Even More Baseball, The "Do You Remember" Dance, The Country Music Story, and "Don't Sit On My Mother's Violin"

As I alluded to in my last post, I don't have a lot of time to write as much as I often do, or to get an acetate of the month ready, either. 

I do, however, want to make sure I refer people back to the comments about my last post. There are multiple posts explaining the details of the baseball offering in that post, and expressing a good deal of excitement over those contents. I'm glad to have shared them. There is also a shorter note expressing an equal amount of excitement over the posting I linked to, in that post, from Kyle - a post of Easy Listening Programming from the 1960's. 

There is lot of text in those comments, so I'm not going to repost them here, but I encourage you to have a look at them if that sort of thing is of interest to you. 

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I'll start with the segment that I know some people are waiting for - the remaining "Badly Recorded Baseball". This tape is considerably shorter than the one I shared last time, and at its worst, is nowhere near as bad as the worst parts of the last reel, but through much of it, there is a ton of static as well as interference from another station. But I look forward to the feedback on this one, which I'm sure is coming, and which will no doubt contain details about just what game(s) are heard here. 

Download: More (Largely Badly Recorded) Baseball, circa 1959

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Next up, both sides of a smallish reel of tape. The tape itself was a standard five inch reel, enough for recording perhaps a half-hour of material at 3 3/4 IPS, but it was two smaller reels spliced together, and the (shorter) one at the start of side one (and end of side two) was unrecorded. Side two was the more interesting of the two sides, but first.... on the recorded part of side one was the modestly (at best) interesting excerpt from The United States Armed Forces Radio Services, featuring some classical performances. 

Download: Brief Excerpt from The United States Armed Forces Radio Service

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The real (and reel) fun from this tape is on the second side, though, where some kids recorded themselves being kids. There is a brief performance of the hit song "Short Shorts", a longer segment of the song "Chances Are" - both of which likely date this tape to early 1958 - and then some general silliness. 

Download: Unknown - Short Shorts, Chances Are and Don't Sit On My Mother's Violin

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My longest offering this time around is one of those live performances I share from time to time. I don't know the name of this band, but it was undoubtedly a local dance band which played at various events, in whatever area Troy High School was/is in. I have a handful of tapes from this outfit, each one saying how many "men" worked the gig - in this case, as you can see below, it was "eight men". This is from Thanksgiving, 1956, and a dance apparently titled "Do You Remember?", if the writing on the tape box is to be believed. Travel back with me to a very different era and enjoy this anonymous dance band: 

Download: Unknown Band - Performance at Troy High, Thanksgiving, 1956 ('Do You Remember')

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In January, 1971, a series called "The Country Music Story", hosted by Johnny Cash, ran on American television. Someone recorded large portions of one episode, and here is that recording.

Download: Segments of 'The Country Music Story' With Johnny Cash, January 1971

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For my "Very Short Reel" this time around, I have a tape labeled "Interacting with a Bit of the 'Sgt Pepper' Album", and I think that sums it up fairly well. Here are a few folks, presumably at home, and presumably enjoying what was, at that moment, a still recently-new album.

Download: Unknown - Interacting with a Bit of the "Sgt Pepper" Album

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The Return of KRAP Radio, A Bit of Basketball, Sound on Sound, A Good Friday Sermon, Commercials and PSA's

HAPPY EASTER!

I'm going to start with a sequel to a post I made just over four years ago, in which I shared a tape of some high school students and their fake radio station, KRAP Radio. Well, I recently found another tape of KRAP radio parody material, and thought I'd share it, as well. 

As it happens, in that post, I mention that the students involved in this project seemed to be from High School Radio Station KDBG, and by chance, I posted more material - real radio recordings, not this pretend stuff - from that station in my last post, so clearly, all of these tapes must have come from the same reel purchase, at some point. 

This is far more entertaining than the real broadcasts, I think.

