Subject: [removed] Digest V01 #32
From: <[removed]@[removed]>
Date: 1/28/2001 11:18 PM

To: <[removed]@[removed];

    ------------------------------

                          The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                             Volume 01 : Issue 32
                        A Part of the [removed]!

                               Today's Topics:

     Re: That's 30                        [Fred Berney <berney@[removed];      ]
     Re: Our Ages                         [Fred Berney <berney@[removed];      ]
     Ages and ... the Secret Word is Grou ["Stephen A Kallis, Jr." <skallisjr@]
     NYT Bing Crosby Story                [Peter Kinder <pdkinder@[removed];    ]
     Black Museum only 51 episodes accoun [Paulurbahn@[removed]                 ]
     Future radio people                  ["Mark Kinsler" <kinsler33@[removed]]
     Tom Mix                              ["Kevin Pearson" <ktrek@[removed]]
     Big bands, dance bands, and jazz     ["Joseph Scott" <jnscott@[removed]]
     Re: Sherlock and Ages                [RobertWGee@[removed]                 ]
     Gunsmoke Pre- & Post-Echo            [Michael Biel <mbiel@[removed];       ]
     Re: playing radio                    [Fred Berney <berney@[removed];      ]
     age and other things                 ["gary sokol" <yrag100@[removed]; ]
     Ages ago                             [George Aust <austhaus1@[removed]]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 01:34:46 -0500
    From: Fred Berney <berney@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: That's 30

    Art, you wrote about Gordon Shaw. I use to be on his radio show when he
    read the Sunday comics over the air. He also did a news show. At the end of
    one of his shows, he explained where the term "30" came from. I was
    listening to this and just as he mentioned the meaning, something happened
    and I didn't get to hear the ending. For years I meant to call him and ask
    him, but never got the chance.

    Do you or anyone else here know the answer? All I can remember is that it
    was a newspaper term.

    Fred
    For the best in Old Time Radio Shows [removed]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 01:34:48 -0500
    From: Fred Berney <berney@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: Our Ages

    Where do the years go. In my mind a still think I'm 20 something, but my
    body logs in at 61 and this June it will add yet another year.

    My first recollection of radio was back when I was about 3 or 4 years old.
    I remember one of my childhood friends telling me about a radio show called
    Superman. I probably had been listening to radio before that, but I very
    clearly remember the conversation about the Superman show.

    My father introduced me to The Lone Ranger on radio.

    When I was 13, my parents bought me a tape recorder for my birthday. It was
    a Pentron model 9T3C. I still have it and it still works.

    I used my allowance to buy reel to reel tape and recorded my favorite
    shows. I wish I had more money back then, because many times I had to erase
    one show in order to record another. But, somehow I managed to record over
    150 shows between 1952 and 1955.

    It was not until 1970 that I saw a classified ad in Audio Magazine for
    radio shows on tape. I put my own ad in and received letters from other
    collectors. Soon after I was trading with about a dozen collectors from all
    over the United States and Mexico.

    In 1956, I started a recording studio and was able to use the studio
    recorders to do all my radio show trading. This way I was able to maintain
    a high level of quality on the tapes.

    Right now my goal is to transfer all my shows to audio CDs. In all cases, I
    am going back to my original reel to reel tapes to make these transfers.

    In addition to collecting radio shows, I also recorded the sound tracks
    from early TV shows. Since many of the early performers were radio stars, I
    have the sound tracks from many of their TV shows. These include, Jack
    Benny, Bob Hope, and George Burns. By the time I could afford to buy lots
    of reel to reel tape, most of the radio shows had vanished, so I turned to
    TV shows. I have hundreds of tapes with just the audio from these shows.
    Since early TV was mostly radio with pictures, it is very easy to listen to
    these TV sound tracks and understand what is going on.

