Interesting Radio Recordings from Two Paper Reels, Birthday Time, An Odd Promo, Music in a Bar and at Home, A Little German, and the use of Cactus and Wood Needles

Howdy, 

I'm starting off today with something I find absolutely fascinating. I recently was lucky enough to purchase two paper reels - that is, reels without plastic backing, just paper. Both were Soundmirror reels, from the company I believe was first in producing reel tape for home buyers. Since that company was out of the reel tape business by 1952, and paper reels were gone by 1953, it's always possible that there could be recordings as much as 80 years old on such a tape. 

That's not quite the case here - these recordings are more like 73 years old - but they are fascinating nonetheless. The first one I listened to had an episode of a radio program called "Answers for Americans", which was heard on the Mutual radio network. A panel of experts answered political questions from listeners, with prizes to the listeners whose questions were used. 

Multiple online sites indicate this was a right wing show particularly focused on anti-communism, but this particular episode really just sounds like the questioners, and the experts, getting their bearings at a very scary moment - the weeks after Stalin died - when a lot of questions about any resetting of US/Soviet relations were unsettled. While I'm sure a left-wing show would have sounded much different, I doubt that a mainstream right-down-the-middle show would have been much different at that particular moment. 

Again, your mileage may vary, but boy did I enjoy listening to this. 

Download: "Answers For Americans" On Mutual Radio, Spring, 1953

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The show ended before the tape did, and at the end of it, there is this fragment of some sort of variety program. The man speaking and singing throughout mentions having starred in "Million Dollar Legs", meaning he could conceivably be one of three male stars of that movie. I certainly am not an expert in any of them, but I'm guessing it's Donald O'Connor

Download: Fragment of a Variety Show circa 1953

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The other paper reel was interesting for a different reason. The person who recorded "Answers for Americans" seemingly recorded another episode of that show or something similar, for the conversation (actually it's more like a series of short speeches) is about how a "One-World Government" would be possible, but only if it were to be a "FREE One-World Government", and I'm sure we all know whose definition of "Free" they were using. 

I believe our recordist must have left the machine alone to record, because powerhouse clear channel station WCKY, and its Country and Western format, begins showing up, interfering with the speechifying. Each station struggles to be heard over the other for a time, but eventually, the Cincinnati C & W format wins out, and the speeches are not heard at all for the last few minutes. What is heard is some down-home entertainment, also likely from right around 1953, complete with ads for worthless patent medicines, which are claimed to be able to cure oh so many ills. 

It's hard to listen to at times, but man oh man, is it rewarding in the end. And the far better radio format wins in the end, too. Well, that's what I think, anyway. 

Download: Competing Stations - "One Free World Government" Discussion Vs. Country and Western on WCKY, Cincinnati

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There is nothing written on either of these tapes' boxes, by the way. One last comment - our recordist clearly intended to record the speeches. Why on earth, after listening to the tape and determining that they had not been recorded correctly, didn't he or she use the tape again? Did the recordist enjoy this mish-mash of sounds?!?!?

~~

And now, for all you "Ed and Frank" fans, here is more from Ed and Frank: an hour of their drummer and electric piano noodling, as recorded at some facility where I'm guessing a lot of beer was consumed, almost exactly 69 years ago. 

Download: Ed and Frank, 7-4-57
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~~

Or perhaps children's birthdays are more to your liking. This tape is from the 1960's, most likely 1968 based on other material on the reel, some of which I will share at a later date. It's short and (mostly) sweet.

In it, Kay's father tries to get her to talk more than she wants to, we hear some other children and then the requisite singing of "MacArthur Park". No, wait, that's wrong. It's "Happy Birthday". 

Download: Kay's Birthday

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Maybe you can make out the words "Kay's Birthday" on the back of the box: 

~~

A company called "Magna-Tronics", also probably sometime in the 1960's, promoted a Muzak-like product, which, rather than being for stores, was for radio stations (!) which wanted to simply program someone else's pre-recorded series of bland musical performers for AM or FM broadcast. 

I have no idea how successful this was - it seems like a fool's errand to me - but here is the promotional tape used to sell the program managers on this product. I have one other tape from this company, an actual example of the product that they sent to stations, which I will feature later. 

Download: Magna-Tronics Radio Station Easy Listening Promo Tape

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Quite some time ago - and I can't seem to find the post at the moment - I shared some home recordings of old-timey type music and more recent standards, recorded by some folks who clearly got together frequently and made music... and sometimes recorded it. I have a handful of tapes from these folks, and today I have a second recording by them, about 40 minutes this time, and in this case with all of their names identified on the tape box, and if I can find that box, I will add it to this post. I do have their names in the file name. 

Download: More Music at Home - Bill, Vernene, Dianne, Helen and Flavian, 3/23/62

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Well, this is not the box that goes along with that reel, but it is a box from a tape with some of the same people. They all look more or less like this: 

~~

And for the last reel today.... I wasn't sure what to do with this but I decided to share it. Maybe someone out there can let all of us know what is being said. As it is titled "A woman speaking "mostly" in German". And that's really and truly all I know about it. 

Download: A Woman Speaking (Mostly) in German

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~~

And finally, here's an Acetate of the Month. It looks like this: 

As you can see. it features what is mostly a blank label from the Acetate company / recording studio, with what might be a family name written in the corner. Note the encouragement to use a "cactus or wood" needle to play this record. WHAT???? Well, a bit of internet sleuthing shows both of these are for real. That's a new one on me!

One side features a bunch of conversations - which definitely sounds like "around the house" type conversations than those that would have taken place in a studio, then a short rendition of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart". Here 'tis: 

Download: Cathedral Latin Acetate - Family Conversations and Let Me Call You Sweetheart

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The flip side is considerably longer, and I've labeled it "Some Sort of Family Skit". That's the best I can do. Maybe someone with better ears than me can make out all of what goes on here. Despite my cluelessness, I still sort of enjoy it. 