Download: KRAP Radio - The Station That Is Full of It

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And here, for your further enjoyment, is the rest of that same reel - presumably some of the same kids, engaging in some reel to reel weirdness. 

Download: Material After KRAP Radio - Weirdness from Some High School Students

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We are in the midst of the annual insanity around College Basketball. I personally find the idea of caring about a college basketball team - and certainly caring about who wins a college basketball game - bizarre in the extreme. I would enjoy watching college basketball about as much as I would watching golf or soccer: 30 seconds would be more than enough, especially when one could be watching baseball, tennis or bowling (Three Cheers for Jason Belmonte!). Or streaming Monty Python episodes for that matter,

But anyway, in honor of this yearly event, and for those who do enjoy amateur basketball, here's a tape containing, within its 33 minutes of radio recordings, some moments from the 1958 Illinois State High School Basketball Final, some postgame coverage, and then a very short part of a newscast, some of which is also about that basketball game. 

Download: Excerpts From the 1958 Illinois State High School Basketball Final, Postgame and Newscast

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Now here's a tape I really enjoyed, not least because, prior to the late 1990's, every time I recorded one of my songs, I used the tape recording method known as Sound on Sound, where you record one track and then bounce back and forth between the two monaural tracks adding more sounds to your recording. Depending on the machine used, you may end up with a stereo recording in which one track alone has the final additions, or you may end up with one track which contains all but the last thing you added, and the other track which has is delayed a split second and contains your entire production, meaning your performance is in mono. The latter is the case here. 

Whoever recorded these guitar pieces appears to me to have only made a basic track and then overdubbed them once. But they are well done and, to my ears, quite enjoyable. 

Download: Unknown - Guitar Performances Using Sound on Sound, Volume 5

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Here's the list of songs you will hear, from the tape box, although the first song is not "Chattanooga Choo Choo", it's "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe": 

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With today being Easter, and of course Good Friday having just passed two days ago, here is a brief Good Friday sermon. What makes this recording remarkable is that it comes from a reel of paper-backed tape, the likes of which was phased out as a product around 1951 or so, meaning that this recording likely comes from the dawn of reel to reel recording, and is likely somewhere around 73-75 years ago. It ends sort of suddenly, and far from sure it was over when the tape ran out, yet it also ends with several seconds of silence, so maybe it did end like that. 

Download: Unknown - A Good Friday Sermon (From a Paper Reel)

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Here is a short collection of commercials, all of which are parts of series already heard on this blog. However, none of these specific commercials have been shared - just others from the same collection, a huge collection of ads, mostly from the Pacific Northwest, which I bought a few decades ago. 

Download: A Collection of Commercials

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Here is a recording of a radio broadcast of a play written by Woody Allen, titled "God". This is a recording from legendary Chicago radio station WFMT. It starts with a very short excerpt from the play, and then the announcement of the sponsorship, a commercial, a bit of introduction, then the play. There is a break about half way through and the second half of the play. There are credits at the end. 

Download: Woody Allen's "God"

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"Mélange": noun. a mixture; confusion.

I labeled the first half (plus) of this tape "Weird Melange of Sound". See if you agree. A little bit more than halfway through this tape, we hear a moment of an audio letter, and then more randomness, before the audio letter comes back at 7:37 and we hear its contents for nearly six minutes. Most of that duration contains a woman speaking to her mother, talking about her mother-in-law and griping about someone else in her family, before requesting a return tape. 

Download: Unknown: Weird Mélange of Sound, Followed by a Short Audio Letter

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And now, our very short reel. And it is extremely short - 55 seconds - and contains someone offering up a brief tribute to the very clearly remarkable Enrico Toti, a one-legged cyclist and World War I hero who you can read about here. With apologies to Rudyard Kipling and his poem about Gunga Din, our unnamed speaker offers a re-written version of that poem, in praise of his hero, giving it three recitations in less than a minute. 