    Fred
    For the best in OTR [removed]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 10:43:42 -0500
    From: "Stephen A Kallis, Jr." <skallisjr@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Ages and ... the Secret Word is Groucho

    Roger Smith reminisces,

> >     . I went thru listening to all of these shows when they were originally

    broadcast, laying on the living room floor in Schoolcraft Michigan. <<

    Not all the time, but often, as I was growing up, the thing we kids did
    was sit or lay close to the speaker of the living-room console.  The set
    was good, a Zenith AM/FM radiophonograph with a cobra arm, and a 12-inch
    speaker, and the sound was clearly audible throughout the living room,
    yet somehow I found myself in close proximity to the set.  In my room, I
    had a small table model radiophonograph (single-record turntable plus
    All-American 5 (AM) radio in a plastic body with a 4-inch speaker.  When
    I listened to shows on that one, I had no tendency to get as close to it
    as I did the console.

    On war bonds:  I remember as a kid buying War Stamps.  Each kid in our
    gradeschool class was sold stamps, which were a dime apiece.  With our
    first stamps, we were given a book with "blank" pages: they actually had
    empty grids on them, with each rectangular grid element the size and
    shape of a war stamp.  The stamps were to be stuck in the book, each on a
    grid rectangle.  We'd buy war stamps as we could, adding them to the book
    until it was filled.  When completely filled, the book would be traded
    for a war bond.  Of course, our parent(s) would put the war bonds away
    for safekeeping, and we'd never see them further, but would just go on
    another cycle of buying War Stamps.  Some of the kids' shows we'd listen
    to during the war would urge us to buy war stamps.

    On Groucho and ad libbing, don't forget that he and a lot of the OTR
    comedians came from a stage background, usually Vaudeville, where at
    least some ad libbing was necessary for long-term survival.  I've no
    doubt that many "ad libs" were scripted, but I've equal certainty that
    Groucho could ad lib very creatively when the situation warranted.  You
    Bet Your Life was a special case because, in addition to everything else,
    it was recorded long to allow for editing of both radio and television
    versions.

    Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 10:43:44 -0500
    From: Peter Kinder <pdkinder@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  NYT Bing Crosby Story

    	Today's New York Times has a very long feature on Bing Crosby
    [removed] written by his new
    biographer, Gary Giddins.  It's a wonderful, warm appreciation of Crosby.
    It gives me great hopes for Giddins' book which has just become available
    through on line outlets.

    Peter Kinder
    Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini & Co., Inc.   [removed]
    530 Atlantic Avenue, 7th Floor, Boston, MA  02210
    1 617 426 5270 (vox)  1 617 426 5299 (fax)

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 12:18:19 -0500
    From: Paulurbahn@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Black Museum only 51 episodes accounted for

    Martin Grams gave a good summary of Black Museum and mentioned there were 52
    shows. Maybe, but only 51 are in circulation. If you check Frank Passage's
    log (with episode titles) on the Internet you will see only 51 have been
    accounted for. Every fan of the show that I have been able to contact who
    thought they had 52 actually only has [removed] am strating to think the episode
    "Wool Jacket" and "Missing Evie Rose" were edited in two versions and used as
    two episodes in the series of 52. If that is true then they only did 51
    stories.
    One day the mystery may be solved. If you think you have the missing episode,
    please contact me. I have all 51.
    Paul Urbahns
    paulurbahn@[removed]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 15:20:31 -0500
    From: "Mark Kinsler" <kinsler33@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Future radio people

    In the early 1960's we had in Cleveland Heights, Ohio a kid who essentially
    ran his own radio station.  He'd built a studio in his house and, if you
    were planning a party, he'd come to your house and install an amplifier
    connected to a leased phone line.  And he'd spin the records, doing the
    announcing in between.  I believe we were all in seventh grade at the time.
    I wasn't too surprised when, a few years later, I heard Bill Baker on a
    Cleveland radio station.  I didn't know Mr Baker (one of the problems with
    being a Baby Boomer is that you couldn't possibly know everyone of your age
    group in school) and I don't know how he's done over the years.

