Vintage R & B Radio, Some Religiosity, Savings Bonds, A Letter to Carole, A REALLY Short Reel, and The Oldest Tape I've Ever Owned

  Hello out there!!!

Let's get right to it. I have here something pretty special, I think, although I wish it was longer....

Anyway...

Remember Gary, Indiana? It was once a fairly flourishing working class town, just outside of Chicago, based around the steel industry. More recently, it has been named "the most miserable city in the US". But back when it was more or less thriving, Gary had a popular R & B Radio Station, WWCA, and WWCA had a popular DJ, Jesse Coopwood (although Wikipedia deems him to have been a jazz DJ).

Regardless, I have been lucky enough to come across, in my collection, two short recordings of Jesse Coopwood doing his thing. One is clearly from Fall of 1951, based on his comments about songs by Sylvia Robinson and by The Dominoes, among others, being recent or new. The other one does not have a date which is immediately apparent to me, but maybe someone else can figure it out. 

Anyway, these are precious and rare, and very much worth sharing. Enjoy!

Download: Jesse Coopwood on WWCA, Gary, Indiana, Fall, 1951

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Download: Jesse Coopwood on WWCA, Gary, Indiana

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Now, from roughly the same time period, in this case, from November 30, 1952, and the place is the tiny town of Clever, Missouri. Here is a recording, mostly likely made in/at a church, of a man who is saying some fairly ridiculous and quickly disproven things about the wonders of the Christian Church and specifically its supposed role in causing virtually everything that is good and forward moving in the world.  

I am a lifelong, active Christian, as you might have gathered from the piece about my mom a month ago, but I don't recognize that faith in what I hear from this guy. The number of "facts" that he spews here which are offensive and prejudicial in nature is staggering.

Download: A Man Extols the Wonders and Benefits of Christianity - Clever, Missouri, 11-30-52

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The flip side of this tape contains a home recording - it's not terribly scintillating, I suppose, but it is a bit peculiar and may hold some entertainment value. It's a family, having a fairly loose discussion, while going about their day, regarding Savings Bonds, and particularly one which was bought on behalf of what sounds like a young adult son, some years back. This seems to come from roughly the same timeframe as the religious speech above. 

Download: A Savings Bond Discussion, Circa 1952

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Perhaps you need a palate cleanser after that church speech up there. If so, here is a nice audio letter from a father to his daughter Carole. And I think that's all that needs to be said!

Download: Audio Letter from a Dad to His Daughter Carole

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And now, a real piece of history. On its surface, this may be among the least exiting sounds I've ever shared with all of you. But on the other hand.... I think this is now the oldest piece of playable tape in my collection. 

I recently was fortunate enough to obtain six reels of Soundmirror Recording Tape, produced by the Brush Development Company. This was, I believe, the first commercially available reel to reel tape in this country, appearing not long after the introduction of the format in the US, which I also believe was from the same company. That was in 1946. All of these are paper reels, by the way.

I have not listened to all of the tapes yet, so there may well be something even older on one or more of them. But this is a recording from May of 1948, 75 years ago this month, and perhaps 18 months after the first reel to reel machines came onto the market in this country. So I felt like I ought to share its contents, even if they are more than a bit bland. 

What the tape contains is an organist at a church in Florida playing a series of hymns and other music. The tape is just over 30 minutes long and the sound starts to fade in and out during the last five minutes. But this is the sort of thing that just excites me no end - not the contents so much as its very existence in my collection. 

Download: Mrs. Gibbs Plays the Organ at the Rader Memorial Methodist Church, Little River, Florida, 5-6-48

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And what does a Soundmirror tape box look like? Here is the box, front and back: 

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Now, let's move even a little further into the past, to nearly 80 years ago, and our Acetate of the Month. This is a little eight inch acetate, and while the voices are quite lighthearted, I'm sure it was made and was received with considerably more emotion than is given away by those voices. That's because this is almost certainly a mother sending her birthday wishes to her son who is in the armed forces, during a time of war. 