Download: Unknown: Tribute to Enrico Toti

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Some Great Jingles, London Nightlife, High School Radio, Talking to Australia, Some Cute Kids, and the Sports of 1971

HI! 

I'm gonna dive right in! Let's start with a lovely little tape which is labeled, as you can see below, "Agency Jingles - Background Music", and on the side of the box it is further labeled "# 53":

And of course, it's also labeled with a complete listing of the tracks, most of which - but not all - are in fact instrumental music for radio commercials. There are some vocals mixed in, though. I have no idea what agency created these or exactly when they are from. All of the information I have is in the scan, above. But these are great!

Download: Agency Jingles - Background Music # 53

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Now here is a bit of programming, from the BBC, that I find absolutely fascinating. It is an edition of what was apparently a weekly show, one which captured as much as possible of what was going on in world of entertainment and theatre in London. Again, this was captured on a weekly basis, with new material every week, some of it from records, but mostly recording specifically from this program. I have found, in my collection, a tape containing three episodes of this show, "London Mirror", from late in 1961, all but this first one complete (this one is missing the opening theme). The variety heard in these forty-some minutes is truly impressive even if, rather than play that icky Elvis Presley, they instead had a bland rendition of his latest hit performed by an in-house conglomeration. In fact, rock and roll music (and its creators) is conspicuously absent among the otherwise fairly broad picture of night life in London reflected in these shows. Many of you (well, me, at least) might be most intrigued by the segment featuring Goons great Harry Secombe, as this appears to be a recording of him made specifically for the show, and perhaps not available anywhere else. The person who recorded this show even cut out the newspaper ad for the program, which captures all of that variety in a very small space: 

Please let me know if you'd like to hear more of these - as I said I've found three and there may be more.

Download: London Mirror, 11/18/61

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Now, let's fly from London to Turlock, CA, some time in the late 1970's, and what was then the local high school radio station, where someone was trying - very poor attempts, to my ears - to make some promos for said station, KDBG. 

Download: Working on a Promo for KDBG Radio, Turlock High School, Turrlock, CA

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But that's only part of what's on this reel - if it wasn't, I'd have used that segment for a "very short reels" presentation. No, the rest of the tape contains an episode of another student's country music programming, including, for the last several minutes, what was apparently the stations very own mix of some odd, humorous country material, ending with a peculiar take on the country standard "Still". 

Download: Country Music on KDBG Radio, Turlock High School, Turlock, CA

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And now, here's a moment in time. I have a bunch of tapes from a professional band - nowhere on them does it seem to specify who they were, just the number of "men" in the group and the event captured on the tape - in concert at "The Elks' Ball" at the end of January, 1959. I have unfortunately misplaced the box for this one, but that's what it said, along with that reference to "nine men" or whatever it was. Their repertoire is pretty well all over the map - everything from "The Peter Gunn Theme" to "The Walter Winchell Rhumba" to "Misty" to "Oh Johnny Oh". Download this one and listen to it sometime while you're working around the house. It's about 72 minutes long. 

And again, if you dig this, let me know. I have more from this ensemble. 

Download: Unknown Band - Performance at The Elks' Ball, 1-30-59

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For those of you who enjoy Audio Letters, here's one from a man in Maine to a friend in Australia: 

Download: Audio Letter from Maine to Australia

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And now it's time for our "Acetate of the Month". And I gotta say, as brief as this is (67 seconds), it's one of the sweetest, even the most adorable, things I've ever shared here. This record scores a 10 on the "authentic cuteness" scale. It's titled (by me, anyway, there is nothing written on the disc itself) "Two Children Play-Act a Visit", and I don't think anything further needs to be said. Enjoy!

Download: Voice-O-Graph 6 Inch Recording Disc Acetate - Two Children Play-Act a Visit

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And finally, a very short reel. Here is a child of the early '70's, clearly from Pittsburgh (or at least a Pittsburgh fan), giving a short play by play of the 1971 world series, before cutting in with a bit of radio, then being generally boisterous (with at least one other child, I think) and finishing with a bit of basketball play by play. Interestingly, both the Pirates and the basketball team end up with 14 runs/points. 

