Vintage WOR from Fall, 1962: Beautiful Music, Long John, Jean Shephard and News, Plus Bud's Kids and More David Hollister

For the third post in a row, I am largely featuring one very long tape. This one will be quite magical, I think, for a good number of people who come to this site. Because after a short segment of home recorded material (which I quite like), the remainder - over five hours of it - contains vintage recordings of WOR radio in New York, including a bit of Beautiful Music-esque programming, a whole lot of Long John Nebel, and sandwiched between those Long John segments, a vintage newscast and nearly an hour of the much beloved Jean Shepherd. All of this except for the opening segment are from a couple of nights in the fall of 1962. 

Without further ado.....

The tape begins with a short segment, recorded most likely several years after the remainder of the tape. On the box, this is labeled as being "Bud's Kids". It starts with a child singing a few things (including the Nationwide jingle still used today), then segues into another child interviewing people (a younger child and an adult), largely about pollution. This very obviously erased about eleven minutes of what was originally on the tape. 

Download: Bud's Kids - A Bit of Singing, Pollution Talk and More

Play: 

As soon as the kids are done, we are transported back to 1962. The talk radio segments make it clear that it was the fall of that year, what with talk of the upcoming mid-term elections and conversations about the 1963 cars, among other things - a few ads for TV presentations which appear to have been from 1961 (including a show starring Leslie Neilson), would have to have simply been reruns. There is no way these conversations are from 1961. 

But before all that, we are treated to a few minutes of Beautiful Music, or something approaching it, at least, on a show called "Music from Studio X". 

Download: WOR, Fall, 1962 - Music From Studio X

Play:

That show goes straight into a long (no pun intended) segment of the Long John show, hosted by Long John Nebel. I have posted Long John material once before, and post, with more text about him, and a link to more information on him, can be found here. In this particular episode, the main guest is a representative of the  B'nai B'rith, as well as several other religious leaders and spokesmen, for a wide ranging discussion centered on religion. 

I enjoyed the fact that no one could call into Long John's show, but instead, had to submit telegrams to him, via a downstairs office, which would then be brought to him. 

But the chintzy commercials here may be my favorite part of this recording, particularly the collection of 50 great melodies from classical music on two LP's - lowbrow music appreciation masquerading as highbrow art. I am reminded of the fantastic parody of this product, which that WFMT, the classical station in Chicago, did in the mid-1960's, called "Great Square Inches in Art", where you got God's finger from the Sistine Chapel and the Mona Lisa's smile. 

Download: Long John on WOR, Fall, 1962 - Religion and Related Subjects

Play:

That recording takes up the remainder of side one, and part of side two. The moment it's over, we are taken to another evening from the same time period, and this time, we hear a newscast and then, the deeply beloved, even revered Jean Shepherd takes over for the rest of the hour. You can read about him here, including how he had few if any advertisers for a time, and almost lost his job. Sure enough, there are no commercials in this more than 45 minutes of radio performance. 

I had never heard Shepherd before this. Honestly, I had avoided him, because I linked him in my mind as the writer of the stories which became "A Christmas Story", a much beloved film which I watched once with my family - all of us found it to be wholly awful. Obviously, your mileage may vary, and taste in movies and and humor is as enormously varied as can be. But despite its reputation for verisimilitude, I didn't find a moment of it believable, endearing or funny. So, as much as I dived into Bob and Ray and other contemporaries of Shepherd, I took a pass. 

That was clearly a mistake. This segment is mesmerizing. He does not seem to know or care exactly where he's going, or how he's going to get there. Stories lead from one into another and the outcome - and when it's going to arrive, is always in doubt. This is pure magic, and just about as entertaining as anything I've ever posted here.  

