A Sweet Tape by a Musical Family, Early Johnny Carson and a Few Odds and Ends

Hello, everybody, Hello!

I have five selections from my collection today, ranging far and wide as a sampling of the eclectic nature of that collection. 

First of all, a tape that I just love. One of the things I treasure most, when digging through tapes, is finding a tape which reflects honest-to-goodness love and affection of family, and people having a really good time. And that's the way I hear this tape. 

This is almost certainly from the same family who recorded the very first post I shared on this site, "A Gaggle of Giggling Twelve Year Olds". The parrot heard on that tape is frequently heard here - I've edited out more than 20 minutes of recordings of the bird making noise, which was interspersed with the sections shared here. And I recognize some of the same voices. 

Anyway, the majority of this tape is made up of children who are in the midst of learning to play instruments - accordion and piano - as well as singing naturally and with great enthusiasm. I understand that for some of you that immediately spells torture, and I will not try to argue with you - in some cases (not here), I'd fully agree. 

But for me, this is gold. Some may hear a bit of brow-beating in the dad pushing his daughter to play her song, early in the tape, but there is genuine and strong affection clearly apparent on both sides, and the girl soon makes fun of dad, as soon as he's out of earshot, certainly knowing full well he'd be able to hear it later. She's not feeling harassed - she wants to share what she can do. 

The first half of the tape features music played by kids who are just at the start of learning, interspersed with a silly conversation with "Donald Duck" - a cartoon voice I've never been able to stand - and some great play-acting between two girls, sisters, I think, in a short skit - which may be my favorite section of the tape. 

There's also a neat little interaction between father and daughter about a test she took, and then it's back to the music. At about the 26 minute point, the remainder of the original is erased, with the announcement that it's now 1962 (I believe we've gone forward two years or so), and we're going to hear how much the musicianship has improved. In that last segment, we again hear piano, accordion, and several duets for piano and voice, with one of the girls repeatedly singing in a fairly over-the-top dramatic style which I, again, find deeply endearing. 

Of all the tapes I've shared in the past few months, this is my favorite. 

Download: A Collection of Musical Performances and Fun Conversations

Play:  

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This one doesn't require anywhere near as much explanation. This is simply a recording made of short segments of two episodes of The Tonight Show, less than 18 months after Johnny Carson took over as host. First we hear humorist and rancontour Sam Levenson talking about a variety of things, particularly his history with the violin, followed by some violin playing. Then, probably from another episode (I believe both of these are from January or February of 1964), Johnny talks about an earlier show which featured a "talking" dog, and a clip from that show is shared. 

Download: Excerpts from Early Tonight Shows -Sam Levenson and a Talking Dog - early 1964.mp3

Play:  

~~

In February of this year, I shared a tape from Joe Gerossi, a man who seemed to have considered himself quite the wit, in which he was heard in a variety of sessions and with a variety of friends. I have since found that I have at least two more tapes of Joe Gerossi in my collection. One of them has not yet been digitized, but will be, soon. The other only features him for a few moments, telling some ethnic jokes of the type typical way back when at the start of the tape, and offering a few other thoughts at the end. In between was a full two hours of a very badly Dean Martin TV roast show, which I am not sharing here. 

And now, Heeeere's Joe: 

Download: A Few Ethnic Jokes from Joe Gerossi

Play:

~~

Next up, here's an example of something I have many varieties of: The Stereo Demonstration Tape. From the dawn of Reel-to-Reel stereo in 1956 to at some time in the late 1960's, purchasing a new tape recorder often meant also receiving a tape demonstrating the wonders of the reel to reel world, particularly if you'd purchased a stereo machine, which were wildly expensive - a single stereo pre-recorded tape of your favorite performer in 1957 cost about $75 in today's dollars, so imagine how much the new machine cost. 

Anyway, the "Voice of Music" company seems to have been particularly aggressive in this marketing aspect, as I have several five inch reels - both demos and short performances of musical works - bearing their imprint. Here is a copy of the Stereo Demonstration Tape from Voice of Music. 

