Vintage WOR from Fall, 1962: Beautiful Music, Long John, Jean Shephard and News, Plus Bud's Kids and More David Hollister

For the third post in a row, I am largely featuring one very long tape. This one will be quite magical, I think, for a good number of people who come to this site. Because after a short segment of home recorded material (which I quite like), the remainder - over five hours of it - contains vintage recordings of WOR radio in New York, including a bit of Beautiful Music-esque programming, a whole lot of Long John Nebel, and sandwiched between those Long John segments, a vintage newscast and nearly an hour of the much beloved Jean Shepherd. All of this except for the opening segment are from a couple of nights in the fall of 1962. 

Without further ado.....

The tape begins with a short segment, recorded most likely several years after the remainder of the tape. On the box, this is labeled as being "Bud's Kids". It starts with a child singing a few things (including the Nationwide jingle still used today), then segues into another child interviewing people (a younger child and an adult), largely about pollution. This very obviously erased about eleven minutes of what was originally on the tape. 

Download: Bud's Kids - A Bit of Singing, Pollution Talk and More

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As soon as the kids are done, we are transported back to 1962. The talk radio segments make it clear that it was the fall of that year, what with talk of the upcoming mid-term elections and conversations about the 1963 cars, among other things - a few ads for TV presentations which appear to have been from 1961 (including a show starring Leslie Neilson), would have to have simply been reruns. There is no way these conversations are from 1961. 

But before all that, we are treated to a few minutes of Beautiful Music, or something approaching it, at least, on a show called "Music from Studio X". 

Download: WOR, Fall, 1962 - Music From Studio X

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That show goes straight into a long (no pun intended) segment of the Long John show, hosted by Long John Nebel. I have posted Long John material once before, and post, with more text about him, and a link to more information on him, can be found here. In this particular episode, the main guest is a representative of the  B'nai B'rith, as well as several other religious leaders and spokesmen, for a wide ranging discussion centered on religion. 

I enjoyed the fact that no one could call into Long John's show, but instead, had to submit telegrams to him, via a downstairs office, which would then be brought to him. 

But the chintzy commercials here may be my favorite part of this recording, particularly the collection of 50 great melodies from classical music on two LP's - lowbrow music appreciation masquerading as highbrow art. I am reminded of the fantastic parody of this product, which that WFMT, the classical station in Chicago, did in the mid-1960's, called "Great Square Inches in Art", where you got God's finger from the Sistine Chapel and the Mona Lisa's smile. 

Download: Long John on WOR, Fall, 1962 - Religion and Related Subjects

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That recording takes up the remainder of side one, and part of side two. The moment it's over, we are taken to another evening from the same time period, and this time, we hear a newscast and then, the deeply beloved, even revered Jean Shepherd takes over for the rest of the hour. You can read about him here, including how he had few if any advertisers for a time, and almost lost his job. Sure enough, there are no commercials in this more than 45 minutes of radio performance. 

I had never heard Shepherd before this. Honestly, I had avoided him, because I linked him in my mind as the writer of the stories which became "A Christmas Story", a much beloved film which I watched once with my family - all of us found it to be wholly awful. Obviously, your mileage may vary, and taste in movies and and humor is as enormously varied as can be. But despite its reputation for verisimilitude, I didn't find a moment of it believable, endearing or funny. So, as much as I dived into Bob and Ray and other contemporaries of Shepherd, I took a pass. 

That was clearly a mistake. This segment is mesmerizing. He does not seem to know or care exactly where he's going, or how he's going to get there. Stories lead from one into another and the outcome - and when it's going to arrive, is always in doubt. This is pure magic, and just about as entertaining as anything I've ever posted here.  

Download: WOR, Fall, 1962 - Newscast and Jean Shepherd

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The tape ends another 106 minutes of Long John, the episode which immediately followed the above Jean Shepherd segment on some long ago 1962 overnight. In the case, the subject is cars, something I rarely need to hear a group of people talk about (with the exception of Tom and Ray, who worth hearing because they were Tom and Ray, not because they were talking about cars). 

Download: Long John on WOR, Fall, 1962 - Car Talk

Play:

By the way, here's all it says on the box: 

~~

Okay, so two months ago, I shared the very exciting news that I had been gifted with a box full of tapes that had belonged to a composer named David Hollister. Read all about the gift, the tapes and the composer here. 

Today, I'm offering up the contents of the second tape that I grabbed out of that box. The writing on the back of this box looks like this: 

This tape was pretty much a mess. Recordings start and stop, sometimes in the middle of musical phrases, and the next recording picks up 15 seconds or two minutes later, with backwards material from the other side coming through in the mean time. Segments seem to end haphazardly, there is an introduction of a program of materials written by Mr. Hollister, material which seems to have already been heard on the other side of the tape, none of which follows the introduction! This tape is all over the place. I have edited it down to one continuous segment of what appears on the tape, in the order it appears on both sides, with all of the backwards material edited out. 

There is all sorts of material here. For my money, if you want to hear what's really interesting, jump to the 22:30 point and listen to most of the last ten minutes of this tape, wherein a baritone sings with piano accompaniment. This material starts fairly normal but becomes more and more esoteric, and finally, downright bizarre. By minute 25, the pianist is performing a playful series of rather ugly combinations of keys, and the baritone's singing features fart sounds and nonsense syllables. More odd vocalizing follows, but none of that prepared me (or will prepare you) for the song which ends this segment, and which runs from 30:40 to 32:08. And that is ALL I'll say about it. 

Download: David Hollister and Others - David Hollister Variety Tape # 1

Play:

~~

And finally, today's "Very Short Reel". If you can figure out why this 139 seconds of tape was recorded, you are more observant and clever than I am. Herein, a man narrates an extremely short slide show presentation, featuring someone named The Right Reverend Richardson Reid. Perhaps I am spelling it or hearing it wrong, but I can find no reference to him. 

Download: Very Short Slide Show Narration - The Right Reverend Richardson Reid

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Vintage John Birch Material, Scouting Slides, "Puppy Day" and More!

Hi, everyone, 

With April, 2021 about to expire, I thought I'd better try to keep my streak going, of posting twice a month for 15 straight months now. 

Let's start with something ridiculous. 

Almost two years ago, I shared a tape of one Mary Davidson offering a screed against the United Nations on what was "Tape Four" of a series, and I bemoaned that I didn't have any other parts. Well, it turns out I do have at least one other part, which I came across last week. 

So, without further ado, here, again, is Mary Davidson to tell us more things we need to know about that terrible, awful, no good, very bad United Nations. 

 Download: Mary Davidson - The United Nations, Part Two

Play:  

As a bonus, or perhaps a punishment, this tape features another John Bircher, Hugh A. Locke, Jr., heard here in the second of three parts (parts one and three, presumably, were on the b-sides of Mary Davidson's tapes numbered one and three), of a speech at a New England Rally. 

Download: Hugh A Locke, Jr - 1967 Speech At New England Rally, Part Two

Play: 

~~

On to something more entertaining. I know people have enjoyed the slide show presentation tapes that I've shared in the past, and here I have another one. And OH, how I wish I could see the slides in this case, as the description makes them sound deeply entertaining. 

This was recorded for what was apparently the first in a series of slide shows, made for a troop of Boy Scouts, in an attempt to teach them First Aid. In this first episode, the slides, and the narration, are concerned with what to do when someone has fallen off of rocks onto other rocks (and glass), what to do when someone "has drowned" (the narrator's term, not mine - I would think First Aid in such a case would be a bit too late), and in the event of electrical shock.

I think you'll agree with me that when you want to teach children how to save someone who is injured, a slide show beats a live demonstration every time, and the areas to start with, due to their immense likelihood, would be a fall onto rocks, a drowning and an electric shock. 

At the end of the segment I'm sharing, we're told that further slides will follow, of a recent "camperee", but unfortunately, the accompaniment was simply a series of instrumental marches, so I faded the tape out. 

Download: Narration for Scouting First Aid Slides

Play:  

~~

Last October, I shared a Stereo Demonstration Reel from the Voice of Music company. And today, I have another one, again from the dawn of Stereo recording, in this case from a company called "Sonotape"

Like other tapes of this genre, this tape attempts to demonstrate the versatility and breadth of what stereo tape can bring you, and the variety of material available from the label, from classical to pop to sound effects. In the case of this tape, and I'm not sure this is a positive, our narrator is accompanied by a cartoonish voiced sidekick who shows up now and then, but who states his name in the final moments, almost as if we were supposed to know who he was, all along.  

Along the way, we do get to here a magical track from those early, experimental and fascinating albums by Ferrante and Teicher, and that's the highlight for me.  

Note the high quality sound you are hearing here. This tape is about 64 years old. In a few weeks, I'll be sharing another demonstration reel of the same vintage which has not held up so well. 

Finally, I will quote here from something I wrote back in October, which applies here, again: 

Because this tape dates to the days when "Stereo" meant two channels recorded across the entire width of the tape (and not the four channel, two direction style which became the industry standard by the end of the '50's), we're technically only hearing half of the programming here. It's still in stereo, but my more modern stereo machine is only playing half of each signal. I hope that makes sense. 

Download: Sonotape Inline Demonstration Reel

Play: 

~~

And now it's time for episode three of my new series, "Acetate of the Month". In today's offering, we have what seems to be a few minutes from a show called "Surprise Package", a segment in which a puppy was given away to a child. One hopes - as the host claims - that the parents of the winning child were on the same page with the show's host and producers. The name on the label is the name of the child interviewed during almost the entire length of the acetate. It's not clear if she was awarded the puppy, but either way, I suspect this acetate was given to her after the show. Perhaps each child interviewed got an acetate with their segment. 

By the way, can you believe she gives her address and phone number out? Although it appears that she was visiting another town at the time, and it's doubtful anyone from her home town would be listening. Still, it was certainly a different time and place, eh? There is also a deeply uncomfortable moment here, which I'll let you experience without further comment. 

The acetate contains the exact same recording of the same broadcast on both sides, and it looks like this: 

And here's the acetate: 

Download: "Puppy Day" on "Surprise Package" Show, with Deborah Hoskins

Play:  

~~

Here is our "Very Short Reel" for this posting. Three inch reels can be deceiving - depending on the thickness of the tape and the speed at which they're recorded, they can be filled up complete and last barely a minute (a thicker tape recorded at 15 IPS), or close to a half hour of material (1 thinner tape recorded at 1 7/8 IPS). 

In this case, we have one of the briefest audio letters ever, with a recording at 7 1/2 IPS taking up barely the first minute of tape on one side; the rest of the tape is blank. And for me, this recording brings up a whole host of questions. The narrator - Jerry - claims to be in Times Square, and seems to have quite the story to tell to his friend - Jinx - and even says it was going to be easier to tell him on tape than in a letter. But then... he doesn't explain what sounds like quite the experience. 

Listen for yourself!:

Download: Brief Audio Letter to Jinx from Jerry in Times Square

Play:

Eisenhower Vs Stevenson and More from 1952, A Comic Slide Show and More!

Good day!

For those in the US, I'm assuming you are as tired as I am of the constant ads for this year's upcoming election. So of course I'm going to pile on a bit. By chance, earlier this month, I came across a wonderful tape from 1952, containing, among a few other things, a bit of live coverage of election night, 1952, in which Dwight Eisenhower trounced Adlai Stevenson. 

This tape also happens to be a paper reel, a type of tape which holds a particular fascination for me, for reasons I've written about before. By 1952, this style of tape was being phased out, and only the earliest people/families who invested in tape recorders would even have owned or used paper reels. They tend to contain recordings from the dawn of tape recording, often family recordings or other things which fascinate me, and this tape is no exception. I will be sharing the reel's entire contents here. 

The family who made this tape lived in Oklahoma, and were Democrats - the party that had been dominant in Oklahoma presidential votes up to that point. But the state went Republican in 1952, and has done so ever since, with only one exception (1964). 

Here is their recording of a few minutes of coverage from that 1952 election. I can't tell if this is a radio or television report. The fairly short segment contains parts of the speeches from each candidate after the results were clear. I'm sure these are readily available elsewhere, but I'm guessing they are not as available in the context of the media coverage of the day, which is provided here, or the occasional commentary by the unhappy Democrats in the room (although not too unhappy, I'd guess - as you'll hear in the second segment, it is mentioned that many of the people present at a party wanted Eisenhower to be president, although I'm sure they'd have preferred he run as a Democrat). 

Here is the segment: 

Download: 1952 Presidential Election Returns and Candidate Speeches

Play:

One of the things I tend to do is that I will share something that has a tie in to a moment in time, first, even if it ends up "burying the lead", so to speak, by shuffling the best stuff off to second place. 

And that's what I've done here, from my perspective, because the flip side of the tape - it was the back side of the tape as I received it, but was clearly recorded first - is the highlight of today's post. Here we have a short compendium of life in Oklahoma, in June and July of 1952. You'll hear some people at a party (including that Eisenhower comment, so perhaps they weren't too upset in November), and just some general fun and descriptions of what life was like that day, month, year in Oklahoma. Then there are further recordings from the family who owned the machine, going forward into July, with most everything dated nicely. 

I really love this tape, and I will let you discover its big and little joys. There are a few slow spots, but the overall effect is fairly magical. I will say that I am particularly enamored of the voice of and descriptions made by a boy who appears on the tape here and there, completely natural (already - remember, reel taping was brand new), and narrating his life and that of his family. He sounds to me to be about 12 years old, so he would be around 80 today. Are you out there? 

