A 1971 Radio Announcer Demo, One Last Visit from Antony Bilbow, Talking to Roy, Music at Home, It's Daddy's Birthday and He's the Most Tip Top Top Cat!

Happy Valentine's Day Weekend - I love my reader/listeners, and I love this hobby. 

Dee-Jay Announcer Demo Tapes always seem to be pretty popular around here, so I will start with a vintage 1971 tape compiled by Chuck Martin. I featured him in part of my "Very Short Reel" in my very last post, but here he is again in a somewhat lengthier tape. He was reading ads in that previous tape, but here he is doing the full DJ thang. However, I've just noticed that, while that previous tape had jingles from KHJ, the Chuck Martin section was apparently from WNHC, New Haven, as is this aircheck. This station is now a public radio station, is part of Yale University and is now known as WYBC.

Download: Chuck Martin - Announcer Demo Reel on WNHC, October, 1971

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The three sets of stories by Antony Bilbow that I've shared have been quite popular, at least with some reader/listeners. You will find the other three posts, and this one, at this link. Sadly, this is the last of the four sets of stories I will be able to offer, as their ain't no more. Last summer I received two comments, on anonymous, one from Sunnymanchester, both containing information about the shows. I have combined those comments here:

The Antony Bilbow recordings seem to have been regularly featured in the "Morning Story" slot on the BBC's Light Programme throughout the 1960s. Many thanks for making them available! Going by the listings for "Morning Story" on https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ many of which include the story titles - it looks like it's a compilation of these recorded over several years, not necessarily in chronological order. The series was originally called "Worthington" when it started in 1954, but by the mid 60s it included other stories, including Bilbow reading a few by other authors.

Thanks for that information! 

Here for his swan song, Antony Bilbow.

Download: Antony Bilbow - Stories on English Radio, Volume 4

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Now, for those who enjoy audio letters, I have something I think is very special. For those who don't, feel free to move on. 

More than seven years ago, I made the top feature of one of my posts a tape from a man named Roy, living in Alaska, circa 1957 or 1958. That post is here, and here is what I wrote at that time. 

I will let the delights and idiosyncrasies of this tape reveal themselves to you, but I do want to add that I'm pretty sure that I own the tape he was responding to!!! That'd be a first, I think, and if I can find it, it'd be a wonderful bookend with this tape. Everything he mentions from "your tape" (i.e. the one he previously received) sounds familiar to me, so I just need to track it down. 

Well, it took longer than I might have expected, but here is that tape. Listening to this one and then going back and listening to Roy's tape is sort of like hearing a conversation that took place over many miles, nearly 70 years ago. 

Download: Audio Letter to Roy

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For those down-home folks, here are a couple of fellows playing together, on accordion and guitar. SO I've called it "Accordion and Guitar. I spent most of the day yesterday working on that file name. 

Download: Unknown - Accordion and Guitar

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And now it's time for an "Acetate of the Month". This is a wisp of a record, at 66 seconds it is almost as short as the extremely short "Very Short Reel" below it. This is a Voice-O-Graph record, no doubt made it a both in some sort of store (perhaps a department store or 5- and 10-cent store - something like that). As I've written before, such machines were still around when my grandmother visited us, and we made such a record, circa 1967. 

I suspect this is from several years before that, but really have no way of knowing anything but the date - May 29th - the singer/speaker - "Billy" - and the recipient - "Dad". The sound quality is atrocious, as is Billy's sense of pitch while singing "Happy Birthday". I actually can't make out much of what he says and sings after that song - perhaps some listener will be able to decipher it. 

Download: Voice-O-Graph 6 Inch Acetate - Billy Sings Happy Birthday to Daddy, May 29

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And finally, a VERY short, "Very Short Reel". It would appear that this tape either had its genesis in the Hanna-Barbera studios, or at the very least passed through there. It contains the music bed for the theme to the relatively unsuccessful H-B cartoon "Top Cat" (which only lasted one season), followed by what I assume is "tag" music to be used to introduced or come out of an episode, or perhaps to be heard over the final credits. Any guesses as to who the "T.T." listed on the box (below) is/was would be welcome. 

If anyone has is any doubt that this is the actual arrangement and performance of that theme's backing track, a comparison with the show's opening should convince you. 

Download: Unknown - 'Top Cat' Main Title Music and Tag

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PAMS Magic, Fooling Around, Some Right Wing Fun, Sunday in New York, More BBC Stories, Dulcimer Magic, and Everybody Likes It!

Okay, so who is ready for more than three hours more of reel to reel wonderment? And I promise no long-winded self-referential observations this time. 

But first, I want to yet again thank Eric Paddon for filling in the gaps in the information about television recordings, as he has done so many times. I'm not going to copy and paste here, but if you enjoyed the games shows that I posted last time, I encourage you to go back to that posting and look at the two comments he left. Thanks!!!

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Let's start with the tape I believe will be the most popular for today's posting, as it ties into top forty radio and features the absolute masters of the Jingle World therein, the PAMS company of Texas. Here is their presentation for "series 44", from the mid 1970's, complete with a sales pitch and then, at the end, an example of every jingle the purchasing station would receive (redone with their own call letters, frequency and/or slogans, of course). Great stuff!

Download: PAMS Sales Pitch for Series 44

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From the sublime to the ridiculous. Here is a tape of a few young pals cracking jokes, playing off each other and generally goofing around. Oddly, their recording is interrupted twice by some other person recording microphone checks, and, following the second round of tests, recording a few moments of the radio. The tape ends with some truly annoying sounds. All in the space of less than ten minutes. 

Download: A Group of Guys Fooling Around (Interrupted  By Some Microphone Testing and Radio)

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At some point, probably many years ago now, I bought what turned out to be a stack of tapes (and two books) containing various recordings (and two books) generated by The John Birch Society. For those of you unfamiliar with this particular brand of American insanity, happy reading. Suffice it to say that even William F. Buckley and the ultra-conservative National Review thought they were wackos. I may share other recordings from these tapes, as I get to them, but for now, here is a short radio program, dated 1967 (see below) on the side of the box, titled "Are You Listening, Uncle Sam?". It looks like this is a single episode of a series by that title rather than a stand-alone presentation. Whoever captured these opinions and edited then into this presentation certainly wanted to present Birchers as reasonable people who were alarmed by things happening in the government of the day, but behind the scenes, the larger group's believes, desires and plans were off-the-charts batshit crazy.  

By the way, rather hilariously, this episode is labeled on the side of the box with a homonym error, calling it "Roll of Government", which I think is something they serve at Washington, D.C. breakfast joints. Anyway, I suggest not trusting your political views to people who couldn't pass a fourth grade spelling test. 

Download: The John Birch Society - Are You Listening, Uncle Sam?

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Here's something much more pleasant. This tape contains a few episodes of a show called "Sunday in New York", from what appears to be early 1959, based on the reference to the New York premiere of  Sammy Davis Jr's first starring film, and a few other things which are said. For the most part, these segments contain singer and actress Portia Nelson performing songs, and chatting briefly with Lee Jordan. However, some of the episodes also had a DJ aspect to them, in which the Portia and Lee chat about a performer and then play a record by that singer. I wonder when the last time such a program - with live, in the studio music of this sort (mixed in with records) was a regular feature on any radio station in the country. 

Download: Portia Nelson and Lee Jordan - 'Sunday In New York', 1959

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Five months ago, I shared a lengthy recording of an English author named Antony Bilbow, reading his story on the BBC. I mentioned that I had three more sets of readings on the same tape, and asked if anyone wanted to hear more. I did get one request for more, and based on the time-worn theory that if you receive one comment, there are several more people who in agreement, here is the second of the four recordings of BBC broadcasts of Antony Bilbow, reading his stories: 

Download: Antony Bilbow - Stories on English Radio, Volume 2

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When I was a regular contributor to the late great Beware of the Blog (find the last of those posts here - that post contains links to the previous ones - I also posted an additional one on this site about 18 months ago), I posted a series of tapes made by an army doctor who was living in Korea following the war there, during the mid 1950's. I recently found that I still had some previously unlistened to tapes from that collection, including the following interesting item. This is not one of his audio letters. It is, instead, a recording he made of a big band jazz concert given by a group of Filipinos from the Second Battalion Team, at a location in Yong Dong Po, Korea, in August of 1954. I think that's all there needs to be said. The music is self-explanatory, and his introduction does the rest. 