I will add one more thing - 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: Voice of Music Stereo Demonstration Tape

Play:

~~

And finally, no post would be complete without a very short reel. Here's an ad for "Tess Electronics". I don't have a box for this one, so there's no specific date, aside from "June 9th", but I'm guessing the 1980's. And I certainly hope it's my tape machine that couldn't well handle this reel, or perhaps that it's deteriorated over the years, as so many 1980's tapes have done, because, for an ad for Electronics, this thing sounds awful, with muddy sound in the right channel and frequent clicking noises. 

Download: Tess Electronics - Ad for the Week of June 9th

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
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~~

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:

Vintage Talk Radio with Michael Jackson and Much, Much More

So here's what happened the day I made my last post - later in the afternoon.

I went into the basement and found a moderate size puddle of water, not far from one of the two sunken window wells - the access spots all basements have to have. I assumed, at the time, that we had some sort of seepage - it's happened before, and since very little was on the floor in that area, and not much had been damaged, I figured we'd address it later, and be aware that it might continue to happen.

Two hours later, though, the puddle was twice as big, and as it wasn't raining at that moment, I thought something else was probably going on. And I was right. A pinhole leak had developed in the pipe carrying away the water from our washing machine. A steady, pin-thin torrent was coming out, straight towards the floor, every time we ran the washing machine. And it was directly over one of my shelves full of tape. Not only was it spewing forth at that moment, it had done so at least twice in the previous two days. The direct hits and the splashing hits had managed to damage parts of 16 large stacks of tapes- varying from completely drenched to a little bit moist.

I eventually hustled the tapes upstairs and put them in the garage to air out and dry. Some were fine the next day, others took several days.

Here's what the garage looked like:

And the other angle:

TI do have a contraption that dehumidifies tapes (because of the existence of something calls "sticky tape syndrome" which affects some reels produced in the '70's and '80's - some of you may know about this), so everything should be okay, to varying degrees. I had not yet listened to all of these tapes. 

And I must say, it looks like a much bigger collection when laid out like that, then it does when on a shelving unit. 

And that brings up another point that you might find interesting. The above reflects about 15-16 stacks of tapes. I have roughly six or seven times that many stacks in my basement that are as of yet unheard by me, in addition to those shown above. It seems I need to "get a move on". 

At some point, I may need to enter into conversations about who would want to carry on with these tapes if and when I'm no longer able to (I actually tried to engage the Library of Congress about this a few years ago, when I was in conversation with a staff member about something entirely different, but as soon as I brought up this collection, the staff member broke off contact). 

Thoughts about any and all of this are welcome. But anyway, the last week of August was a challenging one for me and for my reel collection. 

And now: 

~~

One of the more interesting things I came across lately is a segment of talk radio from the mid 1960's, version of the format which has been utterly unknown outside the realm of public radio for at least the last few decades. It's hosted by an erudite English fellow named Michael Jackson (no, of course not that one - THIS one), and it was recorded, as the box says, on October 12th, 1964, not long at all before KHJ jettisoned its adult oriented programming - which was apparently quite something - for Top 40 Radio, the following spring. 

The writing on the box is sort of a mess, but it does confirm what I just wrote: 

And here's the segment, which, as I alluded to, I find fairly fascinating:, both for its style and for the variety of subjects discussed at a fairly critical moment in U. S. History. It starts with a segment of a newscast, but from the one minute point on, it's the Michael Jackson show:  

Download: Michael Jackson on KHJ, Los Angeles, October 12, 1964

Play:

~~

So while we're on the topic of radio, which I know is a favorite for many readers/listeners to this site, I have a really neat collection of ads for Lucky Lager, from 1969, another tape from a collection of Lucky Lager-related reels that I managed to pick up... somewhere. These eight ads - more like sponsorship promos, as they are each about three minutes long - are from the "Sportsman's Friend" series, and they feature short profiles of people and/or places. These were produced by the very well known BBDO, Inc., and are from 1969, facts I learned through careful research and detailed study of the tape box: 

And here's the reel: 

Download: Lucky Lager - Eight "Sportsman's Friend" Features

Play:

~~

Another collection I picked up along the way features, on several of its tapes, Telephone Company related material. I have featured several of these reels in the past, and here is another one, featuring "25 simulated telephone conversations", meant to help train phone "toll traffic observers", presumably to help them learn how to help make sure calls are loud enough to be heard but not so loud as to be uncomfortable.

The content of the fake calls is quite entertaining at times. 

Download: 25 Simulated Telephone Calls

Play:

~~

So every now and then, I like to throw in something either dull or annoying or otherwise difficult to listen to, to give all of you a fuller taste of the nature and variety of the tapes I come across and listen to in order to provide enjoyment for all of us. 

This tape is mercifully short but has little to recommend it, to my ears, despite being one of those, usually precious home recordings, and what's more, a home recording of a child. However, this one is extremely badly recorded, and primarily features the child trying to demonstrate the newest song she (Vernisha?) has learned on piano, one which she hasn't actually really learned yet. 

The opening greeting is cute, as is her response when she is called to clean the dishes. Following that point, she returns, and I absolutely cannot make out much of what's she's saying over the next 45 seconds - it may be gibberish, or it may be in another language, or it may be an assumed accent, but the distorted sound doesn't help. In the last 35 seconds, she becomes more intelligible. And then it ends. 

If the whole tape was this kid talking as at the end, and was recorded well, it would probably be gold. But in this form it's fairly hard to listen to. Maybe you'll feel differently...

Download; Unknown: Bad Piano and Rambling Talk

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~~

And finally, as always, our very short reel. Today's reel features two ads for "Kingsbury Homes", wherever those were sold. One has the sales pitch from start to finish, and the other has a music bed for what would have been a live read over it. 

Additionally, a bit more of tape was left on the reel, and it contains very brief segments of three other recordings in quick succession over less than 12 seconds, at the very end. This tape clearly was used multiple times before the Kingsbury Homes ads were recorded. Sort of an interesting little medley of sounds...

Download: Two Kingsbury Homes Ads (and a bit more)

Play:

It's been a while since I digitized that one, and I don't quite know where the box is, so I don't have a scan...

Celebrating Baseball, Trying to Get the Ad Just Right, and Keeping in Touch

How ya doon?

Today marks the completion of the Scotch Tape Box History Series. Last time around, I shared the boring box that Scotch moved towards, during the period when the rest of the advertising world (and the Western World) was moving towards an explosion of color and imagery. Scotch then stayed with that box style, with minor modifications and variations, for at least 15 years, regardless of tape size or item number.

Following that - and I may have missed a design or two along the way, particularly after 1980, a period I don't generally look for tapes from, and during which I was not buying new tapes. But anyway, the next - and last - example I have is the starkest change of all, and even did away with the band of scotch plaid which had been present all the way back since 1948. In fact, it did away with just about everything, and featured a solid black box with the word "Scotch" in silver.

Ecch. What an ignominious end. The word "Scotch" barely appears anywhere else on the box (only in tiny legal type), replaced as a company name by "Magnetic Audio/Video Products Division of 3M".

<a bit of a plug - the tape housed in the box scanned above does happen to include some of the  recordings I made for my 1997 opus "The Many Moods of Bob", available free at that link.>

I'm thinking that now I might move towards sharing some of the other boxes which I consider to be particularly interesting/common/rare/whatever. Any thoughts on this?

And now...

~~

With baseball back in full swing, albeit with only 37% of the games scheduled and 0% of the fans present, I thought it might be perfect time to break out a really nice tape that I've owned for decades - it's actually part of the set of reels that I purchased that had belonged to the family of Merigail Moreland, although it has only a couple of moments which make it clear that it's part of that collection, and nothing of Merigail.

In fact, most of the tape is taken up by recordings of a key baseball game in Chicago history - the night the White Sox clinched the American League pennant, for what was then the first time in 40 years, in 1959.

(Now granted, this is not as special as, say, a Cubs pennant winning broadcast, or, say, a broadcast of a last place Cubs team losing a game. We are, after all, only talking the American League here. But it's nice, anyway.)

This is nowhere near the entire game, and due to sections of it having been erased with other material, it's not even a solid nonstop chunk of the game. However, the end of the game is here, and - perhaps the most interesting part - the last 24 minutes or so is the post-game coverage.

The lead broadcaster here is the immortal Jack Brickhouse, beloved among Chicagoans of at least age 50 or more, and this would have to have been on WGN. I don't think there's anything else I need to say!

Download: Jack Brickhouse, et al - White Sox vs. Cleveland - 9-22-59 - White Sox Win Pennant
Play:

Update, 8/23: Long time reader and Frequent commenter Eric Paddon has listened to this entire chunk of tape and has written three comments expanding on its contents. For one thing, it IS "a solid nonstop chunk of the game", despite what I wrote, but there are other bits of information, too. I admit to not re-listening to the whole thing when I captured it digitally, last month, and was going by memory. 

Anyway, I deeply appreciate ALL of his comments over the years, and encourage you to read them here to fill in a few more bits of information. 

 ~~

Next up, an audio letter. This 30 minute example is fairly pedestrian as these things go, but there's a certain fascination for some people, me included, in hearing the ramblings of someone - or in this case, two someones ("dad and sis") - talking to a loved one who is far away, plus, there is a sort of horrible moment during the tape, which I'll explain.

But first, I'll confirm that you really are listening to the correct item: this one starts in a unique fashion, with bird-tweeting sounds, followed by comments about birds.

Then there's the moment... well, a unique aspect of this tape that is actually fairly chilling. There is a mention at one point about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, and I certainly assumed, at that moment, that this tape was recorded at some point soon after that tragic event. But NO. At another point on the tape, it becomes clear that the date is August 12, 1967, and listening back to the King mention, is also becomes clear that the speaker is - honest to God - simply making a prediction, more or less as fact and certainly without any rancor or emotion, that King will be assassinated at some point. He doesn't say, as I thought at first, "when they assassinated...", instead, he says "when they assassinate....".

Wow. What an unintended insight into the thoughts and views of some people during the mid 1960's.

Download: Audio Letter from Dad and Sis - 8-12-67
Play:

~~

Next up, here's something fun: It's some radio guy making multiple attempts to record an ad for an end-of-year closeout sale at a local Fresno car dealership, presumably in the summer of 1963. There are multiple different (but similar) ads attempted, and the reader makes several attempts to get them right, breaking down repeatedly along the way. There's a bit of fun in the copy - some understated humor and a sense of making fun of themselves. I find this highly enjoyable.

Download: Trying to Record End-of-Season Ads for Fresno Motor Sales, 1963
Play:

~~

For my "very short reels" sample this week, I again pulled one out at random, and it turned out to be an ad for a local watering hole in Toledo, known as "The Distillery", an ad to be aired on WJZE, which was then on 106.5 FM - it's since migrated to lower on the dial and changed formats. This ad is date 3-20-97.

Download: "The Distillery" Ad - WJZE - 3-20-97
Play:

A Nice Advertising Demo Reel, A Not-So-Nice Novel, The Return of Australian Shortwave and More!

Howdy, good people! I've got a good variety of material for you today!

Let's start with what I'll guess will be the most popular of the offerings. What I have here is a single reel containing two demo presentations from 1969, from a then-leading voice in radio and television advertising, Chicago's own Bernie Saber Musical Productions, Inc.

This reel actually has two presentations from approximately the same period spliced together, with the details of their contents taped to either side of the tape box.  The first segment, which is about a third of the entire tape, and runs just under five minutes, is summed up this way on the box:

And the second set, running almost ten minutes, is summarized on the other side of the box. This section starts with a spoken introduction by Bernie himself, wherein he plugs his new arranger, Jerry Zervic (who is also mentioned on the box, which looks like this:

By now, I have no doubt you're champing at the bit to hear what all this sounds like. I do not believe you'll be disappointed. Here are both segments, back to back, as heard on the tape:

Download: Bernie Saber Musical Productions, Inc - 1969 Commercial Demo Reel
Play:

 ~~

Staying for a moment with the theme of advertising, here's the other end of the production of a commercial - the multiple attempts to get it right. I don't know who this is (maybe someone will recognize the voice), or when this is from, or why they needed to do so very many takes sounding almost exactly the same, but regardless, here is... someone... from some point... recording multiple takes of what I believe may have been a radio promo, for CBS Television News.

Download: Unknown - Recording a CBS TV News Promo
Play:

~~

Switching gears fairly significantly, now it's time to revisit something I have on several reels, for some reason, almost certainly a batch of reels that were all bought together, but got separated at some point, as I keep coming across this stuff.

Anyway, it's more Australian Shortwave, and specifically, more "Australian Mailbag". This nearly 28 minute tape seems to be made up of one complete episode, from the very end of March, 1974, then portions of two other episodes. It would appear that the first episode heard here was erasing part of the second one, and that the second one was in turn erasing part of the third one, so that we're hearing the most newly recorded episode (and only complete one) first.

In addition, the (very short segment of the) second episode was recorded on a faulty machine, and the speaker's voice was slowed down unnaturally. The opposite was true of the third episode, which ran abnormally fast. I have attempted to adjust these segments to approximate the correct speed and tone, but I'm sure I wasn't perfect in doing so.

Also, I will note the first, full episode has mediocre sound quality, and that the other two segments have even poorer quality sound.

Download: Australian Mailbag, March 1974 and Two Other Segments
Play:

~~

And now, something fairly peculiar, in both content and sound. Here is a man reading from part of what I assume to be a novel. I found this 16 1/2 minute recording on a three inch reel of tape.

And here's a thing I've found, repeatedly, about some three inch reels of tape - some of the tiny machines built to only handle this size reel must have been extraordinarily crappy. Because I find the same problem recurs time and time again with a subset of three inch reels - speech fluctuation. And it's always the same fluctuation - a tape will play with what is clearly a "sped up" sound at first, and the tone of the speakers' voices will gradually approach a more normal tone, then pass that normal tone right by and continue to gradually lower into an artificially "slowed down" sound. I don't believe that certain of these small recorders were capable of recording at a consistent speed, and went too fast or too slow depending on how much drag there was on the left-hand reel.

I've made no attempt to correct that here - the process for doing so would be fairly complicated. Besides, I think it adds an extra odd, at times creepy vibe to what he's reading, which, as I've telegraphed in my headline, is "not-so-nice". Not that it's out of the mainstream of boilerplate fiction, it certainly isn't. But I found it jarring anyway - I mean, why record this for 15 minutes, from what clearly is the middle of a longer work?

Download: Unknown - A Man Reads Part of a Novel
Play:

~~

And finally, as always, here's our very short reel for today's post. In this case, what you'll hear below is all that there was on a small reel of tape. I don't speak French, so if anyone would like to translate this 36 second recording, by all means, please do, and I'll include it in an update of this post.

Au revoir.

Download: Unknown - A Very Short Reel in French
Play:

A Small Child and His Family, Ersatz Bob and Ray, A Hodgepodge Tape and Another Very Short Reel

Greetings!

First up, I want to share something based on a couple of specific requests. I have, from time to time, sold reel tapes on eBay, tapes that I did not want to keep (rarely if ever anything I've shared here, almost entirely tapes whose contents do not excite me). I have never promoted these sales before, but when I mentioned that I have a history of selling tapes, I had a few people post that they'd like to be alerted to these sales, the next time.

And so, with that in mind, I will let you know that I have three auctions of tapes at this time. 25 seven inch reels are here, another 27 seven inch reels are here, and 16 five inch reels are here. The auctions end on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week, respectively.

~~

I have been very slow to continue the "Scotch Tape Box History" series, having gone a few months without a further post, and that's because this is the entry that I've been dreading. Scotch used a series of creative tape boxes throughout the late '40's, all of the '50's and the early '60's, with the exception, I suppose, of the most commonly found box, the black design. But that one is so iconic to me, it still is something special. The rest, though, whether the busy Scotch plaid patterns, or the one with the clock, or the one with the studio rehearsal or the crazy art deco arrangement, are all so nice.

And then, just as the world was exploding in a symphony of color - and just as the art world was exploding with Pop Art and other wonderfully creative moves towards using color and images in new and startling, fun and exciting ways, the folks at Scotch went precisely in the other direction, and from perhaps 1964 or so through the end of the decade, THIS - with a few variations of product numbers and specifics as to each product - was your standard Scotch Tape Box:

Ugh.

~~

Okay, first up today is a tape I find utterly charming, except for those few moments that are ear-piercing. The primary speaker is a child named Paul, heard first at age 5, then at age 7. Paul and his father are recording, and he is singing and babbling the way a five year old is likely to do. Early on, a toddler, also in the room, becomes upset and shrieks extremely loudly, but if you can get past those moments, I think this is a lot of fun.

For those of you in my age demographic, you will probably get a kick out of the song Paul sings after asking if he can sing the "Huckleberry Song". He also makes up a few songs, and makes mention in song and speaking that he wishes mommy would be home soon with the brand new baby.

Then there is a break, and we indeed hear mommy, announcing that we've been listening to 1960, and now it's 1962, and all three children will speak. They do, but just barely - Paul is the star of our show again. For any more details, I'd prefer that you experience this tape yourself, and I hope you enjoy it as I do.

Download: Paul and His Family - 1960 and 1962 Recordings by Paul (age 5 in 1960) and His Family
Play:

~~

Next up, a rather peculiar and fascinating recording I found on a VERY old Scotch reel. Luckily, there was enough writing on the box for me to decipher what was going on, because otherwise, I would have thought this was a pair of guys pretending to be on the radio, and wishing that they were Bob and Ray.

But no, as the box made clear, this is a pair of would-be humorists by the names of Don Anderson and Leo McKay, working under the names of "Bunky and Dufoe", at station KWRO, Coquille, Oregon on 2/27/57, with either their entire show for that day, or an excerpt thereof. Your mileage may, of course, vary, but boy do I find this to be a big old dumpster fire of unfunny. And as someone who reveres the early, improvised work of Bob and Ray (from when they were on in Boston), this just grates on me.

On the other hand, it may well be the only known recording of this duo (I certainly couldn't find any mention of them online), so that certainly makes it worth hearing. And certainly, tastes in humor vary widely, so you may enjoy it not just as an obscure piece of radio history, but as comedy.

Download: Bunky and Dufoe (Don Anderson and Leo McKay) - KWRO, Coquille, Oregon, 2-27-57
Play:

~~

The next tape I'm sharing as an example of something I come across from time to time - this one being more interesting than most others, and that is the type of tape I label a "Hodgepodge". These are typically tapes of anywhere from 20 minutes to over an hour, which, within their length, contain a fairly ridiculously varied number and group of recordings, often with no clear link between the segments. My own family's tapes would have a ton of this sort of thing, or at least if a stranger went through them, that person would think they were a hodgepodge. Having been there, I would know the relationship between the items of the tape and of the people heard.

And there's little doubt that's true of this tape, too. But I don't have that background information, so here's what I heard. Someone playing blues chords and licks, fairly badly (and very badly recorded), on an electric guitar, with some vocals here and there. Someone (who was probably trying to be funny) expressing himself with extremely crude language, most likely just for his own entertainment and for the entertainment of those in the room, while the guitar playing continues - THIS SECTION IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK - and is followed by more guitar, then a Brook Benton song recorded off the radio, and even more blues.

This is interrupted by someone singing standards, a capella and then with a record. Then there is a segment which seems to be capturing mostly the ambient noise around someone's home - a radio is on and there is a bit of conversation for around three minutes. Some VERY badly recorded radio follows (Warning, this is extremely shrill, and begins at 20:40), and that segues right back into the blues guitar and vocal, recorded just as loudly and badly.

Again, I include this mostly as an example of a type of tape I come across fairly often, and that I haven't shared before. Plus there are some curious things here. I may try to do this with other genres that I have categorized tapes into, in the future, or other "hodgepodge" tapes that seem interesting.

Download: A Hodgepodge - Bluesy Guitar, Rude Talk, Singing, Conversations at Home
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Finally, this week's "Very Short Reel". And it's an "Extremely Short Reel", just 24 seconds (it says 21 plus 2 on the box....). This is one tape from a whole batch of tapes which I bought at least 15 years ago, all of which came from a station in Astoria, Oregon, which is, like Coquille, above, right on the Pacific Ocean, but at the other end of the state's coastline from Coquille.

Most of the tapes from this station were episodes of a half-hour story-telling program, with the stories read by the same female announcer heard here - I believe she was named "Aunt Polly" on the story program. The stories were mostly science fiction and horror, and nothing in the series was all that interesting to me, and I sold them all after listening, again, many years ago.

But here's one from the collection that stayed with me. As you'll hear, it's an ad for a dance, to be held at the Clatsop County Historical Society, which is still there (although the phone number for the the heritage center has since changed. It was in February of 1990. Maybe someone out there reading this was there!!!!

Download: Clatsop County Historical Society USO Dance Ad - 2-4-90
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A Week in Radio and Television History - Mid-August, 1962: WNBC's Anniversary, News From Here, Abroad, and Space, Bert Parks. and the Star of Our Show, Shelley Berman!

Before we get to today's offering, I want to share my deepest thanks and appreciation to those who read and listened to my birthday post, and particularly those who offered up some truly wonderful comments. Thank you, everyone.

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I have a bunch of clips today, and all but the last offering come from the same reel, and I hope that I find that I own more tapes from this same collector (my unlistened-to tapes are a hodge-podge, and tapes bought together have gotten separated over the years).

The reason I hope that is because this person seems to have recorded like a fiend - I'm going to share with you almost the entire contents of this tape, well over two hours worth, and those contents appear to capture recordings made over the course of less than a week, in mid August, 1962. Imagine how many tapes this person may have had, and the contents thereof, if he or she filled a two hour tape in just four or five days!

Anyway, this tape is quite the variety reel, capturing part of one TV show, the entirety of another, parts of three different newscasts, and seven installments of a feature being aired that week by NBC flagship station WNBC, in honor of the 40th anniversary of their having gone on the air. The two dates I can actually nail down are August 14th and August 16th, but certain items here likely are from both before and after those dates.

I have grouped these items together by theme - what follows is not actually quite the order in which they appear on the tape. It is just much easier for me to do it this way, as I digitized these some time ago and am not sure where the tape is, so I don't recall the original order - hope that makes sense.

Let's start with the newscasts. The dominant news stories that week including the lengthy flight of two Russian cosmonauts, Eisenhower's visit to England, an assassination attempt on the President of Ghana, and a disagreement about whether the return to the US by an terminally ill American doctor who had been spying for Russia.

The first segment is from "London Calling", a news report from England but broadcast in the US. The second segment contains a brief excerpt from "Douglas Edwards News" then segues into another show, "The World Today", and the third segment is from Mutual News. It seems to me at least possible that this second clip flips again into another broadcast, as the end of that clip seems quite similar to the start of the Mutual clip. At least one of these items is from August 14th, based on the reference to it being one year and one day after the start of the Berlin Wall.

(Note: All three of these segments sound to me as if they are running slowly - the voices sound artificially low and slow. However, this makes no sense, as the rest of the tape (that these segments are interspersed within) does not sound slow. Why would only the newscasts be recorded on a machine not running correctly?)

