Some Early '70's Jesus Music and Talk from the Kids!

Here's an appropriate reel of tape for this Easter afternoon. What I have hear is a tape containing two productions by the youth of some church, or summer church camp or youth retreat (or the like), from the early '70's. 

These are energetic, earnest performances, amateur from start to finish but endearing in their own ways. I particularly enjoying the energetic, at times haphazard drumming and the unsure quality of many of the lead vocals. 

The two shows were performed almost exactly one year apart, as shows by the dates on the tape box, below, and as recorded, they run virtually the same length, just under 43 minutes for each show. 

Based on what the man introducing the second of these shows ("God Said Yes") explains, it would seem the adults (within whatever this setting was) chose the music and dialogue for the first of these performances, "God is Real" (and however many preceded this one, in previous years), while the young people - for the first time - made all of the writing and selecting choices for "God Said Yes". I don't perceive a huge difference between the messages or the way they are delivered, but perhaps you'll hear something I've missed. 

The first show starts mid-song on the tape, while the second starts with the aforementioned announcement. 

If you meant to get to church this Easter, and didn't quite make it, maybe this will make up for what you missed. If that's not your thing, you might enjoy this anyway, as a recording which captures a moment in time in America - the early '70's - the only point in our history, I think, when such a church group project of this type would have sounded exactly like these young people sound, on this tape. 

Download: Unknown Summer Youth Group - God is Real (8/2/70)

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Download: Unknown Summer Youth Group - God Said Yes (8/1/71)

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"Show Uncle Jack Your Shoes..."

To start, a few responses to comments....

First, thanks to everyone who has been reading and listening - I appreciate your eyes and ears on what I'm sharing here more than I can say. And second, thanks to those who have offered up comments, whether occasionally (or once) or many times.

To those of you who've commented on either the idea of figuring out where these people are, or who they were, or those who just ruminate about the lives they were living, and those they lived in the ensuing years. One comment said:

With these recordings, they're not unlike strangers you meet when traveling. Once you move on, those people are in your rearview mirror, quickly disappearing from view. Then, sometime you think about them but there's no way to find out "whatever happened to...", how they're doing, etc.

These recordings mirror life itself, don't they?

Yes, I get that completely - it's one of the main things that draws me to these tapes. And if you've read my postings for a longer time, you'll know that I've actually been lucky enough to hear from family members of a few of those whose sounds I've posted here and elsewhere, over the years.

Thanks also for the multiple comments regarding the little montage of sounds that I posted late last month (including the identity of one of the songs heard therein, and the interesting point that a Theramin is heard, briefly, in one of the segments). I heard from several people who have done similar things, in various ways (as I have myself), although I still don't know that I've heard of anyone splicing things together in quite the way they were on that tape.

And I appreciated all the nice words about the tape I posted featuring me and my brother at ages 6 and 12.

Finally, thanks to the poster who let me know that the second set of Vivian Cherry tracks had become corrupted somehow. This has been fixed.

On to this week's offering!
~~~~~

Today's brief tape may not sound like much to some listeners - I'll leave that to you to decide - but it is a greatly loved little 113 seconds and a few of my closest friends, and a key tape in my development as a collector of other people's sounds and memories.

This tape came from the ALS Mammoth Music Mart sale, which I've written about several times, and it was a tape found most likely the first batch at the first of those yearly sales that I went to. And as a result, this little moment in time, recorded very likely in the 1960's, was among the first - if not the first - tapes I found of its sort, and definitely the first to make me want to hear more of this sort of thing. The fact that it was clearly recorded in Winnetka, IL, a town less than a mile from where I grew up, probably helped, too. Plus - and maybe this is the reason it made such an impression on me - there are a remarkable number of enjoyable little moments for such a short tape. Regardless of the reasons, this is one of the tapes that pushed me into the collector that I am today.

What we hear: Uncle Jack has brought his tape recorder over to the home of a family member. A child named Gail, being apparently the oldest child present, is encouraged to talk. After not wanting to, at first, she then lists several of her friends, and mentions her school - Crow Island Elementary (see below). There is a toddler present, Brian, and he begins nibbling on part of the tape recorder, until told not to. The family then comments on the Brian's behavior and looks, before trying to get him to say a few of the words he knows.

That's it. Except it isn't. For me, my family and friends, several phrases here have become the sort of obscure references that we all have within our family and friendship circles.

Some of the things I love here:
 - Gail: "It's beautiful... and I love it"

 - Uncle Jack worrying about Brian shorting out the transistor

 - The way Gail says "He goes... and he bites it"

 - Gail's mother's description of her son Brian- leading me to the essential question "Can an overbite be 'nifty'"

 - The same woman's wordless vocalizing, immediately thereafter, demonstrating that nifty overbite for those assembled (these last three are in very quick succession).

 - The failed attempts to get Brian to say his new words, including Gail's excited encouragement: "SHOES!!! SHOES!!!"

This is one that I treasure above all but perhaps a dozen others. If it doesn't live up to the billing for you, well then, please allow me the indulgence.

Download: Uncle Jack's Family - A Few Moments with Uncle Jack's Family
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Incidentally, not only is Crow Island School in the heart of Winnetka, IL, perhaps three miles from the home where I grew up, in nearby Northfield, but I actually attended a summer school enrichment program there, in the summer between second and third grade - I could very well have been in the school at the same time as this girl named Gail. I was very enamored of their unusual, elaborate and large playground. I didn't know it at the time, but it turns out that in that playground, at the time, sat the very first Jungle Gym ever made, a fact which is mentioned in that Wikipedia article I linked at the start of this paragraph.

Triple Play Tuesday! Australian Mailbag, Terrible Acting and a Bizarre Little Reel

It's been a busy February, and I haven't been able to get here as often as I'd like. To make up for that, I have three unrelated bits of tape today. (Oh, and I know this is going up on a Wednesday - but I wrote it on Tuesday then couldn't get it to post for the rest of the day. The title doesn't really work with "Wednesday".)

First up is a second sampling of the many tapes I came across somewhere which feature short wave recordings from Australia. Based on a couple of things heard here, particularly a reference to recently born Australian Quintuplets (the ones being mentioned were born on 12/31/67), this tape seems to date from early 1968.

The first section, a local news roundup, is not that interesting to me, but I've kept because I thought maybe others would be more interested. But that second section, for me, is GOLD. It starts at just past the 16 minute mark and lasts 15 minutes. It is called "Listeners Mailbag", and the concept of the show could not be more simple: The host reads cards and letters from listeners in America, complete with their names and addresses. Often, these are little more than reports of how well the Australian Shortwave station was coming in, perhaps a question or two, or descriptions of things or activities from the writer's hometown.

I find this a charming concept and effort, the likes of which have been completely lost in our modern world.

Download: Radio Australia - Australian News and Mailbag from America, 1968
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Next, a very short segment from an ancient and clunky TV private eye show, called Martin Kane. I bought a tape some time ago which contained recordings off the air of a dozen episodes of this show, which starred multiple men in the title role over its entire run. An interesting feature of this show was that it used the setting of a local tobacco shop, right within the plot of its episodes, to further the plot and sell the sponsor's product at the same time. Every episode featured two scenes in the tobacco shop, with extensive descriptions of the various products from the sponsoring tobacco company.

On one of these episodes, someone had the wise idea to include a local sports star, a Yankees pitcher who happened to have thrown an excellent game a few days earlier. Tom Morgan may have been a good enough pitcher, but at remembering and delivering lines... well, I'm going to bet this was his only live acting appearance. It is fairly amazingly awful.

Download: Tom Morgan on "Martin Kane, Private Eye"
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Finally, a completely inexplicable little three inch reel of tape. Someone went to the trouble to splice together short excerpts from what sounds like at least ten, perhaps 15 different tapes into a quick hodgepodge of sound. Many of the segments are less than 10 seconds long. Among other things, you'll hear someone playing an organ, several short excerpts of music of several styles from the 1930's to the 1940's, a jazz announcer from Chicago's WBBM, people at home talking into the microphone, and, in the longest segment by far (about 75 seconds),  a bit of a court proceedings involving J. Edgar Hoover!

I doubt that many people will give this a second listen, but it's certainly a weird little experience, and I'd love to know what purpose it served.

Download: Bizarre Small Reel of Tape with Many Edits
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It's 1952: Bob Bowfinger Leaves for the Army

Anytime I have the chance to buy a reel to reel tape with paper backing (as opposed to the various plastic backings which have been around since at least the early 1950's), I jump at the chance, and I am usually quick to see if the tape contains what such a backing suggests - a tape recorded during the dawn of the reel-to-reel era, more or less from just after World War II through the point that paper reels were phased out, in the early '50's. Presumably, this was due to the fact that they tore so easily, and perhaps because there tends to be white noise behind recordings made on paper reels. Why this is, I don't know. My guess is that people chose the winning format with their wallets, and that paper backing went away.

Anyway, that excitement was present with today's 3 inch reel of paper-backed reel, which contains a friend (and his mother) bidding farewell to one of their own, a fellow named Bob Bowfinger, on May 6th, 1952, as he prepares to leave for the army.

The tape is six minutes long, and simply captures a few moments in time. Bob's lost his voice a bit, but is able to talk about a movie they've just been to see, and chats with his friend's mother for a moment.

The last third of the tape contains someone singing "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen", for a small audience, followed by someone reciting a prayer. Whether or not this was recorded at the same gathering as the Bowfinger segment, or is in any way connected to it, I have no idea.

Please enjoy this tape, sounding remarkably fine for having been recorded nearly 64 years ago.

Download: 5/6/52: Bob Bowfinger Leaves for the Army
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Vivian Cherry - Singer/Songwriter

If you search for the name Vivian Cherry, you get a lot of hits. If you eliminate those connected to a photographer by that name, you still get a lot of hits. Literally: she has been in hit movies (Everyone Says I Love You), sung on popular commercials (Have a Coke and a Smile) and on a variety of records, particularly jazz albums.

What she hasn't had - as far as I can tell - is much success as a solo singer under her own name, or with her own material. But within my catacombs I came across two five inch reels containing a total of eleven songs which she sings, and, according to one of the boxes, wrote.

These are not particularly in a style that I appreciate much, but it's an interesting listen, she clearly has an abundance of talent, and there's no reason except for luck and the right people behind her that would have kept Vivian Cherry from being as successful as any number of singers who did make it to the charts in the '70's and '80's (my guess is that these are from the '70's, although the studio identified on the boxes was open until 1985).

Here are the two reels, heard without edit as they played on my machine. I have not edited the individual songs, the titles of which can be seen above and below.

Download: Vivian Cherry: One Set of Songs
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Download: Vivian Cherry: Another Set of Songs
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Billy and Bobby Meet Stereo Recording

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Before I get to this week's recording, I wanted to say thanks to two frequent posters.

First, thanks to Timmy, who not only sends frequent comments my way, but who also sent me more information about station WCOL, whose top hits of 1968 I shared last week. These included a link to a bit of station history, AND a copy of the actual top hits of 1968 handout sheet. Both can now be found in the updated post from last week, here.

Second to recent frequent poster Muff, who has left wonderful comments on several of my recent posts. I really appreciate the feedback and the good words. That goes for everyone, of course, and keep them coming, but this person has commented on just about everything I've uploaded over the past six weeks or more!

And now, on with the countdown:

~~

I thought I'd do something special for the first posting of the year. Well, I'll let you decide how special it is, but it's special to me.

This is a recording of my brother Bill and me, very shortly after our family got our first stereo tape recorder, an event which took place in the early fall of 1966. As children, Bill and I shared a room, and we were unusually close (I think) for brothers who were (almost exactly) six years apart, and we made hours and hours of tapes together, among many other games and other fun.

In this recording, he is twelve and I am six, we're each going to have our own recording channel - probably for the first time trying out the stereo effects - and we're going to sing a few little songs for posterity.

The first one takes some explaining. It's actually the song "I Ain't Down Yet", which is from a  Broadway show, but we didn't know that - we knew it as "Bup Bup Bup Bup", because the version we learned was from a record produced as a tie-in to a local Chicago children's show of the early '60's, "Here's Geraldine". On that record, no words are sung, instead, "Bup" and "Bah" are the primary sounds used, until the last verse, which is performed on kazoos. If you want to hear what we're trying to recreate, you can here it here. Basically, we do the second and last verses from that record, here. I think the fact that I could sing as part of a duet using counterpoint, at barely six years old, is fairly impressive.

The rest of the tape is more self-explanatory. After a few minutes of weirdness, we take a brief tour of two Beatles' hits from 1965, with Bill singing funny, trying to make me laugh, for much of that segment. Then the tape ends with "I've Been Working on the Railroad", featuring a few side from Bill about my singing. A brief ending song follows, and the tape is done.

I hope you find this to be enjoyable few minutes of tape.

Download: Bill and Bobby - A Few Songs in 1966
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Party Like It's Almost 1969

As you prepare for this year's New Year's Eve festivities, here's a little party music for you from 1968, courtesy of the fine folks at WCOL, AM 1230, in Columbus, Ohio.

Someone (whose tapes I bought at least three decades later) made the wonderful choice to record much of that station's year end countdown of the biggest hits of the year. Unfortunately, some of the DJ chatter is cut out, as are all of the commercials. And not all of the songs are represented here (many from lower down on the list are cut). But what's here is great stuff, if you're into top 40 radio recordings.

For example, while the number one song is quite predictable (it was the biggest hit record of the era), several of the top 15 hits of the year came nowhere near that lofty finish on any nationwide charts - for example, who would expect "Dock of the Bay" to be sitting outside of the top ten, pushed out by the likes of "Bottle of Wine" by the Fireballs? And the year end number FIVE hit - well it's a song which only got to number 17 in its regular chart run in Billboard. And in other spots on the chart there are similar regional hits, much bigger here than they were nationally.

Oddly, after playing the number five song, the DJ cuts back to two songs from much lower down in the countdown, which apparently were skipped for some reason. We get to hear those, but sadly, there's not even a moment of song number three, which was skipped entirely, by whoever recorded the countdown, so I guess we'll never know what that song was..

The tape contained the majority of the countdown on the first side of the tape, and that is the first segment here, running about 94 minutes. It ends with the celebration of the new year, 1969, as it arrives, with an idiosyncratic version of Auld Lang Syne (heard during most of the last 90 seconds of segment one) which is worth hearing. The remainder of the countdown (36 minutes) is on side two, and that is the second segment (it starts with a few seconds of a news broadcast, which was then erased).

(Not included is the remainder of side two, which features an aggressively uninspired Tom Jones album, a few tracks from Elvis movies, and some of Glenn Miller's biggest hits, in what sound like hi-fi note-for-note recreations of the originals. Bleah.)

Put on your funny hats and Welcome-1969 glasses, and enjoy the broadcast!

Download: WCOL, AM 1230, Columbus Ohio, Top Hits of 1968 - Part One
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Download: WCOL, AM 1230, Columbus Ohio, Top Hits of 1968 - Part Two
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UPDATE, 1/7/16: Frequent commenter and general wonderful helper to this site Timmy has shared both a link to some history of WCOL, which you can find here, and also a copy of the station's Top 100 of 1968, in which we can see that the #3 song of the year was "Lady Madonna", which barely made the top four in it's regular Billboard run, nationally, in the early part of that year.

 

Thanks, Timmy!