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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Ed Sullivan Meets the Wounded Soldiers

Okay, here's a truly remarkable tape. I have, on several occasions here, and at WFMU, shared the bounty of a massive purchase I made well over a decade ago, featuring a variety of network recordings, including many raw tapes, sound effect reels, foley material, etc, primarily from CBS television. This one might be the most amazing of all.

It takes a moment to get going, but when it does, this recording features recordings made during a visit by Ed Sullivan to an Army hospital (or some such)  - apparently in Denver, according to the box, circa 1969 or 1970. Presumably, a camera crew was following, and some segment of this recording was used in a broadcast, whether on his show or elsewhere. But what's captured here is a good part of the visit - 25 minutes of it, anyway - Ed being taken from bed to bed and room to room, being told about the soldiers and their injuries (most of which occurred in Vietnam or in training to go to Vietnam), and then sharing a few words with each of the young men.

I don't think more needs to be said.

Download: Ed Sullivan - Ed Sullivan Meets the Wounded Soldiers
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Traveling further west, and another tone and attitude entirely, is another fairly unique tape. I have to believe this was made for a High School project, as there are lots of clues that a group of High Schoolers made this tape, and it seems unlikely that they'd have gone to this much trouble just for kicks. It's an imitation radio broadcast, from the mid '70's, complete with news reports, sports updates, lots of current and recent music, and other hallmarks of top 40 radio. Except the stories and ads are snarky and filled with lame jokes, a song by Paul McCartney is mis-identified (write album, wrong song), and the radio "staff" are clearly amateurs. All that could just point to this being a high school radio broadcast, but the kicker - and the proof that this never aired - is that the station is identified as K-R-A-P radio.

If I'm hearing it right, this seems to come from Turlock High School, which is in Turlock, California. And I really wonder if these students pushed things past their teacher's comfort level with that KRAP stuff.

Download: Unknown High Schoolers - K-R-A-P Radio

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And finally, for you advertising fans, here's an endless series of attempts to record the same hard-sell copy for "Cannon Flex-O-Matic", one of which you can see here.

Download: Unknown - Recording an Ad for the Cannon Flex-O-Matic
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Terry-Thomas and His Teeth!

Happy Sunday, and for those who celebrated it, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving on Thursday. I have a bumper crop of four tapes for you today.

We'll start with a truly remarkable reel of tape. This comes from the same batch of "raw tapes" that I bought several years ago, and which I've mined at least a dozen times between this site and the WFMU blog.

What we have here is 22 minute tape featuring a series of attempts to get a commercial JUST right. The produced is a new toothpaste called "Stim-U-Dent" (introduced in 1969, so I'm guessing this is from around that time). The spokesman sounds to me like the late, great British character actor Terry-Thomas. I have no proof that it's him, and I can find no record of this commercial, featuring either Terry-Thomas or anyone else, but I can't imagine anyone sounding quite this much like Terry-Thomas without actually being him. And the fact that it's for toothpaste - given the prominent teeth of the man in question - just makes me hope it's true that much more.

There seem to be a number of decent takes here, and yet they keep trying and trying again. Other takes break down when nothing seems to have gone wrong. The actor becomes quite irritated and frustrated at a few points, but mostly in the most British of ways - but not always.

I only heard this for the first time last week, and couldn't wait to share it here - it immediately became one of my favorite things I've heard all year.

Download: Terry Thomas (?) - Stim-U-Dent Commercial (raw takes)
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I was trying to think of something else extra special to pass along, in Thanks for all of you who read and listen, and I don't know if this qualifies or not, but I've been shy about including excerpts from my own family's many, many tapes, and I thought I'd offer up a few moments from my own life.

On one of our tapes, there is a lengthy section where my brother Bill ("Billy", then), age 10, is home sick from school, very bored, and recording whatever he can think of. He tries to get the cat to make noise, tries to get the microphone to pick up the sump pump going on, and plays a few of his favorite children's records. Then I arrive home from somewhere (I'm four years old, here), and he engages me in the conversation you're about to hear, focused mostly on long words, most prominently the big one which had just been introduced, earlier that year, in the film "Mary Poppins".