    Mark Kinsler

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 15:29:23 -0500
    From: "Kevin Pearson" <ktrek@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Tom Mix

    I happened to run across this today by accident looking for something else
    but here is something on Tom Mix that might be of interest even though it's
    in reference to films. Unfortunately it seems all the parts are not
    available online.
    [removed]

    Kevin

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 16:24:04 -0500
    From: "Joseph Scott" <jnscott@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Big bands, dance bands, and jazz

    A good rule of thumb with "big bands" vs. "small bands" of the late '20s to
    early '40s (and beyond) is ten or more musicians, big band; less than ten,
    small band (= small group, small combo). That works a lot better in practice
    than you might think, because medium-sized bands were quite uncommon. The
    norm was to use either well over ten musicians (a la [removed] Benny Goodman's
    Orchestra) or well under ten (a la [removed] the Benny Goodman Sextet).

    Only perhaps roughly half of the successful big bands of that era played
    much jazz, and many played virtually no jazz. Most jazz bands that were
    well-known were big bands, but there were small jazz bands that toured and
    made broadcasts, such as the King Cole Trio and Louis Jordan's Tympany Five.
    The expression "swing band" typically describes a big band that played a lot
    of jazz during the general "Swing Era," '30s-'40s, [removed] Count Basie's, Woody
    Herman's. (So Lawrence Welk's music during the "Swing Era" years would not
    be considered the music of a "swing band," so-called.)

    It's worth noting that many jazz fans use the term "dance band" to refer to
    a big band with little jazz content. That's unintuitive, I know, but it is a
    common practice among jazz fans. So a jazz fan might say that Jan Garber had
    a dance band as of such-and-such a year, but then he put together a swing
    band in such-and-such a year, and the difference being described would be
    the amount of concentration by the band on jazz, rather than, necessarily,
    how much people danced to the bands.

    Best,

    Joseph Scott

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 19:44:31 -0500
    From: RobertWGee@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: Sherlock and Ages

    For what it's worth, [removed] Baring-Gould's biography, Sherlock Holmes of Baker
    Street: A Life of the World's First Consulting Detective, states that the
    great man died 6 January 1957 (having been born exactly 103 years before).  I
    say "for what it's worth" because Baring-Gould believes that Dr. Watson died
    24 July 1929, which we know to be wrong because the good doctor was on the
    air being interviewed by product purveyors (Petri Wine and others) throughout
    the late 1940s.

    Incidentally, I don't know if anyone has mentioned it, but people have made a
    case that Sherlock Holmes did marry and have a son, who grew up to be Nero
    Wolfe.  There's a whole chapter of interesting speculation on this in the
    biography, Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-Fifth Street, oddly enough also by
    William S. Baring-Gould.  (Of course, given Wolfe's physical traits, Mycroft
    Holmes seems a more logical father candidate.)

    As far as age is concerned, mine not Holmes, I'm 38, and live in Michigan.
    (If anyone has access to the special Holmes longevity strain of honey,
    mentioned in a previous digest, I'd appreciate hearing about it.)  My first
    exposure to dramatized radio was the CBS Radio Mystery Theater in the
    mid-to-late 1970s.  It seems to me the first episode I heard was a mystery
    about a tower, possibly in a storm.  My dad and I heard it while we were
    vacationing in Kentucky, from a Detroit station (back when stations could
    carry that far).  My first experience with actual "otr" was hearing
    rebroadcasts of "The Shadow" back around the same time ("Murder on Approval"
    and "Reflection of Death" are two of the first episodes I remember hearing).
    I have both pleasurable and scholarly interests in radio, and I had been
    trying to finish a [removed] dissertation on an old radio topic until I got sick
    awhile back; now I'm just trying to finish it as a book.

