The 1950's on the Radio and at Home with the Coughlin's, Charlie Louvin Fandom, More Shortwave, and The Reasons People Buy Cars

 Before I get started with today's offerings, I would like to direct you to the comments from last time, and the way that three regular readers/commentators) figured out the teams and date, broadcaster and broadcast medium (and even the inning!) of the very brief baseball segment. One of them further delved in further and determined the date of the high school basketball game I posted. Aren't researchers amazing? Isn't the internet amazing? Have a look at the comments at the bottom of that post. Thank you, Ken, Snoopy and Eric!

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And for this week's post, I'd like to start with more Shortwave from Australia. And that's because, within the last month, I have made the acquaintance of Thomas Witherspoon, who blogs about, and has a shared archive of, Shortwave Radio and Broadcasts. His blog is here and his shortwave recording offerings are here. He has kindly written a post about this site, and cross posted one of my previous shortwave recordings. Glad to have met you, Thomas - you are clearly a kindred spirit to me and to those who read this site. 

Anyway, in honor of this meeting of the minds, I found yet another Shortwave broadcast in my collection to pass along. In this case, it is again Australian Shortwave, from Spring of 1968. An I will acknowledge right off the bat that the recording quality is abysmal. It starts poorly and gets worse and worse as it goes along. This is actually why I hadn't shared it before. But I thought the time was right to offer it up, terrible quality and all. 

Download: Australian Shortwave, Spring 1968

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And now we move on to the complete contents of another reel of tape, an old favorite of mine which I've owned for decades but only recently got around to digitizing. This is a recording made in the home of someone named Coughlin. The first side features part of a local Chicago daytime also featuring someone named Coughlin, specifically a show called "Coughlin's Corner": 

I believe, but am not certain, that this is John Coughlin, who went on to be a much beloved weatherman on Chicago television, and who you can read a bit about, here. This is a slight, but enjoyable 16 minutes or so, featuring Coughlin and a sidekick named Rainer, playing a few hits of the day - that day apparently being the mid-winter of 1957 - reading ads and making comments on the records and other such things as daytime hosts were known to do. 

Unfortunately, this was recorded from a radio with a microphone in a room, rather than line-in, so it's not the highest quality in the world, but it's not bad, either. 

Download: Coughlin's Corner

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The flip side of the tape is recorded at the slower 3 3/4 IPS, and therefore, has about twice as much time recorded on it, all of which are home recordings from the Coughlin Home. Just over half of this side is taken up with the singing of various pop songs, accompanied by piano. This is not the most scintillating part of the tape, but I decided to include it for completeness. By the way, a small portion of this recording was actually at the end of the first side of the tape. 

If this is not to your taste, I still encourage you to have a listen to the portion that follows after this sound clip.

Download: Recordings Made in the Coughlin Home - Pop Songs with Piano

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The remainder of the tape features a small child, containing a portion that I find this deeply endearing. I didn't set this up to correspond to Easter, but the first moments of the segment feature a performance of "Peter Cottontail", After another song (and a moment of an adult singing), the same child is allowed to bang on the piano and make up a song. Rather horrid and adorable at the same time. Then we have a rapid fire version of The Three Little Pigs.

But the centerpiece of the section starts at 6:45, and it's a mock interview with "Mrs. Gene Autry", with (I believe) the same small child taking the part of that interviewee, followed by a similar interview with "The Bride of the Year", Marjorie Coughlin. I encourage you to listen, if you enjoy whimsy to any degree, or just the guilelessness of children. The little girl's joyful noise just as the machine is being turned off is worth the price of admission. 

Download: Recordings Made in the Coughlin Home - Small Child Sings and Talks, and Mock Interview

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And now for something very, very specific, perhaps not only one of a kind in terms of being the only tape with this recording on it (of course), but also one of a kind in terms of the participant, the recipient and the subject matter. 

For here we have a gentleman in Germany recording an audio letter to someone named Pat, who was, at the time, the President of the Charlie Louvin fan club in New Rockford, Pennsylvania (I can't actually find that there's a town by that name, but that's what he says). He includes plenty of Louvin music, which, I would have to guess that the recipient of the tape would already have owned... 

The date is January 18th, 1968. And I think that just about covers it. 

Download: A Tape to Pat, the President of the Charlie Louvin fan club in Pennsylvania, From Germany, 1/18/68. 

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By the way, have you been wondering why people buy cars? If so, YOU'RE IN LUCK!!! Because for one night only, I have Dr. Ernest Dichter to speak on that very subject!

Download: Dr. Ernest Dichter On Why People Buy Cars

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As you'll hear, this seems to be some sort of mix between the actual interview, and various attempts to get retakes of certain questions just right. 

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And now the moment you've all been waiting for: our Very Short Reel™ of the day. This item is one of multiple short reels I have containing advertising for Firestone Tires. I previously shared three ads from 1967 or 1968 within this post, just about a year ago. In this case, it's two ads intended for use across the middle of January, 1969. The style of these commercials remind me more of ads I've heard from the late 1950's, than they do of other ads that I've heard from the late 1960's. 

Download: Two Firestone Tire and Rubber Ads - For 1/13/69 Thru 1/24/69

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Here is the reel box:  

The box indicates that there is an insert in the box. Here is that insert: 

Finally, here's a fun little request from the producers of the commercials, stuck right on the reel itself:

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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(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.) 

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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

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