Download: Life in Oklahoma, June-July, 1952

Play:

The piece I've saved for last actually is heard first on the tape, but quite obviously came later, as it erased part of the election returns, as heard above (despite an command pasted right on the reel itself, "do not erase"). The election returns are heard for a moment, and then this political commentary, clearly recorded later, erases the next 14 minutes of those election recordings. 

At this point, this is quite the piece of ephemera. Perhaps this was of vital interest to folks in east central Oklahoma that year, but at this remove, I can barely work up enough energy to understand what he's talking about, let alone care. 

Here, as broadcast on KOTV in Tulsa, is Glen Twist, with his "Report from the Citizen's Committee"

Download: Glen Twist - Report from the Citizen's Committee

Play:  

Here are the two sides of the reel, labeled as to their contents: 

~~

Now here's a real oddity. From time to time, I have shared narration tapes I've found from slide shows of various types. But this one really threw me for a loop. It professes to be simply a narration for a slide show on early American art, and I got through much of it, the first time, thinking that's what it was. But there came a point that I said "this is a put-on", and listened again from the start. I'm not exactly sure what the joke is, because there were clearly things going on in the slides themselves which were meant to make people laugh, along with the little comments in the narration. But such is the joy and frustration of listening to a slide show narration without the slides. I'm curious to hear what anyone else thinks....

Download: A Comic Slide Show About "Early American Art"

Play:

~~

Next up, here's a neat set of eight ads promoting the new Dodge line for 1971, presumably from the fall of 1970. This is from advertising giant BBD & O. We have three "rock" commercials, three "country" commercials and two commercials featuring the "sheriff". 

I could have sworn I shared these before (and if I did, apologies for the repetition), but I can't find them, so here they are.  

Download: BBD and O - Eight 1971 Dodge City Ads

Play:

~~

And finally, and by coincidence along the same lines, here's a tape I grabbed at random from a stack of "very short reels". In this case, it's a 1998, "end of season blowout sale" type ad for a car dealership owned by Ed Schmidt in Perrysburg, Ohio, produced by McGee & Starr and titled "Operation Elimination", which has a rather disgusting connotation to me, particularly given the play on Ed Schmidt's name at the end of the ad, but maybe it worked.

Download: McGee and Starr - Operation Elimination

Play:

Late September Cornucopia!

Greetings!

First, thank you to those who chimed in with comments and or condolences about my basement calamity. I appreciate it.

I have five reels/segments of reels today, with no particular theme, and none of them stand out as being the most exciting or most interesting (although perhaps one wins the "least interesting" prize), so I'll just start describing and posting them here in random order.

With politics all over the news these days, perhaps the most relevant of these clips is one from early in the 1964 primary season, specifically, January 31, 1964, and an interview with the eventual nominee, Barry Goldwater, on "The Jack Paar Program" for that evening.

We certainly have come (or gone) a long way in terms of what constitutes an acceptable and appropriate interview - on both sides of the conversation - between a host and a politician, in the ensuing 56 years.

Download: Jack Paar - Interview with Barry Goldwater, 1/31/64
Play:

~~

Probably my favorite of today's five-spot comes from almost exactly 11 years before that Goldwater interview. In this case, it's a family named The Robertsons, mom, dad and two boys, reaching out to friends via this new contraption called a reel to reel tape recorder to make a new thing called an audio letter on tape.  Very, very few people had home recorders in 1953. What a revolutionary thing this must have felt like.

Most of this audio letter is taken up by the couple's sons, who go on longer than either parent wants them to, and continue after they've been asked to stop because they're almost done.

I find this whole thing utterly charming and endearing, and hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Here is the back of the four inch reel tape box - a size I don't believe Scotch made for very long, by the way:

And here is the actual recording:

Download: An Audio Letter from The Robertsons - David, Douglas, Margie and Pete - January 27, 1953
Play:

~~

I did mention that one segment might be the least interesting, and here it is. Tedious might actually be a better word. This track combines two things I've shared in the past - the slide show narration, of which I've offered several, and the hard-to-get-through boring tape, which I've only offered up occasionally, including last time around.

This tape comes from our friends at the General Telephone Company of California, and it is a 36 1/2 minute narration of a slide show about..... well.... "Wiper Springs on Stroger Two Motion Switches". Doesn't that sound scintillating? I've listened to the entire thing and have no idea what they're talking about, or what it has to do with telephones.

The tape begins and ends with machinery sounds, but almost the entire thing is the slide show narration.

ENJOY!!!

Download: General Telephone Company of California - Wiper Springs on Stroger Two Motion Switches (slide show)
Play:

~~

Next up, some Beautiful Music. This sort of thing does not "do it" for me, but every time I post this stuff I get thankful, grateful comments, so as I come across more if it, I will certainly post it. This segment is fairly short - just under 16 minutes - and I don't think it's a single, uncut 16 minutes, as there seems to be at least one edit in there. Happily, there is a commercial break included. The station is WFMS, Indianapolis, which seems to have become a Country station in the early 1970's, so this is probably from the 1960's.

Download: WFMS, Indianapolis, Beautiful Music Programming
Play:

~~

And finally, this week's Very Short Reel.

This is a voice actor / voice over actor demo reel. These sort of reels were sent by the boatload to companies across the country to peddle the vocal wares of a variety of voice over people and actors looking for some extra change. I have dozens of these, or maybe even hundreds.

The one I pulled out at random today is by Neil Kobin, and I'm thinking this is from the 1970's. Here is Neil Kobin's Demo Reel:

Download: Neil Kobin's Demo Reel
Play:

And the box cover:

Watch the Belgian Parade with some Lucky Lager!

I have another batch of interesting and widely varying tapes today!

I've periodically shared slide show narration tapes, and today I have one that is actually a bit of a mystery. Because first, I'm not sure this is a narration for a slide show or for an 8 mm home movie presentation. And second, because the subject matter seems to change without announcing itself partway through the material.

The first section of the narration is clearly for a parade featuring Belgian-Americans (and possibly the King of Belgium - see below), but then at some point we've clearly moved on into a tour of one of the many world's fairs which occurred in the mid-20th Century - I'm guessing the one in New York in the 1960's, but maybe the clues on this reel will steer a listener in another direction.

Narrating a slide show makes much more sense to me - my experience with film is that it is awfully hard to line up such a narration with the film and have it work every time, with a pre-prepared recording. Yes, I've actually done this, back when I was 14, with some of my family's home movies. But some of the announcing certainly sounds like it's related more to moving images than slides. Hear for yourself!

Download: Slide Show or Film Narration for a Parade and World's Fair Visit
Play:

And here, as an little added attraction, is a fragment of recording which was contained on the very next box I opened from this collection. This is the end of a radio interview, with a connection so poor as to possibly be a short wave broadcast, interviewing someone who was at a Belgian Reception, mentioning the presence of the King of Belgium, and wishing that more Belgian-Americans had been present.

Whether this reception is connected to the parade documented on the other tape is unknown. That this reception was in Detroit complicates that idea, since the parade seems to have transitioned into an event that I believe to have been in Detroit.

I do love my listeners/readers, though: you've come through many times with solutions, based on things I missed, or didn't have time to research.

Download: Brief Fragment of Conversation about Belgian Reception
Play:

~~

I'm not a drinking man, but I still usually recognize the name of a beer when I hear it. But Lucky Lager was a mystery to me. It seems to have been far more common in the western states, and I have never lived outside of Illinois, so maybe that's why. But it seems to have been massively popular, wherever it was enjoyed, in the 1950's and early 1960's, at least.

And it was in the early 1960's - late 1962, for use in 1963 - that Lucky Lager sent out the following promotional tape to its dealers, and who knows who else. I find this tape highly entertaining, except for the sections where they literally repeat portions of it again, most notably the upcoming new radio ad promotion featuring future game show stooge Jaye P. Morgan, complete with her introductory comments, twice.

Despite that bit of repetitive weirdness, this is a fun tape. One more thing: there is a moment where they were apparently going to insert some other sort of recording or presentation, and there is a moment of silence
instead. The brand was apparently flying pretty high at this time, but not so much by the end of the decade.

Have a listen!

Download: Lucky Lager - 1963 "Lucky Days" Sales Promotion
Play:

Finally, here's this week's "very short reel", chosen at random from a few large stacks. This is a late 1990's radio ad - two promos for use on one specific day, due to the content being related to that night's TV broadcast, on the local Toledo Fox-owned station, promoting both the news, and that evening's rerun of the never-less-than-aggressively-and-painfully-unfunny Home Improvement. 

Download: Two Fox News and Home Improvement Combo Ads

Play:

The 1962 Eurovision Song Contest, Jonathan Winters Uncensored and More

Hi, everyone,

It's time to update the ol' Scotch Tape Box History Series. I believe I can hear you whooping and hollering from here!

I have to say up front that I do not know exactly where this design fits in. Each of the last four boxes that I've shared seem to date from somewhere in the period 1958-1965 or so, which is mostly a period that my family bought precious few new tapes, as we only replaced our faded Concertone with a newer model in the fall of 1963. And even then, my father seems to have favored a brand called "Knight" (which also went through some interesting box design changes).

So I'm certain that the last four (including this one) come from that era, but really can't put a better date on them. However, today's offering is a definite change of pace. All of the previous designs prominently featured some representation of the reel of tape held within, and/or played up the quality of the tape or some special feature (extra length, weather balanced, etc.), this one contains none of that. It has a type number (141, indicating a 1200 foot reel), and some space age era illustrations. We're also told it's part of the "Tartan Series, whatever that was. But that's it. As with the previous boxes, the Scotch pattern has been relegated to a half-inch on the right edge of the box.

I suspect this box was in production longer than the last few that I shared, as it turns up more often, particularly more frequently than the last two.

Things get a lot less interesting, design-wise, from here on out.

~~~

The big offering for today is a remarkable piece of tape recorded live, off the air, in England, in 1962. It features virtually the entirety of the 1962 "Eurovision Song Contest". If you are unfamiliar with this amazing and unique event, you should really read up on  it, but if you don't want to, I'll tell you that it is a contest between some of the nations of Europe, held every year, to determine the best song of that year.

That it doesn't succeed in this is self-evident - for many years, a very specific few types of songs were offered up, intended to appeal to the generic middle-of-the-road European judge. Monty Python famously ridiculed this tendency around 1970.

The only worldwide hit to have come out of the contest, as far as I know, is the magnificent "Waterloo" by Abba, which may well have broken the mold, and perhaps brought more variety to future contest, but I really don't know.

The recording heard here features an announcer who seems more suited to a golf tournament, breaking in with hushed explanations and comments via what sounds like a walkie-talkie, at opportune moments.

Aside from a moment to turn over the tape, the whole thing seems to be here - all the performances, the intermission music while the countries are deciding on their favorites, the voting, and the second performance of the winning song. For me, I only liked a couple of the songs, neither of which got many votes at all.

I've probably made this sound awful. It isn't - it's weirdly wonderful, and certainly a moment in time that has long-since passed. Just think, less than six months after this contest, The Beatles recorded their first Parlophone Records 45. I have to think that, at least by the 1964 Eurovision contest, the difference between the songs performed at this contest, and what actual Europeans (and the rest of the world) were listening to, must have been as wide as the ocean.

Download: Various Artists - The 1962 Eurovision Song Contest
Play:

~~

Next up, something really remarkable. At least, that's the case if it's as rare as I think it might be.

This is a short tape of Jonathan Winters, at some undated point in his career, but I would guess the 1960's, performing without the restrictions of the day, for either stand-up (which he actually did very little of) or of album releases.

Over the course of these 13 or so minutes, you'll hear Winters - who has an audience of only a few people - engage in a series of mostly very short vignettes, punctuated here and there by words that would have been bleeped, at the time. The scenes include a bit about having diarrhea, a bit of gay comedy (the one thing not unheard of in his released comedy), some lighthearted material about a rape, some fun about teenage masturbation, and in the last (and by far the longest) bit, a parody of a hip black guy, which features the use of several racial and ethnic slurs.

Again, maybe this is commonly known of and circulated. But I've only found one reference to it, on an acetate (and indeed, it seems likely that this is a recording of an acetate), so I'm guessing it's fairly rare.

Download: Jonathan Winters - Unreleased, Off-Color Material
Play:

~~

The next tape, featuring Larry Blair talking about "The CIA" came in this box:

I am almost certain that this tape was recorded as accompaniment to a slide show, perhaps for use in High School or College classes. The factual reporting, with very little opinion on either side of any issue, and the open-ended nature of the ending suggests that it was meant to be followed by conversation, a written assignment, or both.

On the other hand, I doubt that this tape was the item that went with the slide show. I suspect it's far more likely that Larry Blair used this tape as a demo reel to promote his own talents as a reporter or voice-over/commercial pitchman.

Download: Larry Blair - The CIA
Play:

~~

And assuming that I'm correct about Larry Blair's tape, it's something of a coincidence that the "very short reel" I pulled out at random for today post is ALSO a demo reel, in this case for Harry Chase, an actor known primarily for his voice work, and who has credits on IMDB as recently as 2012. Here is his demo reel.


Download: Harry Chase - Voice Talent Demo Tape
Play:

A Compendium of Chet Huntley - David Brinkley Tag Stories

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

So here's a tape that is really something. For those who enjoy media recordings, in this case, specifically vintage news reporting, you will probably find this amazing. I know that there are others who will not listen at all, or who will bail out a few minutes into this two-hours-plus recording.

What I have here is someone's collection of the "tag" stories from the end of each night's broadcast of the legendary Huntley-Brinkley report. This was the NBC television news broadcast, from the mid-'50's through 1970, that first gave us the concept of the dual anchor newscast, and which was, along with CBS' Walter Cronkite broadcasts, where a large percentage of Americans got their nightly news during the 1960's.

Then, as now, most newscasts ended with a short "tag" story. With few exceptions, these were usually lighthearted, whimsical, odd or otherwise not as serious as the rest of the evening's news. Our mystery reel to reel enthusiast made it his or her job to record these stories - and only these stories - every night, for God knows how long (I'm guessing that this is not the only tape this person made - this particular tape is from 1962). There are a few other reporters filling in (on vacations and such) here and there, but mostly, the voices you will here, telling the stories and commenting, are those of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley.

I really wonder just how amazing this is - it seems to me at least possible that this material does not exist - at least to this level of completeness - anywhere else.

Download: Chet Huntley and David Brinkley - A Compendium of Huntley-Brinkley Tag Stories
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Oh, and our intrepid documentarian also kept detailed written records of the shows he or she taped. Here is just one of THREE handwritten logs found inside this tape box.

UPDATE: I had a request to post all of the documentation from inside the box, and so there are now two scans and a picture, below, the picture being from the inside of the tape box, so it is a little less clear than the scans. There are more tape files after these pictures:

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For those of you who like your sound clips shorter (32 minutes), and those who like Slide Show narrations, I have one of those narrations which is particularly unsuited to listening without the slides. Isn't that fun? This is a slide show meant to accompany a presentation of the winners of a photography contest! There's something I can't quite explain, that I enjoy about this tape - something in the detail that the narrator goes into, about the contest, the photographs and the photographers. I hope you enjoy it, too:

Download: Unknown - A Slide Show for a Photography Contest
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The Time? 1966. The Place? Arizona. The Event? Slide Show

My posts have been few and far between around here lately, so I'm going to continue to triple up on my offerings, this week with three completely unrelated items, and a minimum of commentary.

First up, another tape for those of you who have asked for more slide shows. In this case, it's a woman documenting a trip to Arizona in 1966, for 35 minutes. Makes you want to go back in time and visit the state yourself, doesn't it?

Download: Unknown - Arizona Travelogue Slide Show, 1966
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Then I have this oddity, which is admittedly fairly hard to listen to. It is a short tape, and badly recorded, featuring some sort of comedic dialogue. It involves someone portraying a shrill old woman named Muriel, and a man with a dumb-guy voice. Perhaps you can make out more of this than I can - I have the feeling if someone takes the time to decipher this, it might be worthwhile, although you should also know, in advance, that it's incomplete, stopping mid-sentence after just over 2 1/2 minutes. .

Download: Unknown - Comedic Dialogue
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Finally, I wanted to make sure you knew that there's still time to go to to RIVERFEST, '97!!!

Download: Riverfest, '97
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Personally, I cannot wait to see Uncle Knucklefunk.

Life Under Castro, A Leadership Slide Show, and An Odd Tape

First, thanks to the good folks at Blogger, the problem with pop-up ads has, I'm told, been addressed. Please let me know if that's the case, or, especially, if that's NOT the case. 

I have another triple feature today, leading off with the tape whose box looks like this:

A large purchase of tapes many years ago contained several reels of Howard K. Smith interviews, most of them raw tapes meant to be edited down later. This is from that collection, and interview with a former resident of Cuba, Ernesto Aguiar (the name on the box is likely a misspelling), talking about life under Castro's regime on January 30, 1963 (the date is elsewhere on the box. I'll let the tape speak for itself:

Download: Howard K. Smith and Ernesto Aguiar: Life Under Castro
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Next up, here's a slide show for your mind - picture the images that were being shown to schoolchildren while the following tape - undated, but labeled "Leading and Following" - was being heard:

Download: Unknown - Leading and Following
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Finally, here is a tape, heard in its entirety, which simply baffles me. I'd welcome comments from anyone who thinks he or she knows what it might have been made for. The 13 minute tape starts with some slow, atmospheric music on a flute-type instrument, for the first 6 1/2 minutes, but the meat of the weirdness comes in the 6 1/2 minutes that make up the second half. None of the things record are odd in and of themselves, but their placement together seems random, and may have been so. But then again, maybe not.

Download: Weird Compendium of Music, Talking and Sounds
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Slides and the Hit Parade

This has been another one of those ridiculously busy months at home and at work, and I can't believe I've not posted here in three weeks. I still don't have much time, so I'll be short in my comments, but I did want to thank two people who posted comments with better information about my last post - the 1958-59 cornucopia of TV sound.

First, thanks to Martinf, for identifying the man talking about Berlin as being Willy Brandt, the Governing Mayor of Berlin. Thanks also to Eric, for identifying that the Charlie Weaver segment was not from Weaver's own show, but from an episode of the Tennessee Ernie Ford show on 11/13/58.

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As I said, I'll be brief with my comments. Very brief. To further answer the requests I received for more slide show narrations, here is another one. This one is incomplete at both ends - the beginning of it was erased by someone's record collection, and then, after about 25 seconds, more of it was erased by more music (which I have edited out). And then, the end has been lost over time with the deterioration of the end of the tape reel. The whole tape is just over 30 minutes long.

In this case, we're going to go to several tourist destinations in various parts of the country, in some cases quite a ways away from each other.

Download: Unknown - Slide Show Narration
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On a completely different subject, and for those who enjoy vintage media recordings, here is an episode, complete with commercials (and as with the above tape, again, this is just over 30 minutes long - so this seems to be almost the entire episode), of an episode of "Your Hit Parade", which is, based on the songs here, from late 1958., which would place this episode near the final days of this venerable programs 25 years on the air (radio and TV). The tape extends into the start of the next show, "Trackdown", starring Robert Culp, as well as its first commercial.

Download: Various Artists - Your Hit Parade
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Oh, and here's a picture of the tape recorder I was able to get, to replace my busted one. As you can see, my daughter's elderly cat Angel is already fond of it.

A Travelogue Through Historic New Jersey

I've had several requests to post more of the "slide show narration" tapes that I've come across. I will have to do more searching to find the remaining ones that I own, as I don't always remember to label things well, but just by chance I came across this extensively researched, fairly professional sounding narration of a slide show, one which is largely focused on historic locations found in New Jersey.

I am dating this to some time in the 1950's or very early 1960's, as the remainder of the tape has poorly recorded segments of someone called Long John on WOR in New York, a position that host (who sounds very interesting) left in 1962. I can share those recordings, too, if anyone is interested.

I hope you can picture the images in your head while the narrator takes you on tour!

Download: Unknown - A New Jersey Travelogue
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From a Boy Scout Slide Show Presentation

Well, about a month ago, I shared the narration from a slide show that someone had done, of his family's vacation trip in New England, and I explained that I have come across several of these over the years. I asked for feedback regarding whether there would be interest in hearing more of them.

Those who commented were unanimous in that they wanted to hear more. And so here we have another one.

This one is quite a bit different than the first one, and more interesting due to those differences. It's a slide show recapping a lengthy Boy Scout trip. But rather than simply being a narration of the slides, with the (apparently necessary) music - although all that is there - instead, it contains several recorded excerpts from the trip itself, to more fully flesh out the stories being told in the slides.

In fact, that may lead to a little confusion, which I'll try to fend off here. The beginning of this tape was erased by something else, so it actually starts up in the midst of one of those "field recordings", and a very poorly recorded one, at that, before going to the first narration of the existing recording, at about 25 seconds in. Almost immediately, there was another section erased, and I have cut out the other material - so there is a gap there, too.

And finally, the tape ends before the presentation does. Perhaps the end of the tape was cut off for some reason (maybe it became damaged), or may it wore away with time, Anyway, we do not hear the end of the presentation either.

However, that does not take away from the interesting material which remains, or the enjoyment of lisetening to it.

Download: Unknown - Boy Scout Slide Show Narration
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Both Fascinating and Tedious

Well, you may or may not agree with the name I've given to this post, and if you don't, I'm guessing you'll lead towards tedious.

However, I have come across well over a dozen, perhaps even two dozen, tapes just like this one, and I thought, since it seems to have been a genre all to itself, way back when, I'd offer up one of them.

I am reminded of some dear friends of my parents, the parents of my childhood best friend, in fact. Every year, they would go on an exotic vacation, and then upon their return, have a dinner party for their (I dunno, maybe eight) best friend couples, after which they would treat them to over an hour of showing their vacation slides. My parents DREADED these invitations, and found it among the most boring things they had to endure in order to be good friends.

Unknown to me - and probably most of the rest of the world - there were people who not only shared their vacation slides, but made a real production out of it - preparing background music, and recording the narration beforehand, apparently from a written script.

THAT is the genre I refer to, above. And here, for your pleasure, annoyance, bewilderment or just plain boredom, is one of those tapes. In this case, it's for someone's 35 minute trip through slides presenting his/their recent trip through New England.

There really is nothing comparable today. Sure, someone could post 240 cell phone photos from his trip to France onto Facebook, but that person would probably not write an explanation of each one, and certainly wouldn't expect there to be comments made on each one. There wouldn't even be a way to know who, if anyone looked at any, or all, of them.

If you want to hear more of these, let me know. If you don't say you want to hear more, I won't share any more of these.

ENJOY.

or not.

Download: Unknown - New England Slide Show Narration
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