Lots of New Year's Fun, A Couple of '70's DJ's, and More John Birch Than I Can Stand

Greetings, and Happy Almost New Year!

I planned to set aside some time in order to be able to make my typical extensive (or even my sometimes typical pithy) remarks about the New Year's Eve-related and other items I put aside for the last post of the year, but I got an infection last week and was laid up in a considerable amount of pain (and did a lot of sleeping) between Monday and Friday of last week, so all of that re-listening didn't happen. 

But since this is a New Year's Eve themed post, I need to get it out anyway, so I will move forward with virtually no comments except for those offered on the two most recently listened to items, both of which feature DJ' Airchecks. 

Here's one called "Don's New Year's Eve Party. It's from the end of 1958, and I will let you discover whatever charms caused me to set it aside as good enough to share on some late December day. Enjoy!

Download: Don's New Year's Eve Party, 12-31-58

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I do have a bit I can say about this next tape, as I listened to it for the first time just last month. It it a DJ Demo Reel, made up of an entire shift performed by the cleverly named "Jack Daniels" at WTMA, Charlston, South Carolina, on 5/2/72. WTMA clearly played the top 40 hits of the day, but also regularly went back in time, sometimes close to 15 years back in time, for oldies. 

This air shift tape is very aggressively "scoped", so it is an extremely choppy listen, but like most of such tapes, there's still enough here to make hearing it worthwhile. 

Download: Jack Daniels Aircheck, WTMA, Charleston, SC, 5-2-72

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This one is just labeled "A New Year's Eve Party". Again, I'm sure there's enough here to explain why I bothered to set it aside for future use. You can discover that sans further elucidation from me. 

Download: A New Year's Eve Party

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My more-or-less "prepared items" - three New Year's items and two Air Checks - were rather short. So here's something long which may well be of interest to some of you. It's a tape I listened to last year, and will never listen to it again. I have, in the past, featured many tapes from a collection of John Birch materials that I unwittingly purchased about two decades ago. Today, it's time for more - a lot more - of their particular brand of idiocy. First, there is an explanation of what you are expected to do and be when you join the Birchers and then, for the balance of this two hour tape, Dan Smoot presents several of his "reports". 

Quoting myself here from a previous Bircher posting, but Mr. Smoot, like most of his brethren, was clearly trying to present Birchers as reasonable people who were alarmed by things happening in the government of the day, while behind the scenes, the larger group's beliefs, desires and plans were off-the-charts batshit crazy.  

I think I still have a bunch of tapes from that batch, so this may not be the end of the road for them, on this site. 

Download: The John Birch Society - What's Expected of a John Birch Society Member & Several Episodes of "Dan Smoot Reports"

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Now it's time for an "Acetate of the Month"! This one has a lengthy and descriptive title which pretty much sums up the contents of its nearly five minute length. I have no date for this item, and nothing was written on it. 

Download: Audiodisc Unlabeled Acetate - New Year's Eve - White Christmas, Joking and Noisemaking, Let Me Call You Sweetheart

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Finally, our "Very Short Reel" for the end of the year. And again, I listened to this one last month, just after I listened to "Jack Daniels". A DJ going only by the name "Jonathan" seems to have put together a tight demo reel highlighting specific aspects of his work - a phone call from the loser of a contest, a live commercial read and just a bit of DJ patter over the end of a few songs, the starts of a few others, and a prize winning phone call. All wrapped up in three minutes. 

Download: "Jonathan" - Short Air Check Sampler from WGOW-AM, Chattanooga, Tennessee

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Top 40 Radio in 1963, Lawyers Entertain in 1953, Arthur Godfrey in 1969, Testing the Microphone in 1967, North Dakota Knickerbockers, and an Arrogant Blue-Nose Browbeats a Citizen.