Download: WOR, Fall, 1962 - Newscast and Jean Shepherd

Play:

The tape ends another 106 minutes of Long John, the episode which immediately followed the above Jean Shepherd segment on some long ago 1962 overnight. In the case, the subject is cars, something I rarely need to hear a group of people talk about (with the exception of Tom and Ray, who worth hearing because they were Tom and Ray, not because they were talking about cars). 

Download: Long John on WOR, Fall, 1962 - Car Talk

Play:

By the way, here's all it says on the box: 

~~

Okay, so two months ago, I shared the very exciting news that I had been gifted with a box full of tapes that had belonged to a composer named David Hollister. Read all about the gift, the tapes and the composer here. 

Today, I'm offering up the contents of the second tape that I grabbed out of that box. The writing on the back of this box looks like this: 

This tape was pretty much a mess. Recordings start and stop, sometimes in the middle of musical phrases, and the next recording picks up 15 seconds or two minutes later, with backwards material from the other side coming through in the mean time. Segments seem to end haphazardly, there is an introduction of a program of materials written by Mr. Hollister, material which seems to have already been heard on the other side of the tape, none of which follows the introduction! This tape is all over the place. I have edited it down to one continuous segment of what appears on the tape, in the order it appears on both sides, with all of the backwards material edited out. 

There is all sorts of material here. For my money, if you want to hear what's really interesting, jump to the 22:30 point and listen to most of the last ten minutes of this tape, wherein a baritone sings with piano accompaniment. This material starts fairly normal but becomes more and more esoteric, and finally, downright bizarre. By minute 25, the pianist is performing a playful series of rather ugly combinations of keys, and the baritone's singing features fart sounds and nonsense syllables. More odd vocalizing follows, but none of that prepared me (or will prepare you) for the song which ends this segment, and which runs from 30:40 to 32:08. And that is ALL I'll say about it. 

Download: David Hollister and Others - David Hollister Variety Tape # 1

Play:

~~

And finally, today's "Very Short Reel". If you can figure out why this 139 seconds of tape was recorded, you are more observant and clever than I am. Herein, a man narrates an extremely short slide show presentation, featuring someone named The Right Reverend Richardson Reid. Perhaps I am spelling it or hearing it wrong, but I can find no reference to him. 

Download: Very Short Slide Show Narration - The Right Reverend Richardson Reid

Play:

Some Suspect Gold Records, 1958 News, An Odd Audio Letter and Moonlight Madness

Good Day, Ladies and Gentlemen, 

Before I get to today's offering, I wanted to respond to someone whose name was listed as "OldRadios90", and who responded to another post, asking me about sharing other vintage recording mediums here. I answered his comment from three weeks ago with a comment of my own, on that post. But I didn't know if it would be better to answer here, and others reading this might be interested, as well. 

Specially, I wrote that I have often thought of expanding this site into Acetates, of which I have many, many (although I've sold some in recent years), and may do so, but I barely find the time to post what I do share at the moment. Still, maybe this will light a bit of a fire under me! As to the other recording mediums you mention, I do not own any of those, although I've always been fascinated by wire recorders. To anyone reading this: if you have anything of this sort you'd like to contribute, I'd welcome having you host a post here. 

~~

A few months ago, I came across this most odd little recording. WVVX was a fairly peculiar station in the far north suburbs of Chicago. It had a tiny signal - probably not reaching very far beyond the north boundary of Chicago - and it was a bartered station (various interests bought time on the station, making for a hodgepodge of programming in various languages), for much of the day, it was a sort of esoteric oldies station, playing a goodly amount of what you'd expect from such a station, but featuring, in heavy rotation, such things as "Rock and Roll is Here to Stay", rather than its predecessor hit "At the Hop", and Cliff Noble's and Company's largely forgotten (even then) instrumental hit, "The Horse".   

I'm not exactly sure what the time frame was for WVVX as an oldies station. I know this tape is from around 1979 or so, and they were still doing the oldies thing when I briefly drove a cab in 1982 - I listened to them all the time during that period. More information about WVVX (no known as WPNA) can be found on this Wikipedia page. 

In this segment, two deejays explain the meaning of a "Gold Record", and also explain that some labels never accepted the accounting that the RIAA would require in order for a record to be certified as "Gold". They then play a medley of moments from he "hits" they believe, after some degree of research (I guess) qualified as Gold Records, over the years, in roughly chronological order. 

The problem here is that their research methods seem to have been lacking in, um, research. A few of these records were never even singles, and a fair number of other ones were mid-charters at best, and quite unlikely to have sold enough to have gone Gold. 

An odd project, and odd results all around.

Download: WVVX Plays the Records They Think Were Gold Records

Play:  

Next up, here are the remaining fragments of two different recordings from a Washington D.C. radio station, made at two different points in early 1958. The first segment was at the very start of the tape, then was erased by something of far lesser interest, and the second segment was what remained at the end of the tape, after that erasure and less interesting stuff. There is a brief break between the segments. There is an interesting "looseness" to the entertainment report that I have not generally perceived in news broadcasts of that era. 

From the stories told during these segments (the first a newscast, the second a light entertainment report), dates can (sort of) be determined. The first segment is from January 22, 1958, while the second is a bit confusing. It is probably from later that week, as it mentions a film starting on January 27th. Yet it also mentions two films playing in town which, per IMDB and Wikipedia, didn't open anywhere until February of that year. Ah, well. 

Download: WASH, Washington - Two Fragments: News and Entertainment Reports, Early 1958

Play:  

And now we come to something a bit peculiar. This is a audio letter sent from someone named Dick Kenny. It would seem, based on the opening comments, that he is sending this tape to someone he doesn't know well. 

Mr. Kenny clearly considered himself quite the cut-up. Much of the tape is made up of him speaking in the third person, portraying people talking about him, first in impersonation of Amos and Andy, and later - for much of the tape - in a series of phone calls to people involved in sound recording. I assume these calls (and the other material on the tape) were meant as humor, but they are god-awful - dry, repetitive, painfully dull and devoid of anything that has ever worked for people who've made a buck via "Funny Phone Calls". He also beats to death his own (fake) concept of a recording term, "Faggacycles".

I will add that Mr. Kenny seems to have considered himself quite the skilled audio man, and if the sound recordings/effects he offers up (early in the tape) are real, then I would have to agree with him on that, but I have no idea if these were just yet another "bit". A weird tape, to be sure. 

Download: Dick Kenny - A Tape from Dick Kenny

Play:  

And finally, here's today's "Very Short Reel". This comes from a city called Turlock, in central California, but other than that, I don't have a date or a station, as this was unlabeled, apart from saying "Moonlight Madness". This seems to have a region-wide sale, or perhaps a street-wide sale or something. 

Download: "Moonlight Madness in Turlock" Promo

Play:  

A Nice Little Variety Tape from 1953

Good day, everyone,

Before I do anything else - I truly want to thank all of you who commented about my recent computer issue and near loss of a huge amount of sound files. Thanks for the thoughts, support, stories, etc. I really appreciate it.

~~

And second - for those of you who don't peruse my other blog where I already posted this - I want to share with you a video that I made. Early in the shutdown, my church asked for happy videos - anything under two minutes - to send out to the congregation while we were alomst all spending lots of time at home.

My thought was to perform one of my favorite Ragtime pieces, a song I learned, by rote, off of an album when I was perhaps 16 or 17. As I say in the clip, I'm a sloppy pianist, but I make up for that in enthusiasm. And I've been forgetting to link to this client for two months now, so here it is. An added bonus (?) you get to see my charming visage and the rest of me, too. Click the link for the video!

A Ragtime Nightmare

~~

Today, I have something interesting and a bit different. Early on in this blog, I tended to just include the contents of one tape, or maybe two, before branching out and trying to give a varied picture of my collection, especially as I was only posting every 2-3 weeks.

Today, I'm returning to the original format, in a sense, but still offering a variety of types of recordings. Because today, I have the entire contents of a five inch reel, all of which was recorded between March of 1953 and May of 1953, in total, well over two hours worth of material - about 68 minutes per side. And there is a significant amount of variety - a school presentation, two birthday recordings, three recordings of visits with friends, and portions of three different television programs.

Now, I initially was only going to share the second side of this tape, because, you see, I previously shared the first side over four years ago, on this same site. But in reading that post, I found that I made several mistakes (I must not have had the tape box at hand at that moment), particular in mis-identifying the year of the recordings, but my editing of it was suspect, too.

Plus, I thought it would be nice to share the entire tape as it plays off the reel. So I hope you don't mind a few reruns. If you've already heard the first side, in that earlier post, you can jump down to the little squiggle, which is where the second side starts.

I will share the segments in the order in which they appear on the tape, and be briefer than usual in my introductions.

First off, and the longest segment on the tape, is a presentation given at a school. I suspect the teacher's name was Miss Olson, or Miss Olsen, but the tape box (see bottom of post) says Miss Ohlson, so that's what I've named the track. This was a sixth grade presentation on China, in May of 1953, a very interesting time indeed to be studying and presenting on China, although much of this is about history, not current events. The woman introduced at the start of this segment is almost certainly part of the family which recorded this entire tape.

Download: Miss Ohlson's Sixth Graders' Presentation on China, March, 1953
Play:

Next, we segue into a recording of a birthday gathering. If you've ever wanted to know what 13 and 14 year olds talked about (at least, with an adult present) in 1953, here's your chance to find out. Because here is Wayne's 14th birthday luncheon, a spaghetti meal on March 21, 1953.

Download: Wayne's 14th Birthday Spaghetti Luncheon, March 21, 1953
Play:

It seems that Wayne had a younger brother, Peter, who also had a birthday in March, as the tape then moves directly to Peter's 12th birthday party. It seems extremely likely that, having been 11 and 12 that school year, he was part of Miss Ohlson's class, and likely the reason their presentation was recorded. Here's the relatively brief recording from Peter's birthday.

Download: Peter's 12th Birthday, March 1953
Play:

The first side ends with a recording of about ten minutes featuring a recording of a visit from what presumably were some friends, identified on the label as "The Pettit's and The Blair's". Here is that segment.

Download: Visit with the Pettit's and the Blair's - March, 1953
Play:

~~

The second side starts with the second longest segment, labeled on the tape as "At the Epley's". This segment starts with a somewhat harder to make out conversation which I believe is about, and in response to, a slide show that everyone is watching. The tape box seems to also say "Talent Bridge" or "Jalent Bridge", so maybe they are viewing slides that tie into that writing, which I may be reading incorrectly.

This segues into some general conversation, and then there is some piano playing. Here is the segment:

Download: At the Epley's - Watching Slides, Chatting and Playing the Piano
Play:

Next up is something completely different and I'm guessing fairly rare. It's about 15 minutes of excerpts from an episode of Ed Sullivan's "Toast of the Town" - a quick web search identified this as being from March 29, 1953. I will let you discover its contents and charms.

Download: Toast of the Town - March 29, 1953 - Excerpts
Play:

This is followed immediately by what I'm guessing is an even rarer segment (although much less interesting to me), ten minutes from "The Fred Waring Show" - according to the box, this is from April of 1953, meaning they erased some other material from March 29th, as that date pops back up at the end of the tape. Here is the Waring segment, which contains several songs - however, it's labeled as "The Palms" on the box:

Download: Short Excerpt from "The Fred Waring Show", April, 1953
Play:

As we near the end of the tape, there is this brief segment identified on the box as "The Aishton's", in May of 1953, and which the tape itself makes clear is a recording of a visit with the Arthur Aishton and his family. Much is made of the accent of a child present, which is repeatedly described as a "Chicago accent". I have lived in the immediate vicinity of Chicago my entire life, and worked in the city for the last 27 years, and have never heard anything remotely like the speech pattern identified here spoken by a native....