    Robert Gee

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 19:56:19 -0500
    From: Michael Biel <mbiel@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Gunsmoke Pre- & Post-Echo

    Nik Kierniesky  writes:

> > >     Most of the tapes [on Radio Spriits' 60 episode Gunsmoke package]
> > >     had a noticeable "echo" after and sometimes before a short piece
> > >     of dialogue.  What causes this?

    From: "Art Shifrin" <goldens2@[removed];

> >     That echo is due to sophomoric mucking with the integrity of the
> >     re-recorded signal.  It's not an accident: it's a bad sonic value
> >     judgement.     Shiffy

    From: Henry Howard <hhoward@[removed];

>     What you are hearing is "print through".  The magnetic image of the
>     sound as transferred from one "layer'" of the tape to the next as it
>     is wound around the hub.  Being wound too tight or being subjected
>     to heat will contribute to the effect.

    While I agree with my old pal Shiffy that the addition of reverb and
    echo is usually a dumb thing to do to a recording, in this case it is
    Henry Howard who is correct in diagnosing this problem.  The key to the
    original question is that some of the echo is BEFORE some of the
    dialogue.  While we are very lucky that many of the Gunsmoke radio
    programs are preserved on the original tapes they were mastered on, for
    some reason the early studio master tapes of this series long ago
    developed print-thru.  I first heard this on one of these tapes about 30
    years ago.  It was most noticable at the opening of the program where
    you sometimes could hear phantom gunshots both before and after the real
    shot.  The tapes were stored tails-out (the proper manner, I should add)
    which put the beginning of the program at the center hub with a short
    amount of time from one rotation of the reel to the next.  The pressure
    is also higher towards the hub.

    Tape recording was still relatively new back then, and they were only
    just discovering these problems.  Low-print tapes were not developed
    till the mid-50s, and these tapes seemed to be recorded at full level
    which put the print-thru at a level way above the tape hiss that might
    have covered it.  Since so many of this series are affected, it probably
    is a factor of having been stored together in a warm environment or
    being exposed to a low level of an AC magnetic field, both of which
    promote development of print-thru.  Print-thru usually goes from the
    center of the reel to the layer outside it, but when conditions are bad
    it can affect layers to the inside as well.

    Those of you who have the Radio Spirits Cronkite set can hear the
    pre-echo of the gunshot in the opening of the 5/6/56 Gunsmoke on CD 29.
    It's not a digital artifact, by the way, it is on the original 15 IPS
    analogue master tapes.

    Michael Biel  mbiel@[removed]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 19:56:17 -0500
    From: Fred Berney <berney@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: playing radio

    The posting from Richard Pratz reminded me of what I use to do as a kid. I
    had run zip cord along the baseboard of our home. It ran from my bed room
    out to the living room. At different places on this cord, I attached a
    standard AC outlet.

    The end in my bed room was attached to the speaker out of my tape recorder.
    I had made up small speakers with AC plugs on the end, and I could then
    play a tape from my bed room and plug in a speaker at different places
    through out the house.

    One day our cleaning lady had mistakenly plugged our vacuum cleaner into
    one of these outlets and was quite surprised to hear sound coming from the
    cleaner. At least that is what my mother told me. She said the cleaning
    lady shouted, "Mrs. Berney, the vacuum cleaner is talking".

    Big Jon and Sparkie were one of my favorite shows. I even created my own
    little Pixie. I would make believe that I was doing a radio show and record
    Pixie voice on my tape recorder at 3 3/4 ips. My normal voice was recorded
    at 7 1/2 ips. When I played back the tape at 7 1/2 ips, Pixie came out
    double speeded, but listenable.

    I still have several of these tapes that I made with me telling stories
    along with Pixie. I even went so far as to find a puppet and had a picture
    taken of the puppet and I together, very similar to the picture I received
    from Big Jon and Sparkie.

    While I was in college I finally got to do radio for real, when I got a job
    as an announcer at a local FM radio station. WAFM in Miami. The station was
    later sold to (I think WKAT) just for the multiplex portion of the FM channel.