Download: The Second Battalion Team Filipino Orchestra, Live in Yong Dong Po, Korea, 8-8-54

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And now for our "Acetate of the Month". One side of it looks like this: 

Both sides feature someone playing the dulcimer. I am sure I've butchered his or her name, but it looks like "Dr. Bluice" to me. Maybe someone can correct me, as a search for that name turns up nothing - not a single hit. Anyway, one side is recorded at 33 RPM and features Slavic (or, as it says here, Slavik Folk Songs. 

Download: Dr. Bluice Plays Dulcimer - Slavic Folk Songs (33 RPM Side)

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The other side is recorded at 78 RPM, and features a tune with a name written on the label which I have not tried to decipher (it's pictured below). Again, maybe someone out there can be of assistance. 

Download: Dr. Bluice - Dulcimer Music - 11-28-53 (78 RPM Side)

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And finally, our "Very Short Reel". And this time, that phrase is a total misrepresentation, but I want to share this 30 seconds of gold. For this is not the entire contents of a short reel of tape. This is an excerpt from a tape of more than three hours. But again, I really want to share it. 

Here's a bit of backstory: In the early '70's, Diet Rite Cola introduced a new jingle, with the sales pitch being that "Everybody Likes It" (not even those who feel a need to diet). After the jingle had been in the ether for long enough for all TV viewers to be familiar with it, the ad company went around and filmed everyday people doing everyday things, while singing the jingle. Then they edited small excerpts from each of these into commercials in which the jingle was sung by six or more different people. I was very happy to find one of these on Youtube not long ago, and you can see that one here (for some reason, it starts a second time and then is shown in chopped up form). I'm particularly partial to the girl kicking her legs on the bed and the guy in the hard hat with a ridiculous scratchy voice. 

But there was one version of this commercial that I simply loved, at the time. All these years later, I could still hear the woman with an English accent near the end, and several of the singers who are just a bit off key throughout. So I was overjoyed to find a recording of just that commercial on a reel of tape which otherwise captured a TV broadcast of a "Movie of the Week". And now I'm sharing it with you. 

Download: Diet Rite Cola - "Everybody Likes It" Ad

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Danny Thomas at Tahoe, A Young Family at Home, One More Set from Antony Bilbow, Even More Hollister, Badly Recorded Top 40 and the New Lux Lotion Bar

I hoped to have this up in a more timely fashion, but I was gone for a weekend and then extremely sick for part of the following week. I hope to have yet another post up before the end of the month. But this one was sort of thrown together. I hope you find it worthwhile. 

First up, and perhaps of interest to at least some of the media-sound-collectors out there, is a recording of an episode of "The Danny Thomas Hour", which ran during the 1967-68 season on NBC and was apparently not much of a success. Each week was a different format - drama, variety, comedy - and on 2/28/68, the host presented a hour of his live act, recorded in Lake Tahoe. There does not seem to be any recording of this out there, audio or video - if there is, I didn't come across it. 

Personally, this sort of thing drives me up the wall, and I fail to understand how it was ever popular. But popular it was, and I know there are people who still love this stuff. And objectively, I recognize that this is by far the most "collectable" thing I'm sharing today, and probably recently, so it deserves the lead-off spot. And so, for those who will like it, here is that tape: 

Download: Danny Thomas at Tahoe - NBC-TV, 2-28-68

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I have, on two previous occasions, shared portions of a tape I found which contains four tracks of a man named Antony Bilbow reading stories on the BBC. Click on his name to see the previous two offerings, as well as this one. At least a few people asked to have more of these, and today I am offering up the third of the four channels on that tape. 

