Some Rare Country Music Television, A 40th Anniversary, Walkie Talkies and THE ROCK RHYTHM SOUND!

 Hello!

My descriptions will be brief this time around. I really want to get a post out, but I usually have time on weekends to do most of my writing. But not this weekend - first Beatlefest in three years! Were you there, too? Maybe I saw you!

Anyway, I'm going to start off with what I found on either side of an ancient reel, which contains some exceptionally rare country music TV recordings. 

First up, I believe, based on the date on the tape, and on what's said during the actual broadcast, that this is literally the first television broadcast of The Grand Ole Opry. The date on the reel is June 11, 1955. Multiple online sources indicate that this show did not become a regular weekly broadcast until the fall of 1955, but that it aired once a month, prior to that, starting the previous summer. So this is the very first episode aired on television. Here it is: 

Download: The Grand Ole Opry Television Show - First Broadcast, June 11, 1955

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The flip side of the tape appears to be something far more obscure, from five days later than the recording above. It is a broadcast, clearly local rather than natural, of something called "The Hillbilly Bob Newman Show". I say "clearly local" as the host of the show actually thanks the local advertiser in his opening comments. Also, and perhaps more importantly, I can find NO reference to the existence of this show online. There are plenty of sites which feature Bob Newman, and even "Hillbilly Bob Newman", but no hits for the name of his show. Unfortunately, nearly all host and/or guest chatter has been edited out of this recording, leaving just the performances, some of them incomplete. But still, this is real time capsule and contains some mighty fine music. 

Download: The Hillbilly Bob Newman Show, June 16, 1955

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Here's a section of the tape box with the relevant information (note that it says "Grand Ole Opera"): 

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And now, a completely different sort of programming. I have a tape which was used to capture several short episodes of a feature which ran on radio station WRC, in Washington, DC, during August of 1963. As it happened, that month was the 40th anniversary of that particular radio station, and, as radio stations are wont to do, WRC memorialized this event with multiple short retrospectives, during that month. My intrepid recorder, whoever he or she was, captured just over 90 minutes of that programming, on a reel of tape. 

It would appear that WRC was, for most of that 40 year period, an affiliate of the NBC network, so these highlights are decidedly LESS locally focused than I would have liked, and less than any other retrospective I think I've heard, being made up largely of "hey, do you remember this network broadcast/broadcaster". Still, it's a neat little bundle of nostalgic flashbacks, and it's worth noting that the there has now been a station in that town on that frequency (it's now WTEM) for 99 years, as of two weeks ago.

Download: WRC, Washington, DC, 40th Anniversary Features, August, 1963

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Here's a really nice insert which was inside that tape box: 

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Switching gears again, for those who are just wild for those walkie-talkie conversations, here is about eleven and a half minutes of walkie-talking conversations. 

Download: A Walkie-Talkie Conversation

Play:

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And now to a "Very Short Reel". This is, admittedly, more than a bit of a cheat. This comes from a full length, fully recorded reel of tape, but a two minute segment of it made me smile. The second side of the tape had a recording of a full presentation, on local Chicago television, of a Mae West movie, complete with the commercials. And this Longines advertisement was heard as one of the commercial breaks. A real time capsule, and, incidentally, not at ALL what I remember Longines promoting and selling, way back when: 

Download: TV Ad for 'The Rock Rhythm Sound' From Longines

Play:

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

Play:

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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

Play:  

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

Play:

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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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Life and Death - Conspiracy Theories of the 1960's!

Happy New Year, everyone,

First, I want to thank everyone who wrote with nice thoughts and positive feedback about my postings. I really appreciate it.

I want to address one comment to a poster named Bill, whose post did not contain a return e-mail address, and who asked a question about his potentially sharing with me selections from his own collection of reel tapes. Yes, Bill, I would love that. I don't like to share my e-mail address here, as it seems to end up causing me to receive an influx of spam, but you can find it at the end of this post, which I wrote about 15 years ago.

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Today, I have two recordings having to do with rumors - one about a man who was quite clearly dead being alive, and one about a man who was quite clearly alive being dead. (I also have a bonus clip, since the first two are so short.)

First up is a remarkable - and remarkably tasteless - recording from either radio or TV, I can't tell which. In it, a man who sounds a lot like Mike Wallace to these ears reads a short piece which had apparently started circulating at the time, regarding the various clues indicating that John F. Kennedy was not dead. You have to hear this thing to believe it - it is seriously obnoxious, or, as Capote described it in denying its authorship, "Grotesque".

Download: Possibly Mike Wallace - "Dead or Alive", Possibly by Truman Capote
Play:

Next up, an inane little 95 seconds out of the middle of a badly (choppy) recorded set of Top 40 radio recordings. In this short clip, we hear a unique take on Paul' McCartney's mid-'60's accident, leading to another possible reason why The Beatles might have added clues to Paul's supposed "death". Sheesh.

Download: DJ Speculates on the Paul McCartney Story
Play:
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And here, on an unrelated note, for those who might enjoy it, and without any real comment, is a recording someone, somewhere, on some date, made, of an 11-minute conversation between two people via walkie-talkies.

Download: Unknown - Walkie Talkie Conversation
Play: