An Interesting Mid-'70's L.A. Radio Station, More Right Wing Buffoonery, The Infinite Voyage, A High School Band, Ella and Steve, and Helping to Relax a Dick.

I'm going to start off this post with a tape I found featuring recordings from KNX in Los Angeles, made sometime near the end of July, 1974. Someone out there is going to be able to tell us the exact date, based on the status of the prison story and the Watergate story, as explained in the news (both stories went on for several days around that time). 

I found this station's format pretty remarkable - there's certainly been nothing quite like it here in Chicago during my 55+ years of radio listenership. Everyone has heard of Album Oriented Rock stations. This is an Album Oriented POP station. Some rock and roll slips through, but the majority of these tunes are from the softer end of the spectrum, and a not insignificant percentage of the tracks are album tracks rather than hit songs. 

According to Wikipedia, at some point in 1973, the station switched to "Gentle Country". This tape would appear to contradict that timing. 

Download: KNX, Los Angeles, Circa Late July, 1974

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Just over two years ago, I shared one tape from a collection of John Birch Society reels, containing an episode of a truly clueless (which should go without saying) mid '60's radio show called "Are You Listening, Uncle Sam", along with a bit of text for those not familiar with these loons. I have here compiled three more episodes of the same show for your perusal, heard back-to-back, belly-to-belly in one file. 

Download: The John Birch Society - Are You Listening, Uncle Sam? - Three Episodes Circa 1967

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I am not familiar with a late 1980's Public Broadcasting show called "The Infinite Voyage", which ran for five very short seasons. IMDB opines that it is "an exceptional series about of humanity, the stars, the dinosaurs, and other mysteries of the world and the universe" in their page about the show. I found a tape containing some of the music from the show.... somewhere, labeled "#3". Whether that's simply tape three or music from the third season or something else, I do not know. The show is available on YoutTube so maybe someone who wants to can find out exactly where this music came from. 

Download: WQED - Music From 'The Infinite Voyage' - # 3
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Now here's a man who is overly confident in his ability to provide the service he's been asked to provide. This is a relaxation tape - by all appearances a homemade relaxation tape done by an amateur. At least I hope he was an amateur, as his work here is... whatever the opposite of stellar might be. 

The man speaking, as you will hear, made this tape for, and provided this tape to, another man, named George Dick. And as you will hear, none of you are supposed to listen to this tape. None of you are supposed to use this tape, either. Do you hear me? NONE OF YOU. 

Download: Relaxation Tape to Be Use BY GEORGE DICK ONLY!

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And now, here is one of two tapes which came to me more or less stuck together. I'll share the other one in another post soon. 

What we have here is a high school band, playing a concert, most likely in 1972. Now, I was IN high school bands starting in 1974, and I must say, I was taken, and taken aback, by the percentage of tunes played by this band which were current and fairly recent pop hits. My bands never did that. And I have collected band albums over the years and have not found this sort of pop-hits-dominated material on any of them. I don't recognize all of the songs, but I suspect that even the one I don't recognize was a popular songs, rather than the standard band repertoire of the day. You'll hear "Morning Has Broken", "Jamaica Farewell", "El Condor Pasa" "Bridge Over Troubled Water", and a medley of Chicago hits. 

The brief news promo heard at the end of the tape, clearly from a completely different source, dates that part of the tape, at least, to April of 1972. 

Download: A High School Band Concert Featuring Lots of Popular Songs ("Wilson Band'), Possibly Circa 1972

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To close, a Very Short Reel. This is pretty neat, and I wish it was longer. It's a few fragments of an appearance by Ella Fitzgerald on what I assume is The Tonight Show during Steve Allen's period as the host. Ella's birthday was April 25th, so this is no doubt from that date, given the content, and the references (including the mentioning of Davy Crockett) seem to indicate that it is from 1955, although I wouldn't swear by that. But she had returned from a European tour that spring. 

The recording is sort of choppy, with conversations cut off and resuming at some later point, but there is a complete performance of "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" 

Download: Fragment of Ella Fitzgerald with Steve Allen, circa April, 1955

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Some Rare Early Johnny Carson Tonight Show Segments, An Interview with a Six-Year-Old, Two Very Different Tapes of Singing, and "The Children's Hour"

I have something extra special to lead off with today, but first, a bit of housekeeping. 

Eric Paddon fills in the gaps yet again regarding my WOR posting, documenting that the first Long John segment is from October 6th, 1962, and that the second segment late on October 17th and early on October 18th, 1962. His comments can be found at the bottom of that post, and are most informative - I encourage you to read them. 

And an anonymous poster - apparently as much of an obsessive as I am - sent me the following comment regarding one of the items in my last post: 

Just thought you might like to know that the Michigan News tape is the 1000th individual mp3 you have put up on the Inches Per Second blog since you started it back in 2015.

The comment goes on say that the number 1000 does not include anything I posted at WFMU. Wow - 1000 items for folks to download. I'm glad I started doing this. 

Finally, a few people let me know that the last offering I shared from the Jack Eigen collection was actually a repeat (and relabeling) of a tape I'd already shared previously. It's way too late to fix that offering, but I will have more Eigen - for real this time - in my next post. 

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Today, I have something extra special to lead off the post - vintage recordings from the first year of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. My understanding is that the videotapes of 98% of Carson's first decade in the big chair were erased by subsequent programs (leading to a lack of, among other things, any video of the appearance of Lennon and McCartney announcing the start of their Apple Corps). The two segments I have for you here do not appear to exist anywhere online, so these could literally be the only existing copies. 

The first, and probably more interesting one, is a portion of an appearance by Ella Fitzgerald and, briefly, Duke Ellington, on May 13th, 1963. There's about five minutes of music at the start, and the remaining 13 minutes or so are conversation. 

Song-poem enthusiasts (and hopefully any of you out there know about my other blog), might find some fascination in Ella's comments, midway through, about Teri Thornton. Ms. Thornton appeared on The Tonight Show three times during Johnny's first several months on the air, although never after that. Unfortunately, Ms. Thornton did not have the career that Ella and Johnny thought she would attain, but she is known to those of us in the song-poem fan contigent under the names Teri Summers, simply "Teri" and several other names. 

Download: Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, 5-13-63

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On the flip side of the same reel, there is an appearance by Allan Sherman, then-currently riding high with two recent number one albums (and a third about to be released, which would be his biggest). Happily (for those who are fans - and I LOVE his first two albums, the rest.... not so much), he performs a medley of some half-finished ideas in the form of very short songs, most of which I don't believe were ever released commercially, before he goes into a number from that upcoming album, "My Son, the Nut", at the end of the recording. 

Download: Allan Sherman on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, 7-10-63

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Switching gears quite a bit, although staying with television (I think), here's tape that I just love, even though I have absolutely no idea of its source, who was involved, or exactly what's going on here. It is post announced near the end as having been "The Children's Hour", and sure enough, it appears to be a series of skits, songs, etc. performed by a group of children. Some annoying editing was done at the time of the broadcast (and again, I'm assuming this was a TV program, and not a radio show). 

After a short rendition of "School Days", the program segues into some sort of play, described later as a Scottish Fairy Tale, which takes up much of the recording. The last several minutes are taken up with various kids singing various songs, with a bit of accordion thrown in, as well. The high point for me is a single minute, starting at about 16:00, where a child (can't tell if it's a boy or a girl) sings "Hey, Good Lookin'". Pretty much this whole tape is just enchanting, I think, but I am head over heels for that one performance - I just love this kid's voice and enthusiasm. The singing puts me in the mind of the early tapes of Merigail Moreland. I wish I knew who it was.   

Unknown: "The Children's Hour"

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The above tape also contains the following short segment of a few kids singing a few songs. They are not singers on the level of those heard during "The Children's Hour", and in fact, there are some wonderfully off-kilter notes, notes which would be downright embarrassing coming from the adult, but which I find endearing when coming from small children, as well as some deliberately goofy singing. Another sweet tape. The note at 2:53 is one for the ages. 

Unknown: Unknown - Peter Cottontail, Oh Susanna and Jesus Loves Me

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And speaking of children, and of sweetness, here is yet another tape that I heard for the first time recently, which contains a man interviewing a six-year-old. That could be cause for automated avoidance by some of you, and/or concerns about sweetness overload, but that's not what I hear. The man in question seems to be - or at least claims to be - a performer in a traveling circus. His relationship with the child, Joe Hogan, is never explained. The man's name is said once, by the child - maybe it's Patrick? 

I don't know what to make of the clipped sounds at the end of a few of the man's statements - Joe (the child) also seems to have trouble hearing what the man is saying at those moments, too, so perhaps this was not done face to face. Or something. 

I enjoy the fact that the child sometimes makes a long statement (as when he says the alphabet) and breathes in without stopping talking - he says the words while he's breathing. There are tapes of me at this age, and I would do the same thing. 

What I find remarkable here, and endearing, is that this six-year-old is clearly extremely bright, fully sure of himself, and holds up his end of the interaction completely. I'll let you discover the details for yourself, but I wouldn't be surprised if this kid went on to great success in school and elsewhere. 

Download: A Man Interviews Six-Year-Old Joe Hogan

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Here's a sampling from a small stack of tapes that I got somewhere, all featuring a woman and a man rehearsing songs in 1971, per the tape boxes. I really don't now more about them than that. The following offering actually features the contents of a two full five inch reels featuring this duo. For the most part, they are working on songs I'd prefer not to be in the same county as, at the very least. I generally loathe the sort of material that's heard here. Your mileage may vary.

Download: Unknown - Rehearsing a Bunch of Songs

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Here are the relevant parts of both tape boxes in one image: 

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And finally, a "Very Short Reel". The person speaking (undoubtedly to someone on the phone) is relating a story about getting an audio letter from someone that was recorded at a speed that her machine didn't run at, when she discovers that she herself is being recorded. This is more than a bit of a cheat, as this is simply the opening minute or so of a tape which is full of other recordings - almost entirely of some home recorded, and vapid, organ playing, with a few Hawaiian numbers from a record mixed in. But this goofy little recording leads off the tape, and I thought it was worth sharing. 

Download: Unknown - "He's Tapin' What I'm Sayin"

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