Download: Cathedral Latin Acetate - Some Sort of Family Skit

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~~

Very Short Reels will return next time!

Some Rare Monty Python, More Australian Shortwave, Mr. Handy and a REALLY Long Tape Few Are Likely to Listen To

Hello everyone, 

I hope you've had a wonderful summer, unless you're in the Southern Hemisphere (like some of the people featured today), in which case I hope you start to have a swell spring soon.

Today I have something I believe to be quite rare. Although I can find a few dozen places online where this recording is referenced, I have been unable to find anywhere that this actual recording is posted or otherwise available. I may have missed something, in which case perhaps this is not as rare as I thought, but even if so, I'm making it available more readily here, I hope, and for free. 

This comes from one of my own home recorded reels, which I am slowly going through to find out their contents. And I've worked my way up to tapes made in 1976, the year I turned 16, and more to the point, perhaps 18 months after my mother and I became extremely early American converts to Monty Python (as I explained partway through this extremely long post). This is, specifically, a recording of the troupe's appearance on the King Biscuit radio show, in May of 1976. 

This performance is from the same series of shows (and same venue, of course) as was released on the "Live at City Center" album that also came out in 1976, with two significant differences. First, it is a different performance - this probably amounts to the most minor of changes from the released album (I haven't compared them), but it is a different show. And second, and perhaps more importantly, it contains a very humorous and self-depreciating introduction from John Cleese. 

I hope that all Python fans enjoy this recording. 

Download: Monty Python's Flying Circus Live - On King Biscuit Flower Hour - 5-9-76

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The other recording on the same tape is less rare. It's an appearance of some of the troupe on "The Mike Douglas Show" that same week in May of 1976. There is a video of part of this appearance on YouTube. It is not the entire segment heard below, and it is in poor video and audio quality, but it is there. This, on the other hand, is the entire appearance, obviously without video but with much better sound quality (although my mom chimes in at one point to explain what's happening). 

Unfortunately, a good part of the visit is taken up with clips from the show and from the movie they were promoting ("The Holy Grail"), presumably to help the squares who watched Mike Douglas get an idea of what and who the Monty Python trouble was. Doubly unfortunate, John Cleese and Graham Chapman - the heart and soul of the troupe, in my opinion, are not present for the interview (Eric Idle isn't there either, but he was always - by far - the weak link of the troupe, for me, anyway). 

Download: Monty Python's Flying Circus Promote "The Holy Grail" On the Mike Douglas Show, 5-14-76

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~~

Somewhere along the line I managed to acquire a whole bunch of someone's tapes of Australian shortwave broadcasts from the 1960's and 1970's. My un-listened-to tapes in my basement have gotten jumbled around several times over the years, so a lot of collections which were once stacked all in one place are now scattered amongst the stacks down there. And so it is that this week, I found yet another tape of Australian shortwave recordings. The recordings only include the day of the week and the date, not the year, but based on those days and dates, and the contents of the broadcasts, I am surmising the first of these to be from September of 1968 and the other to be from nearly exactly two years later. 

The 1968 recording starts off difficult to hear and grows progressively worse - this is not an easy to listen to tape - such are the vagaries of listening to short wave broadcasts. The 1970 tape is considerably clearer in sound quality. 

Download: Australian Shortwave, 9-23-68

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Download: Australian Shortwave, 9-12-70

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~~

Okay, now here's a segment that perhaps only the masochistic among you might listen to. But I listened to all five hours plus of it, so I'll be damned if I'm not going to do something with it. But it is tedious and endless. 

I don't know what exactly was going on here, but what seems to be small group of friends/acquaintances spend nearly four and a half hours (in the first segment), singing songs, some of them multiple times during that length of time, accompanied by a few musicians. A lot of these are old, old songs, some of them probably fairly recent to whenever this was recorded. At one point, there is a lengthy break for what sounds like a meal, and it becomes clear that there are also a few children present. For a good period of time there is no singing and the soft conversations are hard to pick up at time. Then it's back to the singing, which is followed at the end by some goodbyes and final conversations. Enjoy? 

Download: A Group of People Sing a Lot of Songs (and Talk a Lot) for a Really Long Time

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When that segment ends, the tape immediately reverts to what was being erased by that lengthy recording, and that was, MORE recordings seemingly featuring the same people, or at least a similar gang of folks. There seem to be two recordings here, of differing sound quality, and they make up another 40 minutes plus of the same sort of things heard in the other, longer segment, including a lot of the same songs. 

I'm not even going to speculate as to what the event was or who these people are/were. I'm just glad I wasn't there. 

Download: A Few More (Much Shorter) Segments with the Same People

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~~

Well, after that heavy and unappetizing meal, how about some lovely dessert. Our "Very Short Reel" features a radio announcer trying - and most of the time failing - to record a few ads for an apparently legendary and much loved business in Springfield, Ohio, "Mr. Handy", complete with hard-sell backing music. This business just closed five months ago, after 45 years in business

Download: Unknown - Recording Mr. Handy Commercials

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~~

And finally, a mint on your pillow for getting all the way through this post. This doesn't really qualify as a "Very Short Reel", even though it's only 66 seconds long; it was pulled out of a 75 minute tape of (mostly) classical music recorded off of the radio at some point in the 1950's, probably the early 1950's. I faded in and faded out this segment, which was buried deep in the second side of this tape. It is simply a moment that made me laugh, and I decided to excerpt it here and share it with you. What's are the call letters of that station, do you say? And that's all I'll say. 

Download: A Humorous Moment

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A 1963 College Jazz Festival, Interviewing the Family, Top 40 Radio in 1966, Some Odd Rehearsals, A One Man Hodgepodge, The Rotations of Mars and Earth, and Some Pasta!

 Howdy, 

First, I'd like to feature a couple of comments from recent posts. A frequent poster who goes by "Snoopy" made some fun comments on this post, and specifically the echoey Chicago radio segment, and also asked "What the HELL is going on?!" at the 24:24 mark. I actually meant to mention this - there was some a cappella singing at a different speed on the flip side of this tape, which somehow bled through, backwards, for the last 25 seconds or so of that radio segment. 

