Blowout Post # 3!!!

Well, it's time for me to have no time to blather on again, so today, we'll have episode three of the "Blowout Post" series, which I started under similar circumstances a few months ago. In summary, I'm going to unload ten files about which I have relatively little to say, some of them quite lengthy and fairly esoteric (107 minutes of discussions of how to entertain a visiting honoree, anyone???), and others perhaps more generally entertaining. About none of them, except the first one, do I have very much to say. 

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We'll start off with an sample from a bunch of tapes I listened to over the last several weeks, all from various members of the same group of amateur musicians. Across the tapes, variously, are heard accordion, guitar, ukulele, drums, piano and probably a few other instruments, as well as vocals at times. Not all of them at the same time, or even on the same tape, but clearly, people who enjoyed playing pop hits, folk tunes and dance music together. This particular tape starts with a few seconds of music off of TV or radio, and ends with one of the participants reading the names of some of the songs that were played. 

If this is appealing to you, let me know - there's a bunch more, including some with more variety of song styles and instruments. And, intriguingly, these tapes seem to feature at least some family members who were heard on the "Gaggle of Giggling 12 Year Olds" / "Noisy Birdy" tape which was the very first reel I shared on this blog. Clearly, I obtained far more tapes from that family than I previously knew I had. 

Download: Music at Home - Marlene, Bill and Vernene, 1-17-58

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By the way, some of these tapes come with extensive notations. Here is what was in this tape's box. As you can see, the file shared above is actually from two different recordings, one on 1/17/58 and one on 1/21/58: 

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From a considerably more accomplished musician, and certainly a more celebrated (and ridiculed) showman, here is a tape of an episode of Liberace's 1950's television show: 

Download: An Episode of the Liberace Television Show

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Next up, here's a guy who is giving a speech - to whom, when and where I do not know - that I find more and more disagreeable as it goes on. But I'm a lefty if there ever was one. I'm sure he'd find my ideas just as cockamamie as I do some of his. 

Download: Unknown - A Chamber-of-Commerce Type Speech

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And now, the aforementioned 107 minute tape of preparations. Someone named Richard Holden (presumably not the Richard Holden I knew at my church in the 1970's, who was a dwarf) was to be honored (along with his family), during the last few days of 1955 at the first days of 1956, in the Los Angeles area. He was to be "The Airman of the Year". The gentlemen heard here go over the minutia buried within the minutia of this visit. And believe it or not, the start of this conversation was actually erased - it originally went on even longer than this!

Download: Making Plans for the Visit of Airman of the Year Richard T Holden, Late 1955

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Christmas is coming. Did you know? Is this too soon? 

Here is my first Christmas offering. I don't know anything about this little performance, but I called it "A Rather Homely Christmas Carol Concert", not "homely" in the way it's mostly been used in the last several decades (meaning plain, or unattractive), but rather - as I found in one online dictionary - "free from affectation, unaffectedly natural, simple". I rather enjoy it in its guilelessness. I hope you will, too. 

Download: Unknown - A Rather Homely Christmas Carol Concert

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Somewhere between the limited skills of our accordion band and Liberace, you might find the sort of band or duo who played at small meeting houses, supper clubs, Holiday Inns and the like. It would appear, from the paper taped to the box for this reel, that two fellows named Heinz and Parker teamed up and, calling themselves "Padded Cell", appeared locally (wherever "locally" was, for as many as, oh, four people, if the applause here is any indication. There are only the two names on the box, but there are obviously at least three people here, four if the vocalist was not playing an instrument. Anyway, here they are on the first of April, 1961. 

Download: Padded Cell (Heinz and Parker) - Live, 4-1-61

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Here's that paper from the tape box cover: 

Or - and I just thought of this - maybe the name of the nearly empty club was "Padded Cell"

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Here's another of those lovely hodgepodge tapes I enjoy so much. This one is particularly varied, even though it very strongly appears to have been recorded by the same family at various points within a relatively short period of years. The title provides all the explanation I hope you'll need. 

