Jingles and Stingers, Birthday Singing, The Jazzy Air Force, Some Medical Lectures, Letter to America, WGN and The Not-So-Fabulous FABIAN

 Happy Almost My Birthday!

I have a real hodge-podge of items today, so let's get right to it!

I ended the last post with some radio material.... well, I started it with radio material too, and only had radio material in it.... so how about starting this one with a neat little tape of some radio jingles and stingers? This tape comes from WGLI, an AM station on Long Island which is long defunct.

There is no date on this box to indicate when this is from, but it sure sounds like the '60's to me. I also get a kick out of the fact that these jingles are contained on a reused United Nations tape box. 

Anyway, here is the tape. I particularly enjoy the itemized numbered intros for each song that would have been in a countdown, and also that, on this tape, they count UP. 

Download: WGLI, Long Island, NY, Jingles and Stingers

Play:

~~

Switching gears pretty harshly, and apropos of my own celebration tomorrow, here are a gang of friends celebrating someone's birthday, by gathering around the piano and singing a whole bunch of songs.  

Download: A Sing-Along Birthday Party

Play: ~~

~~

Next up, here is a jazzy program from those jazzy folks at the United States Air Force Recruiting Service. It's an odd sort of propaganda, that's for sure, and is titled '"Serenade in Blue". On it, we hear a variety of acts playing a variety of jazzy material, and interspersed with informational bits about such things as ways the Air Force is helping to prevent animal species from becoming extinct, and ways the Air Force is addressing the need to conserve energy (this must be from the 1970s...)

Download: The United States Air Force Recruiting Service - Serenade in Blue

Play:

~

And now, here's something which is bound to appeal to the largest possible audience. Well, that's not actually true, but I digitized it more than five years ago and haven't yet shared it, so here it is. It is the second tape I've shared (of dozens that I bought somewhere, a LONG time ago), from our friends at the Medical Audio Digest .(Here is the first one.) This one is called "Obstetrics and Gynecology - Hirsutism and Virilism, Management of Endometriosis". I can just see you all getting up to dance now!

Download: Audio Digest, Obstetrics and Gynecology - Hirsutism and Virilism, Management of Endometriosis

Play:

~~

Next up, this is called "Audio Letter from Frank Smith in Australia to Larry in America", and I suspect that's all that needs to be said: 

Download: Audio Letter from Frank Smith in Australia to Larry in America

Play:

~~

Here's an oddity I just came across. Please know in advance that the recording quality here is quite poor. Who remember Fabian? I don't mean who remembers who he was - I was born in 1960 and I know who he was. But who remembers hearing his songs on the radio and seeing his early films when they were new? I sure don't. I have looked to see if this program exists at all online, particularly in better quality, but have not found it. 

Well, this is a somewhat backhanded documentary about Fabian, made after he had moved into movies, but entirely focused on his "singing" career. As alleged in those days and as still clear as day, the man simply couldn't sing. But that didn't stop him from having a half dozen hits, including a few top tens, entirely because he looked the part, which was what his handlers were talking about. 

You'll hear from the man himself, who clearly knew and felt like he was in over his head and didn't want to be there. The recording cuts off suddenly, just as Hollywood (where he did considerably better) was beckoning, so I don't think this is the entire show. But it's mighty interesting, if you can get past the terrible sound quality. 

Download: Documentary on Fabian

Play:

~~

And now a "Very Short Reel". 

What we have here is a Brief Segment of what was then a Chicago and midwestern powerhouse station (and now an insufferable embarrassment), WGN Radio, from July, 1953. The end of one song (a vocal) is heard, then a Freddy Martin Orchestra instrumental, which is back-announced as being the last song on a 20 minute program of music. This is followed by about 90 seconds of news, the contents of which date the recording nicely, reporting, as it does, on the imminent truce in the Korean War.

Download: Brief Segment of WGN Radio, July, 1953

Play:

A JFK Remembrance, A City Councilman's Ad, More Voices from a "Small" Town, A Stereo Sampler, Geraldo Plays for You, and Some Animal Voices

Happy Post-Thanksgiving to all who celebrated it a few days ago! 

As I was sitting at my work desk around 12:15 or 12:30 PM on Friday of last week, it occurred to me that it was almost exactly at that moment on that same date, 61 years earlier, that John F. Kennedy was shot and killed. I shared this thought on Teams with, well, my team, to a big round of no response. 