I'll start off with some good old Top 40 Radio recordings, as those seem to be among the most popular things I share. Here is just over an hour of such programming, from WEAM, a powerhouse in Arlington, Virginia. One caveat - Vintage Top 40 recordings are usually the most interesting to folks due to the material between the songs - the commercials, the DJ patter, etc. That's what you'll get in the first 32 minutes here. The second side of the tape (the final 32 minutes) are far more edited and mostly feature the local and national hits of the day. 

I remain amazed, as I always am by tapes of this vintage, by the fact that the standard procedure on these stations seemed to be to play one song, then a commercial, then another song, then another commercial, etc. 

And maybe I'm just being dense (which is not at all unlikely), but I cannot for the life of me figure out the point of one line in a cigarette commercial, one which (I was actually impressed to hear) encouraged only adults to smoke. It features the following line: "Lucky Separates the Men from the Boys.... But Not From the Girls". Huh? 

Download: WEAM, Top Forty Radio, Arlington, Virginia, 1963

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Now, here's a tape which is a real time capsule, and a fascinating look at a very specific time and place. For here we have 30 or so minutes of various entertainments as they were provided to a convention of lawyers in 1953. There is a small vocal group with piano who sing a few songs at the start, and later a folk singer type who sings some slightly bawdy material, then, at the end, a bit of a racy story - the sound quality gets poor near the end and the tape runs out before we get to the end of the story.

This was clearly a room full of nothing but (or very nearly nothing but) male lawyers, which is no surprise, given the date. And as befits a show geared towards a very male group of highly educated professionals, in 1953, the centerpiece of this tape, and clearly the bit which was meant as the highlight of the entertainment, is what I would, in retrospect call its lowlight: a sketch in which a group of lawyers present what a lawyers' coffee klatch / card playing session would look like if all of the lawyers behaved and talked as their wives do, when at their own get togethers. Ho ho ho. It's cringeworthy.  

Download: Entertainment at a Lawyers' Convention, 1953

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Here's a short, fun little tape I listened to for the first time recently. I don't know if this was a syndicated program or if The Knickerbockers were local to North Dakota, but for 11 1/2 minutes, they provided a performance of what were, even in 1951, some old-timey songs for the listeners of WDAY. The show was called "Harmony Lane", and the reference to the recent death of a songwriter (who also was a professional boxer!) nicely provides us with a date for this program. 

Download: Harmony Lane, with The Knickerbocker Four on WDAY, North Dakota, 1951

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I have been periodically sharing the contents of several tapes which feature Chicago radio icon Jack Eigen, including in my last post. What I'd forgotten about those tapes (until I pulled them out) is that they also contain some recordings of the syndicated program hosted by Arthur Godfrey. The show ran for under an hour (I would assume after a newscast). 

I have said repeatedly that I don't particularly enjoy Jack Eigen's shows and don't fully understand the appeal. But Eigen's shows were award-worthy compared with these late-era Godfrey shows (and, I'm guessing, the same could be said about earlier examples of his show, which ran for decades). Godfrey has a small band of sycophants who laugh at all of his cringeworthy jokes (as bad as any of the laughing goons heard today on hundreds of local morning radio shows), does live, boring reads for a variety of cheap products, and generally provides morning entertainment seemingly designed to put the listener back to sleep. Ecch. 

I suppose my reaction to these shows could also be influenced by having read many things about what an enormous jackass Godfrey was. 

I have more of these - please let me know if you want to hear them. And why. 

Download: The Arthur Godfrey Show, 5-22-69

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Here's a fun - and then later, a bit boring - fairly brief tape, presumably from 1967. I'm honestly including this one mostly for completeness sake - what's on the other side (below) is MUCH more interesting. But the opening segment, in which a couple of kids sing two fairly disparate top 40 hits from 1967, is pretty entertaining. From there on out, it's sort of a slog through a lot of microphone tests, first with interminable "number" tests and then checking the levels via reading of local news reports. Then you'll be ready for the fireworks on the other side of the tape... 