And as I was sure he would, Eric Paddon helpfully cleared up any confusion about the baseball recording I posted last time around. Silly me, I didn't even check to see if the dominant game heard therein was the same game as any of the previous offerings. It turns out that it was. How this game ended up on two different reels, with the end AND start of this game on one reel and the rest on another, is a real mystery. Here's what he wrote: 

Back on March 18, you had posted the Bottom 6th to beginning of the Top 8th of this same 7/3/62 game and the beginning of this post picks up exactly where the previous one left off with Jim Landis batting in the Top 8th for the first two and a half minutes. Then it gets inaudible for the next few minutes but then around the five minute mark what we're hearing when the announcer mentions Joe Azcue is batting is the Kansas City A's-Detroit Tigers first game of a doubleheader from August 1 ,1962 with George Kell announcing on the Tiger network but the July 3, 1962 game is still bleeding through at intervals during that but it is predominantly the August 1, 1962 A's-Tigers game that dominates what's audible for the next ten minutes (faintly) and then suddenly we're back in July 3, 1962 starting at the end of the Top 2nd and that continues in good quality up to the Bottom 6th when the previous recording began (except for a couple bizarre sequences where someone is doing a test at slow speed over the recording.)

I have stitched together a single file of all material from this game in the right sequence: 

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6krt6umaas2hy1vmcq8qq/1962-07-03-White-Sox-vs.-Tigers-WCFL-Partial.mp3?rlkey=21niwfuyrayhhtnq6u0oo7qg0&st=hcv31y46&dl=0

Thanks!

~~

I'm going to start with a real (reel) winner this time, a lengthy recording of a broadcast of "The 1963 Villanova Intercollegiate Jazz Festival". This was the third such festival, and aside from the announcer talking over a few bits of performances, it's great stuff. The legendary John Hammond even stops by for an interview. I don't think any more needs to be said. 

Download: The Third Annual Villanova Intercollegiate Jazz Festival, 1963

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Next, something else very special! A long-time reader/listener name Bram B. offered up a three inch reel of tape which had come with a vintage Westinghouse machine (the type that could only record three inch reels, and which looked, to me, more like a sewing machine!) that he had bought some time earlier. The machine did not work correctly, just enough for him to recognize the recording as a home recording of a man and some children. So he sent the tape to me! 

One side of the tape was country music recorded off of records - most of it sounded (to me) like Jim Reeves, which is always a treat. But the real worthwhile stuff was on the other side. 

As Bram first described to me - and I agree - it sounds like a family patriarch, perhaps a visiting grandfather, interviewing some young children. And it is mostly delightful - a segment in which he works way too hard to get one shy child to talk is the only blemish here. The rest is very enjoyable and I wish there was more of it. The supposition he expresses at one point that one of the children would like Batman and Robin seems to date this to the brief but intense heyday of the ABC TV show of 1966-68, so this likely a dates from around that time. 

THANKS, BRAM!

Download: A Man Interviews Some Young Family Members, circa mid-1960's

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I do not know the source of this next tape, although maybe someone out there can make some sense out of this tape box: 

The tape contains a brief lecture - source unknown - about Earth and Mars, the relative speed of each and, essentially, how a contest between the two of them around the sun might be described. That's about all I think I have to say: 

Download: Unknown - A Short Talk On the Rotations of Earth and Mars

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Tapes from the golden age of Top 40 Radio are always welcomed by many people here and on other sites, so I'm sharing this one despite it's multiple flaws. It is poorly recorded, and the recordist chose to edit out commercials and some of the deejay patter. Given that those two things are often the most valuable parts of such tapes, this is, as I said, a lesser example of such a recording. However, it is a portion of a station's top hits countdown show, and some of what the deejay had to say is still there. 

The station is WILS, Lansing, MI, and, fairly remarkably, I found an online posting of the very survey being counted down here (although it starts with a "flashback" to 1964). The date on the survey is April 6, 1966, and it can be seen here. I was quite taken with the fact that there was a local hit, presented as up-and-coming on this show, by a local group called The Plagues. Perhaps others are familiar with this group - they are well known enough to have their own Wikipedia page - but if you'd asked me if a group named after a deadly disease would have had a hit song in 1966, I'd have said that would be very unlikely. 

Download: WILS, Lansing Michigan - Portions of the Top 20 Countdown for 4-6-66

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I've titled this next segment "A One Man Hodgepodge", and I can think of no better name for it (even though a woman joins the man at the end of the segment). Over the course of these 19 minutes, you'll hear a bit of some sort of reedy instrument, some religious songs and readings (including a bit of Revelation), a bit of a fake newscast, and some guitar accompanying wordless vocalizing. At certain points, one of those categories of recording repeatedly interrupts one or more of the other categories listed. 

Download: A One Man Hodgepodge

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And now, the "Acetate of the Month". This is a pretty early Acetate, dated July of 1939, and while it initially sounds like it contains a quiz show, but after a single question, it turns out to contain ads for Fleet-Wing Gasoline, a company I've never heard of. There are three commercials in all, each containing a tricky question, which then segues into an ad for this product. 

Here's the label: 

Note that already, by 1933, radio stations and others who needed playable material were using the 33 1/3 RPM speed, a decade and a half before it was introduced for commercially available products. 

There are many and varied photos of and comments about Fleet-Wing gas stations and products, and one poster to a Fleet-Wing thread out there says the company existed from 1928 to 1970. I've never heard of them before, myself. 

