Vintage TV Variety with George Gobel, Some Paranormal Material, The Piano Man, A Few Minutes with Sonja, More David Hollister and Cracking Corn

 Greetings!

I like to get two posts out every month, and this being the night of the 31st, I am speedily putting this one together, so I won't have too much to say. 

Vintage television programming seems to be among the more popular things I offer here, so here's something fun: The George Gobel show for the last week of 1958. George Gobel, I suspect, is largely forgotten today by anyone under 60 years old, but he was quite popular in the 1950's and into the early 1970's, had his own variety show, and appeared frequently on the tonight show and other talk and variety shows, including a stint on The Hollywood Squares. 

This episode was a bit of cross promotion, with the entire cast of "Leave It to Beaver" appearing on the show, as well as Eddie Fisher and Maureen O'Hara, among others. This recording is of the entire show, complete with commercials, so enjoy a flashback to nearly 66 years ago. 

Download: The George Gobel Show, 12/30/58

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I really don't know anything about this next recording. It is from the same tape from which I took the most recent recordings of Jack Eigen and the recordings I posted last month featuring Arthur Godfrey. meaning that it is from sometime around June of 1969. It is a documentary exploration of the paranormal. 

Download: Paranormal Radio Show, Circa June, 1969

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Now here is a fairly lengthy tape which may well put you to sleep, or else perhaps you'll find it interesting, entertaining, soothing, who knows. This is a tape, seemingly from the very early 1980's, in which a man plays the piano and runs through a whole bunch of piano-man type songs. There are standards from way back when, songs I don't recognize, and songs which, at the time, would have been quite recent. 

This comes from the very same tape which featured "The Bob Terry 50th Birthday Party", which I shared one month ago, so it's quite possible that this is also Bob Terry, but I have no proof of that, so I'm not labeling it as such. 

Download: A Piano Man Runs Through His Repertoire

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This next tape, all of eight minutes long (exactly) features a little girl named Sonja (or perhaps Sonya) singing some of her favorite songs and telling a few stories. I'm sure this is fingernails-on-a-blackboard for some people, but I love this sort of stuff. I'd listen to this all day before I'd willingly spend time listening to the piano man I shared above. 

Download: Sonja Sings, Tells Stories and Talks

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For this next tape, I refer you back to my first post about David Hollister, the composer whose tapes I have been gifted with. This is the third tape I've shared from that Hollister collection, and the second which has a variety of recordings on it. 

This tape box has stuff written all over it. Here is the back of the box and the two panels from inside the box: 

I am truly rushing this post out, so I have not taken the time to try and match up what's on the tape with what's on the box - some of the writing above seems to contradict what other parts of the box say is on the tape. And it's only a 50 minute tape - I'm not at all sure it lines up with the writing completely, and perhaps not at all. Perhaps someone out there will figure it out for all of us. 

Download: David Hollister Variety Tape # 2

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The "Very Short Reel" feature is taking this post off, but I do have an "Acetate of the Month", and it's a "Very Short Acetate of the Month". This is from a "Voice-O-Graph 6 inch acetate, which was typically a record that you could make in a booth at a restaurant or a department store of the like and take home with you. I've written before about how we made one in downtown Chicago with my beloved grandmother and managed to damage it beyond repair before we got home. 

Anyway, here we have some kids singing a song I don't recognize, followed by a few chorus of the "Jimmy Crack Corn" section of the song "The Blue Tail Fly", sung to a melody I also don't recognize. It's all of 63 seconds long. 

Download: Voice-O-Graph 6 Inch Acetate - Unknown Song and The Blue Tail Fly

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Some 1961 BBC Musical Programs, Norman Rockwell, Erskine Hawkins, Music and Images, and Entertainment from Margie

I am desperately late in posting this time around - it's been three full weeks since the last post. I was hoping to get to some comments, but I just want to get this up and to y'all. Today's post is largely made up of the contents of two very different reels of tape, one from England and one from Chicago.

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From England, I have what I consider to be a simply wonderful collection of nighttime radio music shows from the BBC in 1961, each of them quite a bit different from the others. 

First up on the reel is a show which came about because of the fad, just around that time in Britain, for Trad Jazz, Dixieland under another name. There's a great movie out there called "It's Trad, Dad", and the famous Cavern in Liverpool was originally a Trad Den which allowed rockers like The Beatles to play lunchtime shows. 

Note that, half way through this 52 show, the program segues into "Pick of the Pops" with Alan Freeman. As Trad Jazz faded in popularity, "Pick of the Pops" became its own show, and a big hit with the kids. 

Download: Trad Tavern, Spring, 1961

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Next up is "The Starlight Room", which presents another batch of Jazz, and featuring, in this episode, Dakota Staton and Woody Herman, the latter also being interviewed on the show. The opening moments here are rather poor sound quality, but it quickly improves. 

Download: The Starlight Room (BBC Program)

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And finally, a show which truly demonstrates how very different radio (and the world itself I suppose) was in 1961. Host Sandy MacPherson took letters from listeners and welcomed each of them into his "club", honoring their requests along with a few details at times about those listeners, and responding to those requests either with songs from records, or - and this is where things truly seem ancient - playing songs for them live... on his theatre pipe organ. How quaint. That's the word for it. Quaint. 

Download: Sandy's Club (BBC Program)

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And now for something completely different. I have dozens of tapes which once belonged to a collector of radio and (especially) TV sound, from the late '50's and well into the '60's. Most of these tapes are meticulously numbered and have detailed information about what is contained on them. I have excerpted many of these tapes before - they tend to have very dry material (lectures, speeches) interspersed with more interesting material (live performances, interviews, tv specials), and that's the case with today's tape. One side had the radiation demonstration I featured last time, followed by a recording of a broadcast of a movie, while the other side contained a documentary on the life and works of Michelangelo, sandwiched in between two other segments that I found much more interesting, the latter of which was followed by another very interesting, if short segment, which was not mentioned on the box at all (something that is very unusual for tapes from this person's collection. 

This happens to be tape number 100 in the series. I continue to slowly work my way through them. 

Anyway, that second side of the tape starts with this fragment of an interview with Norman Rockwell, conducted by what sounds like a teenage girl: 

Download: Brief Interview with Norman Rockwell

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Then comes Michelangelo, and then comes a rather fascinating recording, and it's another one which shows how much media (in this case, television) has changed since the early 1960's. If I've deduced this correctly, "Patterns in Music", recorded from a Chicago TV station around Christmastime some year, was nothing more than music off of records, played while still images from photos were shown on the screen. Narration is offered, before and after each piece of music, talking about the photos and tying the pieces together with each other and with the photos. On this episode, the theme was various colors. 

Download: "Patterns in Music" - Undated Chicago .Area Television Music and Photos Program

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When the person recording stopped the machine, the end of a previously recorded segment was left - not mentioned on the tape box. I've identified this as a brief interview with Erskine Hawkins, but what's left actually starts with promotion for Joe somebody (I can't make out the last name) who was appearing locally - at the Thruway Motel (!), and then suddenly we're treated to an Erskine Hawkins track and then the last two minutes are, indeed, a few moments with Mr. Hawkins. A bit confusing, but that's what it seems to be. 

Download: Brief Fragment of an Interview with Erskine Hawkins

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Even after all this time, I have only a basic idea in some cases of what people coming to this site will be thrilled to hear and what will get passed over. There may be very little, or great interest in the contents of the above sets of recordings for example. 

I do, however, recognize that the next recording is not going to be for everyone, and that it won't even be close. But.... I just love this kid. Here we have a child named Margie who is entertaining herself (and later, is joined by her sister or perhaps a friend), by singing a vast repertoire of songs, reciting a bit of a play she was in at school, and demonstrating her rudimentary skills on the piano. 

She is pretty much tone deaf, but clearly would have no idea of this, and her abilities on the piano amount to little more than one note at a time. But she is HAVING SUCH A GREAT TIME. And she clearly envisions herself entertaining some unseen audience on the other end of the microphone. I love her little asides, like when she puts the microphone down to play piano and says "goodbye" to it, when she apologizes for not knowing which book her piano piece is in, and when she asks for a round of applause for... herself. And then, nearly two-thirds of the way through, she gets to really famous song, sung complete with an inexplicable (slight) accent. 

Again, I adore this girl, and this is probably my favorite new-to-me tapes that I've heard this year. To be honest, that's probably because she reminds me of... me at that age, except that I wasn't tone deaf. This sounds remarkably like the tapes I made of myself around that age, only far more entertaining. 

Download: Margie Sings, Plays Piano and Talks

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Finally, a "very short reel". This is a complete cheat, as the segment below is an excerpt from a four hour tape, but I really want to get this posted!

I have a group of tapes that someone made off of an Indiana radio station around 1979-1980. They contain episodes of American Top 40, an end of the year countdown, and other programming from a couple of local stations. Contained on at least two of them are episodes of Robert W. Morgan with "The Special of the Week", hour long episodes, heavy on the interviews, looking at a then-popular act. The two I've listened to so far covered the careers of George Benson and The Who. Your mileage may vary, but I have zero interest in the George Benson, and I enjoy perhaps six tracks in the entire career of The Who. So these were not interesting shows to listen to for me. 

But I did enjoy the introduction to the episode on The Who, less for Morgan's reworking of Abbott and Costello (although it's worth hearing), than for the fake letter that he used to set up the bit, specifically the name of the fake letter writer. Here is the segment that led off The Special of the Week featuring The Who. 

Download: Robert W Morgan - Who's On First

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Oh, and The Who were hardly the first groups to record a concept album. The Almanac Singers (featuring Pete Seeger) made several of them in the 1940's, including albums encouraging the US to stay out of World War II and collections of songs in the support of Unions), and Frank Sinatra had a few in the 1950's, as well. The "Manhattan Tower" album and its sequels and imitators come to mind, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Download: Unusual Montage of Late 1970's Media Sounds

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

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

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

Download: Interviewing the Family on Christmas Night

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

Download: Sing Along with Mitch - A Christmas Episode

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

Download: Merry Christmas to Honey - Three Songs

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

Download: A High School Choir Rehearses Christmas Songs

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This is all it says on the box: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Tom Slade, Piano

2. Tom Slade and Milton Jackson, Piano

And here's what it sounds like!

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

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An Anti-Medicare Screed, Another Japanese Missive, A Lovely Hodgepodge, Mrs. Isono, and More Mitch Miller Than Anyone Can Stand

Howdy, Y'all. 

Oh and BOOOO!

Last time around, I asked if anyone knew the link between Frank Zappa and "Pipeline" by the Chantays. Well, I had a couple of questions about that, and here is the obscure answer. It comes from an interview I have on tape, I believe it's with Dr. Demento, but I could be wrong. I don't have an exact quote, but in the interview, Zappa says more or less: 

"It was one of the first time I was in a 'real' recording studio with booked time and a song to record." He goes on with something along these lines: "we had to wait for awhile - the producer needed to finish working on a record he KNEW was going to be hit - Pipeline, by the Chantays - before we could record..."

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Also, I heard from frequent commenter "Snoopy", who said he'd really like to hear the entire Bob Binderman car race segment, which I edited in order to remove what I thought was about three minutes of mouth-made car noises, with no narration in between. It turns out it's actually 2 1/2 minutes, but for Snoopy, and anyone else who is interested, I have re-posted that bit, unedited this time, at the bottom of this post. 

And now.....

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With politics in the news all day, every day here is America this week, we'll start with a flashback to an earlier day, and the hot button issue of 1962 - whether to offer government insurance to certain portions of the population. The bill at the time was the King-Anderson Bill, and the Medical establishment was dead set against it, as heard in this presentation from the head of the AMA -  a response to a much flashier presentation the Kennedy administration had given a short time earlier, as you'll hear. This particular bill was defeated, but a similar bill was more successful a few years later. I've labeled this a screed, and find it to be full of scaremongering - your mileage may vary, but it's worth noting that the successful tweaking of this bill, a few years later, called Medicaid, is quite popular, nearly 60 years after its passage. 

Download: The American Medical Association (Dr Leonard W Larson) -  Presentation Against the King-Anderson Bill - 1962

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Well, after that hyperbole, maybe a nice palette cleanser is in order. Here, ahead of the usual arrangement, is our "Very Short Reel" for the day, a sweet home recording I've labeled "A Few Minutes at the Schafer Home". I don't know the actual spelling of the family's last name, as there are several versions of that moniker, so I guessed. Mostly, this is a series of piano solos rendered by a little girl, but near the end is a bit of stilted conversation which I thought was interesting.  

Download: A Few Minutes at the Schafer Home

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It's been awhile since we checked in with our young man in Japan. As I've explained before, I'm unable to ascertain exactly what he was doing there, although I've identified him as a student-soldier in previous posts and in the names of files. If someone else has figured out what he was doing in Japan from these tapes, I'd love to hear it. Search for "Japan" in the labels, and all of the previous posts from this series of audio letters will show up (along with a few other Japan-related items)

Download: Audio Letter from a Student-Soldier in Japan, January 19th

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I always enjoy it when I come across what I call a hodgepodge - a (usually shortish) tape which contains a series of things completely unrelated, or at best, barely related to each other. That's about all I'll say about this item - its title explains its contents pretty well. 

Download: A Hodgepodge - Born Free, Narration, Heavy Breathing and Mario Andretti

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Last week, I listened to a tape containing two complete New York Yankees baseball broadcasts, one from from 1960 and one from 1961. That was enjoyable enough, but my favorite moment was actually a little ad for Ballantine Beer which popped up in the middle of the 1961 game. This doesn't really qualify as a "very short reel" since it's 40-some seconds out of a tape lasting more than six hours, but I wanted to share it here. 

Download: Ballantine Beer Ad, 1961

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And now, the moment that perhaps NO ONE was waiting for. But.... I had this tape, and it's probably a fairly rare piece, so I thought I'd share it. Contained on the tape are four near-complete episodes of "Sing Along with Mitch" - the four episodes broadcast in May of 1963. This is a really long share, and its certainly from another time and place, but perhaps it's your thang, and if so, do what you wanna do: 

Download: Sing Along With Mitch - Four Full Episodes from May, 1963

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And now it's time for our "Acetate of the Month". I know very, very little about this record. It looks like this on one side: 

And like this on the other side: 

Perhaps someone out there who can read Japanese can tell us all what it means. Regardless, it seems to feature a Mrs. Isono, if the label is to be believed, and why shouldn't it be. Here are the two sides: 

Download: Mrs. Isono - Side One

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Download: Mrs. Isono - Side Two

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And finally, as mentioned in the blurb at the top of this page, here, for those who want it, and Snoopy in particular, is the full, unedited Bob Binderman Auto Race performance, complete with another 150 seconds or so of mouth-as-car-engine performances at the end: 

Download: Bob Binderman - Calling an Auto Race in Reims, France (unedited)

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Blowout Post # 2!!!

Welcome to the final hours of September!

One month ago, I wrote a post explaining that I have an overabundance of material, some of which I don't have a lot of things to say/write about, and a periodic dearth of time to put together the sort of post I normally would like to. I proposed that at least sometimes, I would burn off ten or more items at once, with a minimum of text. The responses were fairly varied, but no one was really opposed to what I did in that post, and a few were quite enthusiastic. 

While I don't actually plan to make this a monthly thing, I am doing another of these blowout posts today, for the second month in a row. 

And heeeeeeere we go!!!

Let's start the ball rolling with my favorite of this post's offerings, a batch of commercials for Owens Community College, in Ohio: 

Download: Seven Ads for Owens Community College

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Next up, a sample of something I come across remarkably frequently - a tape that simply captures people sitting around chatting. Sometimes, it's clear that the recording was made for posterity, maybe a particularly interesting conversation, or a visit from old friends, and every voice (or nearly every one) is close to the microphone and it's clear they all wanted to be recorded. Other times, it sounds almost as if the machine was left on by accident, or that perhaps no one by the recordist knows the machine was on. Here is an example of the latter of those two types - a few minutes with some people sitting around talking:

Download: A Few People Sitting Around Talking

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And now, let's talk Milagros. I had never heard of Milagros before I came across this short audio documentary. You can read about them here. Or you can just listen to Marsha Bol and her compatriots: 

Download: Marsha Bol and Others - Life Sized Milagros

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The last time (well, the first time) I did one of these mega-posts, I wrote the following, about an audio diary: 

   I have in my collection several tapes recorded by an American couple living, I believe, in Germany, who made several trips to other parts of Europe during the late 1960's and early 1970's, and made recordings each night, while on those trips, summarizing their experiences from that day.In most cases, they used more than one reel - always three inch reels, with the thinnest, lengthiest tape available, and recorded at 1 7/8 IPS.

Here is another of these tapes, capturing elements of a tour of Norway and Sweden in the summer of 1968. This is the second tape this couple made on their tour of Scandinavia, and once I find and digitize part one, I can share that, too, if there is interest. Unlike the other tape I shared of them, last time, for this vacation, the couple's children accompanied them, and are heard on the tape: 

Download: Audio Diary - Tour of Norway and Sweden, 6-22-68

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Here's that three inch tape box!

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And now it's time for the "homely music hour". I have tons of reels like this one, featuring people who love to play and sing, even if they are not truly good at it. In this case, it's someone named Alma playing the piano, in a style I find wonderfully nostalgic, and in certain ways not unlike some of the music I play, while another someone named Gus sings in a style which might have been fashionable in the early days of acoustic recording, circa 1895-1910. It seems to me that the days when anyone would create something sounding like this are long since past. 

Download: Alma and Gus - Alma Playing Piano and Gus Singing

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Oh, and now here's something. You know that old saying about how someone or something can be "more boring than listening to a file cabinet salesman"? Wait, I guess that's not an old saying. But it should be. Exhibit A follows: 

Download: File Cabinet Salesman

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(By the way, in the above segment, just past the 41 minute mark, there is two minutes of a song, followed by a short "Thank You and Farewell - I'm Moving to Houston" speech by a different person than the salesman who had been speaking earlier. That segment gets softer and softer as it continues on through the end of the tape.)

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And yet another genre of tape which recurs over and over again is the amateur musical performance (or rehearsal). In this case, rather oddly, the recording of a small combo, led by Bari Sax player (accompanied only by guitar and drums), is interrupted just past the halfway point by a recording (off of the radio) of a Dave "Baby" Cortez track, before it returns to the combo. They're not very good, but they seem to be enjoying themselves. 

Download: A Baritone Sax Led Combo Recital (and a bit of Dave 'Baby' Cortez)

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This next tape may not be to scintillating - unless it is being compared to listening to a file cabinet salesman - but it does have a soft spot in my heart, as it was one of the first tapes I ever bought, when I got serious about looking for this sort of ephemera. I was sort of fascinated by it, too, as it was recorded at 15 inches-per-second, a speed I wouldn't necessarily think one would choose to use to record a sign-making lecture, given how quickly one uses up the available tape at that speed. Yes, I know how geeky this paragraph makes me sound. But no doubt you already knew that, if you've spent any time here.

Download: A Sign-Making Class Lecture, 2-17-61

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The oldest recording in this week's offerings is this short series of excerpts from a Major Bowes Amateur Hour. Since Major Bowes died in 1946, this is definitely older than the other items here. 

Incidentally, I once played Major Bowes' successor, Ted Mack, in an 8th Grade review near the end of my elementary school career. I introduced "The Andrews Sisters" portrayed by the three smallest boys in our class, all of whom were in drag, and they lip synched to an Andrews Sisters' record. (I played trombone in the band for the rest of the show.)

Download: Segments of a Major Bowes Amateur Hour Episode

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Okay....

Last time around, I left the longest offering - a church related segment - as the final one of my Blowout post features. This time, I'm doing it again, with a reel that was recorded, somewhere, in the early 1950's. It's a faith healing session, complete with the faith healer giving a sermon, some music, some more sermonizing and then performing his miracles. If you're up for this sort of thing, it's a pretty amazing recording. If not, well, we still have our monthly and bi-monthly features yet to come, below: 

Download: A Faith Healer Talks and Faith Heals

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And now it's time for our "Acetate of the Month". This is a sweet audio letter from two family members to two other family members. One side is addressed to Bea, and the other side to Momma. It's from November of 1940. I have combined both sides into one single track. The "Momma" side is poorly recorded, or at least has not weathered as well as its flip side, over the years. It is rather difficult listening.

Download: Bob and Ginny - Audio Letters to Bea and to Momma, 11-15-40

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Here's what that record looks like: 

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And finally, the "Very Short Reel" for this posting. I find it rather remarkable that I have this specific little advertisement for the Sunday Chicago Tribune. And that's because the issue being advertised contained a profile of a then-completely-unknown woman in an obscure city job, a woman named Jane Byrne. Byrne, of course, would be, by the end of that same decade, Chicago's first woman mayor. The main story advertised here suggests what might be collectable in 2015, without much accuracy. 

Download: Sunday Chicago Tribune Ad, Circa Early 1970's

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A 1960's Student/Soldier, A Visceral Radio Play, Two Types of DJing, and More!

Hi, everyone, 

Before I go any further - and because I definitely won't be posting again before next Thursday - I want to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who will be celebrating it. 

To start today, the first of a whole batch of tapes that I have from the late 1960's, made by a young man living in Japan. They are audio letters to family (or at least to one family member) in the states. At some point in the last year I acquired more than a half-dozen of his tapes, and I'm still digitizing and listening to them. 

And I am more than a bit confused as to his status, and as to why he was in Japan. The content of the first several tapes led me to believe he was a soldier, who was also attending school in Japan, because he both mentions his schooling, at length at times, and also talks about the local army base, where he was living during the times captured on some - but not all - of the tapes. That led to my impression of what he was doing in Japan, when I labeled today's feature as "From and American Student-Soldier". 

More recently, in tapes I will feature going forward, it becomes more clear that he was a high school student during the times reflected in most or all of these recordings. So that made me think maybe he was living with a family member who was in the Army, yet those other tapes mention him having moved off-base. I find that aspect of these tapes very confusing. 

I intend to share one of these in each post until I run out of them, so maybe someone more familiar with the times, and/or who is better at picking out details which will explain things, can help. 

I don't have them in chronological order yet, mostly because some remain undigitized, so I just chose the first one that I listened to, to share with you. 

Download: Audio Letter From an American Student-Soldier in Japan, March, 1967

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Next up, a fascinating reel that I bought at the old ALS Mammoth Music Mart, which I've written about many, many times. This is a remarkable production of a retelling of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", produced, no doubt for radio, by a conglomeration that called itself "Earwaves Productions". I cannot find anything about this company online, but then again, this does date to 1976. 

This is a pretty intense rendition of the story, visceral in its descriptions and even sound effects at times, and I find it very entertaining. The producers of the drama, who otherwise portray the lead characters as devout Muslims, made the odd choice of adding a scene of drinking to excess - which is not part of the original story, and which would be very much out of character for such people - and that seems weird to me. But otherwise, I really enjoyed this. It's in two parts, and I'm sure it aired that way.  

By the way, the two parts both start off identically, but then part two picks up where part one ended. 

Download: Earwaves Productions - Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Part One (1976)

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Download: Earwaves Productions - Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Part Two (1976)

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For several years, I had the great pleasure of listening to the radio show of Herb Kent, "The Cool Gent", on my way home from church on Sundays. He played great soul and R & B oldies, often with a good degree of comment and insight. It was his last gig in radio, and he worked right up until the Sunday before his death, at age 88, in 2016. 

I knew that Kent had been a DJ in Chicago for a good long time. In fact, he worked in radio for 72 years. 

Quite some time ago, I was lucky enough to find a reel featuring Herb Kent, a year into his 15 year stay at Chicago's WVON, in July of 1964. While this 27 minute recording is not a pristine aircheck at all (there are lots of edits, of the sort usually found on tapes made by people who mostly wanted the songs), it is, I'm guessing, a rare recording regardless, and does capture enough of Kent to make it worth sharing. 

Download: The Herb Kent Show, WVON, Chicago, July, 1964

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From the sublime to the ridiculous. I also recently digitized a tape containing three, back-to-back identical recordings of the same 11 minute aircheck, with the songs scooped out, done by someone named John Nelson at WXIV (The Big 14) in 1973. I believe this station was in Maine, based on some research I just did. 

Not only is this a far, far worse era for hit music than that found in the preceding 1964 recording - I could only stomach a couple of these hits (were they not excised anyway) - Mr. Nelson's hackneyed performance is as unlistenable as the tunes we are thankfully spared. I assume he was going to chop these up into three tapes and mail them off for a hoped for better job somewhere. He might have waited until he had a chance to do a show while he didn't have a cold. 

Download: John Nelson's Demo Reel - 8-27-73

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As promised last time around, today I am returning to the "Acetate of the Month" feature. With Thanksgiving a week away, and certain radio stations having long since turned on the Christmas Music, I thought I'd share this eight inch home recorded acetate, of what sounds like an adolescent boy (named Bill Duke), playing a piano solo of "White Christmas", near the end of 1948. 

Download: Bill Duke - White Christmas (Duodisc 8 Inch Acetate)

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On the flip side, Bill Duke serenades us with "My Happiness"

Download: Bill Duke - My Happiness (Duodisc 8 Inch Acetate)

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And finally, it's time for our "Very Short Reel". This is among the very shortest of those short reels, 34 seconds of John Dancy, in which he introduces what he's going to do, does a four second promo for a news special, in three slightly different styles, and says "okay". 

Download: John Dancy - Foreign Policy Special Teaser

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Vintage Talk Radio with Michael Jackson and Much, Much More

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

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

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

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

Here's what the garage looked like:

And the other angle:

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

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

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

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

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

And now: 

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

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

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

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

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

And here's the reel: 

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

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

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

Download: 25 Simulated Telephone Calls

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

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

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

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

Download; Unknown: Bad Piano and Rambling Talk

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

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

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

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