Download: Antony Bilbow - Stories on English Radio, Volume 3

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As I often say here, recordings Top 40 Radio from its golden era are considered precious to many folks out there, and I count myself in that number. In my last post, I featured part of a countdown show from WILS, Lansing. Now I have something considerably less wonderful, from the same collection. Both shares were from three inch wonders, tapes which contain far more recording than one might think such a small item could hold. The problem with today's offering is the resolutely awful sound quality, and again, there is only some of the deejay patter, making these recordings less valuable than many others. Oh, and like many of the machines which were designed to record ONLY those three inch reels, the recording speed was extremely variable, depending on how much tape was left on each side of the reels. 

Unlike the previous offering, this is not all from one broadcast, although there are some countdown items here. And not everything here is from WILS, but most of it is, and I can't make out for certain what the other station(s) heard is/are. Oh, and the last few minutes heard here are from yet another three inch reel that came from the same collection, one which only had a few minutes of recording on it. 

Download: WILS, Lansing, Michigan, Circa Late 1964 and Early 1965

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And now it's David Hollister Time again. I don't want to repeat myself each time I bring up his name, but the explanation for these tapes is at the start of this post, and this link will take you to all of the Hollister tapes I've shared so far. 

Today's Hollister tape has two separate sections. The first part seems to be a rehearsal for something called AORN show, from 3/2/76. I don't know what that was. It starts with multiple takes of a brief parody of "Love Will Keep Us Together". The rest is some sort of short play, performed largely straight through, with a few breakdowns. I will let you discover whatever you find to be its highlights/lowlights/charms, depending on your opinion of the material. 

Download: David Hollister and Others - AORN Show, 3-2-76

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The remainder of the tape has a pianist - presumably the composer - and a singer, running through multiple takes of a song called "Footsteps in the Snow". This is a very Broadway-esque number, as some of the other material on these tapes has been, and as such, is just as much not my thing as that Danny Thomas material up there. But your mileage may vary. 

Download: David Hollister and Singer - Rehearsing 'Footsteps in the Snow' - 6-2-76

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Now here's something I absolutely love - worth 1000 Danny Thomas stage shows. I've called this "A Young Family At Home", and it is simply about 34 minutes with a loving family, enjoying being together. The child heard the most during this tape is remarkably well spoken for someone who seems to be extremely young, and the whole thing is just one charming moment after another. The tape ends oddly, with a short, unrelated recording of something that many of us used to interact with from time to time, but which I'm sure no longer exists. 

Download: A Young Family At Home

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Time for a "Very Short Reel". This is simple enough - some folks spending a few minutes making a commercial for Lux Lotion Bar

Download: Making a Lux Lotion Bar Commercial

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Antony Bilbow Reads His Stories, Mike Starr Reads the News, Great Musicians Vs. Tone Deaf Singing, A Few Soldiers in London, and Not Singing "Let Me Go, Lover"

Howdy, 

I'm back from COVID and ready to share more of my enormous collection! But first, a follow up to my last post. 

For what I'm sure is more than the dozenth time, thanks to Eric Paddon for identifying that the brief clip of Tic Tac Dough that I shared last time comes from February 13th, 1959, and that, while the show had already gone through it's period of being "crooked" by that point, the winner of that show came by his successes honestly. And he won the equivalent of $1.5 million during his run on the show. All of this information is better explained in a couple of comments Eric made on the post linked above. 

Thanks to everyone else who has commented, as well. In answer to a couple of those comments, I will continue to make a priority of listening to and sharing DJ airchecks which are in my collection. 

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To start, something a little different. Many years ago, I bought a batch of tapes which had belongs to a "tape club", a batch of mostly old time radio recordings, which a circle of people who would exchange with each other, each of them labeled - usually with up to six hours of recordings of episodes of one show - Jack Benny, Bob and Ray, Mr. Keen... whatever. I'm sure these tapes became available to me because of the dying out of the reel to reel format and particularly, the growth of the internet - for the most part, nowadays, the contents of most these tapes can be found online, either for free or for sale on multiple websites. I've listened to some of these tapes over the years and some remain unexplored, so far, in my basement. 

But one of these tapes, labeled "Worthington", contains recordings of a BBC program which, as far as I've been able to discover, don't appear to be easily found online - I've found references to them, but nothing else. Technically, the show is not "Worthington", that's just the name of the lead character - a dog - in two out of every five stories. The shows are actually 15 minute stories, read by a man named Antony Bilbow, and written, for the most part, by Mr. Bilbow and his wife. I believe this fellow, 95 years old as I write this, is the same person as you'll hear on this tape. The stories are quite wonderful, in my opinion, and British through and through. They would apparently run in the morning on English radio five days a week, with Monday and Friday's shows featuring stories about Worthington the dog. 

Anyway, the tape is recorded in quarter track mono, six stories to a track, which means I have 24 of them, lasting a total of six hours. Here is the first side, left channel of the tape. If anyone would like to hear more of these, just let me know. 

Download: Antony Bilbow - Stories on English Radio, Volume 1

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Here is the part of the tape box which lists the stories on the first side, left channel, as heard above: 

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Next up, in two segments containing at least three different recordings, we have someone named Mike Starr. He was, if this tape is to be believed, a news man and general voice-over/commercial announcer at a station called WHBM (named after its owner's initials) in Xenia, Ohio. You can read about the station's history and current status here. I say "If this tape is to be believed" because elements of this tape are so amateurish as to make me wonder if this isn't a demo tape submitted to the station. Primarily, I'm referring to the comical level of reverb heard throughout, and the way that reverb gets turned up to a distracting point during the latter parts of this tape. 

Anyway, part one of this offering - by far the longer of the two - features Mike Starr giving a lengthy newscast which, based on a couple of the stories involved, appears to date from January 7, 1967. This is followed, in this same segment by several commercials, the first of which is Christmas related, so cannot be from the same date as the newscast. A couple of the commercials don't even sound like the same announcer to me. And it is during these commercials that the reverb gets cranked up, seemingly at random, a few times. But maybe it's real. What do you think? 

Download: WHBM News and Ads with Mike Starr

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Sorry about the clicking throughout - I digitized this five years ago, and I believe that those noises are on the original tape. If I track down the tape at some point, I will double check and replace these files. 

Anyway, after several unrecorded minutes on that same tape, the following short bit of goofiness featuring a man who I believe is still Mike Starr, interacting with his dog. 

Download: Mike Starr at Home with His Dog

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Looking backwards into the previous decade, and for those of you who enjoy Big Band music, here is half of an hour long program featuring Harry James, fronting his band on something called "Palladium Dance Time" on July 27, 1954 - presumably, these particular performances of these tunes have not been heard since this broadcast. The reel of tape this was recorded on only allowed a little more than 30 minutes to a side, at 7 1/2 IPS, so that's where the recording ends. 

Download: Harry James and His Orchestra - Palladium Dance Time, 7-27-54

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And now for the polar opposite to the above. Instead of a half hour of master musicianship, we have a very different half hour.... Yes, it's another recording of someone who absolutely cannot sing, and who recorded himself singing along with various records by Elvis, and a few others, apparently some time in 1959. If you can stand listening long enough, you will hear the same fellow demonstrating that his talent as a vocalist was roughly equal to his talent as a guitarist. 

I don't know why, but I am absolutely fascinated by these sorts of tapes - I have at least three which I believe feature this same guy, but I have others, as well - and I sit and listen to them with amazement, wondering 1.) why anyone, even an excellent singer, would record him or herself singing along with a series of records, and 2.) if this guy had any insight, at least after listening to these tapes, that he was tone deaf. 

I completely understand if this is not of interest, but as I said, it holds a peculiar hold over me. 

Download: Singing Along Badly (and Playing the Guitar Along Badly) With Elvis and Others, circa 1959

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And now for our "Acetate of the Month". I think this one is fairly self-explanatory: 

A reporter the U.S. Army Radio Service interviewed a few soldiers from Chicago, for playback on a Chicago station (WGES), on June 21st, 1945. Here is that recording: 

Download: US Army Radio Service 12 Inch Acetate - World War II Broadcast - London to Chicago - WGES- 6-21-45

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And finally, yet another "Very Short Reel". In this case, we have a little girl named Debby (or, perhaps, Debbie" who is being encouraged by her parents to sing a song, specifically "Let Me Go, Lover" (which likely dates this tape to very late 1954 or early 1955, when that song was a hit). Debby would rather pound on her toy xylophone. This goes on for precisely 75 seconds, at which point the recording turns into daddy asking mommy to name all the colors found in their couch, a topic which takes up the final 23 seconds. 

