Some Rare Monty Python, More Australian Shortwave, Mr. Handy and a REALLY Long Tape Few Are Likely to Listen To

Hello everyone, 

I hope you've had a wonderful summer, unless you're in the Southern Hemisphere (like some of the people featured today), in which case I hope you start to have a swell spring soon.

Today I have something I believe to be quite rare. Although I can find a few dozen places online where this recording is referenced, I have been unable to find anywhere that this actual recording is posted or otherwise available. I may have missed something, in which case perhaps this is not as rare as I thought, but even if so, I'm making it available more readily here, I hope, and for free. 

This comes from one of my own home recorded reels, which I am slowly going through to find out their contents. And I've worked my way up to tapes made in 1976, the year I turned 16, and more to the point, perhaps 18 months after my mother and I became extremely early American converts to Monty Python (as I explained partway through this extremely long post). This is, specifically, a recording of the troupe's appearance on the King Biscuit radio show, in May of 1976. 

This performance is from the same series of shows (and same venue, of course) as was released on the "Live at City Center" album that also came out in 1976, with two significant differences. First, it is a different performance - this probably amounts to the most minor of changes from the released album (I haven't compared them), but it is a different show. And second, and perhaps more importantly, it contains a very humorous and self-depreciating introduction from John Cleese. 

I hope that all Python fans enjoy this recording. 

Download: Monty Python's Flying Circus Live - On King Biscuit Flower Hour - 5-9-76

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The other recording on the same tape is less rare. It's an appearance of some of the troupe on "The Mike Douglas Show" that same week in May of 1976. There is a video of part of this appearance on YouTube. It is not the entire segment heard below, and it is in poor video and audio quality, but it is there. This, on the other hand, is the entire appearance, obviously without video but with much better sound quality (although my mom chimes in at one point to explain what's happening). 

Unfortunately, a good part of the visit is taken up with clips from the show and from the movie they were promoting ("The Holy Grail"), presumably to help the squares who watched Mike Douglas get an idea of what and who the Monty Python trouble was. Doubly unfortunate, John Cleese and Graham Chapman - the heart and soul of the troupe, in my opinion, are not present for the interview (Eric Idle isn't there either, but he was always - by far - the weak link of the troupe, for me, anyway). 

Download: Monty Python's Flying Circus Promote "The Holy Grail" On the Mike Douglas Show, 5-14-76

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~~

Somewhere along the line I managed to acquire a whole bunch of someone's tapes of Australian shortwave broadcasts from the 1960's and 1970's. My un-listened-to tapes in my basement have gotten jumbled around several times over the years, so a lot of collections which were once stacked all in one place are now scattered amongst the stacks down there. And so it is that this week, I found yet another tape of Australian shortwave recordings. The recordings only include the day of the week and the date, not the year, but based on those days and dates, and the contents of the broadcasts, I am surmising the first of these to be from September of 1968 and the other to be from nearly exactly two years later. 

The 1968 recording starts off difficult to hear and grows progressively worse - this is not an easy to listen to tape - such are the vagaries of listening to short wave broadcasts. The 1970 tape is considerably clearer in sound quality. 

Download: Australian Shortwave, 9-23-68

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Download: Australian Shortwave, 9-12-70

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~~

Okay, now here's a segment that perhaps only the masochistic among you might listen to. But I listened to all five hours plus of it, so I'll be damned if I'm not going to do something with it. But it is tedious and endless. 

I don't know what exactly was going on here, but what seems to be small group of friends/acquaintances spend nearly four and a half hours (in the first segment), singing songs, some of them multiple times during that length of time, accompanied by a few musicians. A lot of these are old, old songs, some of them probably fairly recent to whenever this was recorded. At one point, there is a lengthy break for what sounds like a meal, and it becomes clear that there are also a few children present. For a good period of time there is no singing and the soft conversations are hard to pick up at time. Then it's back to the singing, which is followed at the end by some goodbyes and final conversations. Enjoy? 

Download: A Group of People Sing a Lot of Songs (and Talk a Lot) for a Really Long Time

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When that segment ends, the tape immediately reverts to what was being erased by that lengthy recording, and that was, MORE recordings seemingly featuring the same people, or at least a similar gang of folks. There seem to be two recordings here, of differing sound quality, and they make up another 40 minutes plus of the same sort of things heard in the other, longer segment, including a lot of the same songs. 

I'm not even going to speculate as to what the event was or who these people are/were. I'm just glad I wasn't there. 

Download: A Few More (Much Shorter) Segments with the Same People

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~~

Well, after that heavy and unappetizing meal, how about some lovely dessert. Our "Very Short Reel" features a radio announcer trying - and most of the time failing - to record a few ads for an apparently legendary and much loved business in Springfield, Ohio, "Mr. Handy", complete with hard-sell backing music. This business just closed five months ago, after 45 years in business

Download: Unknown - Recording Mr. Handy Commercials

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~~

And finally, a mint on your pillow for getting all the way through this post. This doesn't really qualify as a "Very Short Reel", even though it's only 66 seconds long; it was pulled out of a 75 minute tape of (mostly) classical music recorded off of the radio at some point in the 1950's, probably the early 1950's. I faded in and faded out this segment, which was buried deep in the second side of this tape. It is simply a moment that made me laugh, and I decided to excerpt it here and share it with you. What's are the call letters of that station, do you say? And that's all I'll say. 

Download: A Humorous Moment

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The Young Sound of '68, Bishop Sheen Talks to Teenagers, The Supreme Court in 1963, a Combo in 1966, TV School, and THE RETURN OF PETE!

Greetings! 

It's been almost a month since my last posting - again due to stuff here at home - and I may not get another post out this month, so I'm going to share a LOT of stuff here, five and a half hour's worth. 

Just a few quick comments before I get to this week's offerings. Regarding a short tape I included in my last post - the end of a broadcast day at an Indiana station - Chad offered up the following: 

Wow! That's almost certainly the only extant recording of WHFS, which only appears in radio directories from 1956 through 1958. There were a lot of short lived FM radio stations in the early days, the technology being new and slow to catch on. Airchecks of any radio station from this era are rare, FM Radio airchecks of this era are nearly non-existent, to begin with but to find one from such a short lived station is practically a Holy Grail!

In that case, I am extremely glad to have found/shared it. 

Regarding an item in a post three months ago featuring a lot of unknown music as heard on powerhouse Top 40 station WINS, Ken had this suggestion: 

One other thing that occurred to me after my post above. Murray the K was on WINS. He had a nightly feature where he'd play 5 new records and listeners would vote on them. The weekday winners would be in the "finals" on Saturday night. This meant that he was playing 25 new records each week, many of which were never heard again. I'm willing to bet a lot of those unknown tracks are from those shows.

Thanks, guys, and thanks to everyone for such great comments. I appreciate your visits, your reading and your listening. 

~~

Full radio airchecks - of any vintage and any format - seem to be a favorite of many of you out there reading this site, so I will start with a couple of recordings, found on either side of a reel of tape, of a rather esoteric and fairly short lived format, one that I can't believe was ever successful. And it happened right here in Chicago. 

The station was WBBM-FM and it was the late 1960's. You can read about it right here. The powers that be wanted to appeal to young people - I would guess those under 25 - but not play any of that icky rock and roll. So - and I'll paraphrase Wikipedia here - one would hear bland instrumental cover versions of recent hits, pop instrumentals (distinctly on the Herb Alpert end of things), and rock-adjacent-but-not-really-rock vocal hits such as those from Petula Clark.

They called this "The Young Sound". Yeah. "The Young Sound."

I don't have the ratings books from 1966-1970, but "The Young" of Chicago could not possibly have been listening in droves to "The Young Sound" on WBBM in 1968. They weren't MOR-ons. 

The first side of this tape seems to have been made "open air" in someone's home - you can hear all manner of conversation and noises in the background and sometimes close to being in the foreground. Not so on the flip side. The first side is likely from 1968. The second side is definitely from September 18th, 1968, based on some of the news reported therein. The deejay is Bud Kelly. The linked Wikipedia article makes it sound like Bud Kelly was the ONLY deejay there. 

Download: Bud Kelly on WBBM-FM, Chicago, 'The Young Sound", circa 1968 (with background sound)

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Download: Bud Kelly on WBBM-FM, Chicago, 'The Young Sound', 9-18-68

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~~

On to some live show-band stuff. In addition to the comments above, I also heard from frequent poster and friend of both of my blogs, Timmy, who expressed his undying love for bar/lounge acts. I'm not sure this is exactly up his alley, but if not, it is probably close. 

I have recently discovered that I have a treasure trove of tapes featuring the performances of a troupe variously identified on these tapes as "Styles" and as "The Jack Dodd Shaffer Quintet". I may not have that latter name quite right, and the different stage names may have depended on how many members were in the band (it appears to have varied) or perhaps the name changed during their existence as a group. And I don't have a name to attach to this particular performance, as the name of the combo is not on the box and doesn't appear to be spoken during the recording. 

All of the tapes feature the same basic shows, with some variety as to the particular songs played and the sketches and humor included. 

That's right, sketches and humor. The act, on most of these tapes, contains set pieces, some of them rather lengthy, all of them moronic and most of them built around vapid jokes of a sexual nature that barely qualify as adolescent humor. I'm sure it was all a bit risqué for the 1960's, at least in some environs. Perhaps those who thought this stuff was funny and/or cutting edge were the same people who thought 17 year olds in 1968 wanted to hear Petula Clark and instrumental version of the Doors. It all ties together, doesn't it? 

Anyway, there is A LOT MORE where this came from, if anyone is interested, or even if no one is interested. So now, for your dining, dancing and laughing pleasure, here they are, the whatever-their-name-was-band, straight from New Year's Day, 1966 at Dick's Rancho Inn in Millbrook, New York. I can't find the tape box at the moment, which is odd, because I just digitized this tape three weeks ago, but the above information is written on the box, and I'll add a scan, when I find it. 

This is for you, Timmy! And if you, or anyone else wants more, let me know: 

Download: Unknown Combo - Music and Comedy at Dick's Rancho Inn, Millbrook, New York, 1-1-66

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And speaking of music that some people can't get enough of, and others wish there was none of, I now present the second of two features on PETE! In my last post, I shared one tape that Pete made, in which he apparently collected a bunch of his older tapes, onto a five inch reel. 

On this tape, Pete did the same, with some comments here and there. But this time, for whatever reason, Pete frequently chose to sing along with the tapes he was copying, with the original on the left channel and the new, further vocal accompaniments on the right channel. The thing is - and here I will quote what I wrote last month: "These performances are, to use the technical term, awful. And it does not appear that Pete was particularly aware of this."

I wrote a lot more about Pete in that last post, and I won't repeat that or go on about him here. The following are the two sides of this tape. The first side, as indicated by its title, contains some other, non-Pete recordings at the end, including the odd juxtapositioning of a bawdy, double entendre 78 RPM record with a religiously themed record. 

Download: Pete - Pete's Hootenanny, Part One (and a Bit of Potpourri)

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Download: Pete - Pete's Hootenanny, Part Two

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As with the other tape, Pete chose to fill nearly every inch of the outside of the tape box with writings about the tape's contents, as you can see: 

Additionally, he included four scraps of paper and cardboard with further information. Well, three with further information and one with a partial ad for Volkswagen. 

He also wrote on the inside of the box: 

~~

Bishop Fulton Sheen was, during his lifetime, one of the most famous men in the country. Read about him, if you'd like at the link I just shared. So when I found a tape called "Bishop Sheen Talks to Teenagers", I figured it was probably a recording that was readily available online. But... that doesn't appear to be the case, unless my searching simply failed to turn it up. This recording appears to be from a television broadcast, rather than a record, so maybe that's why it's not out there somewhere (unless it is). This actually goes in a few directions I wasn't expecting, before landing on the same old reciting of expectations that I knew were coming at some point. Here is that tape: 

Download: Bishop Sheen Talks to Teenagers

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~~

"Continental Classroom" was - to directly quote Wikipedia this time - "a U.S. educational television program that was broadcast on the NBC network five days a week in the early morning from 1958 to 1963, covering physics, chemistry, mathematics, and American government. It was targeted at teachers and college students and many institutions offered college credit for courses of which the broadcasts were the main component." 

I have featured the program here before - at some point, I obtained a LARGE collection of tapes made of a wide range of media recordings, including, in several cases, episodes of this show. 

With the Supreme Court in the news seemingly every three days nowadays, I thought I'd share the recordings of a three part series on the court, which aired in February of 1963. I'll share one segment per post for the next three posts. Here is the first one: 

Download: Continental Classroom - 2-12-63 - The Supreme Court, Part One

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~~

And now for an EXTREMELY Short "Very Short Reel". At 43 seconds, it's not the shortest segment featured at the end of a post, but it's close. I've called it "A Brother and Sister and Their Dad". And I'll let you enjoy its pleasures without saying anything else. 

Download: A Brother and Sister and Their Dad

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Toastmistresses, A Fairly Generic Rock Band, Pete and his Musical Limitations, The End of the Broadcast Day, and MR. PERSONALITY

Hi, everyone, 

Well, I said things might slow down here and, as I wrote in my most recent post on my other blog, they sure enough have. I want to explain that an immediate family member has received a serious diagnosis and has had two surgeries since my last post. Since I posted to my other site, things are looking up, and hopefully in June I can get back to two posts a month, or... I might not. I hope you will continue to visit and view, read and listen whenever I do post. 

A few comments, first: 

In my last post here, I offered up, without much comment, a short recording from Armed Forces radio, which I included only for completeness sake, as I was much more interested in the material on the other side of the tape. However, I received the following comment, from Chad S. about that Armed Forces material, which indicates that it is far more interesting than I thought: 

At the very end of the Armed Forces Radio Service tape is a brief ID of "VOUS" that gets cut off by the end of the tape. This would appear to be the actual call letters of the American Forces radio station in St. John's and later moved to Argentia, Newfoundland, Canada. Older Newfie stations can still retain their VO- calls from before the province joined Canada in 1949. The base at Argentia shut down in 1993, but it appears the tiny 250 watt station shut down some time before that.

This tiny clip is an absolutely amazing find and possibly the only extant audio of this station!

https://www.radioheritage.com/llri50-post/

And, as I expected, Eric P. returned with a couple of comments on the baseball recording that I posted, including the following: 

1-We start with the ending of the 9/12/59 CBS Game of the Week TV audio (Tigers-Yankees) with Dizzy Dean and Buddy Blattner announcing that we heard an earlier portion of on the other tape posted.

2-At the four minute mark, we find ourselves at the end of the Bottom of the 3rd inning on August 20, 1959, again Yankees-Tigers. This is the Tiger radio network and the announcer is George Kell. Action is continuous through the Bottom 6th to the end of the tape. The Tigers pad their lead from 6-2 to 11-2 in a game they ultimately won 14-2. The station ID is WKZO-Kalamazoo.

Thanks to Eric and Chad, and to everyone who comments, and everyone who listens!

(As an aside, I have, just in the last couple of days, found another tape with over three hours of baseball recordings on it - I have not listened to it yet, as I just digitized it yesterday - but will share it here in the future.)

~~

Let's start with a tape which reflects a couple of different things which have not existed for a good many years. It is a tape featuring two speeches by members of the "Toastmistress Club", as heard during what appears to have been a radio broadcast. As it says on the page linked, the Toastmistresses had their own club from 1938 until 1985, so this tape could not be less than 40 years old. It's clearly older than that - my other out-of-date thought is that such speeches being broadcast on the radio places this in the early 1960's at the latest. 

Three other things about this tape. First, much of the recording is marred by being doubly recording - some classical recording can be heard throughout more than the first half of the tape, as well as a bit of announcer talk at one point. And second, the machine on which this broadcast was recorded was not working well at all, and the speed of the recording goes up and down, wreaking havoc on the women's voices. And third, not only is the beginning of the first speech missing, the recording starts and stops a couple of times, causing us to miss bits of each speech. 

The last 50 seconds of this tape feature some children being children, followed by a very brief moment of another radio broadcast. 

Download: Two Short Speeches by Members of Toastmistresses (and a bit more)

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~~

Next up, I know nothing about this tape - or this band - beyond what I think is stated after the first song: that this is Miss Patsy Van Simon singing with a band. I could well have that name wrong - feel free to write in if you think you're hearing it better, or especially if you think you know who this is (beyond the name). Anyway, it's a combo playing just about the sort of repertoire you might have heard from a bar band or a wedding band at some point, especially if you weren't paying too much for them. 

There is no audience here, but they are clearly going through said repertoire, and at the end, in the absence of a crowd, they applaud themselves. So was this a demo? I doubt it. A rehearsal? That seems more likely. 

Download: Miss Patsy Van Simon and Her Band

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And now something extremely esoteric. A fellow named Pete - he says his last name a few times here, but I'm not sure I'm hearing it right (as with the above) - had recorded a set of (apparently small) tapes at some point earlier in the 1960's. He mentions multiple dates on these tapes - the tape box reads 1967 - and I'm guessing there are recordings from multiple year copied here. These are all tapes in which {ete sang (badly) with his guitar (tuned and played badly) on one side and without his guitar on the other. At some point, Pete apparently decided to simplify his collection and made copies of his tapes onto another tape, with minimal comment as to their content. That's what we have here. 

The first side, as this tape came to me, starts off with Pete calling it "Side Two", but that may mean side two of whichever older tape he was copying, since on the other side, he refers to it as "This Side", in comparison with the other side of the tape. I may be overthinking this. 

These performances are, to use the technical term, awful. And it does not appear that Pete was particularly aware of this. In fact, I have another tape (which I'll share later) where Pete consolidates even more of his old tapes onto another reel, copying them onto the left channel, while he sings along with himself, anew, on the right channel. 

These go out to a reader/listener with whom I have been having a delightful email exchange with, about terrible records and performances. Enjoy!

Download:  Pete - Pete Sings With His Guitar, One Part

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Download: Pete - Pete Sings Without His Guitar, Another Part

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Pete wrote all over the tape box and also put stickers on both sides of the reel, to sum up everything captured on this tape. See?: 

 

  

He also included copious notes, four pages of them. Here is one: 

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Here's a neat little reel I found recently. Shortly before her father's death, then-Princess Elizabeth made a trip across Canada, which, based on what I've just read, was supposed to have been made by the king, but he was too ill. This little tape simply captures a variety of reports made before and during that visit, and ends with a speech by the princess just before her departure from the country. The tape ends just as she starts speaking in French, so we unfortunately miss the point at which John Astin rushed the stage and began kissing her up her arm, saying "Princess, You Spoke French!"

Download: Coverage of Princess Elizabeth's Visit to Canada, Fall, 1951

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The next tape is little more than a fragment - under eight minutes of radio recording. But it does feature something rarely heard these days (except from those relatively few remaining AM stations which are licensed for daylight broadcasting only). It's the end of the broadcast day, as heard on WHFS, South Bend, IN, on some long-ago day (or rather, night). You'll hear some classical music, then some station ID backdrop music with an announcer ending his show ("The Wax Museum"), and previewing his next episode (which sounds like an interesting broadcast, actually). Then another announcer does Marine Corps ad, offers up some items of interest about the station and closes up shop for the night with the National Anthem (complete with a moment of un-syncopated rhythm where there usually is syncopation). They were not returning for broadcast again until the next day at 1 PM. What's that about? 

Download: WHFS, South Bend, IN - End of the Broadcast Day

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Nearly every post, I end with a "Very Short Reel", and this week is no exception. But before that, here's a "Very VERY Short Acetate" - all 91 seconds of it - as my "Acetate of the Month". I labeled it as "Man Speaks About 'Protocol M'", and at that time, I did not find anything more about it. I've now searched again, and discovered that the man is reading an editorial from Time Magazine, dated 4/19/48. You can read it here. The acetate space runs out just before the man finishes his reading. 

Download: Unlabeled Black 6 Inch Acetate -Man Speaks About "Protocol M"

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And now for the aforementioned "Very Short Reel". This tape, of just under five minutes, starts with a man introducing himself as "Mr. Personality". He then babbles on for a few minutes, telling some ancient jokes along the way, in a very poorly recorded segment. Then the sound improves, and it's Christmastime - a group of folks test the microphone and levels, and continue this process, and to discuss it, for far longer than seems necessary to me. 

Download: Mr. Personality and Checking the Levels

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Even More Baseball, The "Do You Remember" Dance, The Country Music Story, and "Don't Sit On My Mother's Violin"

As I alluded to in my last post, I don't have a lot of time to write as much as I often do, or to get an acetate of the month ready, either. 

I do, however, want to make sure I refer people back to the comments about my last post. There are multiple posts explaining the details of the baseball offering in that post, and expressing a good deal of excitement over those contents. I'm glad to have shared them. There is also a shorter note expressing an equal amount of excitement over the posting I linked to, in that post, from Kyle - a post of Easy Listening Programming from the 1960's. 

There is lot of text in those comments, so I'm not going to repost them here, but I encourage you to have a look at them if that sort of thing is of interest to you. 

~~

I'll start with the segment that I know some people are waiting for - the remaining "Badly Recorded Baseball". This tape is considerably shorter than the one I shared last time, and at its worst, is nowhere near as bad as the worst parts of the last reel, but through much of it, there is a ton of static as well as interference from another station. But I look forward to the feedback on this one, which I'm sure is coming, and which will no doubt contain details about just what game(s) are heard here. 

Download: More (Largely Badly Recorded) Baseball, circa 1959

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Next up, both sides of a smallish reel of tape. The tape itself was a standard five inch reel, enough for recording perhaps a half-hour of material at 3 3/4 IPS, but it was two smaller reels spliced together, and the (shorter) one at the start of side one (and end of side two) was unrecorded. Side two was the more interesting of the two sides, but first.... on the recorded part of side one was the modestly (at best) interesting excerpt from The United States Armed Forces Radio Services, featuring some classical performances. 

Download: Brief Excerpt from The United States Armed Forces Radio Service

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The real (and reel) fun from this tape is on the second side, though, where some kids recorded themselves being kids. There is a brief performance of the hit song "Short Shorts", a longer segment of the song "Chances Are" - both of which likely date this tape to early 1958 - and then some general silliness. 

Download: Unknown - Short Shorts, Chances Are and Don't Sit On My Mother's Violin

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My longest offering this time around is one of those live performances I share from time to time. I don't know the name of this band, but it was undoubtedly a local dance band which played at various events, in whatever area Troy High School was/is in. I have a handful of tapes from this outfit, each one saying how many "men" worked the gig - in this case, as you can see below, it was "eight men". This is from Thanksgiving, 1956, and a dance apparently titled "Do You Remember?", if the writing on the tape box is to be believed. Travel back with me to a very different era and enjoy this anonymous dance band: 

Download: Unknown Band - Performance at Troy High, Thanksgiving, 1956 ('Do You Remember')

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In January, 1971, a series called "The Country Music Story", hosted by Johnny Cash, ran on American television. Someone recorded large portions of one episode, and here is that recording.

Download: Segments of 'The Country Music Story' With Johnny Cash, January 1971

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For my "Very Short Reel" this time around, I have a tape labeled "Interacting with a Bit of the 'Sgt Pepper' Album", and I think that sums it up fairly well. Here are a few folks, presumably at home, and presumably enjoying what was, at that moment, a still recently-new album.

Download: Unknown - Interacting with a Bit of the "Sgt Pepper" Album

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Christmas (Almost) Through and Through

As I've done just about every year, I am again offering up a Christmas post. The only difference is that one of today's tapes also contained significant (and interesting) non-Christmas related material, so I've tacked that on at the end. 

First, and perhaps most interesting culturally, is this tape I came across somewhere, featuring former first lady (and so much more) Eleanor Roosevelt reading from "A Christmas Carol" to a group of children, as well as some chatter afterwards. This came to me on two tapes, but I've joined them here.  Curiously, this tape is dated 1/25/56, but I have to think that's actually 12/25/56 or something - why would she have been reading a Christmas story in late January. 

Anyway, this recording does not seem to have been shared anywhere, outside of this offering, and I can find no reference to her having read this book on 1/25/56 or on any other date in such a setting, among her published diaries, which can be found online. Perhaps I missed it. Anyway, it's a pretty neat, rare recording. 

Download: Eleanor Roosevelt Reads "A Christmas Carol"

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Next up, a recording I've labeled "Christmas and Winter Songs and Poems with a Young Child", and that pretty much sums it up. Starting with "A Visit From St. Nicholas and progressing through some songs and some conversation, this is, as far as I'm concerned, an adorable recording. 

Download: Christmas and Winter Songs and Poems, etc, with a Young Child

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Now, let's drop in for nearly an hour of Music and Conversation at Senator Smith's house. It's 1951. I think I once tried to figure out exactly who this "Senator Smith" was - I think he was a state senator - but attempts just now to remind myself were unsuccessful. I suspect someone will chime in. 

Download: Music and Conversation, Christmas Night, 1951, at Senator Smith's House

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This one is nothing more than a short excerpt from a radio presentation of some Christmas hymns and songs, complete with a bit of historical information from an announcer. 

Download: A Short Radio Christmas Program

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On one of those tiny, three inch reels, I found this brief compendium of holiday programming, including some moments from the Glen Campbell show, among others. I've been unable to determine the year for these recordings - again, maybe someone else can figure it out. 

Download: The Glen Campbell Show and Other TV Recordings, Christmastime

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And finally, the entire contacts of a tape which starts with a chorus rehearsing some Christmas songs and goes on to include some interesting country music recordings. 

The choir rehearsal is most interesting to me for the presence of a lilting melody which I found belongs to a Mexican hymn, here translated into English. It's quite beautiful and the words are very effective. I only found one website which features the lyrics to this song in English, and that is here. It's called "Pedida de la Posada" or "The Search for Lodging".

Download: A Choral Group Rehearses Christmas Songs

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When that rehearsal is over, most of the rest of side one of the tape contains a short recording of Kenny Biggs playing country music on WEEP. I featured another tape featuring the same singer/deejay about 18 months ago. My tapes have been moved so many times that it's hard for me to know for sure, but perhaps these were from the same collection. 

Download: Kenny Biggs on WEEP, Pittsburgh

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On the other side of the tape are several recordings by a country and western band. There appear to be at least a few different sessions recorded here, but I'm guessing they are all from the same band. Perhaps someone out there will disagree. There was also music from a band on the last few seconds of side one, and I've tacked those onto the end of this section. 

Download: A Few Songs from a Country Band

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Finally, the band music heard above is followed by some VERY poorly recorded material, also from WEEP, and also apparently involving Kenny Biggs. This is music which was broadcast live over that station from The New Aurora Hotel, which was located in the extraordinarily chunkily named "The McKees Rocks Bottoms" area of Pittsburgh. Despite the poor recording - which I've attempted to improve, to little effect - I thought this was worth hearing. 

Download: Country Music from The New Aurora Hotel in The McKees Rocks Bottoms, on WEEP

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I wanted to get this out a week before Christmas, and have failed to do that already, so the Acetate of the month and the Very Short Reels feature will not be featured in this post. 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

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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By Request! More Jack Eigen! Plus Ridiculous Vocals, My Favorite Poet, Igor Stravinsky, Some Relatives Visit, Steinbeck Pro and Con and a bit of Union Propaganda

Greetings! 

Before I get to this week's offerings, I want to share a very interesting comment I received regarding the last post, specifically, the tape of an adult man interviewing six-year-old Joe Hogan. An anonymous reader listener wrote: 

The man interviewing him seams to be in another room. I think this may have been some sort of studio. The clicking you here is the talkback going on and off. Back then, you had to hold down the button to talk, then release. He kept releasing it to soon. This seams like some sort of low budget production deal I think. I think Joe is listening through a monitor (the room sound when they talk) its not a direct mic feed or anything. I don't think they were related, I think he was just trying to make Joe feel comfortable. Maybe some sort of news thing for the school? Also, if you listening very carefully when he asks Joe, "Can you write?" He accidentally releases the talkback in the middle of his sentence, and you can briefly hear Joe's mic pick him up from the control room

Makes sense to me! Thanks!

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I have received a handful of requests for a further portion of my collection of Jack Eigen broadcasts. And this requires a bit of explanation. First, for those who haven't heard any of the other offerings in this series, my write up on Mr. Eigen can be found in this post. Suffice to say that, for the better part of twenty years, Jack Eigen was an irritant on the late night Chicago radio dial, but one that plenty of people could barely do without. As my mother once told me (and as is mentioned in that earlier post), his irritating manner was, in her view, essentially what drew people into listening to his shows. 

For those of you who have downloaded my previous Eigen offerings, I will share (as I mentioned in my last post) that I actually cheated you out of additional Eigen material when I posted what I identified as "Volume Five", last May. You see, that offering was actually the exact same tape as the one I had posted as "Volume Four", over a year ago. 

So here is the reel "Volume Five", which I will label as "Volume 5" so that your folder won't get confused and tell you that there is already a file by named "Volume Five". This is by far the longest one yet, I think. It is over four and a half hours long. Enjoy!

Download: Jack Eigen - The Jack Eigen Show, Volume 5

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I seem to have left on about ten seconds' silence at the beginning of this file, by accident. So don't be surprised at a bit of silence at first...

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Next up, here is someone named Bob Terry, enjoying his 50th birthday party in 1980. Someone - presumably the birthday boy, plays a lot of piano, including a few parody numbers which presumably were his own creations, and none of them terribly clever. For the last several minutes, the pianist/birthday boy and his guests try to work out a happy birthday dirge based on a familiar melody, although it seems to be a struggle to perfect what they're trying to do. That section goes on, and on, and on, and on.

Download: The Bob Terry 50th Birthday Party

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The next three rather esoteric items all come from the same tape, and all were recorded in 1962 off of television. I am presenting them here in the order they appear on the tape, even though the second one is dated before the first one (presumably, the first segment erased something previously recorded even earlier, on that section of the tape). I cannot locate this tape to show you a scan of the writing on the box (I may have sold it along with a bunch of other tapes, some time ago), but the information on dates was from the box.

First up is a short segment in which two jazz performers, pianist/singer Rose Murphy and bassist Slam Stewart, promote a local appearance in Albany on WRGB, a pioneering television station in Schenectady, New York. I learn from Wikipedia that WRGB was one of the world's first TV stations, way back in 1928 (!) and the fourth commercial station to sign on, in 1942. However, it was also the station that launched the career of Rachael Ray, and that is simply unforgivable. May you rot in hell for what you've done, WRGB. 

Anyway, I was certainly familiar with Slam Stewart and his sing-along bass playing, but had not encountered Rose Murphy before. Her piano playing is fine. But her singing... Oh my God, she was GODAWFUL! I have a hard time believing her performance style wasn't some sort of elaborate dry joke, designed to see how many pretentious jazz-hounds she could make rave over an absurd, terrible  and mannered singing. Your mileage may vary. 

After a pre-recorded track featuring both performers singing and playing, there is a great instrumental featuring Stewart and then a song featuring Murphy, before just a taste of Murphy's signature song and a fade out. 

Download: Rose Murphy and Slam Stewart - WRGB - 6-7-62

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Next on the tape is John Ciardi, giving a lovely presentation - along with the legendary Alan Lomax, on The Sea Islands, This was part of a short lived CBS-TV series called "Accent on an American Summer", and this episode focused on the music of these islands, dating from the slave era and later created by the descendants of slaves.  

Alan Lomax should need no introduction (if for nothing else but helping to mentor Pete Seeger and first bringing him to prominence, but of course, so much more), but John Ciardi? I'm sure he's largely forgotten, if indeed he was ever well known outside of literary and poetry circles. But he was well known and beloved in the home in which I grew up, due to his having written two of our favorite books, books of poetry for children. He actually wrote well over a dozen books of poems for children, it seems. We owned "I Met a Man" and "The Man Who Sang the Sillies", and there were few books in our home that I loved more, for both the wonderful nonsense of his rhymes  (which I'm sure had a deep influence on my own lyric-writing and general sense of humor), and for the marvelous illustrations by Edward Gorey. I found the following image from my favorite of his poems, which had my favorite of the illustrations, as well: 

Genius. Absolute genius. 

Anyway, I was delighted to find this tape, as I had no idea he had done anything else but write those two lovely books. 

Download: John Ciardi on The Sea Islands - 2-14-62

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Then the tape ends with a recording of a program in which Igor Stravinsky conducts one of his own compositions, "The Flood", and which is followed by a documentary about Stravinsky. This is a much longer segment - almost 50 minutes - and it is also from 1962: 

Download: Igor Stravinsky Conducts His "The Flood", and Documentary on Stravinsky, 1962

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I feel like I've done sort of a lot of typing so far, and will be below, as well, so I'm gonna scale it back for this one. This next piece of tape is "called Aunt Edith and Uncle Carl Come to Visit, 7-27-60", and I think that just about describes it. 

Download: Aunt Edith and Uncle Carl Come to Visit, 7-27-60

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Now it's time for our "Acetate of the Month". Most of the time, these are 78 RPM acetates, and last from three to seven minutes, total, for both sides. But acetates were also cut at 33 1/3 RPM, long before that speed was available commercially, and they were also cut at that speed, by private users, in the 1950's and well into the 1960's (and of course, by professional studios, long after that). And those 33 1/3 acetates could, of course, be far longer than their 78-era brethren. Today's offering is 26 minutes long, and the disc itself looks like this: 

Much of the information you need to know what you're going to hear is right there in that picture. The rest is in the first moments of the sound file. The discussion is between high school students. The school Evanston Township High School (I was able to find a reference to the teacher named on the label having worked there), and the other student, discussing Steinbeck with Dick Mills, is Bill Brower.

This is, as I'm sure you're imagining, scintillating stuff. 

Download: Custom Sound Studios 12 inch Acetate - Bill Brower and Dick Mills - A Discussion of the Style of John Steinbeck, Evanston, IL, September, 1957, Side One 

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Download: Custom Sound Studios 12 inch Acetate - Bill Brower and Dick Mills - A Discussion of the Style of John Steinbeck, Evanston, IL, September, 1957, Side Two

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Here's a photo of the second side of the acetate: 

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Finally, a "Very Short Reel". This is a bit of propaganda - and I don't mean that negatively - from the AFL-CIO. This sounds very much like it was the soundtrack to a short film, and the closing statements further make it sound as if this was one of a series of short films, presumably all from the AFL-CIO, which perhaps were paid for and ran on television stations in five minute timeslots. 

I should explain that I made some of the files that I am sharing today, and in the recent past, and no doubt in the future, as long as six or seven years ago. I have a large collection of "not yet used" items, and this one was digitized at least four years ago. All that is to explain why I can no longer find this tape's box, either (although it's unlikely I sold this one). But the name of the file is almost certainly what was written on the box. 

Download: AFL-CIO - Americans At Work - Building Aircraft

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Some Rare Early Johnny Carson Tonight Show Segments, An Interview with a Six-Year-Old, Two Very Different Tapes of Singing, and "The Children's Hour"

I have something extra special to lead off with today, but first, a bit of housekeeping. 

Eric Paddon fills in the gaps yet again regarding my WOR posting, documenting that the first Long John segment is from October 6th, 1962, and that the second segment late on October 17th and early on October 18th, 1962. His comments can be found at the bottom of that post, and are most informative - I encourage you to read them. 

And an anonymous poster - apparently as much of an obsessive as I am - sent me the following comment regarding one of the items in my last post: 

Just thought you might like to know that the Michigan News tape is the 1000th individual mp3 you have put up on the Inches Per Second blog since you started it back in 2015.

The comment goes on say that the number 1000 does not include anything I posted at WFMU. Wow - 1000 items for folks to download. I'm glad I started doing this. 

Finally, a few people let me know that the last offering I shared from the Jack Eigen collection was actually a repeat (and relabeling) of a tape I'd already shared previously. It's way too late to fix that offering, but I will have more Eigen - for real this time - in my next post. 

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Today, I have something extra special to lead off the post - vintage recordings from the first year of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. My understanding is that the videotapes of 98% of Carson's first decade in the big chair were erased by subsequent programs (leading to a lack of, among other things, any video of the appearance of Lennon and McCartney announcing the start of their Apple Corps). The two segments I have for you here do not appear to exist anywhere online, so these could literally be the only existing copies. 

The first, and probably more interesting one, is a portion of an appearance by Ella Fitzgerald and, briefly, Duke Ellington, on May 13th, 1963. There's about five minutes of music at the start, and the remaining 13 minutes or so are conversation. 

Song-poem enthusiasts (and hopefully any of you out there know about my other blog), might find some fascination in Ella's comments, midway through, about Teri Thornton. Ms. Thornton appeared on The Tonight Show three times during Johnny's first several months on the air, although never after that. Unfortunately, Ms. Thornton did not have the career that Ella and Johnny thought she would attain, but she is known to those of us in the song-poem fan contigent under the names Teri Summers, simply "Teri" and several other names. 

Download: Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, 5-13-63

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On the flip side of the same reel, there is an appearance by Allan Sherman, then-currently riding high with two recent number one albums (and a third about to be released, which would be his biggest). Happily (for those who are fans - and I LOVE his first two albums, the rest.... not so much), he performs a medley of some half-finished ideas in the form of very short songs, most of which I don't believe were ever released commercially, before he goes into a number from that upcoming album, "My Son, the Nut", at the end of the recording. 

Download: Allan Sherman on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, 7-10-63

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Switching gears quite a bit, although staying with television (I think), here's tape that I just love, even though I have absolutely no idea of its source, who was involved, or exactly what's going on here. It is post announced near the end as having been "The Children's Hour", and sure enough, it appears to be a series of skits, songs, etc. performed by a group of children. Some annoying editing was done at the time of the broadcast (and again, I'm assuming this was a TV program, and not a radio show). 

After a short rendition of "School Days", the program segues into some sort of play, described later as a Scottish Fairy Tale, which takes up much of the recording. The last several minutes are taken up with various kids singing various songs, with a bit of accordion thrown in, as well. The high point for me is a single minute, starting at about 16:00, where a child (can't tell if it's a boy or a girl) sings "Hey, Good Lookin'". Pretty much this whole tape is just enchanting, I think, but I am head over heels for that one performance - I just love this kid's voice and enthusiasm. The singing puts me in the mind of the early tapes of Merigail Moreland. I wish I knew who it was.   

Unknown: "The Children's Hour"

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The above tape also contains the following short segment of a few kids singing a few songs. They are not singers on the level of those heard during "The Children's Hour", and in fact, there are some wonderfully off-kilter notes, notes which would be downright embarrassing coming from the adult, but which I find endearing when coming from small children, as well as some deliberately goofy singing. Another sweet tape. The note at 2:53 is one for the ages. 

Unknown: Unknown - Peter Cottontail, Oh Susanna and Jesus Loves Me

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And speaking of children, and of sweetness, here is yet another tape that I heard for the first time recently, which contains a man interviewing a six-year-old. That could be cause for automated avoidance by some of you, and/or concerns about sweetness overload, but that's not what I hear. The man in question seems to be - or at least claims to be - a performer in a traveling circus. His relationship with the child, Joe Hogan, is never explained. The man's name is said once, by the child - maybe it's Patrick? 

I don't know what to make of the clipped sounds at the end of a few of the man's statements - Joe (the child) also seems to have trouble hearing what the man is saying at those moments, too, so perhaps this was not done face to face. Or something. 

I enjoy the fact that the child sometimes makes a long statement (as when he says the alphabet) and breathes in without stopping talking - he says the words while he's breathing. There are tapes of me at this age, and I would do the same thing. 

What I find remarkable here, and endearing, is that this six-year-old is clearly extremely bright, fully sure of himself, and holds up his end of the interaction completely. I'll let you discover the details for yourself, but I wouldn't be surprised if this kid went on to great success in school and elsewhere. 

Download: A Man Interviews Six-Year-Old Joe Hogan

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Here's a sampling from a small stack of tapes that I got somewhere, all featuring a woman and a man rehearsing songs in 1971, per the tape boxes. I really don't now more about them than that. The following offering actually features the contents of a two full five inch reels featuring this duo. For the most part, they are working on songs I'd prefer not to be in the same county as, at the very least. I generally loathe the sort of material that's heard here. Your mileage may vary.

Download: Unknown - Rehearsing a Bunch of Songs

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Here are the relevant parts of both tape boxes in one image: 

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And finally, a "Very Short Reel". The person speaking (undoubtedly to someone on the phone) is relating a story about getting an audio letter from someone that was recorded at a speed that her machine didn't run at, when she discovers that she herself is being recorded. This is more than a bit of a cheat, as this is simply the opening minute or so of a tape which is full of other recordings - almost entirely of some home recorded, and vapid, organ playing, with a few Hawaiian numbers from a record mixed in. But this goofy little recording leads off the tape, and I thought it was worth sharing. 

Download: Unknown - "He's Tapin' What I'm Sayin"

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Blowout Post # 7!

It's time once again for me to clear the decks and post a whopping twelve different recordings in quick succession, with very little comment. Yes, it's another BLOWOUT Post, Number Seven in the series. 

A reminder/explanation: These are files that I have made over the years, from my collection, that I either have little to say about, or don't remember much about, or both. In most cases, I have not listened to these since the day they were digitized, which was likely more than ten years ago in some cases. 

In all, there is nearly six hours of recorded material in today's post. 

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Five months ago, in this post, I shared one episode of London Mirror, from a tape which contained multiple episodes of that show. I wrote quite a bit about it, at that time, and you can look back at that post for what I said at the time. Anyway, I find this program fascinating and very entertaining, so I'll lead of today's post with another episode from that same tape:

Download: London Mirror - 11-25-61

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This one says "Portion of a Trial". Again, aside from a bit of scanning, I have not re-listened to these offerings - I'm just putting a bunch of them up there and out there for your perusal. And I honestly don't remember anything about this one. Enjoy!

Download: Portion of a Trial

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Here's another recording which is well explained by its title, "Accordion Playing and A Cappella Singing". 

Download: Accordion Playing and A Cappella Singing

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Here is a tape featuring about five and a half minutes of news as broadcast in Michigan in 1954: 

Download: International, National and Local News from Michigan, 1954

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I have, on several occasions, delved into a collection I own which came from someone who worked for multiple TV networks (and possibly elsewhere) in the 1960's, including a bunch of tapes featuring dubbing or looping in dialogue for shows and movies. I can't find the box for this tape at the moment (I digitized this at least a decade ago), but it said something about "Figard" on it, and I've been unable to find out what that might mean. But it could be the name of the program or movie which was being worked on, here. 

Download: More Dubbing for a TV or Movie, Possibly "Figard"

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Somewhere along the line I managed to pick up a set of tapes by someone who led various sized dance bands in the late 1960's at local parties and events. This one is referred to, on the tape box (see below) as Kendall's Ork (with 8 members), but not all of them show this name for the group, and each performance seems to have a different number of guys on the bandstand. This particular performance is from the Winchester Nurse's Association's shindig on 9-25-59. Maybe you were there!

Download: Kendall's Ork (8 Members) - Winchester Nurse's Association - 9-25-59

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Lemme ask ya somethin'. Do you like Insurance Assessors? Put your hands together for Insurance Assessors! I bet at least a few of you were bopping to that great 1994 hit "The Insurance Assessor Mambo" when it got all the way to number one on the Billboard Insurance Songs Chart that year. 

For all of you Insurance Assessor fans, here's an Insurance Assessor reporting his findings on a variety of buildings that he insurance assessed. 

Seriously, I do like to throw in something like this every now and then, just to give a fuller picture of the ridiculously wide range of tapes that I come across. 

Download: An Insurance Assessor Reports His Finding

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Here's another easy one to describe. It's called "Three Songs by a Barbershop Quartet". The description I have for it is that it is three songs sung by a quartet, barbershop style. 

Download: Three Songs by a Barbershop Quartet

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And yet another easy one to explain. It's called "A Young Girl, A Baby, and Their Dad". In this one, you'll hear.... oh, never mind. 

Download: A Young Girl, a Baby, and Their Dad

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Yet another one I'm not going to have much of anything to say about. Here's "An Evangelical Preacher", who is preaching, evangelically. 

Download: An Evangelical Preacher

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And now, for an "Acetate of the Month". In this unlabeled recording, a group of family and friends sing the pop hit "K-K-K-Katy", and then a woman reads a short paragraph of nonsense, then a man tells a story about a small woman trying to remove a large boulder. The sound quality gets fairly poor in the last 45 seconds or so of this recording. 

Download: Audiodisc Unlabeled Acetate - K-K-K-Katy, Humorous Recitation and Boulder Story

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I have, on two previous occasions, here and here, I am, here again, featuring one of the many tapes I somehow became the owner of, which feature an amateur songwriter named Marge Magenheimer. This one qualifies as our "Very Short Reel" for this posting, although some of what's said indicates that it probably came from what was originally a longer tape. But this was all that was on the tape when I got it. There is a bit of pop song singing, then a dedication of sorts from a family member or friend, followed by a short statement from Marge. Then a pianist plays one of Marge's songs. 

Download: A Few More Minutes with Marge Magenheimer and Friends

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