But it did remind me of this tape, which I think is perfect to lead off today's post, seeing as how it also aired on an anniversary of that event, and served as a commemoration of that event. Here, from 1968, is that tape: 

Download: Commemoration of the Death of JFK - Radio Broadcast - 11-22-68

Play: 

~~

And now, just a bit too late to tie in with the recent election, here are a group of folks making multiple attempts to get a lengthy political advertisement just right. The subject of the ad is a then-alderman in the Chicago City council, a Republican (sometimes, the only Republican) in that Democratic Party dominated council, and apparently quite a thorn in the side of Mayor Richard J. Daley. His name was John Hoellen, Jr. You can read about him here. It took me quite a while - and some help from an outside source - to find out who the subject of this promotional song was, as his name is misspelled on the tape box. Have a look: 

You'd think the people who were hired to perform on a commercial in support of someone who know how to spell his name. On the other hand, I would also agree with the tape box that this material is "Junk". I'm going to say that this was probably recorded in support of Hoellen's 1963 race for re-election to the council, as the song is a ham-fisted knock off of the 1962 hit "Big Bad John". You can get the gist of this session by listening to the first five minutes or so, since the entire tape consists of nearly identical, thudding performances of the same two minute, fifteen second commercial. Most of them were recorded at 15 IPS, the last few were at 7 1/2 IPS. 

I'd have to guess that Hoellen was re-elected in spite of this material, rather than in anyway because of it. 

Download: Unknown - Recording a Political Ad for "Big Bad John Hoellen"

Play:

~~

Just over eight years ago, I posted a set of raw tapes from the production of a PBS television episode, titled "Life in a Small Town". At the time, I wrote this: 

For today, here's an interesting reel, one which captures the raw tapes for a show - I believe a local PBS show from the Maryland area - called "People In Process". I can find no references to this show, but admittedly haven't looked that hard.

The investigation here (such as it is) is into how people in a small town view life in a small town. That they chose the city of Annapolis, Maryland, which is the capital of the state, strikes me as weird, especially given that the town had 30,000 residents in the late '60's and early '70's, which is when I'm guessing this is from. Perhaps it's because I was raised in a town of 4000 people, but 30,000 people isn't a "small town" to me.

Today, I have another reel containing more raw tapes from that same production (actually, a comparison of the two boxes shows this to be the early recorded of the two). Here 'tis: 

Download: People in Process - More Raw Tapes for "Life in a Small Town"

Play:

And here's that box: 

~~

In the early days of reel to reel recording, and in particular, the early days of stereo (which was introduced on reels in 1957, a year before it made its way onto records), tape recorder manufacturers and companies producing pre-recorded tapes, provided their customers with sampler and demonstration tapes to indicate the wonders of reel to reel sound. I've shared many of these before, and here it yet another, from the Replica label. Replica releases some amazing albums, a few of which are in my collection. But as far as I can tell, they did not dive very deeply into the Reel to Reel market. This sampler's narrator mentions that they had only produced seven tapes so far (each of which is "sampled" here), and I cannot find anything online to indicate that the reel division of their label made it out of 1958, or beyond 8-10 releases. 

Download: New Adventures in Sound - A Stereo Sampler From Replica

Play:

~~

Reaching into the past of this blog yet again, six months ago, I featured some segments from a tape of 1961 BBC musical programming. Here is another segment from that same tape, in this case, "Melody Hour with Geraldo and His Orchestra. Play It, Geraldo! (or should that be "Conduct It, Geraldo"?):

Download: BBC - Melody Hour with Geraldo and His Orchestra- Circa Summer, 1961

Play:

~~

Finally, I'm going to stretch the concept of a "Very Short Reel" today. I started off focusing on tapes which, in their entirity, were under five minutes. Then I started featuring segments of tapes which were under five minutes, even if the segment was part of a much longer tape, and recently I've been pushing that limit to six minutes. Today, I will revert to an entire tape - a large reel with only 7:22 of recording tape on it, but, as noted, will extend the definition of "short" to 7:22. 

And this is really worth hearing. A young man - sounds like he is perhaps in his mid to late teens - starts the tape by impersonating my choice for the worst section of "The Wizard of Oz", that being the "If I Were King of the Forest" segment. He then goes on, for whatever reason, to portray several creatures from the animal kingdom, each with its own vocal delivery and name. That's all well and good, but when he's done, we hear the last few seconds of what he was erasing with his animal talk - a much more serious and rather intimate sounding discussion of a most intimate experience he'd had. I very much would have preferred to hear what sounds like it much have been a pretty fascinating little vocal essay in complete form than hearing the animal bit which erased it.  

Download: A Boy Impersonates a Series of Animals (and a bit more)

Play:

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

Play:

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

Play:

~~

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

Play:

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

Play:

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

Play:

~~

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

Play:

~~

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 

Play:

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

Play:

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

Play:

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.

~~

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: 

~~

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

Play:

~~

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

Play: 

~~

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

Play:

~~

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)

Play:

~~

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

Play:

~~

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

Play:

~~

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

Play:

~~

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

Play:

More Jack Eigen, A Lot of Early 1960's BBC, and a Couple of Guitarists

Hello, everyone, 

In the past two months, I have had three - THREE - people ask me if I would share some more of my voluminous collection of recordings of the Chicago late night radio talk personality Jack Eigen. It would appear that this broadcaster either deeply appeals to people or rubs them the wrong way. And when I first found these tapes, in the 1990's, I learned (from my mother) that it was always thus. She said she found him extremely annoying, as did most people, yet they listened - I believe she told me "that was kind of the point". That explanation makes no sense to me, but maybe it does to you, or maybe you just love these recordings. 

I am here to honor those requests, and will continue to do so in the future. 

I have not scanned this volume recently for any clues as to when it might be from, or for any glitches. I listened to these tapes more than 20 years ago, and made the sound files at that time. If anyone wants to pinpoint the date, that'd be great. 

Without further ado, volume three of Jack Eigen. 

Download: Jack Eigen, Volume 3

Play:

~~

Next up, an hour long tape which is sort of peculiar. It starts off and ends up normally enough - just a couple of guys playing guitars - some instrumental duets, some songs with vocals. 

20 minutes into it, though, a man starts speaking, and introduces a recording of a shortwave broadcast of a speech by the first lady of Guatemala, thanking Ham Radio operators who assisted the country during the then-recent (1976) earthquake. Then follows that shortwave recording, and then the man comes back and shares that he will be providing some recordings of his recent performance with another guitarist. 

The earlier segment does not appear to be a "live" recording, and at one point, an organist (with one of those beat-box built in drums) joins them. But after the "thank you speech", it seems that we're hearing a club or bar performance. There's no applause, but there is talking in the background. 

I guess what I find peculiar about it is that the sender put the "interesting" short wave broadcast right in the middle of the tape, in between highlights of his performance. That strikes me as a weird choice.

Download: A Guitar Duo with Some Vocals, With a Thank You Speech in the Middle

Play: 

~~

Okay, now I'm going to go back to doing something I did quite a bit in the early days of the blog, and share the various sections of a full tape, a tape which I found quite interesting. It came to me in a batch of tapes that someone very meticulously recorded off of the BBC and documented. And if I could find the box (I digitized this perhaps eight years ago), I would share that documentation. But I did capture the names of the segments and the date in the individual file names.  

I'm just going to line them up in the same order they were on the tape and let you listen to them. 

They are: 

    1.) Stanley Watkins talking about introducing sound to the movies

    2.) Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip's Royal Tour of Ghana

    3.) Robert Reed (surely not that Robert Reed) on the Queen's 10th Anniversary on the Throne

    4.) "Conference"(a weekly program) - Episode: Britain's Defense Policy

    5.) The Aberdonian Train (a narrated train trip from King's Cross to Aberdeen)

Quite a wonderful little five inch reel of tape, if you ask me. Dig in!: 

Download: Stanley Watkins - Sound For the Movies (BBC, 9-27-61)

Play:

Download: The Royal Tour of Ghana (BBC, 11-19-61)

Play:

Download: Robert Reed - Anniversary Portrait (Queen Elizabeth's 10th Anniversary) (BBC, 2-6-62)

Play:

Download: "Conference" - Britain's Defense Policy (BBC, 2-8-62)

Play:

Download: The Aberdonian Train (King's Cross to Aberdeen) (BBC, 1962)

Play:

~~

And let's finish with a "Very Short Reel", shall we? Here's a promotion from WBUZ in Toledo, a prize package featuring a trip to the Napa 500 Auto Race in 1998. Yippee!!

Download: Kendall Energies, Inc - WBUZ, Toledo, Trip to the Napa 500

Play:

Passover on 1960's Television, A Letter from Vietnam, "The Fat American", and a Moment from 1950

Today, we're going to run the gamut from religion to fatness, from Vietnam to car tires, all from a roughly ten year period, somewhere between 1962 and 1972, with a very brief side trip to 1950. 

Since we're in the first few hours of Passover, I thought this would be the perfect time to share a tape I came across some years ago, and listened to again over the winter. It features recordings of two televised programs about - and featuring elements of the celebration of - Passover. My guess is that they ran during the same year, although I don't know that for certain. 

I will largely let them speak for themselves. The first program on the tape, nearly exactly a half hour in length, features the Operatic and Broadway Tenor Jan Peerce, and comes from a series on NBC - one which ran without advertising - titled "The Eternal Light". This was a program which ran on radio, then television (while remaining on radio as well) for a total of 46 years.  

Download: "The Eternal Light" - Passover with Jan Peerce

Play:  

The second program - about which I have discerned fewer details - features another Operatic Tenor, Richard Tucker, who sings at times. Between his singing, there is a presentation of a Seder at home, presented in a sort of educational fashion. This one's nearly three quarters of an hour.

Download: Richard Tucker Presents a Passover Seder

Play:  

~~

For those of you who didn't want to listen to 75 total minutes of religious programming - and for everyone who did - here is something I find truly fascinating. It's a tape I just listened to for the first time yesterday. This features a Marine narrating an audio letter from Vietnam. The speaker is quite self-effacing and I find him extremely likeable. He is speaking to a family - the Schaffer (sp?) family - but specifies that it's easier to visualize himself speaking to one person, and so chooses "young Ruthie" as the focus of his comments. 

The tape is punctuated a few times by such sounds as the unit phone ringing, the Marine's cohorts partying hearty somewhere nearby and a plane going over at low altitude, providing a level of verisimilitude rarely experienced in these sorts of recordings. 

Starting just before the end of side one, and extending through the entirety of side two, he draws out a secret that he wants Ruthie to keep - a gift he is buying, presumably for his wife or at least his girl. I'm guessing his wife, since the gift turns out to be something truly special, costing him "a year's pay". 

I think this is just a wonderful tape, and hope you do, too. 

Download: An Audio Letter from a Marine in Vietnam to Ruthie Schaffer and Her Family

Play:   

~~

Coming back over to the domestic scene, here's a tape I found capturing an episode of "CBS Reports", from early 1962. It was fairly easy to nail down this episode and its date, but aside from its existence (verified on IMDB), there doesn't seem to be any other record of this program. 

It was absolutely wonderful to hear the long-missed voice of Harry Reasoner, who, in this case, was examining the expanding waistlines (and other measurements) of the American populace, in a program titled oh-so-discreetly, "The Fat American".

Download: Harry Reasoner - CBS Reports - "The Fat American" - January 18, 1962

Play:  

~~

At the beginning of last month, after some prodding from a commenter, I initiated a new series, "Acetate of the Month" to capture the home recording format which was most common before reel tape became available to the masses. And that, of course, was the home record making device. Today, the second installment. 

And I will clarify that "the masses" did not have access to home disc-cutting machines any more than the average 1950's home had a reel tape machine. The disc machines were largely for the well to do, or at least the upper middle class. 

And so it was that one thing a person, group or family might do, is go to a public place and have the opportunity to make a record and hear their voices on it when they got home. This particular item is a six inch, 78 RPM record made at "The Chicago Fair", whatever that was, on July 9th, 1950, by The Rappaport Family. 

It looks like this: 

These records did not allow for a lot of recording - this record is barely a minute long. But it certainly captures the excitement of being able to record their own voices, even as they spend much of their 66 seconds complaining about how most things at the fair were not free this year. 

Download: The Rappaport Family - At the Chicago Fair, July 9, 1950

Play:   

(As a side note, this sort of side business still existed until at least 1968, because my family and I made one, in a downtown Chicago Woolworth's - I believe the resulting recording was a 45 RPM, but may have been a 78. I vividly remember this. We listened to it after it was made - my grandmother was in town for one of her rare visits - and in this case, her last one, before her death in 1972. At one point, she adopted a baby voice and said "I'm only three and a half years old". Sadly, we managed to damage the disc that day, before we even got it home.) 

~~

Finally, from my stack of "Very Short Reels", I grabbed one housed in a plain, solid black box with no markings on it whatsoever. It turned out to contain three ads for Firestone Tires. Unlike lots of tapes of this sort, these three ads are not variations on one particular sales pitch, but rather, they feature three completely different focuses. The ad mentioning the Indianapolis 500 would seem to place these ads in the early 1960's, but the reference to the number of years they'd been in use at that race, according to Wikipedia at least, would seem to date them closer to 1967 or 1968. 

Download: Three Firestone Tire Ads

Play: