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

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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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A Week in Radio and Television History - Mid-August, 1962: WNBC's Anniversary, News From Here, Abroad, and Space, Bert Parks. and the Star of Our Show, Shelley Berman!

Before we get to today's offering, I want to share my deepest thanks and appreciation to those who read and listened to my birthday post, and particularly those who offered up some truly wonderful comments. Thank you, everyone.

~~

I have a bunch of clips today, and all but the last offering come from the same reel, and I hope that I find that I own more tapes from this same collector (my unlistened-to tapes are a hodge-podge, and tapes bought together have gotten separated over the years).

The reason I hope that is because this person seems to have recorded like a fiend - I'm going to share with you almost the entire contents of this tape, well over two hours worth, and those contents appear to capture recordings made over the course of less than a week, in mid August, 1962. Imagine how many tapes this person may have had, and the contents thereof, if he or she filled a two hour tape in just four or five days!

Anyway, this tape is quite the variety reel, capturing part of one TV show, the entirety of another, parts of three different newscasts, and seven installments of a feature being aired that week by NBC flagship station WNBC, in honor of the 40th anniversary of their having gone on the air. The two dates I can actually nail down are August 14th and August 16th, but certain items here likely are from both before and after those dates.

I have grouped these items together by theme - what follows is not actually quite the order in which they appear on the tape. It is just much easier for me to do it this way, as I digitized these some time ago and am not sure where the tape is, so I don't recall the original order - hope that makes sense.

Let's start with the newscasts. The dominant news stories that week including the lengthy flight of two Russian cosmonauts, Eisenhower's visit to England, an assassination attempt on the President of Ghana, and a disagreement about whether the return to the US by an terminally ill American doctor who had been spying for Russia.

The first segment is from "London Calling", a news report from England but broadcast in the US. The second segment contains a brief excerpt from "Douglas Edwards News" then segues into another show, "The World Today", and the third segment is from Mutual News. It seems to me at least possible that this second clip flips again into another broadcast, as the end of that clip seems quite similar to the start of the Mutual clip. At least one of these items is from August 14th, based on the reference to it being one year and one day after the start of the Berlin Wall.

(Note: All three of these segments sound to me as if they are running slowly - the voices sound artificially low and slow. However, this makes no sense, as the rest of the tape (that these segments are interspersed within) does not sound slow. Why would only the newscasts be recorded on a machine not running correctly?)

Download: London Calling - News from England - Peter King Reporting - Mid-August, 1962
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Download: Douglas Edwards News and The World Today
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Download: Mutual News, August, 1962
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Now, the first of the two Television recordings. While I suspect that this tape's entire contents may be made up of sounds which no longer (or barely) exist anywhere but on this tape, this strikes me as something special even within that world of rarity. Maybe it's just because I love game shows.

But anyway, what we have here is a few portions of a game show called "Yours For a Song", hosted by Bert Parks. The show aired on ABC during the daytime for about 15 months and in a nighttime edition for just under a year. And I'd certainly never heard of it. It's a goofy program, but sounds like something I'd have enjoyed. Rather than explain it here, I'll just let you listen, as all the explanation you need is in the recording. There is a break near the end, and I don't actually know if the part following the break is from the same episode or not, but I suspect it was, and that a portion of the show was later erased by one of the other items being shared here.

Download: Yours for a Song, Starring Bert Parks, August, 1962
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Recorded rather haphazardly throughout the tape is a feature that was airing that week on WNBC, the flagship station of the NBC network, in New York (where, presumably, all of these recordings were made). The station was acknowledging their 40th anniversary. Please note that while Wikipedia (linked above) states that the station first went on the air on March 2, 1922, these segments, developed and provided by the station itself, are using August 16th, 1922 as the first date of operation. I don't know which is correct, but one of these clips definitely identifies that date. The clips all feature earlier recordings from the station, mostly from the 1940's or earlier. The first one is the only one for which I have a hard-and-fast date for - it's clear from the introduction what today's date was. And the two clips of announcer contests may well be two broadcasts of different parts of the same archival segment. ere are all of those clips, in succession as they appear on the tape:

Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - 8-16-62 - The Silver Masked Tenor, Joe White
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - Quick Reading Announcers' Contest
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - Jack Norworth Sings
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - Another Announcers' Contest (Segment)
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - Snoring Demonstration
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - Billy Hill Sings "The Last Round-Up"
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - The Ed Wynn Show
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And finally, the pièce de résistance! If you read my birthday post, you'd have seen a brief reference to my adoration for the comedy of Shelley Berman. Well, the saga of Mr. Berman usually includes a reference to an ill-fated show that was done about him in early 1963, following him for a day at a club, including parts of his performance, followed by a few things that happened afterwards. I will not recount the details here, but the legend is that this show ruined his career - although some recent research captured in a book called "The Comedians" indicates strongly that this was not the case.

What I didn't know until I listened to this tape - and this is not even documented on Shelley Berman's IMDB page - is that he did a show for ABC in 1962 - on August 14th - tied to his then-most-recent album, "Shelley Berman: A Personal Appearance", a show which carried the same title as the album, and which was almost entirely made up simply of his act, including much of that album, with slight differences, of course, since it is a different recording of the material. There is also other material here that I've never heard before.

Well.... Wow. My considered opinion is that "Shelley Berman: A Personal Appearance" is the greatest comedy album ever recorded. So I was knocked out to have found this tape, and to learn that it is virtually unknown. (There is a seller online who will sell you audio copies of any of hundreds or perhaps thousands of recordings he holds. He's got a copy.)

So here, unheard by virtually everyone in the world sing 8/14/62, is the ABC special, "Shelley Berman: A Personal Appearance".

Download: Shelley Berman - A Personal Appearance - ABC TV Special - 8-14-62
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~~

Today's very short reel is an ad which apparently ran on Chicago's WNIB, which was, for decades, the second place classical music station in town. It's an ad for the Sunday Chicago Tribune, probably from 1972 or 73 or so, and it's an interesting curio, containing as it does some references to what one expert thought would become collectible in the future (the expert doesn't seem to have been too accurate, based on the view from nearly 50 years later), and a reference to a story on Jane Byrne, who would have been virtually unknown at that time, but who, by the end of the decade, would be Mayor of Chicago.

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