Download: Debby Doesn't Want to Sing 'Let Me Go Lover' and How Many Colors

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Some Great Vintage PSA's, Letter from Akron, 1961 TV, Working on Songs, a Short Interview, Christmas in May and More Comments

Greetings!

Before I get to these week's offerings, I'm going to finish getting caught up with some of the great comments I've received lately. If I didn't get to yours, I apologize. And if you're not interested in these comments, just skip down to the squiggle. 

After my posting of multiple recordings of Antony Bilbow (all of which you can hear by scrolling through this link), an anonymous commenter shared this brief interview with the great Rowan Atkinson, conducted by Mr. Bilbow, so now you can see him and hear him. 

Another anonymous poster, responding to my offer to repost anything from the WFMU site, asked for a baseball broadcast from 1954. But that broadcast was actually listed at this site and is still available, in a posting from the earliest days of this site - in fact, it was my fifth post here.  

From one of those posts containing Mr. Bilbow's work, I also included an instrumental version of the "Top Cat" theme. Matt offered up this comment: 

This Top Cat bed was the real deal as my friends father worked at Taft which controlled Hanna Barbera at the time.

I posted a brief excerpt of the end of the broadcast date at WHFS in this post. about a year ago, and another anonymous poster shares that: 

The music played while the WHFS announcer closes his programme, and looks ahead to the next one, is called 'Hey Professor!' written and performed by Otto Cesana & his Orchestra, with soloist Bernie Leighton.

In response to a post which included some jingles sung by Joan Wile, I received this comment: 

Joan Wile is/was a notable composer of off-boadway musicals, jingles, a cabaret performer & social-justice warrior grandmother. https://joanwile.blogspot.com/

A year ago, in this post, I featured a tape labeled "Mood Music for Motion Pix", and got this quite interesting comment (slightly edited here) in response: 

The insert notation for the Music For Motion Pix are recorded from a then commercially available (1959/60) disc of Portuguese music which appears on Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/sell/item/1064705086?ev=bp_img The rest of the tracks have been recorded from various 10" LPs issued by the London-based KPM Music Library. These LPs are known as the KPM Brownsleeves. The composers are well-known library music (aka mood music) composers and the music is still available 65 years later , albeit digitally. 

In the midst of this long post, I included some radio from Kingsport, TN. My online pal Sammy (who I usually see over at my other blog), offered up the following information: 

I heard a couple of commercials with a young George DeVault, who later became president of the Holston Valley Broadcasting Corporation - which has WKPT radio & TV, as well as several area radio stations it has acquired over the decades - until his retirement in 2017.

Frequent contributor Eric chimed in for a second time on an older post (one which featured our sweet, beautiful and much missed kitty cat), with some interesting thoughts about who may have recorded "Your Hit Parade": 

The aircheck for this appears to be WTEN-Albany, based on the "Channel 10" declaration and the plug for a showing of the movie "Yolanda And The Thief". This likely indicates that the original recorder of this was Pat Rispole, who recorded tons of radio and TV from the Albany area on his reel to reel machine (primarily baseball broadcasts) from 1957 to his death in 1979.

Another frequent commenter, Chad, has offered up information on the two tapes of Steelers football that I have shared recently (here and here). Regarding the long post of a full game, with bits of other games afterwards, he wrote: 

The games on the other tape are not what's indicated on the box. The first portion is the end of the first half of the season opener Steelers vs. NY Giants from September 15, 1968. At about 10:20 it switches to Steelers vs. St. Louis Cardinals from November 13, 1966. Then at around 11:55 it switches to postgame coverage of the season opener Steelers vs Browns from September 26, 1959. All three of these games were Steelers home games, by the way.

And then regarding the end of the game I posted last time, he wrote: 

This is an absolutely incredible find! The announcer is Joe Tucker, who was the first Steelers radio broadcaster and continued up through 1965. He also called Pirates baseball and college football as well. I can only find two circulating clips of Tucker calling Steelers games: another partial game from 1955 and his visit to the broadcasting booth in 1981 where he joins Fleming and Cope. Despite a 30 year career with the team he's not well known and not in the team's Ring of Honor likely because there's so little preserved from his long tenure. So this is another absolutely incredible find!

Interestingly, after the game ends and the catchy Duquesne Beer commercial (another great find!) - there's a few seconds of coverage of *another* game: Coach Buddy Parker arguing with the officials after a 28-24 loss to the Eagles. This very brief snippet has to be from October 11, 1959. So whoever was taping these broadcasts was reusing the tapes regularly.

Incidentally, I have been in contact with the host of the McMillen and Wife website, which is dedicated to Steelers football, and he has synched up my recording of the Immaculate Reception game with the video from that game, which you can view here.  I don't recall who referred me to this gentleman, but whoever did, I thank you. 

And thanks to everyone who stops by and comments, as well as everyone who stops by and doesn't comment. I get a real joy out of sharing these sounds and I hope you get the same joy in experiencing them. 

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I have a great little item to start the show today. This is a tape I found that was chock full of PSA's from the 1960's. They start off seemingly at random, but eventually some themes show up, including multiple PSA's about seat belt use (a rather new thing at the time), some other ones about littering,  and even more about fire prevention. Be on the lookout (or the hear-out, I guess) for a couple of PSA's featuring the second best folk group in history (second only to the Weavers), The Limeliters with two different versions of a Smokey Bear number. But even beyond them, the famous voices, named and unnamed, crop up over and over again, in this most enjoyable string of radio blurbs. 

Download: Various Artists - A Series of PSAs on Various Subjects

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The tape box was extremely descriptive, by the way: 

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Now, here is a lengthy but rewarding audio letter from a man to someone named Crystal. Their relationship is not clear to me (maybe someone out there will pick up on something I missed), but it's a very thoughtful outreach - he's offering feedback, advice and insights from his life to someone younger than him, someone he cares about very much. If you're into such things, this is a really good audio letter to listen to. 

Download: Audio Letter from a Man in Akron to Crystal - Reflections on Several Subjects

Play:

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A tape I recently listened to had some very fragmentary bits of an Ed Sullivan show, including his yearly introduction of the All American college football team for 1961, which includes one name which would become very famous in the coming years. 

Download: Fragments of an Ed Sullivan Show. 12-3-61

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The Ed Sullivan segments were followed by a longer, and not nearly as choppy, recording of part of Red Skelton's show from a few weeks later. I have heard, over the years, about how beloved this performer, and his show, was, and also, how he became angry and frustrated when his show was cancelled and how this affected his later years and the release (or lack thereof) of his material on home video. 

Given the affection people have for the man and the show, I hope this excerpt is an aberration, because it is simply God-awful, the worst of old-timey sit-com and variety show tropes and stereotypes. Your mileage may, of course, vary. 

Download: Segments of The Red Skelton Show, 12-26-61

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This tape box was even more expressive of its contents: 

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I return now to the David Hollister tapes. If this is of interest, please click the David Hollister link below this post and you will find every Hollister post I have shared so far. 

In this episode, he is working with what is described on the tape box as a "Client (Girl) on a few songs. What makes this tape a bit livelier is that partway through, the muffled sound of a thunderstorm can be heard raging outside. But the rehearsal itself has enough interesting moments, I'm sure, to entertain those who are entertained by such things. 

Download: David Hollister and Client (Girl) Working on Three Songs During a Storm

Play:

And here's part of that tape box: 

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Here's a tape I labeled "Interview with German Chancellor", when I listened to it a year or two ago. And that's all I know about it and all I have to say. 

Download: Interview with German Chancellor

Play:

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And now, for a Very Short Reel. "Christmas in July" is a cliche, a common trope used by many, but how about "Christmas in Mid-May"? Here is a short recording of some children, clearly made at some sort of Christmas gathering

Download; Some Kids at a Christmas Gathering

Play: