Something Special from the Very Start of American Beatlemania

I know I haven't posted in nearly a month, and so I'm going to try to get three in before the end of the month, with the best going first - right now!:

So I recently acquired a small collection of reels containing someone's obsessive capturing or Top 40 radio through the early to mid '60's. The real gold to be found in these sorts of reels today is in finding those where the listener left the recorder on and captured all the DJ banter, commercials, phone calls, bits, etc. So I was disappointed to find out that this person made a point (as so many did) of editing out EVERYTHING that wasn't the records being played. There are barely any split seconds of DJ chatter, let along anything more. That's particularly sad because several of these tapes contain broadcasts from the mighty WINS, 1010 on your dial, in New York City.

One tape in particular, at least, captured that moment in 1964 when The Beatles were becoming the hottest thing ever in pop music in the States. The broadcasts are full of Beatles music, including tracks from both of their British albums and multiple singles. Near the beginning of the tape is an airing of "Love Me Do" (available - briefly, on the first version of Vee-Jay's "Introducing the Beatles", but not a hit single until months later), with a surviving DJ comment (one of the few) that makes it clear that that song hadn't been aired much, if at all - the DJ makes mention of John Lennon's harmonica style, indicating that it's a brand new record to him. Other elements of the tape place it just before or just after the Beatles arrived in the US that February, although I could be off by a week or two.

My frustration with the tape turned to joy - and then back to frustration - halfway through the second side. Because I was suddenly in the midst of what had to have been a hastily constructed special on the Beatles, complete with reports from England, analysis of their music and their appeal, and lots of little factual errors of the type you'll get when you're trying to glom onto something that's been wildly popular for three weeks.

But then, after about 21 minutes (of what promised to be a 55 minute show) the tape runs out. The other tapes I've checked from this collection do not appear to have the rest of the show. But what's there is GOLD. I'm not sure this has survived anywhere else, at least not in this form, so this may be a rare treat. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Download: WINS 1010 - Beatles Special, Winter, 1964
Play:

A 1965 Thanksgiving Day Tribute to Kaolin!

So, where have I been - I won't duplicate the post, but I did write a bit about my last few weeks at my other blog, within this post. As I said there, I hope to be back on a regular schedule (which, for this site, is about every two weeks), starting immediately.

Today, I have a tape I find to be barely steps away from being totally bizarre, but then again, maybe you had to be there. You see, a significant amount of the wheels of industry and gears of income in central Georgia, at least at a point some 50 years ago, seems to have been all wrapped up in the clay known as Kaolinite, better known as Kaolin. Its uses have run from making glossy magazine pages shiny to being the key (original) ingredient in Kaopectate, and many other uses in between.

So important was it to the region, that for at least two years, radio station WCRY in Macon broadcast tributes lasting over an hour, about, and in honor of, Kaolin. My best guess is that the money brought in by Kaolin played a significant role in the life of this station, hence the "tribute". Without that supposition, as I said, this program strikes me is fairly odd, to say the least.

For this year's Thanksgiving, here is the first of the two shows titled "A Tribute to Kaolin", from 1965. If you're really clambering for the 1966 version, maybe I can share it with you next Thanksgiving.

Download: WCRY, Macon, Georgia: A Tribute to Kaolin, 1965
Play:

On this Thanksgiving, I offer up my thanks to everyone who reads this site, with a special thanks to those who chime in with comments. I really appreciate it.