Download: General Broadcasting System 12 inch Acetate - Three Fleet-Wing Announcements, 7-20-39

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And now for a "Very Short Reel". I am very happy to announce that I recently bought a small box full of three and five inch tapes, most of which contain radio ads created by the Needham Harper Steers agency, and I will be digging into this pile of tapes from time to time in upcoming posts. Here's the tape which was on top of the rest when I opened the box. There's no date on this tape (or on any of them, I don't think). It contains three ads for Mueller's Pasta, another company I've never heard of. This company, however, still exists, and according to their website, the nearest store to me carrying their products is over 60 miles away from my home. 

Download: Needham Harper Steers - Three Mueller's Pasta Ads

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The Young Sound of '68, Bishop Sheen Talks to Teenagers, The Supreme Court in 1963, a Combo in 1966, TV School, and THE RETURN OF PETE!

Greetings! 

It's been almost a month since my last posting - again due to stuff here at home - and I may not get another post out this month, so I'm going to share a LOT of stuff here, five and a half hour's worth. 

Just a few quick comments before I get to this week's offerings. Regarding a short tape I included in my last post - the end of a broadcast day at an Indiana station - Chad offered up the following: 

Wow! That's almost certainly the only extant recording of WHFS, which only appears in radio directories from 1956 through 1958. There were a lot of short lived FM radio stations in the early days, the technology being new and slow to catch on. Airchecks of any radio station from this era are rare, FM Radio airchecks of this era are nearly non-existent, to begin with but to find one from such a short lived station is practically a Holy Grail!

In that case, I am extremely glad to have found/shared it. 

Regarding an item in a post three months ago featuring a lot of unknown music as heard on powerhouse Top 40 station WINS, Ken had this suggestion: 

One other thing that occurred to me after my post above. Murray the K was on WINS. He had a nightly feature where he'd play 5 new records and listeners would vote on them. The weekday winners would be in the "finals" on Saturday night. This meant that he was playing 25 new records each week, many of which were never heard again. I'm willing to bet a lot of those unknown tracks are from those shows.

Thanks, guys, and thanks to everyone for such great comments. I appreciate your visits, your reading and your listening. 

~~

Full radio airchecks - of any vintage and any format - seem to be a favorite of many of you out there reading this site, so I will start with a couple of recordings, found on either side of a reel of tape, of a rather esoteric and fairly short lived format, one that I can't believe was ever successful. And it happened right here in Chicago. 

The station was WBBM-FM and it was the late 1960's. You can read about it right here. The powers that be wanted to appeal to young people - I would guess those under 25 - but not play any of that icky rock and roll. So - and I'll paraphrase Wikipedia here - one would hear bland instrumental cover versions of recent hits, pop instrumentals (distinctly on the Herb Alpert end of things), and rock-adjacent-but-not-really-rock vocal hits such as those from Petula Clark.

They called this "The Young Sound". Yeah. "The Young Sound."

I don't have the ratings books from 1966-1970, but "The Young" of Chicago could not possibly have been listening in droves to "The Young Sound" on WBBM in 1968. They weren't MOR-ons. 

The first side of this tape seems to have been made "open air" in someone's home - you can hear all manner of conversation and noises in the background and sometimes close to being in the foreground. Not so on the flip side. The first side is likely from 1968. The second side is definitely from September 18th, 1968, based on some of the news reported therein. The deejay is Bud Kelly. The linked Wikipedia article makes it sound like Bud Kelly was the ONLY deejay there. 

Download: Bud Kelly on WBBM-FM, Chicago, 'The Young Sound", circa 1968 (with background sound)

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Download: Bud Kelly on WBBM-FM, Chicago, 'The Young Sound', 9-18-68

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On to some live show-band stuff. In addition to the comments above, I also heard from frequent poster and friend of both of my blogs, Timmy, who expressed his undying love for bar/lounge acts. I'm not sure this is exactly up his alley, but if not, it is probably close. 

I have recently discovered that I have a treasure trove of tapes featuring the performances of a troupe variously identified on these tapes as "Styles" and as "The Jack Dodd Shaffer Quintet". I may not have that latter name quite right, and the different stage names may have depended on how many members were in the band (it appears to have varied) or perhaps the name changed during their existence as a group. And I don't have a name to attach to this particular performance, as the name of the combo is not on the box and doesn't appear to be spoken during the recording. 

All of the tapes feature the same basic shows, with some variety as to the particular songs played and the sketches and humor included. 

That's right, sketches and humor. The act, on most of these tapes, contains set pieces, some of them rather lengthy, all of them moronic and most of them built around vapid jokes of a sexual nature that barely qualify as adolescent humor. I'm sure it was all a bit risqué for the 1960's, at least in some environs. Perhaps those who thought this stuff was funny and/or cutting edge were the same people who thought 17 year olds in 1968 wanted to hear Petula Clark and instrumental version of the Doors. It all ties together, doesn't it? 

Anyway, there is A LOT MORE where this came from, if anyone is interested, or even if no one is interested. So now, for your dining, dancing and laughing pleasure, here they are, the whatever-their-name-was-band, straight from New Year's Day, 1966 at Dick's Rancho Inn in Millbrook, New York. I can't find the tape box at the moment, which is odd, because I just digitized this tape three weeks ago, but the above information is written on the box, and I'll add a scan, when I find it. 

This is for you, Timmy! And if you, or anyone else wants more, let me know: 

Download: Unknown Combo - Music and Comedy at Dick's Rancho Inn, Millbrook, New York, 1-1-66

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And speaking of music that some people can't get enough of, and others wish there was none of, I now present the second of two features on PETE! In my last post, I shared one tape that Pete made, in which he apparently collected a bunch of his older tapes, onto a five inch reel. 

On this tape, Pete did the same, with some comments here and there. But this time, for whatever reason, Pete frequently chose to sing along with the tapes he was copying, with the original on the left channel and the new, further vocal accompaniments on the right channel. The thing is - and here I will quote what I wrote last month: "These performances are, to use the technical term, awful. And it does not appear that Pete was particularly aware of this."

I wrote a lot more about Pete in that last post, and I won't repeat that or go on about him here. The following are the two sides of this tape. The first side, as indicated by its title, contains some other, non-Pete recordings at the end, including the odd juxtapositioning of a bawdy, double entendre 78 RPM record with a religiously themed record. 

Download: Pete - Pete's Hootenanny, Part One (and a Bit of Potpourri)

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Download: Pete - Pete's Hootenanny, Part Two

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As with the other tape, Pete chose to fill nearly every inch of the outside of the tape box with writings about the tape's contents, as you can see: 

Additionally, he included four scraps of paper and cardboard with further information. Well, three with further information and one with a partial ad for Volkswagen. 

He also wrote on the inside of the box: 

~~

Bishop Fulton Sheen was, during his lifetime, one of the most famous men in the country. Read about him, if you'd like at the link I just shared. So when I found a tape called "Bishop Sheen Talks to Teenagers", I figured it was probably a recording that was readily available online. But... that doesn't appear to be the case, unless my searching simply failed to turn it up. This recording appears to be from a television broadcast, rather than a record, so maybe that's why it's not out there somewhere (unless it is). This actually goes in a few directions I wasn't expecting, before landing on the same old reciting of expectations that I knew were coming at some point. Here is that tape: 

Download: Bishop Sheen Talks to Teenagers

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"Continental Classroom" was - to directly quote Wikipedia this time - "a U.S. educational television program that was broadcast on the NBC network five days a week in the early morning from 1958 to 1963, covering physics, chemistry, mathematics, and American government. It was targeted at teachers and college students and many institutions offered college credit for courses of which the broadcasts were the main component." 

I have featured the program here before - at some point, I obtained a LARGE collection of tapes made of a wide range of media recordings, including, in several cases, episodes of this show. 

With the Supreme Court in the news seemingly every three days nowadays, I thought I'd share the recordings of a three part series on the court, which aired in February of 1963. I'll share one segment per post for the next three posts. Here is the first one: 

Download: Continental Classroom - 2-12-63 - The Supreme Court, Part One

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~~

And now for an EXTREMELY Short "Very Short Reel". At 43 seconds, it's not the shortest segment featured at the end of a post, but it's close. I've called it "A Brother and Sister and Their Dad". And I'll let you enjoy its pleasures without saying anything else. 

Download: A Brother and Sister and Their Dad

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A Tragic Industry, Some Funny Recipes, Children at Home, The Summer of '64 and More

First off, I'd like to than Eric Patton - yet again - for identifying details that I didn't have the resources (or, in this case, didn't take the time) to dig up. The baseball recording from my last post is from a game played on July 3, 1962. 

To Eric and anyone else who is interested: This particular collection of reels contains two more tapes of baseball broadcasts from roughly the same era (very late 1950's or very early 1960's). However, the recording quality is as bad as I've ever heard on a tape, and worse than anything I've ever heard here short of shortwave - they sound like they are coming over shortwave, and broadcasts simply start and stop at random. At one point, I realized I was listening to a broadcast of a collage baseball game. If there is interest, I will post these. But... they are lengthy (one is two hours, twelve minutes and the other is 55 minutes) and REALLY hard to listen to. Let me know!

~~

I'd like to start with something pretty awful, but awfully fascinating, too. It's an interview, very likely from the 1950's, with someone named Captain Hill (along with "Jimmy") on a show which I think might be called "The Pepperell Forum" - but that's just a guess, as the name of the show is said very quickly. The host is Major Barren (and again, I'm guessing at the spelling of his name). 

The subject of this abomination is "The Sealing Industry", aka the killing of seals, including baby seals, for their pelts and other materials. While I understand that this is basic necessity for people such as the Inuit, that's not what's under discussion here, and in any event, the killing of seal pups - discussed here - has long since been outlawed. 

I guess I'm both horrified and mesmerized - in the way one might be at looking at a terrible car crash - at the tone of this interview, which is very much clinical and informational. At one, point the interviewer does make mention of something terrible or awful happening, and I thought maybe he was going to acknowledge that they were talking about something incredibly cruel. But no, he was talking about an outing for hunting that ended in the deaths of multiple hunters. Oh, that. 

And to the contrary of any thoughts of awfulness contained in the practice itself, at the end of the show, we are told that the we've been hearing about "The Fabulous Sealing Industry". 

Download: The Pepperell Forum - The Fabulous Sealing Industry

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How about a palate cleanser. I was requested some time ago to share more tapes from my own childhood, and I was absolutely delighted to find the following short tape not too long ago, on a tape I had not listened to since I was a teenager (at which point I had catalogued what was on said tape), and which I have no recollection of EVER hearing before. 

I believe I've about eight years old here (putting this in 1968 or 1969), recording on what may have been the first tape given to me to be my very own - a three inch reel, recorded at the ultra slow speed of 1 7/8 IPS, in quarter track mono (different recordings on all four tracks) so as to get the most recording time out of it. Most of it was nearly unlistenable goofing off, save for some very nice interactions with my older brother. But in one segment, heard below, I read a series of recipes. I would love to say that I was this creative or deliberately funny to have written all of these fake recipes tongue-in-cheek at age eight, but that's absolutely not the case.

No, I'm reading from some source. I don't know where I got these from, but I'm guessing it was a book. And listening to the tape, I'm fairly certain this was a book - or perhaps an article - featuring a series of recipes dictated by kids my own age or younger. They are silly, funny, ridiculous and delightful. I love this tape. 

Download: Bobby Reads Kid Recipes

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Now it's time for some other children, perhaps a decade before the above - at least, I'm guessing it's the late 1950's), being silly, being fun... being kids. It's apparently both the week between Christmas and New Years (or thereabouts) AND around the time for one of the children's birthdays, judging from the various conversations heard here. 

This tape was in the same stack of tapes as was the one from which came the "very short reel" in my last post - the segment with the section about the cow going moo - and it could well be that both tapes came from the same family. 

Download: Kathy, Jackie, Michael and Others - Home Recordings, Christmas and Birthday Talk and More

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Here's something common to this blog but just a little bit different. It's a tape made from New York Top 40 powerhouse WINS in the summer of 1964. Normally, I'd be drooling over this, as would a certain percentage of my readers/listeners. However, this is one of those frustrating tapes where the taper made every effort - very effectively - to cut out all DJ voice overs, patter and commercials, and just get the songs. 

The reason I'm sharing it anyway (since it only contains the songs, many of which are extremely commonly available) is that I was sort of taken aback by the sheer variety of music heard on such a leading Top 40 station that summer. I am a huge record collector and have been studying the charts, and pop music in general, for more than 45 years. Yet there were close to a dozen songs within this two hours of recording that I'd never heard before. 

And were it not for the lists of songs included in the box, I'd have had to do a lyric search to find out what they were, and I'm quite certain some of them would not have been found online by that search. I was also sort of dumbfounded that The Beatles didn't show up until about 90 minutes into the recording, and even then, they appeared first in a version of one of their songs by The Boston Pops. Really? On WINS? The actual Beatles don't show up - during a tape made while they were dominating radio and the world - until eight songs from the end of the tape. 

I know that at that time there was a plethora of local and regional hits heard on many regional stations, but I guess I didn't expect that to be the case so much for what was perhaps the most powerful Top 40 station of its day. The tape box says something about "Tip Top Talent Hunt" - perhaps that's the explanation - that portions of this tape were recorded during was some sort of "potential future hits" programming. But on the other hand, the more obscure records heard here are played throughout the length of the tape...

Here's that portion of the box: 

One final note: I was sort of stunned by the out and out theft of others' material heard early on in this tape. The third song on the tape is identified as "Rules of Love", and even the compiler here didn't know who the artist is (an online search finds a single hit for the lyrics, and attributes them to The Orlons, which makes sense given the weird bass singer heard on this track). This record is literally "What'd I Say" rewritten with new lyrics. Note for note, section for section and nearly chord for chord. Astonishing. Three songs later comes "Moon Maid", a deeply unlikely tribute to a side character from the Dick Tracy comic strip which owes its existence to "Alley Oop". A little less ridiculous in terms of plagiarism, but only by degrees. (Youtube proves this one to be by "Billy Dee & The Debonaires", by the way.)

Download: WINS, New York, Summer, 1964

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And here are the lists - I believe you can open/save these and make them bigger. I made them small to save space: 

      

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And now, a little Ed and Frank. I have, in my collection, a small group of tapes featuring said duo, performing live at who-knows-where, each of them with little stickers on the reel with their names, the date, the speed of the tape and, on this tape, at least, the words "electric piano". And that's all I know. 

Actually, I find this stuff pretty damn unlistenable - it is electric piano... and brushed drums, with the very occasional vocal thrown in. Now, when I write what I'm about to write, I'm not talking about billed duos who actually have a full band behind them, or folk singing duos who don't need anything more than a acoustic instruments and voices: 

But with those exceptions, two person "groups" are, in my experience, pretty ridiculous, painfully limited and generally awful - looking at you, The White Stripes - and Ed and Frank are no exception. 

Download: Ed And Frank, 7-4-57

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For my "Acetate of the Month", I've selected a record featuring a presentation of William E. Fitzpatrick, being honored as the "Rochester Citizen of the Day" on some unnamed radio station and by an unnamed announcer. The date is August 1st, 1951, and the record looks like this. 

And it sounds like this: 

Download: Audiodisc Acetate - Rochester Citizen of the Day - William E Fitzpatrick - 8-1-51

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The flip side simply says "NG" for No Good (see below), but contains the same material, told in three seconds longer than on the usable side. For whatever reason, this version was not considered suitable for airplay. 

Download: Audiodisc Acetate - Rochester Citizen of the Day - William E Fitzpatrick - 8-1-51 (NG Side)

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And now for the "Very Short Reels" entry for this week's post. And technically, this is part of a slightly longer reel (15 minutes or so), as this section comes after a short period of some dull recordings of commonly available music off of full albums played on the radio. A young woman gives the date and is excited about the upcoming Perry Como Kraft Music Hall show with Eddy Arnold - this allowed me to identify the year as 1967. Here is that show. Then there's time for a bit of talk about the music she'd just shared and just a little bit of family news and personal goings-on, and talks just a bit about some situation familiar to both her and the recipient of her outreach. 

Download: A Short Audio Letter - 1-25-67

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BASEBALL for Opening Day, Wife Beating Songs for Children, Life at Home in the Mid 1950's, Jazz from Charlie's Party and Beyond, and the Cow Goes Moo

Hello! 

I forgot to add this when I posted this, but I have tapes for sale. I also forgot to publicize the last two batches, which sold earlier this month. But these are still available. Nothing posted to this site is on any of the tapes listed in that auction. 

And now: Let's jump right into things. Major League Baseball got an early jump again this year, with two teams starting the season today in Japan, while the rest of the teams are still playing Spring Training. My Chicago Cubs - the ONLY team that matters - have a two game series of games that will count against the Los Angeles Dodgers - who have been the Spawn of Satan since at least 1976, maybe 1973 (I'm not sure about earlier) - before both teams go back to Spring Training. 

In honor of the Cubs opening the season, here are their Artificial League (AL) Chicagoland cohorts, the White Sox, heard over very poor reception in a game against the Tigers, perhaps from 1962 

(I'm guessing 1962 because the other side of the tape was a poor recording of part of the second 1962 All Star Game, at Wrigley Field. That broadcast, in full and in better quality, is on YouTube). 

I suppose it's possible that this broadcast is also out there already somewhere, but I have no idea how to find out if it is. I'm sure someone out there will know - much quicker than I would - how to date this recording.

Regardless of the appalling lack of CUBS in this recording, it's still a lot of fun. Plus, it's always amazing and encouraging to me, when I hear old baseball broadcasts, to realize how little has changed about the game, in the (in this case) roughly 62 or 63 ensuing years. That is, except for the damnable Designated Hitter rule, which is no Spawn - it is the direct work of Satan himself.  

Download: White Sox at Tigers, 6th, 7th and 8th Innings

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I was quite pleased and surprised to find a nearly complete episode of a show featuring Alan Mills from CBC radio on an otherwise nondescript reel the other day. With my folk music background and my history of working with children, Mills' voice was very familiar one to me, and this show was called "Folk Songs for Young Folk". 

I mentioned up there how baseball seems to be eternally the same in a lot of ways. Well, here we have the opposite: In what could not be a more clear example of how much times have changed, this show - which I'm guessing is from the late 1950's - is largely focused on songs about marital discord, including every grade school child's favorite subject, wife beating. It's all handled with the most pleasant and avuncular good humor, too. 

Download: Folk Songs for Young Folk with Alan Mills on the CBC

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The next three segments all come from the same tape. And as much as some - perhaps many - of you may find the first part too sickly sweet, I found it deeply endearing and memorable. It is an edited version of a considerably longer tape, a tape which mainly features the cries, gurgles and other sounds made by an infant named Paulie in late November, 1955. 

I have come across many such tapes - in the days before video cameras, I think it was fairly common for parents to audiotape their newborn's utterances. But that's not the focus of the segment heard here. For whatever reason, halfway through the side of the tape, the child's mother, Betty, begins thinking out loud about the baby, about his father and grandfather, about his development so far, etc., and.... well, like I said, I found it extremely touching. I hope you do, too. 

Download: Mommy Betty and Baby Paulie, 11-28-55

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On the other side of the tape are more baby recordings, from February of 1956, then, the following curious little segment, in which Betty complains that someone who borrowed the machine may have damaged it in some way (the recordings sound fine to me) and it order to test it, she will read from the Sears Catalog. Not, mind you, the products and prices, but rather, the advertising copy no doubt on the first few pages, telling the customer how wonderful Sears is. And for someone simply doing a machine test, four minutes seems sort of... excessive? 

Download: Betty Tests the Machine by Reading from the Sears Catalog

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After she's done expounding on the wonders of the Sears company, for the rest of the reel, we get to hear a fairly wonderful example of what local radio sounded like, circa 1955. I'm guessing 1955 as that's when the baby recordings started and this is what those recordings were erasing, at least up to the halfway point or more of side two. In this case, it's the long-lived, but now defunct WMAQ in Chicago, with a bit of midwestern daytime radio, typical of the era. 

Download: A Few Minutes of WMAQ, Chicago, Circa 1955

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The biggest chunk of tape I have for you today is the entire contents of a tape which came in a box that looks like this: 

The back of the box (below) says "Dixieland and Other Jazz From Our Annual Studio Party for Charlie Miller" featuring - I think I'm reading this right - Guy and Lenore Preston. If those names mean anything to anyone out there please leave a comment. Otherwise, I'm just going to let this go without further comment. 

Download: Dixieland and Other Jazz From Our Annual Studio Party for Charlie Miller, 1-7-73

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Now to my ears, where there is a definite break in the recording - at the 62:20 mark - the music returns with what sounds like a different session, even a somewhat different band, so I have broken that part of the tape out as a separate track, indicating that I think it's just a jam session from the same (or more likely, a similar) band. I could be wrong, of course, but that's how I separated out this tape. 

Download: Jamming with the Band from the Charlie Miller Tape

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Here's part of the back of the box: 

~~

For our very short reel, which is the homiest of home recordings, I have come up with a title which, I think, summarizes the contents nicely, without anything else that needs to be said. 

Here it is!: 

Download: Four Minutes at Home - Two Songs, An Interview, and the Cow Goes Moo

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Christmas (Almost) Through and Through

As I've done just about every year, I am again offering up a Christmas post. The only difference is that one of today's tapes also contained significant (and interesting) non-Christmas related material, so I've tacked that on at the end. 

First, and perhaps most interesting culturally, is this tape I came across somewhere, featuring former first lady (and so much more) Eleanor Roosevelt reading from "A Christmas Carol" to a group of children, as well as some chatter afterwards. This came to me on two tapes, but I've joined them here.  Curiously, this tape is dated 1/25/56, but I have to think that's actually 12/25/56 or something - why would she have been reading a Christmas story in late January. 

Anyway, this recording does not seem to have been shared anywhere, outside of this offering, and I can find no reference to her having read this book on 1/25/56 or on any other date in such a setting, among her published diaries, which can be found online. Perhaps I missed it. Anyway, it's a pretty neat, rare recording. 

Download: Eleanor Roosevelt Reads "A Christmas Carol"

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Next up, a recording I've labeled "Christmas and Winter Songs and Poems with a Young Child", and that pretty much sums it up. Starting with "A Visit From St. Nicholas and progressing through some songs and some conversation, this is, as far as I'm concerned, an adorable recording. 

Download: Christmas and Winter Songs and Poems, etc, with a Young Child

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Now, let's drop in for nearly an hour of Music and Conversation at Senator Smith's house. It's 1951. I think I once tried to figure out exactly who this "Senator Smith" was - I think he was a state senator - but attempts just now to remind myself were unsuccessful. I suspect someone will chime in. 

Download: Music and Conversation, Christmas Night, 1951, at Senator Smith's House

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This one is nothing more than a short excerpt from a radio presentation of some Christmas hymns and songs, complete with a bit of historical information from an announcer. 

Download: A Short Radio Christmas Program

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On one of those tiny, three inch reels, I found this brief compendium of holiday programming, including some moments from the Glen Campbell show, among others. I've been unable to determine the year for these recordings - again, maybe someone else can figure it out. 

Download: The Glen Campbell Show and Other TV Recordings, Christmastime

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And finally, the entire contacts of a tape which starts with a chorus rehearsing some Christmas songs and goes on to include some interesting country music recordings. 

The choir rehearsal is most interesting to me for the presence of a lilting melody which I found belongs to a Mexican hymn, here translated into English. It's quite beautiful and the words are very effective. I only found one website which features the lyrics to this song in English, and that is here. It's called "Pedida de la Posada" or "The Search for Lodging".

Download: A Choral Group Rehearses Christmas Songs

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When that rehearsal is over, most of the rest of side one of the tape contains a short recording of Kenny Biggs playing country music on WEEP. I featured another tape featuring the same singer/deejay about 18 months ago. My tapes have been moved so many times that it's hard for me to know for sure, but perhaps these were from the same collection. 

Download: Kenny Biggs on WEEP, Pittsburgh

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On the other side of the tape are several recordings by a country and western band. There appear to be at least a few different sessions recorded here, but I'm guessing they are all from the same band. Perhaps someone out there will disagree. There was also music from a band on the last few seconds of side one, and I've tacked those onto the end of this section. 

Download: A Few Songs from a Country Band

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Finally, the band music heard above is followed by some VERY poorly recorded material, also from WEEP, and also apparently involving Kenny Biggs. This is music which was broadcast live over that station from The New Aurora Hotel, which was located in the extraordinarily chunkily named "The McKees Rocks Bottoms" area of Pittsburgh. Despite the poor recording - which I've attempted to improve, to little effect - I thought this was worth hearing. 

Download: Country Music from The New Aurora Hotel in The McKees Rocks Bottoms, on WEEP

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I wanted to get this out a week before Christmas, and have failed to do that already, so the Acetate of the month and the Very Short Reels feature will not be featured in this post. 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

Blowout Post # 7!

It's time once again for me to clear the decks and post a whopping twelve different recordings in quick succession, with very little comment. Yes, it's another BLOWOUT Post, Number Seven in the series. 

A reminder/explanation: These are files that I have made over the years, from my collection, that I either have little to say about, or don't remember much about, or both. In most cases, I have not listened to these since the day they were digitized, which was likely more than ten years ago in some cases. 

In all, there is nearly six hours of recorded material in today's post. 

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Five months ago, in this post, I shared one episode of London Mirror, from a tape which contained multiple episodes of that show. I wrote quite a bit about it, at that time, and you can look back at that post for what I said at the time. Anyway, I find this program fascinating and very entertaining, so I'll lead of today's post with another episode from that same tape:

Download: London Mirror - 11-25-61

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This one says "Portion of a Trial". Again, aside from a bit of scanning, I have not re-listened to these offerings - I'm just putting a bunch of them up there and out there for your perusal. And I honestly don't remember anything about this one. Enjoy!

Download: Portion of a Trial

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Here's another recording which is well explained by its title, "Accordion Playing and A Cappella Singing". 

Download: Accordion Playing and A Cappella Singing

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Here is a tape featuring about five and a half minutes of news as broadcast in Michigan in 1954: 

Download: International, National and Local News from Michigan, 1954

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I have, on several occasions, delved into a collection I own which came from someone who worked for multiple TV networks (and possibly elsewhere) in the 1960's, including a bunch of tapes featuring dubbing or looping in dialogue for shows and movies. I can't find the box for this tape at the moment (I digitized this at least a decade ago), but it said something about "Figard" on it, and I've been unable to find out what that might mean. But it could be the name of the program or movie which was being worked on, here. 

Download: More Dubbing for a TV or Movie, Possibly "Figard"

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Somewhere along the line I managed to pick up a set of tapes by someone who led various sized dance bands in the late 1960's at local parties and events. This one is referred to, on the tape box (see below) as Kendall's Ork (with 8 members), but not all of them show this name for the group, and each performance seems to have a different number of guys on the bandstand. This particular performance is from the Winchester Nurse's Association's shindig on 9-25-59. Maybe you were there!

Download: Kendall's Ork (8 Members) - Winchester Nurse's Association - 9-25-59

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Lemme ask ya somethin'. Do you like Insurance Assessors? Put your hands together for Insurance Assessors! I bet at least a few of you were bopping to that great 1994 hit "The Insurance Assessor Mambo" when it got all the way to number one on the Billboard Insurance Songs Chart that year. 

For all of you Insurance Assessor fans, here's an Insurance Assessor reporting his findings on a variety of buildings that he insurance assessed. 

Seriously, I do like to throw in something like this every now and then, just to give a fuller picture of the ridiculously wide range of tapes that I come across. 

Download: An Insurance Assessor Reports His Finding

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Here's another easy one to describe. It's called "Three Songs by a Barbershop Quartet". The description I have for it is that it is three songs sung by a quartet, barbershop style. 

Download: Three Songs by a Barbershop Quartet

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And yet another easy one to explain. It's called "A Young Girl, A Baby, and Their Dad". In this one, you'll hear.... oh, never mind. 

Download: A Young Girl, a Baby, and Their Dad

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Yet another one I'm not going to have much of anything to say about. Here's "An Evangelical Preacher", who is preaching, evangelically. 

Download: An Evangelical Preacher

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And now, for an "Acetate of the Month". In this unlabeled recording, a group of family and friends sing the pop hit "K-K-K-Katy", and then a woman reads a short paragraph of nonsense, then a man tells a story about a small woman trying to remove a large boulder. The sound quality gets fairly poor in the last 45 seconds or so of this recording. 

Download: Audiodisc Unlabeled Acetate - K-K-K-Katy, Humorous Recitation and Boulder Story

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I have, on two previous occasions, here and here, I am, here again, featuring one of the many tapes I somehow became the owner of, which feature an amateur songwriter named Marge Magenheimer. This one qualifies as our "Very Short Reel" for this posting, although some of what's said indicates that it probably came from what was originally a longer tape. But this was all that was on the tape when I got it. There is a bit of pop song singing, then a dedication of sorts from a family member or friend, followed by a short statement from Marge. Then a pianist plays one of Marge's songs. 

Download: A Few More Minutes with Marge Magenheimer and Friends

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