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News and Reviews 2022
We are now in year 17, (a nice respectable prime number) and I stand by my statement from 6 years ago... "it seems both impossible and inadvisable to have gone so far down the rabbit-hole." This blog...
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DJ Claud Pettit
There is something oddly endearing about this tiny book with it's awkward idioms on the inside and rear cover. I was most taken with this one, a true product of the 1950s: "The insects must be...
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TAB Books
Technical Author's Bureau Books was based in Blue Ridge Summit, PA on the Maryland border about halfway between Gettysburg, and Hagerstown. It's s small town, even today the population is just 1,089....
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This post was put behind a warning
I write about radio history. History can be dry, academic even boring for some. But my background was in rock music and radio so sometimes a bit of blasphemy or profanity, creeps in; maybe even a...
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100 years of Ruby Fluid
I was doing a bit of soldering and it suddenly occurred to me that my tin of Rubyfluid was older than some of my friends. It's dented yellow 4 oz tin that would fit inside a coffee cup. I got more...
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Winter Garden on WOR
This was another tough topic to research. WOR-AM has been operating since February of 1922. So we have a solid 100 years of history to sort through to rediscover this radio program. I eventually...
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Another Radio Dial
I really like finding old radios that have presets will call signs on them. This one only has three but it still narrows down the era and the location. Lets dig into it. WJZ - I've written about this...
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6 Transistor Candle
This transistor radio bears both the "candle" branded and 6 Transistor branding. The ad above is from 1964, which is interesting as 10-trnsistor models had been on the market since at least 1962. The...
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Google deleting Blogger images?
There are no additional specifics to be had from Google but it appears that they are going to delete an unknown number of images from this and all other blogs hosted on blogger. I've attempted to...
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A Leon Russel Bootleg
I recently found a Leon Russel bootleg cassette. Scribbled on the J-card it reads "Live in Los Angeles FM & TV concert." A second line of text dates the recording only to 1970. Am I a Leon Russel...
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Toronto 1922 vs. Toronto 1932
Sometimes at the odd antiquarian book shop I find an odd antiquarian phone book. Sometimes, those old phone books list off radio stations. Below is an image from Might's Greater Toronto city directory...
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K-TEL Archeology
K-Tel is still in business today. But their music footprint is mostly limited to licensing songs for film and television now. Not that they were always in the business of cheap comps. K-Tel was selling...
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Some Thoughts on Cassettes
Cassettes have always sounded a bit crap. CDs can flawlessly reproduce the entire range of human hearing, from about 20 hertz all the way up to 20 kHz. Cassettes roll off everything below about 40 Hz...
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News and Reviews 2023
We are now in year 18, (a Harshad number), and I stand by my statement from 7 years ago... "it seems both impossible and inadvisable to have gone so far down the rabbit-hole." This blog began in April...
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The Gene Kaye Show
Not Danny Kaye or Carol Kaye, Harold Kaye, Lenny Kaye, Nora Kaye, Sammy Kaye, Paul Kaye, not even Buddy Kaye. There are after all quite a few successful and at least semi-famous Kayes. (He's also no...
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Radio Sales Service — Malcom D. Burdick
The sign reads "Radio Sales Service, Malcom D. Burdick; Hampton, Conn, Call 1011-2, Complete service to All Makes of Radios. Modern testing Equipment. Reasonable Rates. RCA Radios RCA Tubes." Then at...
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The John Daniel Quartet on WSM
These articles usually start with a chance find, and then basic research to block in the timeline. John Daniel was unknown to me, even in the context of WSM. So the multi-decade career was very...
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Outstanding Radio Features of 1935
I found this image online with no attribution but dated to January 12th, 1935. But I do recognize it as a column from the New York Daily News. I'm going to assume that date is real and extrapolate from...
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The Bromwell Radi-O-Trap
It weighs just a few ounces and measures 2 3/8 inches in diameter, and is 3/8 inches thick, not counting the binding post. On the back it bears a yellow label for Bromwell's Radi-O-Trap Aerial...
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Flour Power (part 2)
Early regional and national flour brands were frequent radio sponsors in the golden era. In a previous post, back in 2007 I wrote up [LINK] the radio contributions of nine brands Light Crust Flour,...
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