Download: Hodgepodge - WLS Polka Show, Conversations Around the House, Choral Song, Audio Letter - Late 1950's

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And here's a short excerpt from a syndicated Album Rock Countdown from May of 1978, as heard on the late, great, WMET, Chicago. This was all there was of the show, on the tape in question. If this had been simply the songs from the countdown, I doubt it would have been very interesting or worth sharing, although God, do I love "Still the Same" - one of my favorite 50 hit singles ever, I'd say, and from an artist I otherwise have almost no interest in, save for that one and "Fire Lake". 

But.... one third of this tape a commercial break, and it provides a nice little pair of radio ads from that moment. And as much as I hate McDonald's, the moment with the little child at the 2:00 mark cracks me up - very effective.

Download: Album Rock Countdown, May, 1978, Short Segment

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And here is the "Very Short Reel" for this post. Not a lot of explanation needed here, just someone reading a bit of a classic novel, "Great Expectations": 

Download: A Brief Reading from "Great Expectations"

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And we'll finish with our "Acetate of the Month". I will let you discover the nature of this little audio letter from the 1940's by listening to it. I will only say that 1.) I included both sides of a small acetate in one file, 2.) I cannot find this record to share a scan of it (I may have sold it...), and 3.) it is as utterly charming as anything I've shared on this site all year. 

Download: Merry Xmas to Willie - 12-12-48 (Knight Acetate)

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A Radio Station's Birthday, a Right Wing Meeting, More From Our Young Man in Japan, and Some Rye Sounds

I have another cornucopia today, with four disparate tapes, three of considerable length, and, of course, a "very short reel".

First is a tape I made myself, on the day that local (and legendary) Chicago Top 40 powerhouse broadcast an hour-long special in honor of their 25th anniversary, some time in the spring of 1985. The station had switched over to Top 40 on May 2nd, 1960, and was easily the best station of its genre for most of the following two and a half decades. 

It was certainly the station my older brother listened to all the time, in the bedroom we shared, when I was a little kid (six years his junior). It vied for my attention (along with the inferior WCFL) when I was a pre-teen, and it became my station again when I started driving my own car at age 17 in 1977. The 60's were the magic years, though, with deejay feuds, funny commercials, content created just for the station, and wonderful music. 

By 1985, I would hardly have called much of the music wonderful or magical, but a station retrospective was always worth hearing, and I'm sure I taped it with much enthusiasm. What you hear here is the entire contents of the tape - there is a gap at the end of side one where I turned the tape over, and the special ends about three minutes before the tape does, so we get to hear an oldie coming out of the show credits, and then the start of the then-current number one hit in town, before the second side runs out. 

Sadly, the station had barely four years to go as a music station. The switch by most listeners to FM (for music, anyway), meant the station started telling hosts to talk more and spin records less around 1988, and by the fall of 1989, music had been eliminated entirely. There was a mix of opinion among the station's hosts, at first, but before too long, it was all right wing talk, all the time. As a result, I haven't listened to WLS in at least 25 years.  

By the way, the glitch a few seconds in is on my original tape of this show. I probably restarted it after a few seconds or something. 

Download: The WLS 25th Birthday Special -1985

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Speaking of Right-Wing Politics, here's a tape that at least some may find fascinating, especially if you like the sort of "fly-on-the-wall" listening in to things that appeals to me. Not that these folks didn't know they were being recorded, but just that they probably thought the number of people who would hear the recording would likely be in the single digits, or low tens, at most. 

This is a recording of a meeting of "We the People", and primarily, their special guest speaker. I'm dating this to early 1965. The Johnson/Goldwater election of November, 1964, seems to be in the relatively recent rear view mirror, and a few other references seem to confirm the time period, if not the date. 

This is a lengthy recording - just over 105 minutes, but it's worth a listen if you're a student of the period, interested in the way the political parties saw each other in 1965 (or perhaps more accurately, how the Goldwater faction, and those to the right of that group, saw most everyone else). 

Oh, and for those who like to play with sounds and make montages and the like, this is chock full of good source material. I've used parts of it myself. 

Download: A Meeting of "We the People", circa Early 1965

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Last time around, I offered up part of a collection I have found, consisting of audio letters from a young man in Japan, to a family member back home. I remain confused as to whether this person was just a student or also a soldier, and if only the former, why he was in Japan, and why there are so many references to military things. Again, maybe someone out there has a better idea. 

In this one, he mentions that it is "Saturday, the fourth" but doesn't give a month. Given that it's also clear the year is 1967, I don't know what month we're in, as there were three months with a Saturday the Fourth that year. 

I hope these are interesting to folks, as I have well over a half-dozen of them, so let me know whether to continue with them. 

Download: Audio Letter from a Student-Soldier in Japan, Saturday the 4th (Month Unknown), 1967

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Finally, this post's "Very Short Reel". This one is a bit longer than most, running just over six minutes, but it's still a small reel, containing what these short reels often do, a Demo Reel. In this case, a voice actor named Michael Rye offers up "The Rye Sounds". 

Download: Michael Rye - The Rye Sounds

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What's "In the Bag"?, Greetings from Germany, A Few Moments on WLS and More

Helloooo.....

What a cornucopia of sounds I have for you today, all of them seemingly from about 1958 to about 1969. 

First up, another of my "old favorites", the reels I filed away, in some cases decades ago, before I started sharing things online, but which I believe to be very much worth sharing. 

In this case, it's an impossibly rare recording of (most of) a local Chicago TV attempt at a game show along the lines of "What's My Line?" and "I've Got a Secret". I've owned this tape for about 30 years, I think. 

As far as I can tell, "In the Bag", only existed as a pilot episode, and a video of it exists in at least one library of such ephemera. The sites I read didn't seem to indicate that the show ever aired, but it clearly did, as you can hear a promo for another June, 1958, show at the end. 

Anyway, if you want to hear the results of someone taking the genius of "What's My Line" and making it stupider, especially when you throw in the always ridiculous Irv Kupcinet for flavoring, you are bound to get a great deal of enjoyment out of "In the Bag". 

The start of this tape is a bit confusing - we hear the tail end of "In the Bag", followed by a bit of a promo for "What's My Line", another promo and part of a commercial. Then we miss the start of the actual episode, and jump into the episode which is already under way, with celebrity guest Jimmy Durante, who's secret is guessed right away - probably not what they'd hoped for when they involved so great a star....

Download: "In the Bag" - CBS, Chicago, June, 1958

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Next, as a bit of a sequel to last week's lengthier WLS excerpts, here is a sort of medley of two bits of the same WLS, about seven years later. This comes from a longer tape which unfortunately - and like a lot of radio tapes - features only the songs, with the DJ banter, commercials and other items heard on the station edited out. Undoubtedly, our (teen?) recordist only wanted the song, which is usually the case. As everyone out there has probably heard (or doesn't want to hear) the songs of 1969 as the sounded over AM radio, minus all the "fun" stuff, I didn't share the entire reel.

But two segments on the tape have a bit of the whole story. The first part is from early 1969, and features, primarily, a newscast, while the second segment, after the fade, is from later that same year: 

Download: WLS, Chicago, 1969, News and Top 40

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Now... at some point, I seem to have purchased the audio letter holdings of someone named Larry - you can catch his last name on the tape, I think. I have at least six or seven audio letters that he received, from multiple people, during the 1960's, and I may have already featured one before. 

At least three of them are from an audio correspondent in Germany, and it's at least somewhat likely that they never actually met. I should explain that, starting in the 1950's, a mailing list (perhaps even a magazine) was developed that contained the names and addresses of people all over the world who wanted to be "reel pals", a la the pen pals of the old days. I don't know exactly how this worked, but perhaps each person's interests were listed - and languages - so that you could pick an appropriate person to send your three inch audio letter to. 

I'm pretty sure Larry was one of those recipients. And so, from late August of 1963, here's an audio letter - which also features some appropriate music - from Germany to Larry. 

(Incidentally, I believe the microphone test at the start of the tape was recorded later, perhaps by Larry himself, but I left it on, because it was there.) 

Download: Audio Letter from Germany to Larry - 8/31/63

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Another recent addition to this site, by request, is the "Acetate of the Month". And today I have one that can only come from a point at which recording acetates were on the way out. 

I would put money on it that this brief, unlabeled recording, which almost certainly comes from 1964 or so, was made at a booth at a store, or an event such as The World's Fair, because home acetate machines were simply no longer a thing in the mid 1960's. And I personally have memories of those "store acetate booths", which remained a thing into at least the late 1960's. 

Anyway, this is a charming, if quite short, performance (appropriately, it's 64 seconds long) of "I Saw Her Standing There", by a group of kids who are clearly having a good time. 

Download: Kids Sing "I Saw Her Standing There"

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And finally, as part of yet another series, here is our "Very Short Reel" for today. As you can see, it's labeled "Guided Missile Effects" on the three inch box: 

As I didn't actually have the box in front of me when I saved the digital version of this tape's contents, I attached a simpler title: "A Series of Explosions". And here it is!

Download: A Series of Explosions

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The 1953 Indianapolis 500, A Bit of Runner-Up Football, and Early WLS Top 40 Radio

Greetings and Happy 61st Birthday To Me!

After I posted what turns out to be a very rare recording of part of the radio broadcast from the 1954 Indianapolis 500, about three weeks ago, I was beseeched by a handful of readers/listeners to also share the record I had mentioned, of the 1953 Indianapolis race, which I'd picked up at the same sale, some time in the mid 1980's. 

Like the 1954 race recording, this is an incomplete capture of the 1953 broadcast, at 103 minutes, just a little bit less of the race than the '54 recording. It starts with a very short recording of a presentation of "The Band of America", but after 85 seconds, it's the race all the way. 

The only other comment I'll make is that I was astonished at the sort of dismissive, or at least minimalized way the announcer mentions that one of the racers had almost literally baked to death in his car, on what was apparently an exceedingly hot day. 

Here's the tape!

Download: The 1953 Indianapolis 500

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Aside from our "very short reel", the rest of what I have to offer today comes from another favorite reel, one I plucked from a shelf of my "favorite reels" just for you this week. 

The entire second side of this tape is wonderful, and the three recordings on it go in reverse chronological order. This happens quite a bit, actually. What happens is that someone used the entire of the tape to record... something. In this case, that happened in the early winter of 1961-62. Then, at some later point, that same someone - or someone else - starts at the beginning of the tape, again, and records something else, using most, but not all of the tape, and leaving the last few minutes of the original recording. In this case, that happened in the first week of 1962. And finally, someone starts the side yet again, and records a third thing, using, in this case, just about half of the side, and leaving the last part of the second recording, along with that already existing tail end of the first recording. In this case, this final recording took place in May of 1962. 

I will link them here in the order heard, which, again, is the opposite order from which they were recorded. 

The first, and by far the most fun for me, is a recording made of WLS, the Top 40 Powerhouse of Chicago, during its earliest heyday - in fact, it's from their second anniversary as a Top 40 station, which was on May 2, 1962. And best of all, it's an uninterrupted recording of the end of their countdown show for the week, containing the top seven hits in Chicagoland for that week. 

The countdown contains a couple of songs I consider to be among the most wonderful of the era ("Old Rivers" & "Stranger On the Shore", along with four that range from okay to pretty awful, and, in a miscarriage of musical taste for the ages, a Number One Record for the week which is surely one of the worst records to ever grace the hit parade - so awful I will not deign to type out its name here. What were the teens of 1962 thinking?

That atrocity aside, this is one of my favorite finds, one I've owned for at least as long as the Indianapolis 500 tapes. 

Download: WLS, Chicago, 5/2/62 - The Top Seven Songs

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When the countdown ended, the recorder was turned off, and we get to hear that recording from January of the same year, specifically, from 1/6/62 - the end of a true oddity, "The Playoff Bowl", essentially "The Third Place" bowl, which was held for several years before the NFL merge, between the second place teams in each division of the NFL, in this case, Detroit Vs Philadelphia. This was held a week after the championship, and must have been just as unexciting as the pro bowl is today. 

What a weird concept. Anyway, here are the 23 minutes or so of The Playoff Bowl, 1962, which survived after the Top 40 Countdown recording. 

Download: End of "The Playoff Bowl - Detroit Vs. Philadelphia, 1/6/62

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Finally, the game ends, and the recording is stopped, leaving us with more WLS - the recording that was initially on the tape. In this case, it's someone - whose name I can't quite make out - filling in for the Legend to Be: Dick Biondi. There's only about five minutes here, but it does contain a local hit by someone named Johnny Cooper - a song which only charted locally, and then only for one week, in January of 1962 on the WLS chart, meaning this recording probably was made in the week or so before "The Playoff Bowl". 

Download: WLS, Chicago, Very Late 1961 or Very Early 1962

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And now, here's our "Very Short Reel" for the week. In this case, it's three minutes as heard on a three inch reel of tape, containing two different men speaking through what sound like Walkie-Talkies - one sided conversations in both cases. 

First, for about 45 seconds, we hear what I'm guessing to be a military man complaining about the performance and behavior of someone under his command. Then, for the last two minutes plus, a different man talks about some sort of water rescue where at least two boats (or something) collided. As he says "A miserable night to be flouting around out in the water..." He also veers off topic a couple of times to wonder about why someone named John doesn't keep in touch with him. 

Download: Brief Walkie Talkie Recording - Water Rescue

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WLS, Channel 89, Chicago, Summer, 1967

Today, I have recordings that no doubt fit into the category of a "Holy Grail" for Chicago area collectors and collectors of radio recordings in general. That will follow at the bottom of this post, but before I get there, I have some thanks to give and some comments to quote.

First, and I apologize that this has taken five months, I received an anonymous comment from someone regarding "The Big Midwestern Hayride"; as follows:

I knew I recognized that Accordion & Piano Player playing in the Hayriders Band. That Randy Dirks is my Great Grandfather! Thanks so much for posting and making available!!! I think the Steel Player is Ray "Chubby" Howard. Do you have any photos or other memorabilia from the show? 

Here is a link with the band, my Great Grandfather (Randy Dirks) is on Accordion & Piano. Same fella in this audio reel of yours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VglClQGWIHQ 

I will add that I do not have any more photos or memorabilia, unfortunately, but am glad I was able to share this piece of your Great-Grandfather's career.

A reader named Eric provided some helpful information regarding the Long John Nebel tape:

The initial program on the tape the guests are Judith Malina, actress and founder of "The Living Theater" and Rosemary McGrath, a conservative activist with Young Americans For Freedom. At one point Long John Nebel refers to one of the plays put on by the Living Theater starring an actor named Kheigh Dheigh who would later become better known for his role as Wo Fat on "Hawaii Five-O." This dates the program based on what fragmentary info I can Google to 1961 since that's when the plays Nebel mentions were performing.

Thanks so much for that research - I appreciate the time that took, and that you wrote. If you care to do the same regarding future posts, by all means, please do.

Speaking of research, another anonymous poster has done some digging on two recent posts (I believe it was the same person both times), and has shared his/her findings with me. I am impressed by your research, who ever you are, and enthusiastically encourage more in the future. Thank you very much for all of your information.

For a post featuring some Australian Short-Wave broadcasting, I received the following:

I enjoy doing a bit of detective work based on the clues in your recordings. For example, for the "Listeners' Mailbag" segment, the following information can be found from searching the Web:

1) Keith Glover's last broadcast was on December 28, 1980; this sets an upper limit on the date of the recording.

2) "Mr. R.B. Gee" gives his address as "843, 310 Bloor Street West, Toronto 5, Ontario, Canada". He was using a "4-tube receiver, two years old" and "80 feet above ground". The address corresponds to the Tartu College Student Residence and, based on his apartment number and antenna height, "R.B. Gee" probably lived on the eighth floor. Tartu college was built in 1970, giving a lower limit on the date. Canada introduced a 6-character postal code system starting in 1971; it would have been rolled out to Toronto by 1974. Since the address is given using the old postal zone "Toronto 5" rather than postal code "M5S 1W4", we can guess that the recording was made before 1974. This also ties in nicely with the fact that the 2-year old receiver used four vacuum tubes; transistors had pretty much taken over by 1974.

So my guess is that the recording was made sometime between 1970 and 1974. Does the original tape box have any markings which might confirm this? 

(Unfortunately, again, the tape box is essentially blank for this recording - with nothing of note written on it at all.)
For the more recent "Gathering of Rude Friends"

Something about the way these people talk (but certainly not the content) reminds me of conversations around my in-laws' kitchen table, when their neighbors dropped by. (They owned a beef cattle farm in southern Ontario.) My father-in-law always referred to his wife as "Mother" and the accents are the same as those of rural Canadians.

I have fun playing detective when listening to your tapes. Here are some of the things I deduced:

1) Although these people sound much like Canadians they are definitely American since they use terms such as "Sears" (instead of "Simpsons-Sears"), "railroad" (instead of "railway"), and "Internal Revenue" (instead of "Revenue Canada"). To my Canadian ears, they don't have a strong accent, so I would guess a northern state.

2) There's a reference to a "Mrs. Larson" ("Larsen"?) in a mock-Swedish accent and also to a Swedish co-worker. According to Wikipedia, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan have the highest concentration of Swedish Americans.

3) The reference to "Michigan" makes it sound like it's a different state, so it can probably be eliminated.

4) When calling the police department, there is a reference to "Wisconsin [license] plates". This would suggest that these people are in Wisconsin (although Minnesota can't be ruled out).

5) There is a reference to "over in Bloomer". Although Minnesota has a Bloomer Township, in Marshall County, this phrase would better fit the Town of Bloomer or City of Bloomer, both in Chippewa County, Wisconsin.

So my guess is that these people lived on a farm or small village in (or near) Chippewa County, Wisconsin.

Again, thanks for all this research.

Finally, Brother Herbert offers up a suggestion regarding the "Check Your Phone Book" guy:

"Check Your Phone Book" guy sounds maddeningly familiar but I can't quite place him. Tone and delivery are similar to James A. FitzPatrick of TRAVELTALKS fame - perhaps it's him? 

I had never heard of FitzPatrick before, but I had a listen, and it seems at least possible.

And now, on with the countdown:

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So here's a tape I'd had for years, and had honestly forgotten about. But I've recently begun trying to arrange my tapes in a more coherent way, and as part of that, I've been replaying those which were poorly marked or unmarked. The first fruit of this project to be interesting enough for this site is that "Holy Grail" I referred to above, an hour of recordings from WLS, 890 AM (or Channel 89), largely from the late summer of 1967.

And interestingly, there is a lot more DJ chatter here than you'll find on many surviving tapes of the era. Usually, over the air recordings feature the songs a young person wished to listen to again and again, often with the beginnings and the endings cut off, with little or no DJ personality heard.

This isn't quite the opposite - there are several songs here - but the DJ in question, Ron Riley for most of the recording, had a lot to say, and kept saying it. He was back from (and talking about) his vacation, he was reporting on the demise of Pirate Radio in England (nicely dating the primary recording here to roughly August 14th, 1967), and engaging in a bunch of unrelated banter. There are also several commercials, and he even interviews that dream James Darren shortly before the tape runs out. The recording quality is not the best, but it'll do.

Side Two is much less interesting, until near the end. On this side, the sound quality worsens considerably, and is honestly awful during the first half of that 30 minute segment (it's bad after that, too). This doesn't seem to be from the same day, but the host is still Ron Riley, until near the end, when we jump forward several months, to Groundhog Day, 1968, and hear a (typically darkly) humorous audio essay from the legendary Larry Lujack, shortly before that side of the tape runs out.

I hope you enjoy this tape as much as I do!

Download: WLS, Mostly 1967, Side One
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Download: WLS, Mostly 1967, Side Two
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The best news is, I believe there are several more tapes down in the basement, also featuring Chicago radio from the same era!