More L.A. Radio, Jazz on Shortwave, Two Very Different Sales Presentations and The Edge of Night

First up, a quick shout out to commenter "Snoopy" for identifying that the "Reviewing Stand" episode I posted a few weeks ago is from March 23, 1964, based on the report on the death of Peter Lorre. He also made some funny observations about the WIND Top 1000 programming from a month ago. Oh, and Snoopy, that noise at 82:37 is just me being exactly who I was, much of the time, at that age. 

And thanks to both a commenter George and another, anonymous person for expressing their enjoying of my own pièce de résistance, the "Stop Playing the Tape" segment at the end of that same post. 

~~

I have made a decided effort, after receiving a few requests, to push to the head of the "listening" line the remaining few tapes I acquired featuring Los Angeles (well, technically in this case, Hollywood)  DJ's. This is not my typically practice, as I try my best to grab things at random to scan and see what's on them, but these are special tapes. The box for this tape claims that both of these (unfortunately brief) segments are from 1967, but one of them is clearly from 1968, given that the date is mentioned at one point - actually, I sort of took a stunned breath when I heard that date, given that it came shortly after a round-up of Robert Kennedy's political progress. May 8, 1968 - not quite a month before his death. 

Anyway, I find it interesting to note how much of these two segments are NOT made up of Top 40 music. I haven't used a stop watch or anything, but the duration of the ads and news reports seems at least to be equal to the amount of music hear here. I also got a kick out of the jingle at the very end of the Frank Terry segment, a clear ripoff of the Doublemint Gum jingle. How did they get away with THAT? 

Anyway, here are Frank Terry (on one side of the tape) and the legendary Robert W. Morgan (on the other), perhaps five months apart from each other, heard on KHJ. 

Download: Frank Terry on 93-KHJ, December, 1967

Play:

Download: Robert W Morgan on 93-KHJ, May 8, 1968

Play: 

~~

Due to my postings of Shortwave broadcasts, most of which have been from Australian stations, I've been in occasional contact with Thomas Witherspoon of The Shortwave Radio Audio Archive, and he has reposted several, if not all of my Shortwave postings. 

Here are two more, which I recently came across. These are both segments of episodes of "The Voice of America Jazz Hour", circa 1980, each of which features live recordings of Jazz performers in concert in Europe. I suspect that the recordings shared within this programming might be quite rare, if in fact these tapes were made for VOA and not generally broadcast or released elsewhere. However, it could also be that these performances are actually from released albums, or at least that these performances were later released. By some weird coincidence, these two segments are both 35-36 minutes, even though the show original ran an hour. 

The styles of jazz performance heard here are not at all similar the styles within jazz that 1I prefer, and I therefore know nothing about these performers nor have I tried to research them or these performances. But perhaps some of you out there have a taste for this, and I don't ever want to limit this site to things that I want to hear. If anyone has information to share about these recordings, by all means, do, and I'll pass it along. 

Download: The Voice of America Jazz Hour (over Shortwave), One Episode

Play:

Download: The Voice of America Jazz Hour (over Shortwave), Another Episode

Play:

~~

The next two items both fit the definition of "Sales Pitches", but beyond that, they have absolutely nothing in common. The first is a slick piece of advertising, no doubt the soundtrack to a film, selling (the history of and) the purchase of a weapon of war as nothing less than the cost of maintaining freedom in that modern world (whenever that was - I'm guessing the late 1950's).

The weapon is the Lockheed F-104, and to hear the narrator tell it, it doesn't belong to Lockheed, it belongs to the free world, and to any free country who wants it. Price seems to be no object - somehow I doubt that. The sales pitch actually ends with several minutes extolling freedom - I don't think the product is mentioned in at least the last two minutes of this thing. A rather remarkable document. 

The opening minutes of this tape are in very poor sound quality, but this improves after about 90 seconds. 

Download: Unknown - "Wings of Freedom" - A Short Presentation on the Lockheed F-104

Play:

~~

From the other end of the "Sales" spectrum, here is a low-fi and low-energy presentation about all things file cabinet. 

Download: A Presentation on File Cabinet Sales, 1959

Play:

~~

And now, the "Very Short Reel" for this post. Here we have a couple who have apparently been enjoying (or at least watching) an episode of the seminal soap opera "The Edge of Night", catching, in this recording, the last few moments of the episode, then chatting (with the commercials turned low) about what to have for dinner (eggs, it would seem), then recording the closing credits of the show. Since the announcer mentions a change in scheduling for the following Monday, July 1st, it would seem that (based on the Wikipedia page for this show), that this recording was made on June 28th, 1963. 

Download: Meal Talk and 'The Edge of Night', June 28, 1963

Play:

Vintage Talk Radio with Michael Jackson and Much, Much More

So here's what happened the day I made my last post - later in the afternoon.

I went into the basement and found a moderate size puddle of water, not far from one of the two sunken window wells - the access spots all basements have to have. I assumed, at the time, that we had some sort of seepage - it's happened before, and since very little was on the floor in that area, and not much had been damaged, I figured we'd address it later, and be aware that it might continue to happen.

Two hours later, though, the puddle was twice as big, and as it wasn't raining at that moment, I thought something else was probably going on. And I was right. A pinhole leak had developed in the pipe carrying away the water from our washing machine. A steady, pin-thin torrent was coming out, straight towards the floor, every time we ran the washing machine. And it was directly over one of my shelves full of tape. Not only was it spewing forth at that moment, it had done so at least twice in the previous two days. The direct hits and the splashing hits had managed to damage parts of 16 large stacks of tapes- varying from completely drenched to a little bit moist.

I eventually hustled the tapes upstairs and put them in the garage to air out and dry. Some were fine the next day, others took several days.

Here's what the garage looked like:

And the other angle:

TI do have a contraption that dehumidifies tapes (because of the existence of something calls "sticky tape syndrome" which affects some reels produced in the '70's and '80's - some of you may know about this), so everything should be okay, to varying degrees. I had not yet listened to all of these tapes. 

And I must say, it looks like a much bigger collection when laid out like that, then it does when on a shelving unit. 

And that brings up another point that you might find interesting. The above reflects about 15-16 stacks of tapes. I have roughly six or seven times that many stacks in my basement that are as of yet unheard by me, in addition to those shown above. It seems I need to "get a move on". 

At some point, I may need to enter into conversations about who would want to carry on with these tapes if and when I'm no longer able to (I actually tried to engage the Library of Congress about this a few years ago, when I was in conversation with a staff member about something entirely different, but as soon as I brought up this collection, the staff member broke off contact). 

Thoughts about any and all of this are welcome. But anyway, the last week of August was a challenging one for me and for my reel collection. 

And now: 

~~

One of the more interesting things I came across lately is a segment of talk radio from the mid 1960's, version of the format which has been utterly unknown outside the realm of public radio for at least the last few decades. It's hosted by an erudite English fellow named Michael Jackson (no, of course not that one - THIS one), and it was recorded, as the box says, on October 12th, 1964, not long at all before KHJ jettisoned its adult oriented programming - which was apparently quite something - for Top 40 Radio, the following spring. 

The writing on the box is sort of a mess, but it does confirm what I just wrote: 

And here's the segment, which, as I alluded to, I find fairly fascinating:, both for its style and for the variety of subjects discussed at a fairly critical moment in U. S. History. It starts with a segment of a newscast, but from the one minute point on, it's the Michael Jackson show:  

Download: Michael Jackson on KHJ, Los Angeles, October 12, 1964

Play:

~~

So while we're on the topic of radio, which I know is a favorite for many readers/listeners to this site, I have a really neat collection of ads for Lucky Lager, from 1969, another tape from a collection of Lucky Lager-related reels that I managed to pick up... somewhere. These eight ads - more like sponsorship promos, as they are each about three minutes long - are from the "Sportsman's Friend" series, and they feature short profiles of people and/or places. These were produced by the very well known BBDO, Inc., and are from 1969, facts I learned through careful research and detailed study of the tape box: 

And here's the reel: 

Download: Lucky Lager - Eight "Sportsman's Friend" Features

Play:

~~

Another collection I picked up along the way features, on several of its tapes, Telephone Company related material. I have featured several of these reels in the past, and here is another one, featuring "25 simulated telephone conversations", meant to help train phone "toll traffic observers", presumably to help them learn how to help make sure calls are loud enough to be heard but not so loud as to be uncomfortable.

The content of the fake calls is quite entertaining at times. 

Download: 25 Simulated Telephone Calls

Play:

~~

So every now and then, I like to throw in something either dull or annoying or otherwise difficult to listen to, to give all of you a fuller taste of the nature and variety of the tapes I come across and listen to in order to provide enjoyment for all of us. 

This tape is mercifully short but has little to recommend it, to my ears, despite being one of those, usually precious home recordings, and what's more, a home recording of a child. However, this one is extremely badly recorded, and primarily features the child trying to demonstrate the newest song she (Vernisha?) has learned on piano, one which she hasn't actually really learned yet. 

The opening greeting is cute, as is her response when she is called to clean the dishes. Following that point, she returns, and I absolutely cannot make out much of what's she's saying over the next 45 seconds - it may be gibberish, or it may be in another language, or it may be an assumed accent, but the distorted sound doesn't help. In the last 35 seconds, she becomes more intelligible. And then it ends. 

If the whole tape was this kid talking as at the end, and was recorded well, it would probably be gold. But in this form it's fairly hard to listen to. Maybe you'll feel differently...

Download; Unknown: Bad Piano and Rambling Talk

Play:

~~

And finally, as always, our very short reel. Today's reel features two ads for "Kingsbury Homes", wherever those were sold. One has the sales pitch from start to finish, and the other has a music bed for what would have been a live read over it. 

Additionally, a bit more of tape was left on the reel, and it contains very brief segments of three other recordings in quick succession over less than 12 seconds, at the very end. This tape clearly was used multiple times before the Kingsbury Homes ads were recorded. Sort of an interesting little medley of sounds...

Download: Two Kingsbury Homes Ads (and a bit more)

Play:

It's been a while since I digitized that one, and I don't quite know where the box is, so I don't have a scan...