few years later. I've labeled this a screed, and find it to be full of scaremongering - your mileage may vary, but it's worth noting that the successful tweaking of this bill, a few years later, called Medicaid, is quite popular, nearly 60 years after its passage. 

Download: The American Medical Association (Dr Leonard W Larson) -  Presentation Against the King-Anderson Bill - 1962

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~~

Well, after that hyperbole, maybe a nice palette cleanser is in order. Here, ahead of the usual arrangement, is our "Very Short Reel" for the day, a sweet home recording I've labeled "A Few Minutes at the Schafer Home". I don't know the actual spelling of the family's last name, as there are several versions of that moniker, so I guessed. Mostly, this is a series of piano solos rendered by a little girl, but near the end is a bit of stilted conversation which I thought was interesting.  

Download: A Few Minutes at the Schafer Home

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~~

It's been awhile since we checked in with our young man in Japan. As I've explained before, I'm unable to ascertain exactly what he was doing there, although I've identified him as a student-soldier in previous posts and in the names of files. If someone else has figured out what he was doing in Japan from these tapes, I'd love to hear it. Search for "Japan" in the labels, and all of the previous posts from this series of audio letters will show up (along with a few other Japan-related items)

Download: Audio Letter from a Student-Soldier in Japan, January 19th

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~~

I always enjoy it when I come across what I call a hodgepodge - a (usually shortish) tape which contains a series of things completely unrelated, or at best, barely related to each other. That's about all I'll say about this item - its title explains its contents pretty well. 

Download: A Hodgepodge - Born Free, Narration, Heavy Breathing and Mario Andretti

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~~

Last week, I listened to a tape containing two complete New York Yankees baseball broadcasts, one from from 1960 and one from 1961. That was enjoyable enough, but my favorite moment was actually a little ad for Ballantine Beer which popped up in the middle of the 1961 game. This doesn't really qualify as a "very short reel" since it's 40-some seconds out of a tape lasting more than six hours, but I wanted to share it here. 

Download: Ballantine Beer Ad, 1961

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~~

And now, the moment that perhaps NO ONE was waiting for. But.... I had this tape, and it's probably a fairly rare piece, so I thought I'd share it. Contained on the tape are four near-complete episodes of "Sing Along with Mitch" - the four episodes broadcast in May of 1963. This is a really long share, and its certainly from another time and place, but perhaps it's your thang, and if so, do what you wanna do: 

Download: Sing Along With Mitch - Four Full Episodes from May, 1963

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~~

And now it's time for our "Acetate of the Month". I know very, very little about this record. It looks like this on one side: 

And like this on the other side: 

Perhaps someone out there who can read Japanese can tell us all what it means. Regardless, it seems to feature a Mrs. Isono, if the label is to be believed, and why shouldn't it be. Here are the two sides: 

Download: Mrs. Isono - Side One

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Download: Mrs. Isono - Side Two

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~~

And finally, as mentioned in the blurb at the top of this page, here, for those who want it, and Snoopy in particular, is the full, unedited Bob Binderman Auto Race performance, complete with another 150 seconds or so of mouth-as-car-engine performances at the end: 

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

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Blowout Post # 2!!!

Welcome to the final hours of September!

One month ago, I wrote a post explaining that I have an overabundance of material, some of which I don't have a lot of things to say/write about, and a periodic dearth of time to put together the sort of post I normally would like to. I proposed that at least sometimes, I would burn off ten or more items at once, with a minimum of text. The responses were fairly varied, but no one was really opposed to what I did in that post, and a few were quite enthusiastic. 

While I don't actually plan to make this a monthly thing, I am doing another of these blowout posts today, for the second month in a row. 

And heeeeeeere we go!!!

Let's start the ball rolling with my favorite of this post's offerings, a batch of commercials for Owens Community College, in Ohio: 

Download: Seven Ads for Owens Community College

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~~

Next up, a sample of something I come across remarkably frequently - a tape that simply captures people sitting around chatting. Sometimes, it's clear that the recording was made for posterity, maybe a particularly interesting conversation, or a visit from old friends, and every voice (or nearly every one) is close to the microphone and it's clear they all wanted to be recorded. Other times, it sounds almost as if the machine was left on by accident, or that perhaps no one by the recordist knows the machine was on. Here is an example of the latter of those two types - a few minutes with some people sitting around talking:

Download: A Few People Sitting Around Talking

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~~

And now, let's talk Milagros. I had never heard of Milagros before I came across this short audio documentary. You can read about them here. Or you can just listen to Marsha Bol and her compatriots: 

Download: Marsha Bol and Others - Life Sized Milagros

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~~

The last time (well, the first time) I did one of these mega-posts, I wrote the following, about an audio diary: 

   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.

Here is another of these tapes, capturing elements of a tour of Norway and Sweden in the summer of 1968. This is the second tape this couple made on their tour of Scandinavia, and once I find and digitize part one, I can share that, too, if there is interest. Unlike the other tape I shared of them, last time, for this vacation, the couple's children accompanied them, and are heard on the tape: 

Download: Audio Diary - Tour of Norway and Sweden, 6-22-68

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Here's that three inch tape box!

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And now it's time for the "homely music hour". I have tons of reels like this one, featuring people who love to play and sing, even if they are not truly good at it. In this case, it's someone named Alma playing the piano, in a style I find wonderfully nostalgic, and in certain ways not unlike some of the music I play, while another someone named Gus sings in a style which might have been fashionable in the early days of acoustic recording, circa 1895-1910. It seems to me that the days when anyone would create something sounding like this are long since past. 

Download: Alma and Gus - Alma Playing Piano and Gus Singing

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~~

Oh, and now here's something. You know that old saying about how someone or something can be "more boring than listening to a file cabinet salesman"? Wait, I guess that's not an old saying. But it should be. Exhibit A follows: 

Download: File Cabinet Salesman

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(By the way, in the above segment, just past the 41 minute mark, there is two minutes of a song, followed by a short "Thank You and Farewell - I'm Moving to Houston" speech by a different person than the salesman who had been speaking earlier. That segment gets softer and softer as it continues on through the end of the tape.)

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And yet another genre of tape which recurs over and over again is the amateur musical performance (or rehearsal). In this case, rather oddly, the recording of a small combo, led by Bari Sax player (accompanied only by guitar and drums), is interrupted just past the halfway point by a recording (off of the radio) of a Dave "Baby" Cortez track, before it returns to the combo. They're not very good, but they seem to be enjoying themselves. 

Download: A Baritone Sax Led Combo Recital (and a bit of Dave 'Baby' Cortez)

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~~

This next tape may not be to scintillating - unless it is being compared to listening to a file cabinet salesman - but it does have a soft spot in my heart, as it was one of the first tapes I ever bought, when I got serious about looking for this sort of ephemera. I was sort of fascinated by it, too, as it was recorded at 15 inches-per-second, a speed I wouldn't necessarily think one would choose to use to record a sign-making lecture, given how quickly one uses up the available tape at that speed. Yes, I know how geeky this paragraph makes me sound. But no doubt you already knew that, if you've spent any time here.

Download: A Sign-Making Class Lecture, 2-17-61

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~~

The oldest recording in this week's offerings is this short series of excerpts from a Major Bowes Amateur Hour. Since Major Bowes died in 1946, this is definitely older than the other items here. 

Incidentally, I once played Major Bowes' successor, Ted Mack, in an 8th Grade review near the end of my elementary school career. I introduced "The Andrews Sisters" portrayed by the three smallest boys in our class, all of whom were in drag, and they lip synched to an Andrews Sisters' record. (I played trombone in the band for the rest of the show.)

Download: Segments of a Major Bowes Amateur Hour Episode

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~~

Okay....

Last time around, I left the longest offering - a church related segment - as the final one of my Blowout post features. This time, I'm doing it again, with a reel that was recorded, somewhere, in the early 1950's. It's a faith healing session, complete with the faith healer giving a sermon, some music, some more sermonizing and then performing his miracles. If you're up for this sort of thing, it's a pretty amazing recording. If not, well, we still have our monthly and bi-monthly features yet to come, below: 

Download: A Faith Healer Talks and Faith Heals

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~~

And now it's time for our "Acetate of the Month". This is a sweet audio letter from two family members to two other family members. One side is addressed to Bea, and the other side to Momma. It's from November of 1940. I have combined both sides into one single track. The "Momma" side is poorly recorded, or at least has not weathered as well as its flip side, over the years. It is rather difficult listening.

Download: Bob and Ginny - Audio Letters to Bea and to Momma, 11-15-40

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Here's what that record looks like: 

~~

And finally, the "Very Short Reel" for this posting. I find it rather remarkable that I have this specific little advertisement for the Sunday Chicago Tribune. And that's because the issue being advertised contained a profile of a then-completely-unknown woman in an obscure city job, a woman named Jane Byrne. Byrne, of course, would be, by the end of that same decade, Chicago's first woman mayor. The main story advertised here suggests what might be collectable in 2015, without much accuracy. 

Download: Sunday Chicago Tribune Ad, Circa Early 1970's

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