Download: Unknown - A Few Hits from 1967 and Lots of Microphone Testing

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I really shared the above tape for a sense of completeness, as it is the second side of the tape which is more interesting, and I would say, by far the most compelling recording I am sharing today. 

The Women's Christian Temperance Union, which was founded in Ohio but has been based in Evanston, IL for more than a century, was one of the premier driving forces behind Prohibition, if not the single biggest driver of the movement that led to it. And of course, what the bluenoses at the WCTU couldn't foresee in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century was that Prohibition would give rise to the ever increasing success organized crime, a problem that has never left us since.  (As I've mentioned in passing, my maternal grandfather was the spokesman for the WCTU in the 1920's and early 1930's (prior to his moving on to radio work and nationwide media prominence), to my mother's eternal embarrassment.)

Anyway, even though this is from the flip side of the tape above, I can't assume it's also from 1967. Because the flip side also contained some extremely badly recorded excerpts from 1950's Liberace TV episode. So it really could be from any point from the mid-1950's on. 

Regardless of the date, this is an amazing and despicable recording. A Mrs. Mars, of the WCTU, calls a locally prominent man (he doesn't seem to be a politician, but he seems to be a citizen of some significant influence). I am not sure I've gotten his name right - it sounds like Lusford, but could well be something else. Mrs. Mars records the call and makes no mention of this to the man she is calling - I don't know if that was illegal at the time or not. My supposition is that she wanted to have proof of whatever it was he might say, should she later wish to undercut his influence or catch him in a later contradiction or lie. She seems to have no problem recording herself engaging in her own inexcusable behavior - no doubt because she had no problem with engaging in that behavior. 

As I always say, your mileage may vary, but I hear a bully, one who is self-assured of being holier than thou about just about everyone, capable of using her influence to undercut anyone she doesn't approve of. She draws lines in the sand. For example, one candidate for office was one arrested for bootlegging (which by definition must have been at least 20, possibly 30 years earlier). And she seems to have spies in Mr. Lusford's place of business, as she knows for a fact that another candidate of questionable integrity recently visited that building, and stayed there quite a long time. Mr. Lusford must tell her at least three times that he didn't see the man, but she is not impressed. There are other questions of the "when did you stop beating your wife" nature along the way. 

I was reminded several times of Joe McCarthy's methods while listening to this tape, and I know that similar browbeatings have taken place over the years in Congress and elsewhere by people with certain agendas. 

Have a listen.

Download: Mrs. Mars of the WCTU Calls Mr. Lusford

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And now it's time for the "Very Short Reel" for this post. It's getting to be time that some people might be thinking about what they'll be doing on the last night of the year. So here is an ad agency named "Sound Resources" with two ads - a 60 second one and a 30 second one - for the Treasure Island Casino's New Year's Party. I advise calling first - I sort of doubt the details heard in this ad still apply. 

Download: Sound Resources - Treasure Island Casino's New Year's Party

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New Year's Eve in July, Some Music Shows from 1958, and a Brief Mish-Mash

Greetings!  Today's offerings come from a far smaller number of tapes than usual, but within those tapes, primarily from the first one, there is a total of over five hours of material here. 

But first, a couple of comments. 

Reader/listener Kyle has again identified a site which contains a lot of information on the history of multitrack recordings, and the writer's history with sound on sound and later methods. It has a few home recording examples in the second part. You can find that site and those recordings here.

And then I also want to thank "Snoopy" and another anonymous poster, who both chimed in with appreciation for, and information about, respectively, the avant-garde music and the DJ tape by Lance Shepard, and their comments can be found at the end of that post, here. And Eric Paddon, who can always be counted on to offer up some interesting and relevant history on media recordings, added some thoughts to the Today Show tape I shared last time around. 

Thanks, everyone, as always!

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I was going to save the following tape for a New Year's Eve post, but I realized that I have too many countdown tapes to save all of them for one post. So instead of Christmas in July, this will be New Year's Even in July, complete with part of a nationally syndicated countdown of the top hits of 1980, as heard on WRBR in South Bend, Indiana.

Unfortunately, this is not the entire countdown, but it is the more than four hours of it that could fit on a 2400 foot tape at 3 3/4 IPS. Doubly unfortunately, most of the commercials are cut out. And triply unfortunately, this production, from some organization called Opus, and titled Opus 80, is an adult contemporary (or "soft rock") version of the top hits of 1980. So there is a LOT of dross among the occasional excellent record, more than even would have been the case in a general Top 40 look at the hits of 1980, and a lot of songs heard here would not have been anywhere near a top 100 from Billboard's main pop chart. 

To choose one example, Al Stewart's "Midnight Rocks" scores on this countdown - nationally, on the Billboard all format Hot 100, it got only to number 24 in its actual chart run, not nearly big enough to be one of the biggest 100 hits of the year.  There are a bunch of vacuous quotes and brief interviews throughout. 

Here's the side of that box: 

A small portion (about an hour) of this very countdown is available elsewhere online, but I couldn't find that anything further of it is out there, so I thought I'd share what I have. 

Download: Opus 80 - A Countdown of the Soft Rock Hits of 1980, 12-31-80 WRBR-FM, South Bend, IN - One Section.mp3

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Download: Opus 80 - A Countdown of the Soft Rock Hits of 1980, 12-31-80 WRBR-FM, South Bend, IN – Another Section.mp3

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And now, a step backwards of 22 years (or more) to a show centered around a singer named Patrice Munsel. This comes from the fellow named Charles that I wrote about at a bit more length in this post (sorry about linking to it twice). This is not from the same batch related to the composer that I wrote about there, it's from a previous set of tapes he sent me, which I am also glad to be able to share at this time. 

I'd never heard of Patrice Munsel, but you can read about her show here, and from there you can link and read about her. In short, she was an operatic soprano whose husband worked in TV and got her a show. As you'll hear, the show was a mix of Ms. Munsel singing on her own, guest performers and comedy sketches. As you can see on the tape box, below, this tape contains two such episodes from April of 1958, one of them loosely Easter themed. These are not the entire shows - commercials are cut, for one thing, but even accounting for a few minutes of commercials, the two episodes heard here add up to about 30 minutes, which was the actual length of a single show, at the time. So these are excerpts. 

Download: The Patrice Munsel Show - 4-4-58

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Download: The Patrice Munsel Show - 4-18-58

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On the other side of the tape, there are more excerpts, this time from "The Patti Page Show". Patti Page I have heard of and am familiar with. However, while the tape box says these recordings are from 1958 - and they could well have been made that year - the show actually aired in 1956 and 1957, with reruns airing a year later. These are recordings of those reruns. "Including the final show", with Patti's comments making clear that she did not expect it to be her final show. 

Download: The Patti Page Show, Excerpts from 1958 Including Final Show

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And now, a very short reel. The name of this file makes clear what is on it - a series of short recordings all heard back to back on the same reel of tape. What I tend to refer to as a "Hodgepodge". The most interesting and entertaining thing here is the brief segment of the brilliant Bob and Ray at the beginning - unfortunately the start of the routine is missing, but its easy enough to figure out what's going on. That recording is from NBC's "Monitor", on which Bob and Ray were regulars, for a time. The rest of the tape is sort of hit and miss - a bit of piano, a bit of a speech and an NBC promo. 

Download: Short Hodgepodge - Bob and Ray on "Monitor", Piano, Speech Segment, NBC Promo

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New Year's Through and Through

Greetings, 

I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday season, whatever it is you celebrate or don't celebrate. I have a batch of recordings which all (except maybe one) have end of the year and/or beginning of the year theme. 

Here's hoping for a fabulous 2024. 

Whatever happens next year, though, it will happen without one of my favorite people in the world. Tommy Smothers died this week, and I want to just say a word or two here. That's because I think The Smothers Brothers - in addition to what they did for the expanding of boundries in television (and for letting Pete Seeger back on the air) - they were, in my opinion, one of the half dozen greatest comedy acts of the 20th century. I'm probably forgetting someone or some team, but I'd put them with Monty Python, The Marx Brothers, Shelley Berman, George Carlin and David Letterman and the staff of "Late Night" on that short list. 

And specifically for Tommy, I'd say that I'm not sure anyone ever had better comic timing or a more fully realized comic persona. And he was a hell of a guitar player, too, something that flew under the radar, but of which he was very proud. 

My favorite political site, Electoral-Vote.com has a nice write up about Tommy, saying far more than I want to here, and doing it better than could. 

Here are my two favorite Smothers Brothers tracks, both of which make my personal all-time favorite top 200 tracks ever recorded: Mediocre Fred and Crabs Walk Sideways.

Also, please keep reading after all of the new year related offerings below, as I am debuted my latest recording, a parody song I've been working on, off and on, for the last seven months or so. 

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Presumably, this first offering will be the most interesting to a good many of the people who are nice enough to frequent this site. It is a partial recording of the KFRC, 610 AM in San Francisco, broadcast of the top hits of 1967. This is far from the pristine (or complete) recording I'd wish it to be - the recording quality is relatively poor - noticeably bass heavy, despite some attempts at my end to rectify it, and it does not contain anywhere near the entire program, or even a single segment - it starts with # 92 and then, 103 minutes later, we hear the end of the number one song of the year. More songs were skipped than were heard. Still it's a piece of top 40 radio history, and that's worth something. 

Download: KFRC, San Francisco - The Top 100 of 1967 (Portions)

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Incidentally, if you do a search for the gentlemen (and his home town) who stamped his name onto this tape box, you will find his obituary. It popped up as the first item found for me. He was 42 years old when he recorded this. I would have thought a fan of top 40 music in 1967 would have been half that age or less. 

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The next two files come from the same tape, and were recorded, first, as 1955 became 1956, and then again, a much longer segment featuring some of the same people, which appears to have been recorded sometime later on New Year's Day, 1956. I do not know anything more about this tape. In fact, I digitized this tape eleven months ago, and do not actually remember what happens during either segment. So we'll all be surprised. 

Download: At a New Year's Eve Party, 1955 into 1956

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Download: A Group of Friends Goofing Around, Circa New Year's Day, 1956

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In my last post, I had what I called "A Post-Christmas Tape From Canada to Lenore and Her Family in Bermuda". Well, here is a sequal of sorts, another audio letter to Lenore. My labeling of these tapes is a bit confusing, or maybe not, based on the labeling of each. But whereas the other tape was labeled "from Canada to Lenore in Bermuda", this one is labeled "To Lenore from Family in Bermuda". A quick spot check of segments of the tape does indicate that this seems to be a tape to Lenore from a different group of people than are heard in the previous tape, and these people were definitely in Bermuda, apparently from a time before Lenora lived there, or between times that she lived there. What we probably have here are two tapes to the same person from two different groups of people. 

Regardless, just as the other tape was made after Christmas, this one was made a day or two after New Year's Day. 

Download: A Post New Year's Tape to Lenora From Family in Bermuda

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And here's a tape I've labeled simply "Party - Lynn and Gene", which is probably self explanatory. I don't know that this is from a New Year's Eve party - chances are it's not - but it still fits the theme of celebrations. 

Download: Party - Lynn and Gene

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And now for a Very Short Reel that I wish was longer. Although perhaps the longer version of this tape - and this segment - is readily available elsewhere, I don't know. It's a short moment from All American New Year's Day tradition. I was thrilled, a few years ago, to find a Scotch tape of the earliest design, labeled thus: 

Perhaps that's hard to read. It says Reel No. 1, Date 1-1-52, Stanford 7 - Illinois 40, Rose Bowl Game. Unfortunately, I found that nearly the entire reel had been erased with much less interesting material, leaving just 140 seconds of this football game broadcast recording. A real pity. Anyway, here it is. 