Download: A Visit with the Arthur Aishton Family
Play:

Finally, we have the remnants of what was originally after that Ed Sullivan recording - a nightly newscast, or at least just over seven minutes thereof. Several news stories here date this broadcast to 3/29/53, so this must have been recorded on that date, then erased with the 13 minutes of Fred Waring and the Aishton's.
Here's how the tape ends:

Download: Portion of a 3/29/53 Newscast
Play:

~~

I hope you enjoyed this little trip through two months or so of 1953 in the life of one family, their friends, their classmates and their television set.

The very short reels and the Scotch Tape Box series will return next month. Before that, the third weekend in June marks something very special for me, so next weekend, I will be sharing a post unlike anything I've shared here before, the likes of which is unlikely to be repeated.

Oh, and here's the tape box for the reel that you just listened to:

A Family Tree, A Young Family, and Some Advertising Odds and Ends

First, I had a request to post all of the documentation from the Huntley-Brinkley tape from a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to make sure that I mentioned that I have added the two other parts of the list to the previous post, here.

~~

I've got another trio of tapes for you today! Starting with this one:

That box is from a tape which is, in certain ways fascinating, while at the same time, fairly tedious. Here's the story: On January 27, 1963, an elderly woman named Martha Hogan was interviewed by family members, primarily one of them, about her family tree. For just a hair under one hour, she answers with various aspects of the story, going back well into the 1800's.

That alone would usually make this gold for the archivist, the tape hound and the genealogist. And while there is material to intrigue and delight everyone who would expect to find that gold... well, unfortunately, the person interviewing her is far from an expert in such a task. I'm no expert either, but in my hearing of this material, I find that he frequently asks questions in boring ways, and gets fairly boring responses, asks the same things multiple times, and fails to follow up on more interesting side trips into the lives of the people who Martha Hogan knew and/or knew of. Far too much of this tape is simply a recitation of who was born when, was related to who, and died when. That's important stuff, but there is so much more I hoped to hear.

I'm thinking with the information on this tape box, and on the tape, it would be easily for someone to come up with more information about these people.

Anyway, it's still very much worth a listen for those who were with me by the end of the first paragraph up there. And here it is:

Download: Martha Hogan and Family - Martha Hogan's Family Tree - 1-27-63.mp3
Play:

~~

And now, from the other end of the life cycle, here is a short (five minute), sweet little tape featuring a small child, named Paulie, heard enjoying a nursery rhyme with his mother, then offering up some family names. Then, in the last 75 seconds or so, daddy comes in and asks some even more detailed questions about who Paulie is. (And again, although it would be harder, I'm guessing it would not be terribly difficult to find out exactly who these people were/are, from this tape.)

Download: Paulie, Mommy and Daddy - Paulie with Mommy, then Daddy
Play:

~~

And finally - and perhaps the most appealing to a good number of readers/listeners - I have a motley collection of various ads and attempts at ads, over half of which originated in Hawaii. I'm offering up this 17 minute hodgepodge exactly as it rolls off of the reel. First up, some weird promos attempting to promote local merchants by indicating their support for a local shipping strike, including a breakdown or two.

After about five minutes of this, we hear what was being erased by those recordings - some attempts, both successful and (mostly) not so successful, at recording some voice over ads for local Hawaiian businesses (specifically, O'ahu). That section ends suddenly, with an obscenity. This is followed by a brief excerpt of someone - sounding very much the amateur to me - attempting to get part of a newscast just right.

Perhaps best of all is the last six minutes, which do not appear to come from Hawaii. Instead, this sounds like a demo reel for an advertising company, with some delightful, old-fashioned 1960's style ads, in something of a medley. Locations advertised here are found in Alabama and Texas, among others. There's even a sales pitch near the end, followed by some perky jingles for WABI, a station which was in Bangor, Maine.

Presumably, the demo reel ended up in Hawaii at some point, and the first portion of it was reused and reused by multiple staff, leading to this wonderful hodgepodge.

Download: Various - A Collection of Ad Demos and Attempts at Recording Ads
Play:

A Compendium of Chet Huntley - David Brinkley Tag Stories

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

So here's a tape that is really something. For those who enjoy media recordings, in this case, specifically vintage news reporting, you will probably find this amazing. I know that there are others who will not listen at all, or who will bail out a few minutes into this two-hours-plus recording.

What I have here is someone's collection of the "tag" stories from the end of each night's broadcast of the legendary Huntley-Brinkley report. This was the NBC television news broadcast, from the mid-'50's through 1970, that first gave us the concept of the dual anchor newscast, and which was, along with CBS' Walter Cronkite broadcasts, where a large percentage of Americans got their nightly news during the 1960's.

Then, as now, most newscasts ended with a short "tag" story. With few exceptions, these were usually lighthearted, whimsical, odd or otherwise not as serious as the rest of the evening's news. Our mystery reel to reel enthusiast made it his or her job to record these stories - and only these stories - every night, for God knows how long (I'm guessing that this is not the only tape this person made - this particular tape is from 1962). There are a few other reporters filling in (on vacations and such) here and there, but mostly, the voices you will here, telling the stories and commenting, are those of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley.

I really wonder just how amazing this is - it seems to me at least possible that this material does not exist - at least to this level of completeness - anywhere else.

Download: Chet Huntley and David Brinkley - A Compendium of Huntley-Brinkley Tag Stories
Play:

Oh, and our intrepid documentarian also kept detailed written records of the shows he or she taped. Here is just one of THREE handwritten logs found inside this tape box.

UPDATE: I had a request to post all of the documentation from inside the box, and so there are now two scans and a picture, below, the picture being from the inside of the tape box, so it is a little less clear than the scans. There are more tape files after these pictures:

~~

For those of you who like your sound clips shorter (32 minutes), and those who like Slide Show narrations, I have one of those narrations which is particularly unsuited to listening without the slides. Isn't that fun? This is a slide show meant to accompany a presentation of the winners of a photography contest! There's something I can't quite explain, that I enjoy about this tape - something in the detail that the narrator goes into, about the contest, the photographs and the photographers. I hope you enjoy it, too:

Download: Unknown - A Slide Show for a Photography Contest
Play:

1960's/1970's Radio-Palooza!!

Howdy folks,

I have the distinct impression that one of the most favored types of posts I put up are those featuring airchecks and other top 40 and related radio. So today, with a minimum of blather from this end, I'm going to share the latest tapes that I've come across that fit this description, or at least come close to doing so. There is one from the '60's, two from the '70's, one from an ancient countdown show AND, as promised, another Christmas related tape.

First up, a set of (mostly) oldies from WBBY, Oldies Radio in Westerville, OH. This is a good, solid 23 minutes or so of broadcasting from that station, mostly featuring '60's music, with one exception. Oh, and somehow, the DJ believes that the absolutely wonderful "Corinna, Corinna", by Ray Peterson, was a pre-rock hit, missing it's actual release date by about six years, at least.

Download: WBBY, Oldies Radio, Westerville, Ohio
Play:

~~

Next up, a real mish-mash of radio from what appears to be late 1966, in the Washington D.C. area, in a 40 minute segment. There are at least two stations heard here, and I believe the call letters are WPGC and WEAM. Much of it is made up of a countdown show. This is a choppier tape, with a lot of edits and far too little of the DJ's. The varied volume levels heard throughout are also an issue, but it's better than nothing. This is actually what an awful lot of the radio tapes I own sound like. (There are also bits and pieces of a gathering of folks, which was previously recorded on the tape - the first ten seconds is the longest segment of this otherwise-erased material.)

Download: Mid '60s Radio on Two Washington DC Stations
Play:

~~

Switching gears a bit, here is an obnoxiously in-your-face newscaster, from 1974, on WCHO, from its ridiculously named hometown, Washington Courthouse, Ohio. I do sort of remember newscasters talking like this at the time, and am indescribably glad that this is no longer a saleable style. The news goes on for five minutes, and is followed by a couple of edited records played afterwards, starting with the always hideous REO Speedwagon. The DJ appears to be the same person who was reading the news. His name is Keith Allen, and this was probably one of his demo tapes. (a side note: I accidentally labeled the file here as 1973 - 1974 is clearly correct.)

Download: WCHO News, 1974
Play:

~~

Taking a step far into the past, here is a nearly complete episode of "Your Hit Parade", featuring (among others) the immortal Snooky Lanson. This episode dates from sometime around late spring or very early summer, 1953, and as usual for this rather bizarrely structured show, features the top seven songs of the week, the bottom six of which are heard in random order, as performed by the show's singers, with only #1 always placed at the end. Remarkably for such a flaccid period in American popular song, there are actually a couple of really good songs in there - I've always been particularly fond of "The Song from Moulin Rouge".

Download: Your Hit Parade, Late Spring, 1953
Play:

~~

Finally, in a complete change of direction dictated by the season at hand, here's a snippet of tape I was happy to find a few weeks ago, 14 minutes spent enjoying a rehearsal (I think it's a rehearsal) by a male A Capella group, with some barbershop-quartet-like arrangements of Christmas Carols and Songs.

Download: An A Capella Male Chorus Christmas
Play:

Back soon!

A Party in 1959 Becomes a Party in 1960

I have two New Year related items for you today.

Almost six months ago, I shared a tape I titled "A Party in 1959", speculating on that date based on the music heard throughout. I have now come across a second tape from what sounds like the same party, and the contents of that tape, and the writing on the box (seen above), make it clear that this was indeed a party in 1959, specifically, a party held on December 31st, 1959, into January 1st, 1960.

And so, here is the remainder of what was recorded of that party, just in time for your own New Year's Eve celebrations. If anything, this is more raucous than the first half of the tape, which I suppose is to be expected as a party moves past the midnight hour, as this recording does just before the ten minute mark.

So listen in, and imagine yourself in your late teens, experiencing the first few minutes of the 1960's, as they happened.

Download: A Party in 1959-60, Part Two
Play: 

~~

Jumping forward 24 years, here are excerpts from an otherwise stultifying recording of WRCQ's New Year's Eve/New Year's Day broadcast of a syndicated program of big band music (which was followed by the in house presentation of the same genre), which someone recorded for about four hours, on December 31st, 1983, into January 1st, 1984. I have excised almost all of the music, and left portions of two newscasts, which were also on the tape. For some reason, they ended the show at 11 PM, rather than at midnight, with the playing of Auld Lang Syne. and that's where the tape begins. Then there is another edit after the 11 PM news, followed by the lead in to the 1 AM news, and about four minutes of that broadcast. Not the most scintillating item in my collection, but a good tie in for this day before New Year's Eve, 2017.

Download: WRCQ on New Year's Eve, 1983 and New Year's Day, 1984
Play: 

FLY THIS POST TO CUBA! NOW!

With the death of Fidel Castro, I thought it would a perfect moment to bring out this tape, which dates to the height of the "Take This Plane to Cuba!" string of hijackings.

It's a recording of an NBC news special, from 8/3/61. On that date, such a hijacking was foiled, as you'll hear in the report. They then cover other recent episodes in this trend. The show is anchored by the legendary Edwin Newman.

Just a neat little piece of history, captured by a dedicated audio collector, and now offered up by another such collector, shared with anyone who'd like to hear it.

Download: NBC News Special On Hijackings, 1961
Play: