A JFK Remembrance, A City Councilman's Ad, More Voices from a "Small" Town, A Stereo Sampler, Geraldo Plays for You, and Some Animal Voices

Happy Post-Thanksgiving to all who celebrated it a few days ago! 

As I was sitting at my work desk around 12:15 or 12:30 PM on Friday of last week, it occurred to me that it was almost exactly at that moment on that same date, 61 years earlier, that John F. Kennedy was shot and killed. I shared this thought on Teams with, well, my team, to a big round of no response. 

But it did remind me of this tape, which I think is perfect to lead off today's post, seeing as how it also aired on an anniversary of that event, and served as a commemoration of that event. Here, from 1968, is that tape: 

Download: Commemoration of the Death of JFK - Radio Broadcast - 11-22-68

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And now, just a bit too late to tie in with the recent election, here are a group of folks making multiple attempts to get a lengthy political advertisement just right. The subject of the ad is a then-alderman in the Chicago City council, a Republican (sometimes, the only Republican) in that Democratic Party dominated council, and apparently quite a thorn in the side of Mayor Richard J. Daley. His name was John Hoellen, Jr. You can read about him here. It took me quite a while - and some help from an outside source - to find out who the subject of this promotional song was, as his name is misspelled on the tape box. Have a look: 

You'd think the people who were hired to perform on a commercial in support of someone who know how to spell his name. On the other hand, I would also agree with the tape box that this material is "Junk". I'm going to say that this was probably recorded in support of Hoellen's 1963 race for re-election to the council, as the song is a ham-fisted knock off of the 1962 hit "Big Bad John". You can get the gist of this session by listening to the first five minutes or so, since the entire tape consists of nearly identical, thudding performances of the same two minute, fifteen second commercial. Most of them were recorded at 15 IPS, the last few were at 7 1/2 IPS. 

I'd have to guess that Hoellen was re-elected in spite of this material, rather than in anyway because of it. 

Download: Unknown - Recording a Political Ad for "Big Bad John Hoellen"

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Just over eight years ago, I posted a set of raw tapes from the production of a PBS television episode, titled "Life in a Small Town". At the time, I wrote this: 

For today, here's an interesting reel, one which captures the raw tapes for a show - I believe a local PBS show from the Maryland area - called "People In Process". I can find no references to this show, but admittedly haven't looked that hard.

The investigation here (such as it is) is into how people in a small town view life in a small town. That they chose the city of Annapolis, Maryland, which is the capital of the state, strikes me as weird, especially given that the town had 30,000 residents in the late '60's and early '70's, which is when I'm guessing this is from. Perhaps it's because I was raised in a town of 4000 people, but 30,000 people isn't a "small town" to me.

Today, I have another reel containing more raw tapes from that same production (actually, a comparison of the two boxes shows this to be the early recorded of the two). Here 'tis: 

Download: People in Process - More Raw Tapes for "Life in a Small Town"

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And here's that box: 

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In the early days of reel to reel recording, and in particular, the early days of stereo (which was introduced on reels in 1957, a year before it made its way onto records), tape recorder manufacturers and companies producing pre-recorded tapes, provided their customers with sampler and demonstration tapes to indicate the wonders of reel to reel sound. I've shared many of these before, and here it yet another, from the Replica label. Replica releases some amazing albums, a few of which are in my collection. But as far as I can tell, they did not dive very deeply into the Reel to Reel market. This sampler's narrator mentions that they had only produced seven tapes so far (each of which is "sampled" here), and I cannot find anything online to indicate that the reel division of their label made it out of 1958, or beyond 8-10 releases. 

Download: New Adventures in Sound - A Stereo Sampler From Replica

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Reaching into the past of this blog yet again, six months ago, I featured some segments from a tape of 1961 BBC musical programming. Here is another segment from that same tape, in this case, "Melody Hour with Geraldo and His Orchestra. Play It, Geraldo! (or should that be "Conduct It, Geraldo"?):

Download: BBC - Melody Hour with Geraldo and His Orchestra- Circa Summer, 1961

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Finally, I'm going to stretch the concept of a "Very Short Reel" today. I started off focusing on tapes which, in their entirity, were under five minutes. Then I started featuring segments of tapes which were under five minutes, even if the segment was part of a much longer tape, and recently I've been pushing that limit to six minutes. Today, I will revert to an entire tape - a large reel with only 7:22 of recording tape on it, but, as noted, will extend the definition of "short" to 7:22. 

And this is really worth hearing. A young man - sounds like he is perhaps in his mid to late teens - starts the tape by impersonating my choice for the worst section of "The Wizard of Oz", that being the "If I Were King of the Forest" segment. He then goes on, for whatever reason, to portray several creatures from the animal kingdom, each with its own vocal delivery and name. That's all well and good, but when he's done, we hear the last few seconds of what he was erasing with his animal talk - a much more serious and rather intimate sounding discussion of a most intimate experience he'd had. I very much would have preferred to hear what sounds like it much have been a pretty fascinating little vocal essay in complete form than hearing the animal bit which erased it.  

Download: A Boy Impersonates a Series of Animals (and a bit more)

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Bob Sirott Gets His Start in Radio, Political Commercial Sessions, Male Ad Voices and More!

I hope you're all ready for another set of interesting items from the archives. Today, we're heavy on the media side of things. 

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Bob Sirott is a Chicago Media legend and survivor of dozens of careers within a career. He has been through too many jobs and media lives to count. For my money, he was at his best in his first big name job, which was as top 40 DJ at Chicago powerhouse WLS for about eight years, ending in 1979. I was enamored of him enough that I made a point of recording his entire farewell show on WLS, which I might share some time here. Since then, he's been on TV and radio and radio and TV in any number of settings, culminating, perhaps, with his current job, holding what was once the single most plum job in Chicago radio: morning drive at WGN.  

Honestly, he ceased to be interesting to me a long, long time ago, and all of those jobs have been more establishment and corporate over the years, which is something I suspect is hard to avoid in such a career. But I respect his longevity, and have fond memories of listening to him as a teenager in the '70's. 

His biography on Wikipedia states his radio start point was on another Chicago station in 1971, but I have, for years, owned a tape that demonstrates that this is incorrect. Because someone filled both sides of an 1800 foot reel - nearly 100 minutes of a Bob Sirott aircheck - from December of 1967, on WRSV in Skokie, just north of Chicago. With his semi-recent hire at WGN, I made a point of digging the tape out to share for everyone. 

At first, I thought it was funny that the owner of the tape labeled it "The Bob Sirott Show", as it seemed to be, largely, simply Sirott doing a faceless job of performing a faceless task: spinning MOR and Beautiful Music records of the era. 

But eventually, it becomes clear that the show did have a "personality", as Sirott gets a few "bits" in, and even re-references one of them later in the show. Oddly, he makes it clear that his was a one-night-a-week job, and even odder (to me, anyway), is that the phones were apparently lighting up with requests for this tedious blandness. Bob Sirott would have been 18 at this time - I sure this was his very favorite music. 

Anyway, it's an interesting listen, to a format of music which hasn't existed in a very long time, and a glimpse into the very earliest days of a very big name in Chicago media. 

(Oh, and I should mention that there is some competing noise, singing, whistling and such on one channel for the first 30 seconds or so. I didn't want to edit out the start of the tape, so I just left it as-is.)

Download:  Bob Sirott Plays MOR of WRSV, Skokie, IL, 12-4-67

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On to something I find even more interesting. The next two segments both come from a tape which is labeled as seen below: 

The box seems to be a set of commercials promoting Democratic Governor Shapiro of Illinois, who had only been governor for five months in October, 1968, in a series called "Mark of Cain", promoting his election to a full term that fall. But that's not really what's featured on this tape. Well, there is one "Mark of Cain" ad, but not four, and the first third or so of the tape is actually made up almost entirely by commercials (from the same election cycle) for the much better remembered Birch Bayh, Democratic Senator of Indiana. Most of the tape is a mixture of raw sessions from the Bayh commercials and finished product, with the single Shapiro commercial edited into the middle of the section, and a few stray moments the could be from something else. 

By the way, Shapiro was defeated, Bayh was re-elected. 

Download: Recording Commercials for Senator Birch Bayh and Others

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And then, in case that wasn't enough, and very happily, in my opinion, someone, surely from the same ad agency, spliced on a presentation of the company's Male Ad Voice Talent, arranged alphabetically, for the first half of the alphabet, anyway. 

I've featured several of these before, both here and at WFMU. As with those previous demo tapes, there are some absolutely hugely famous names heard here, and I find it funny to think that some of the actors heard here - including the likes of Oscar winner Burl Ives - might be able to command enormous fees for movie and TV work, but got to be pimped out along with 20 other guys in the advertising equivalent of speed dating. 

There are also some racial and ethnic portrayals here which wouldn't get past the drawing board today. 

Download: Male Ad Voices Demo Tape, A Through M

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And then there's this little three inch reel

Now, I don't know if this next set of material is rare or collectable at all, but I listened to it for the first time this week and thought it was enjoyable. I know that Ed Sullivan shows have been packaged, repackaged and re-aired in a dozen ways, and some Smothers Brothers' episodes have been released on DVD, as well. But it seems at least possible that these little segments might not be otherwise available, so I thought I'd share the contents of this tape. 

Side one, heard first, features three performers from the October 6, 1968 edition of the Sullivan show, including Flip Wilson and Dionne Warwick, but highlighted - well, at least I think so (and so did whoever wrote on that tape box) - by Tiny Tim's performance, and the introduction of Tim's parents in the audience. The tape runs out, unfortunately, during his performance. 

Side two features an equally short segment from the Smothers Brothers' show from the same night, featuring a sad tune from Nancy Sinatra, a goofy jug band turn from Nancy with Tommy Smothers, and part of Pat Paulson's then-current campaign for president. 

Download:  Ed Sullivan Show (Flip Wilson,  Dionne Warwick, Tiny Tim), and The Smothers Brothers' Hour (Nancy Sinatra and Pat Paulson) - 1968 

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And finally, this posts "very short reel". I have a LOT of tapes from a radio station in Astoria, Oregon. I bought a batch of them perhaps 15 years ago, in one of my earlist eBay purchases. A lot of them have since been sold, mostly episodes of a storytelling radio series. I have shared a few of the "short reels" I got with that batch, and here is yet another one, a PSA sponsored by the clunkily named K-TEK C.N.C. Machines company. This is truly "very short" - just 37 seconds. 

Download: K-TEC CNC Machines Astoria, Drunk Driving PSA, July 1987

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