Clik here to view.
Transcription Mystery Disc # 188
While watching the waveform unwind itself across my screen I thought; the signal to noise ratio looks really good. And it was so. The recording still has a hum that's indigenous to the recording....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Zeke Clements was not a dwarf
Marlon "Zeke" Clements was not a dwarf. He just played one on the big screen. In 1937 Clements yodeled the part of Bashful, in Walt Disney's 1937 version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. To be...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Over all of Spain, the sky is clear
To use the medical jargon, radio has some off-label uses.We listen to the radio for entertainment and information. We hear and interpret an audio message for the most part just as it is intended. But...
View ArticleClik here to view.
AUDIOVISUAL HERITAGE DAY!
UNESCO has named October 27th 2013 as Audiovisual Heritage day. The day is intended to raise awareness of the significance of AV documents and to draw attention to the need to safeguard them. More...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lafayette Radio Electronics
Back in the fifties and sixties, Lafayette Radio Electronics was a retail and mail-order competitor for Radio Shack, Allied Radio, and even Heathkit. They no longer exist. Lafayette was based in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Transcription Mystery Disc #189
This one is hardly a mystery. This disc was made by a home recorder not flipping channels but flipping records. He or she can clearly be heard at about the 2:15 mark flipping their 78 rpm record...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Scheidel's Electro-theraputics
By definition electro-theraputics means the treatment of disease or disorder by electricity. This may sound like any other common gri-gri, like homeopathy. It's not. Electro-theraputics reached the...
View ArticleVoice of Victory
I first heard of this film courtesy of the website Ominous Valve. The film begins as many military propaganda films do with explosions and platitudes. Then it takes a strange turn explaining the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Nature of The Universe
For Fred Hoyle the term "Big Bang" was one of derision. Hoyle proposed a theory that the universe didn't have a beginning, it just always had been. He called it the "Steady State Theory. " In 1948 he,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Venus Equilateral
It's often the case that science fiction precedes science non-fiction. Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke envisioned satellite communications long before it was a reality. In this case Clarke...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Transcription Mystery Disc #190
This is a 6.5 inch, metal-core Silvertone brand transcription disc. One side is labeled "Iowa Gang 7-25-43." The label on the other side has been torn off. the recording is of my favorite sub-sub...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tom & Doug
Tom and Doug may have more listeners on Youtube than they do on the radio but they are in fact carried on three terrestrial radio stations 90.7 WAZU-FM, 107.9 WRFA-LP, and on 89.1 KHOI. Their chatter...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bob Dylan Banned!
We have all read variations on the tale. Bob Dylan's music was banned on a radio station in Texas, sometimes specifically El Paso, in 1968 or sometimes 1970. The ban is not because he was a red, or a...
View ArticleFrozen Peas
This recording officially reached meme status long ago. In some radio circles the phrase "frozen peas" refers to a radio blooper. It's been parodied by SCTV, various cartoons, and even Monty Python. It...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Negro Station Profile
I found a 1958 copy of Sponsor magazine that breaks out the programming hours targeted at black people on dozens of stations. Below is a grid that summarizes just a few of the key fields. I have made...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Transcription Mystery Disc #191
This is a 6.5-inch Wilcox-Gay Recordio. It's blank on one side and true to form it had no markings of any kind that would help us identify it's origin. There appears to be a couple drips of sealing sax...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Steamrolling Cat Stevens
Vinyl records have a reputation of being "unbreakable." When they were first manufactured this was actually advertised on several brands. In reality they're not impervious to damage, they scratch...
View ArticleClik here to view.
CLUB HANGOVER BROADCASTS
Club Hangover was the place to be in San Francisco for Dixieland and New Orleans jazz in the 1950s. In that pre-bebop era that's all jazz meant: swing, dixieland and the earliest notions of what we now...
View ArticleClik here to view.
WDAS Original Soul Sounds
If you are from Philly, or have lived in Philly, or near Philly, or even took a long-ish visit to Philly you probably know the call letters WDAS. The station sighed on in Ocean City, NJ in 1922 as 1200...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Everett Mitchell
I only realized recently that I'd written about Everett Mitchell four separate times and never covered his career. I recognized the name when I bumped into a copy of the book Radio's Beautiful Day:...
View Article