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 20:49:49 -0500
    From: "gary sokol" <yrag100@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  age and other things

    I am a silent listener and being so have learned a lot about OTR.  Sadly I
    do not have any firsthand experience of listening to the original shows  and
    I am 53.  Not only that but I grew up on Long Island.  My family was one of
    the first to get and watch television.  I have vivid memories of so many
    early tv shows, I am truly a child of that media.

    My wife got me a Burns & Allen tape  (radio) about 10 years ago and a boxed
    collection (variety) about 5 years ago.  I was hooked from that point on and
    I find in listening to old radio shows something I miss in current tv.  I
    like the fact that I have to use my imagination more.

    BTW  there was a posting a while back about the formation of an old time tv
    digest.  I emailed the person right away and never heard any more.  Does
    anyone know anything about it?

    One further question.  I played the Cinamon Bear for my class and they loved
    it (most of them).  They want to know if there are any more that they can
    listen to.  DOes anyone have any suggestions?  We are studying NH history
    and one of our newspapers ran a 18 chapter of the serialization of a book by
    Avi.  I thought the concept of listening to the CB daily went along with
    that also.  Now to find some more since they have asked more than once.

    Keep up the great work.  I love to sit here and learn so much and I am a
    good listener!  Gary in NH, The LA & S of the F C of the GSOLFOT Club

    [ADMINISTRIVIA: Re: the Kinescope (the name chosen for the OTV mailing list),
    it will be open in another week or three. There'll be a long, boring admin
    message shortly on the subject, along with some others.  --cfs3]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 01:19:21 -0500
    From: George Aust <austhaus1@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Ages ago

    I'm writing this during half time of the Superbowl game and I really
    feel old! (Whatever happened to music?) Actually I just turned 40 years
    old 24 years ago. I,  like many others remember OTR when it was new and
    have always loved it even when TV came on the scene and I got to see all
    those great old movies (including the "B" movies) but I never quit
    listening to radio  altogether.

    In the 50's I used to record bits of radio on a clunky Webcor tape
    recorder and  like others have written used alligator clips on  the
    radio. Actually in the 40's my best friend had a Majestic radio phono
    wire recorder console and we tried recording off the air with it, but
    the wire kept breaking and getting all tangled up. What a mess.

    When I was in the [removed] Army in Germany in 1957 and 1958 I bought a
    Grundig recorder and taped off the air alot. German shows as well as
    Armed Forces Radio and Radio Luxembourg. I still have a quite a few of
    those tapes, but I can't seem to keep my old Ampex 950 in rubber long
    enough to do anything with them.

    I started picking up OTR in the early 60's on LP. Nothing much but
    enough to expose my kids to Jack Benny, Fibber McGee, the Great
    Gildersleeve and Charlie McCarthy. Surprisingly it "took" and my adult
    kids know and are fond of those shows still today.
    I never could get into drama that much, it just doesn't seem very
    believable to me but that goes for drama on TV as well and also plays. I
    like comedy musical shows and musical variety shows like Bing Crosby.

    My wife on the other hand has never been much interested in OTR (with
    the exception of "Lets Pretend").But she is a huge Frank Sinatra fan so
    for her birthday  last August I gave her that big Sinatra OTR set. At
    first she accused me of getting it for her because I wanted it, but as
    she began listening to the cassettes she really got into them. She is
    just now listening to the last tape in that set but she has been asking
    me for tapes from my collection of other shows that don't have Sinatra
    as a guest or [removed] convert!
    I'm attempting to reconstruct radio from the year 1941 and try to get
    everything I can from that year. Along the way I have also bought and
    traded for shows from other years also and I try to listen to a show
    everyday.
    I really enjoy reading the digest everyday and I'm still learning
    more"stuff" all the time. Thats really what keeps life interesting.

    George Aust

    --------------------------------
    End of [removed] Digest V01 Issue #32
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