Download: Billy and Bobby - Long Words
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Next up, some warnings to keep in mind when having outdoor winter fun. As I sit here, a few miles northwest of O'Hare airport, we are experiencing what is forecast to be the first major snowstorm of the year. And so, for your edification and enjoyment, I have the pride of Ishpeming, Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula, those wacky folks from the humorous music group "Da Yoopers" with some snowmobiling safety messages:

Download: Da Yoopers - Snowmobile Safety PSAs
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And now, since it's officially the Christmas shopping season, and since I have so many Christmas oriented tapes to share, I thought I'd start with those now. On one tape I listened to, a man sent a lot of Christmas music to a friend, sort of an audio letter, except that there was virtually no talking, just introducing of tracks. That was true, at least until the tape was almost over, when the man recording the tape offered up some Christmas memories. This is a very sweet tape, and I wish this man had chosen to speak more, on the tape to his friend.

Download: Unknown - A Few Christmas Memories
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Adventures in Sounds!

Before getting to today's triple feature, I received this nice note from Ken, regarding the second tape featuring Bob Hopp, which I shared a short time ago. The note contains a link to a Youtube video which, given its nature, will probably not be up for very long: 

I downloaded this just after you posted it but just got around to listening to it, hence the late comment. Fascinating. He gave his address as 830 High street, and on the earlier tape he mentions he lives in Aurora IL. Putting two and two together, I found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk_ay2nPsDY

I also received the following about the tape with the banjo music and the older woman talking, from frequent correspondent Timmy: 

The old gal dictating to her tape for whoever, sounds like she got a Cajun accent. And I would think SHE is the banjist, as well. She mentions 1969 a couple times, so there's the date of recording.

Thanks to both of you, and to everyone who offers up comments!

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For today, three different types of Adventures in Sound. I'm naming them such because the first of them is literally labeled "Adventure in Sound", on the tape box. The tape came in set of boxes of tapes, many of which had some relation to the phone company. While there were several there which had no apparent connection (recordings of a community house-type production of a play, high quality recordings of live TV from the '50's), they all have notes on them in the same handwriting. I've featured several of them here and at WFMU. 

Here is the sheet of paper which comes in the "Adventure in Sound" box, and it gives you a good road map to the many short bits of sound - some only in one channel, others in both - which are going to come at your rapid-fire. The sheet indicates 15 different bits in just over six and a half minutes. 

And here is the tape. Clearly, this has something to do with the continual changes and improvement in the way sound is transmitted, but I wonder for what purpose. If you have an idea, please offer your thoughts!

Download: "Adventure in Sound"
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The next adventure is from a sound stage. From another batch of tapes that I've dived into here several times - the group of tapes that feature raw tapes and promotional items from various TV productions of the late '50's through the mid '60's, here is yet another twelve or so minutes of raw takes, from a production of something apparently called "Greenwich Village", according to the tape box.

It sounds to me like these people are REALLY not getting a lot done. The number of shouts of "CUT" while people are still talking, and the occasional curse make it sound like a rough day. Or maybe I just don't know how life on a sound stage works. These takes average about three seconds each! Maybe they were just fixing specific shots.

Download: Raw Takes from "Greenwich Village"
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And finally, a place where people once went to have a few adventures. Here's a commercial for the Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey, the same classic park that Chuck Barris wrote a song about and Freddie Cannon sang that song about.

The whole thing isn't technically here. What I have here is an entire, very entertaining jingle for the park, with spoken details afterwards, which are cut off by whoever was recording the bland "beautiful music" programming that day on WOR-FM. This was the only thing worth salvaging in that entire 30 minute tape, and it's sort of wonderful, if more than a little moronic, too.

Download: Palisades Amusicement Park Ad
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Raw Tapes from a "Man On The Street" Type TV Show

 

 

Well, it's been a busy few weeks, with a couple more to come in advance of a big event I'm part of. And that's meant less posting here. It will pick up after the middle of the month, and I have a lot more to share.

 

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.

 

The questions the interviewer chooses to ask, particularly the different things he asks different people, are quite interesting, and deserve their own sociological study. There's also the woman who doesn't want to be on camera. And there's the way he tries so hard to feed several interviewees questions, asking them to answer in complete sentences, even telling them how to start the sentences, and the way that NONE of them seem to understand what he wants them to do. Beyond that, to my ears, he just isn't much of an interviewer, and that's being generous.

 

The entire tape runs about 56 minutes.

 

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

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