Download:  Birthday Greetings to Ensign Richard Nash from Mother, 10-6-43, Side One

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Download:  Birthday Greetings to Ensign Richard Nash from Mother, 10-6-43, Side Two

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And now it's time for our Very Short Reel of the post. In fact, I have two, because the first is a ridiculously very, VERY short reel. 

Here, for your dining and dancing pleasure is everything that was recorded on a standard, Seven inch, 1800 foot reel of tape that I scanned a few weeks ago: 

Download: Hello, George

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Since that was so ridiculously short, here's a more typical length "very short reel", this one being the remnants of what was probably once a longer recording. This was at the end of a tape on which was recorded some less than interesting records from the previous owner's collection. 

Download: Testing the Machine and Asking Bobby to Come Here

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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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WCHB, Detroit - Live from the Michigan State Fair, August, 1963

Hello!

First, I'd like to acknowledge that a helpful commenter or two (not sure if it was one person or two), has/have provided more information about the rock and roll TV show I shared last time around. That updated post can be found here.

Today, I have something just as keen, or maybe even more so. I've had this tape in one of my stacks for ages, but just discovered its contents in the last two weeks. Most of this tape is filled up with an amazing aircheck from a station called WCHB in Detroit.

Wikipedia reports that the station was briefly a top 40 station in 1963, before going to all country, and this tape, which can only be from August of 1963, certainly would predate that sort of switch. But this is NOT a top 40 station, so Wikipedia seems to be a it off.

This is clearly an R & B station, hosted by an African-American dee-jay, whose name I can't quite grasp, and who is broadcasting from the Michigan State Fair in Detroit. He uses an amazing, and absolutely wonderful amount of reverb (I love reverb), talks over records, comments on things, interviews fair-goers, and does commercials.

Unfortunately, there are points at which the dee-jay material is cut off and we slide right into the next song, but there is a LOT of prime AM radio from 1963 here. And I'm fairly certain that, among my tapes this is the first one of an R & B station that I've come across. There are a lot of songs here that I've never heard before, or even heard of, and this is among my favorite eras for music.

(It's worth recalling that it was around this time that Billboard decided to discontinue R & B charts, feeling at least in part - and I know there were other reasons - that R & B was so well integrated into top 40 that having two charts was redundant. Just this 70 minutes or so proves how inaccurate that was).

Anyway, enjoy this for all it's worth. It's one of my favorite new finds of the last few years.

Download: WCHB, Detroit - Live from the Michigan State Fair, August, 1963
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The remainder of the tape is made up of the same person's recording of multiple stations, presumably in the Detroit area, and from very much the same general time period. If one ever needed to hear the distinction between the stuff that really had it going on, and the more whitebread aspects of top 40 radio, in the summer of 1963, one could hardly do better than to contrast the above tape with the start of the remaining material, which features "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton.

Download: Various Detroit Stations, Late Summer, 1963
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And now, because this is my 59th birthday, I'm going to indulge a bit, and share with you a 150 second blast of my own family's tape collection, recorded by and with my mother, in January of 1964, just 4-5 months after the above, and featuring two brief renditions of a song most small children would have known in those days, "I Love Little Pussy", and a somewhat longer version of another song most children of any age would not have known in those days, "There is a Tavern in the Town".

I am, in the case of "Tavern", doing my 3 1/2 year old best to yodel in the style of a record that was, and is, a great family favorite, Wally Cox' rendition of the song, which you can hear here. Seriously, listen to that first - it will help make my version make more sense. Sort of.

I enjoy how I stop to make mention - in the middle of saying a stream of incorrect and non-existent words - of how I've just said the wrong words. You'll also hear me excitedly talk about how daddy sings the song.

I hope you find some enjoyment in this.

Download: Bobby Purse - I Love Little Pussy & Tavern in the Town
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By the way, that Wally Cox record is a contender for my favorite 100 records ever,  and even so, it's outranked by the Rudy Vallee version, which may be my favorite comic recording ever.