Download: The 1952 Rose Bowl Game - Short Fragment

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And now for something completely different. About six years ago, something inspired me - something insistent - to write a parody lyric for the song "Up Up and Away" by the Fifth Dimension. This is not even a record that I like - not when it came out when I was seven, and not now - and although I've written and recorded parodies in the past, all but one were of records that I love. Anyway, it wasn't until April of this year that I decided to make a track of my parody. 

Anyone my age or perhaps even 10-15 years younger will likely know the song this is based on, but for those who don't, the original can be found here. 

I decided along the way that I wanted my music track to sound as close to exactly like the original Fifth Dimension track as I could possibly get out of my Midi set-up, and I think I succeeded to the point that the track sounds like a Karaoke track. It is not - I built it from the ground up, instrument by instrument. I worked on it off and on, sometimes on weekends, mostly when I took days off from work. It took me over seven months! 

I am very happy with the final product.... except that I can't settle on which prospective title is better, the one that reflects the original song's title ("Come, Come in and Play") or the one which better reflects the text of the parody ("My Curio Filled Room"). Regardless, I hope you enjoy it, and would love to hear comments, including thoughts on the better title. 

Download: Bob Purse - My Curio Filled Room (AKA Come, Come In and Play)

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Just a Group of Guys Seeing the Old Year Out in 1958

Here's something pretty special, I think.

What we have here are a group of young men - four or five of them, I think, joking around, singing, telling stories and generally just watching the last few minutes of the year tick away, in 1958.

The tape is just over 30 minutes long. I initially had derisively considered titling this post with a phrase having to do with "a bunch of jamokes", but quickly decided that that was complete unfair. I think, instead, that this tape just reflects a different, more innocent time (for lack of a better word). I don't know at what point a New Year's Eve tape would have ceased even the possibility of sounding like this, but I doubt anything found from even the late '60's or early '70's would have the feel of this tape. It's very much of a particular time period in America. Or so it seems to me.

After some introductory comments - the names of the participants are mentioned, but are both slurred and, in some cases, covered up by other noises - there is some fairly awful piano and harmonica playing. If you want to skip this fairly painful bit of noise, it ends at about 4:20, although if you do that, you'll miss some Lawrence Welk references and fart jokes (which I supposed are not mutually exclusive).

The flounder around for a bit, before one guy does his Ed Sullivan impression, another guy talks repeatedly way too loudly into the microphone, and they stumble into a version of a Christmas Carol. Several references to then-current commercials and other cultural touchstones of the moment also float by.

Then, at the nine minute mark, we get to the meat of the tape - a bunch of stories, both true-life and, mostly, fairy tales. One guy starts by telling a story that happened at a drive-in theatre, followed by another car story.

Then we get a lengthy rendition of "Little Red Riding Hood". There's not really much of a payoff - although the storyteller clearly thinks he's on a roll, repeatedly telling his peers to shut up. But what he lacks in originality, he more than makes up for with enthusiasm.

Then the whole group gets into the act, doing a group performance of "Little Red Riding Hood", interrupted many times by product slogans, other asides and general silliness. For my money, this is the best section of the tape.

The story ends suddenly, and incompletely, and now it's 11:45 PM - an updated version of Hansel and Gretel - involving a Corvette and marijuana - is attempted, but the overlap with the original story is minimal, and what's more, the tape is running out. An end to the story is quickly constructed.

We never reach 1959, but we do hear the very end of what these young man had been erasing, which plays on the very last few feet of tape - it's "Alvin's Harmonica" by David Seville and the Chipmunk. (Interestingly, it appears that this record came out in the last days of 1958, so whenever it was recorded, it must have been brand new.)

ENJOY!!!!

Download: A Group of Friends - December 31, 1958
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