Download: Unknown - Baseball and Basketball Reports, 1971

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Vintage BBC Documentaries, The Return of Joe Gerossi, Unusual Sounds, Some Wild Piano, and Christmastime Is Here Again

Two posts in six days!!! Christmas must have come early! (And that's actually foreshadowing for this post....) 

I'll start with something off the beaten path. Here is everything that's contained on a reel of tape made by someone in England, featuring three programs, two documentaries and a show about policy. 

The first show, taking up about the first 27 minutes of the tape, is a documentary about the story of sound coming to the movies. The second was labeled on the tape as a review of Queen Elizabeth's 1961 visit to Africa, although the program expands into a more general review of many aspects of the Queen and her reign. This program mentions her tenth anniversary on the throne, so must actually have been broadcast in 1962. Most likely, all three shows are from 1962 (I can't seem to find the tape box at the moment, as I digitized this one some four years ago.) Finally, starting about an hour and 14 minutes into the tape, a program called "Conference", which in the episode heard  here was concerned with British Defence Policy (given that the show and the person recording it were English, that's how it was spelled on the box). The tape runs out before this show ends. 

Download: British Radio Potpourri - History of Sound Film, Queen's Visit, British Defence Policy

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Next, do you remember Joe Gerossi? The gregarious barber who I have featured three other times, here, here and here? Well, here I have a bunch more from Ol' Joe. And although this is the fourth such posting, it's labeled "Volume 2". Why? Because this one features Joe and his friends and perhaps family, and is thus more of a sequel to the first posting than to the other two (both of which largely or entirely featured Joe on his own).

Let me just say: This Tape Is A Mess. The sound goes in and out, there are problems with the speed of the machine recording it in spots, and there are other spots where newly recorded material did not fully erase older material (which was a problem on another one of Joe's tapes, too - he must have had a lousy tape recorder!). There are some truly winning moments here, and some others which go on too long, or should never have been kept in the first place. But I think Joe has some fans, so I thought I'd share another batch of recordings that he made. 

Download: Joe Gerossi and Friends - Various Recordings, Volume 2

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Incidentally, this reel came with THREE different slips of paper claiming to contain descriptions of what was on the tape and in what order. I present them here in case you'd like to see if you can tell who is who, and what is where: 

 

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This next segment is a five minute oddity I've labeled "Unusual Montage of Late 1970's Media Sounds". I have no idea for what purpose this might have been created, and aside from that, I think the title suffices as an introduction to this interesting compilation of sounds: 

Download: Unusual Montage of Late 1970's Media Sounds

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AND NOW - with the exception of a short reel at the end - IT'S TIME TO MOVE INTO CHRISTMAS MODE!!

I have so many Christmas related items that I won't possibly be able to squeeze them all into one post in the middle of December. So with Advent beginning in three days, I'm going to get ahead of things and share four Christmassy items with you.

I'll start with the one which, to my ears and in terms of what I prefer, is by far the most interesting of the next four tapes. In it, a man, perhaps a patriarch, for lack of a better term (or perhaps not), spends some time "Interviewing the Family on Christmas Night". I find this fascinating and endearing, and I hope you will enjoy it, too. 

Download: Interviewing the Family on Christmas Night

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For those of you who enjoy manly men singing Christmas music with Mitch Miller's idiosyncratic echoey production - with a few female vocals thrown in - here is a Christmastime episode of "Sing Along with Mitch!: 

Download: Sing Along with Mitch - A Christmas Episode

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And here's a tape of three songs - none of which are related to Christmas - but which were offered up as an sort of musical Christmas Card by some unknown folks, folks who very likely were living in Indiana (on 52nd Street), from the sound of things. At first I thought this was a musical audio letter to someone ("Honey") who was far away, but upon a closer listen, I'm pretty sure that the male singer present IS honey, and that the woman who speaks first is addressing him following a return from.... somewhere. The sound quality is more than a bit rough, but the homey qualities and the clear affection in the voices of all involved make this a sweet, short offering.

Download: Merry Christmas to Honey - Three Songs

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And finally, a neat little tape (well, I think it is, anyway) of a rehearsal of Christmas Songs by a high school choir. I picked up several tapes of this group some time ago, in a batch of tapes purchased from God knows where, and this was the first one I listened to. 

Download: A High School Choir Rehearses Christmas Songs

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This is all it says on the box: 

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Finally, it's time for our "Very Short Reel". This one is sort of intriguing. This is a small reel of tape, containing a recording of two piano pieces, recorded at the professional speed of 15 Inches-Per-Second. Only the second piece is identified (on the side of the box), listed as "Down Yonder", but the first, shorter piece is clearly "Who's Sorry Now". The pianist on the first piece is listed as Tom Slade, and the second piece is listed as a duet between Tom Slade and Milton Jackson. The performance of "Down Yonder" is upbeat, and jazzy, rollicking, features elements of other familiar tunes, and is just a whole lotta...... 

Wait, Milton Jackson? Surely not the legendary jazz musician? I doubt it, but I can't figure any way to determine this one way or the other. The date certainly makes it possible, but that's hardly an unusual name.

Here are two images from the box. This was, unfortunately, one of the tapes whose boxes got damaged in a pipe leak in my basement several years ago. For the most part, the tapes were undamaged, as is true for this reel (reel to reel tape tends to be pretty hardy), but the box is a mess. 

Here is the side of the tape box, which is admittedly hard to read in this scan. It reads Tom Slade (Down Yonder) 10-13-54

And a portion of the back. Again, hard to read. It says: 

Reel # 3, 10/13/54, 15 IPS

1. Tom Slade, Piano

2. Tom Slade and Milton Jackson, Piano

And here's what it sounds like!

Download: Tom Slade and Milton Jackson - Who's Sorry Now and Down Yonder - 10-13-54

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Happy Birthday, Sweet 16, The Ups and Downs of Radio Work, Some Live Music, and Other Wonders

Welcome back to my archives!!!

I have very little time this week, so I will be far less verbose than usual. 

First up is a tape I've owned, and loved, for decades. It comes from Lake Forest, IL, and features two different recordings from the 1957-58 school year of a bunch of girls who were, apparently, mostly High School Juniors that year. Nearly the entirety of both tapes is made up of the girls singing, which I enjoy mightily. 

Here is the relevant (i.e. the marked-up) part of the tape box: 

First up, with have Joan's 16th birthday party, wherein the girls sing a number of fight songs, including some lyrics to the Notre Dame song - about drinking - that I've never heard anywhere but on this tape. They also sing the songs of a couple of nearby high schools, including ones that no one in Lake Forest would have attended, which seems a little weird. Throw in some current pop songs, including the utterly wonderful "Just Between You and Me", originally by the Chordettes, and you have an irresistible little segment. 

Download: Joan's 16th Birthday Party, 9/19/57

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Immediately after this is what's listed as the "Junior Luncheon", which does feature, as the box indicates, an unfortunate hum. I've tried to minimize this hum, but have been unable to do so without also impacting the sound of the recording. Here, again, there is a bunch of singing, although it sure sounds to me as if they are wishing the Senior Class well as they leave the school - why that would be the subject of a Junior Luncheon I'm not sure. But I'm guessing - hence the date - that this happened later in the school year, probably the Spring of 1958. 

But the kicker for me here is that all the songs sung have new lyrics, each of them about a specific girl to whom they are singing. I just think this is a great deal of fun. 

Download: Joan's Junior Luncheon, Lake Forest, IL, Likely 1958

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Let's switch gears here pretty radically and listen to six and a half minutes of production material recorded for radio station WEEP in Pittsburgh, in January of 1976. 

The box has this sticker on it: 

These short little segments are all over the map, and nearly all of them are pretty entertaining, especially if you ignore the John Denver concert promo. Another fun little tape. 

Download: WEEP, Pittsburgh - Radio Productions -January 1976

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So that last sampling was a lot of fun. From about as far away as you can get and still be (I think) in radio, here we have someone I think is practicing being a DJ, or perhaps trying to make a demo tape, or... well, I just don't know. 

It seems pretty half-assed, or perhaps even quarter-assed, but it is incompetent in a fairly interesting way, so I'll just share it here and see if anyone out there has a better idea what's going on. 

Download: Unknown - Possibly DJ Practice

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And in case you wanted to hear some early Randy Travis, guess what I.....

Oops, sorry, this isn't Randy Travis. It's Travis and Randy. See: 

And if you'd been one of the what sounds like no more than five people who were at the Ramada Inn in Tucson, on 10/29/71, you could have heard this little set of music (and probably a lot more, but this is all that was on the tape). 

Download: Travis and Randy at the Ramada Inn, Tucson, Arizona, 10-29-71

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Now it's time for our "Acetate of the Month". In this case, someone named E. Frederick recorded four songs on the accordion - two on each side of a ten inch acetate, way back on November 27th, 1940. The two sides of the record look like this: 

And they sound like this: 

Download: E Frederick - Dizzy Fingers & Two Guitars - 11--27- 40 (Presto Acetate)

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Download: E Frederick - Nola & Beautiful Days - 11-27- 40 (Presto Acetate)

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And finally, a VERY short example of a "Very Short Reel", and an enigmatic one at that. I'll let the track I've titled "Can You Hear That There?" speak for itself. 

Download: "Can You Hear That There?"

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Ed Sullivan Meets the Wounded Soldiers

Okay, here's a truly remarkable tape. I have, on several occasions here, and at WFMU, shared the bounty of a massive purchase I made well over a decade ago, featuring a variety of network recordings, including many raw tapes, sound effect reels, foley material, etc, primarily from CBS television. This one might be the most amazing of all.

It takes a moment to get going, but when it does, this recording features recordings made during a visit by Ed Sullivan to an Army hospital (or some such)  - apparently in Denver, according to the box, circa 1969 or 1970. Presumably, a camera crew was following, and some segment of this recording was used in a broadcast, whether on his show or elsewhere. But what's captured here is a good part of the visit - 25 minutes of it, anyway - Ed being taken from bed to bed and room to room, being told about the soldiers and their injuries (most of which occurred in Vietnam or in training to go to Vietnam), and then sharing a few words with each of the young men.

I don't think more needs to be said.

Download: Ed Sullivan - Ed Sullivan Meets the Wounded Soldiers
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Traveling further west, and another tone and attitude entirely, is another fairly unique tape. I have to believe this was made for a High School project, as there are lots of clues that a group of High Schoolers made this tape, and it seems unlikely that they'd have gone to this much trouble just for kicks. It's an imitation radio broadcast, from the mid '70's, complete with news reports, sports updates, lots of current and recent music, and other hallmarks of top 40 radio. Except the stories and ads are snarky and filled with lame jokes, a song by Paul McCartney is mis-identified (write album, wrong song), and the radio "staff" are clearly amateurs. All that could just point to this being a high school radio broadcast, but the kicker - and the proof that this never aired - is that the station is identified as K-R-A-P radio.

If I'm hearing it right, this seems to come from Turlock High School, which is in Turlock, California. And I really wonder if these students pushed things past their teacher's comfort level with that KRAP stuff.

Download: Unknown High Schoolers - K-R-A-P Radio

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And finally, for you advertising fans, here's an endless series of attempts to record the same hard-sell copy for "Cannon Flex-O-Matic", one of which you can see here.

Download: Unknown - Recording an Ad for the Cannon Flex-O-Matic
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