Download: London Calling - News from England - Peter King Reporting - Mid-August, 1962
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Download: Douglas Edwards News and The World Today
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Download: Mutual News, August, 1962
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Now, the first of the two Television recordings. While I suspect that this tape's entire contents may be made up of sounds which no longer (or barely) exist anywhere but on this tape, this strikes me as something special even within that world of rarity. Maybe it's just because I love game shows.

But anyway, what we have here is a few portions of a game show called "Yours For a Song", hosted by Bert Parks. The show aired on ABC during the daytime for about 15 months and in a nighttime edition for just under a year. And I'd certainly never heard of it. It's a goofy program, but sounds like something I'd have enjoyed. Rather than explain it here, I'll just let you listen, as all the explanation you need is in the recording. There is a break near the end, and I don't actually know if the part following the break is from the same episode or not, but I suspect it was, and that a portion of the show was later erased by one of the other items being shared here.

Download: Yours for a Song, Starring Bert Parks, August, 1962
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Recorded rather haphazardly throughout the tape is a feature that was airing that week on WNBC, the flagship station of the NBC network, in New York (where, presumably, all of these recordings were made). The station was acknowledging their 40th anniversary. Please note that while Wikipedia (linked above) states that the station first went on the air on March 2, 1922, these segments, developed and provided by the station itself, are using August 16th, 1922 as the first date of operation. I don't know which is correct, but one of these clips definitely identifies that date. The clips all feature earlier recordings from the station, mostly from the 1940's or earlier. The first one is the only one for which I have a hard-and-fast date for - it's clear from the introduction what today's date was. And the two clips of announcer contests may well be two broadcasts of different parts of the same archival segment. ere are all of those clips, in succession as they appear on the tape:

Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - 8-16-62 - The Silver Masked Tenor, Joe White
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - Quick Reading Announcers' Contest
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - Jack Norworth Sings
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - Another Announcers' Contest (Segment)
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - Snoring Demonstration
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - Billy Hill Sings "The Last Round-Up"
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Download: WNBC 40th Anniversary Highlights - August, 1962 - The Ed Wynn Show
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And finally, the pièce de résistance! If you read my birthday post, you'd have seen a brief reference to my adoration for the comedy of Shelley Berman. Well, the saga of Mr. Berman usually includes a reference to an ill-fated show that was done about him in early 1963, following him for a day at a club, including parts of his performance, followed by a few things that happened afterwards. I will not recount the details here, but the legend is that this show ruined his career - although some recent research captured in a book called "The Comedians" indicates strongly that this was not the case.

What I didn't know until I listened to this tape - and this is not even documented on Shelley Berman's IMDB page - is that he did a show for ABC in 1962 - on August 14th - tied to his then-most-recent album, "Shelley Berman: A Personal Appearance", a show which carried the same title as the album, and which was almost entirely made up simply of his act, including much of that album, with slight differences, of course, since it is a different recording of the material. There is also other material here that I've never heard before.

Well.... Wow. My considered opinion is that "Shelley Berman: A Personal Appearance" is the greatest comedy album ever recorded. So I was knocked out to have found this tape, and to learn that it is virtually unknown. (There is a seller online who will sell you audio copies of any of hundreds or perhaps thousands of recordings he holds. He's got a copy.)

So here, unheard by virtually everyone in the world sing 8/14/62, is the ABC special, "Shelley Berman: A Personal Appearance".

Download: Shelley Berman - A Personal Appearance - ABC TV Special - 8-14-62
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~~

Today's very short reel is an ad which apparently ran on Chicago's WNIB, which was, for decades, the second place classical music station in town. It's an ad for the Sunday Chicago Tribune, probably from 1972 or 73 or so, and it's an interesting curio, containing as it does some references to what one expert thought would become collectible in the future (the expert doesn't seem to have been too accurate, based on the view from nearly 50 years later), and a reference to a story on Jane Byrne, who would have been virtually unknown at that time, but who, by the end of the decade, would be Mayor of Chicago.

Download: Sunday Chicago Tribune Ad, Circa Early 1970's
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