jim henson

Attached extension speakers that swing-out from this 1967 portable AM/FM stereo's 'single compact unit' evoke the promise of the Boomboxes that Hitachi and everyone else would begin marketing in the '70s.

- - Don't you think so?

(click on image to ENLARGE in a new window)

See also:
The Vintage Boombox and Ghetto Blaster Museum at Pocket Calculator Show.Com

Hi-Fi Boombox: 1954 at Shorpy,
The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog

(click on image to ENLARGE in a new window)













































Wow! - - It's 'The Complete Stereo Sound Center for your car, boat or home'!

Check the handy and oh-so-modern innovations that include separate cartridge/modules for AM and FM radio, and how timely was the naming of the 'Gidget'
4-track tape adapter?

I'd never heard of that one...

...but of course there's a special section for
4-track history and their accompanying gizmos at the lovingly detailed 8-track Heaven.

- Please also follow this link to a
previously posted 1966 Lear Jet Stereo 8 advertisement for some additonal background on the
mid-'60's mainstream introduction of the 8-track format to American consumers!

When this story made it's first appearance in 1964, the AM radio band in America was filled with the non-stop snappy patter of top 40 pop disc jockeys promoting the hits, promoting their show's sponsors, and promoting their persona.

Though it was not necessarily a new phenomenon, it had reached a fever pitch and was quite a novelty of the era, as was the resurgence of rock & roll radio.

This spoof ran in issue #36 of Archie's Mad House, dated October, '64. It was written by George Gladir and drawn by
Joe Edwards.

'Archie's Mad House' was a humor comic book published by the same Archie folks that gave us the adventures of the high school crowd in Riverdale.

It was a brazen attempt to try and cash in on the popularity of MAD magazine, right down to the visual style of its cover border and the separation of the word 'mad' from 'house' in its title.

- For detailed info on 'Archie's Mad House', its creators and
this issue in particular, please follow this link to an entry at Scott Shaw's Oddball Comics posted this past spring.



⬆ READ 'Tops in Pops':

⬅ (Click either on images or page numbers to open an ENLARGED page in a new window) ⬇

(page 1)
(page 2)
(page 3)
(page 4)
(page 5)
(page 6)






- For a bit more reference on the spoofing of the 'deejay craze', please see either of my previous posts presenting vintage novelty records on the topic:

Arbogast & Ross' 'Chaos', Parts 1 & 2, from 1959,

and

Ted Randal's 'What Is A Disc Jockey?', from 1957.


- For just a tiny bit more on the subject of 'Archie's Mad House', please let me also refer you to a flickr page in the 'Archie comics of the 1960's as a mirror to fads, fashion and trends' set that accompanied my previous blog post on that topic.

Honestly, I'm not sure what the point is to this little oddity...

Have you seen one before?

(ADDENDUM: Many have! See below, and see comments on this post for great info and recollections!)




































The 'Cardtalk' is essentially a folded piece of cardboard with a nail attached.

You are supposed to use it to play spoken-word 78s.

I found it mixed in with a nice batch of old 78 RPM Rock & Roll records given to me by my friend Ripspix.

He had no clue either. It had come to him similarly, mixed in with a batch of stuff he'd bought.

My best guess is that it was meant to be a novelty item, sort of a science experiment.

I can't imagine that this was intended to be a truly useful piece of sound equipment.

I'll assume that it first appeared a few years following the demise of the 78 RPM format, perhaps early '60's, when the old records were still around but were cast off, outdated items, like 8-tracks and
Beta videocassettes would be in years to follow.

To operate, you'd place your 78 RPM record on the evil-looking little spindle, then sort of tent the folded cardboard over it so the clipped on nail 'stylus' could rest in the grooves of the record.

Wait, it gets better. You are also instructed to gouge or burn a hole in the label of the record, so that you can place the end of a pencil or "pointed stick" in it.

By pushing the pencil you begin spinning the record by hand, trying (I guess) to approximate 78 revolutions per minute.

Perhaps at some point I'll go beyond setting up a visual demo of The Cardtalk in action for the purpose of photographic documentation.

Truth is I couldn't bring myself to really try it all out.

I'm not yet prepared to hear the wonders of
high-fidelity Cardtalk sound reproduction.

I think perhaps that The Cardtalk may have been manufactured as a means of torturing old records.

- - Or more to the point - - of torturing old record collectors.

ADDENDUM, 6/16/08:
PLEASE see comments on this post for helpful information and insights, including the wide use of 'Cardtalk' devices by missionaries to help educate and spread gospel in locations of the world without electricity. Thanks to the folks in the know for sharing their memories!

Say what you will about that 'Champagne Music-Maker',
Lawrence Welk, but in addition to being tops in his chosen field, he was also an amazingly shrewd businessman.

Generally, pop hits had to have ripened for a few years and been given time to grow more palatable to his TV audience before he'd allow them to be played on his show.

- - But meanwhile, he was cranking out new LPs on a regular basis, many of them delivering still-current but sanitized versions of recent pop hits.

It was that kind of thinking that hepled make him ridiculously wealthy.

In addition to leveraging such album release angles, he also busily secured the royalty rights to thousands of songs, made massive real estate investments (including his own 'Champagne Music'-themed resort communities), and spun a very lucrative TV syndication deal;
When ABC cancelled his network program in 1971 after deciding that his audience was getting too old, Welk sold his show to hundreds of stations and continued production
for a further eleven years.

From the LP 'Today's Great Hits'
(Dot Records, 1965),
listen to:

Lawrence Welk and his Orchestra - The "In" Crowd
(click for audio)



See also:
- Lawrence Welk entry at All Music.Com and at Space Age Pop

- Welk Musical Family.Com fansite and blog page

- Click here for this entry and all the previous 'In Crowd of the month' posts together on one page.


A few of my favorite Welk images...
The green-jacketed pocket-pool photo at the top of this post is from a program for
Expo '74 in Spokane, Washington, at which Welk, his orchestra and 'musical family' performed.

This older shot to the left (from the cover of the April '56 issue of Radio & Television News) shows Welk adjusting the in-car phonograph of his 1956 Dodge!

For more on that chapter in audio archaeology, follow the links to:
'Highway Hi Fi: Where The Vinyl Meets The Road' at Ookworld, and a spotlight on Chrysler's models; 'It seemed like a good idea at the time'.

- - And finally, at right;

Tom Bertino's classic illustration accompanied his 1984 article on The Lawrence Welk Show that was included in the 6th issue of 'The Tuber's Voice', the official Couch Potato Newsletter.

Times have certainly changed - - That's what the times do best.

This ad is so perfect!
Touting stylish & modern design for clock radios with analog clocks...

... and *one* of the models shown even receives *FM*!! (click on image to ENLARGE ⬆)

"They're almost works of art."

Going back as far is possible, ads claiming modern designs and innovations will always look dated when viewed from a few years further down the road.
Regardless of the object, the technology, this would seem to be a pretty hard and fast rule.

This was driven home to me while watching a recent TV advertisement that shows a 'domino effect' of older audio technologies careening into one another, until finally 'falling short' of the product claiming to be the innovative apex of modernity.

Probably you've seen this ad - - ? It always gets a slightly peeved chuckle out of me.

Peeved, I suppose, because clearly I'm still thoroughly enjoying many of those obsolete audio technologies - -

- - and a chuckle, because as you and I both know too well, it will not take much time before we can look back on this TV ad and say 'Look how clunky, restrictive and ugly that antique looks!'

'Mp3 players?!? Satellite radio?!? Get out of the stone age, grandpa!'

The chain of dominoes never ends, and today's latest-coolest will be outmoded and collecting dust on thrift store shelves tomorrow.

- - And more than likely be cherished by small, rabid groups of kooky collector nerds.

(Daaang...! I wonder where I can get me one of those AM goblet radios with the bright blue face?
So pretty...)

A previous post shared some novelty 78s that Red Ingle had recorded in the 1930's as vocalist with the Ted Weems Orchestra, prior to his stint from 1943 - 1946 with Spike Jones as one of his 'City Slickers'.

Featured in this post is one recorded almost immediately following his departure from the Spike Jones band, but just prior to the formation of his own group and the beginning of his stellar string of records made for the Capitol label from 1947 into the early fifties.

Recorded in Hollywood during this interim, his one session with
Dick Peterson and The Vocal Yokels yielded this Ingle original. ➤

See also: Red Ingle bio page at AllMusic (click to link)

Listen to:
Red Ingle, with Dick Peterson and The Vocal Yokels -
It Ain't Never Hurt Me None So Far
(Enterprise 78, circa 1946)

(click for audio)

- sigh - Funny little story about the B-side...

The demise of this particular disc is one that illustrates what I love and respect about old 78 rpm records, and likewise what I love about working with software like ProTools and SoundSoap.

Getting set to record the A-side, I heard a loud and persistent surface popping as I was setting levels.

'Rats, maybe it's got a little crack in it', I thought. 'Better take a look...'

↖ As I picked the disc up from the turntable, a big triangular chunk fell right out of it. Eeek!!

78s are a marvel, and (in my opinion) they retain more of the special magic and wonder of the *concepts* of sound recording than any medium that's followed.

Yes, they can be brittle as hell, and can carry lots of surface noise, but I'm continually amazed by the fact
(in my experience) that they so rarely skip.

- - And unlike most recording mediums, you can put them back together and they'll still play. Sometimes.

I was very pleased with the performance of the A-side of this old and broken record.

I had to put a small piece of tape on the B-side to hold the broken chunk in place, because otherwise centrifugal force was sending it careening off the turntable.

I placed the disc back on the platter, gave it a good wet clean with my old discwasher brush to sort of 'lube up' the grooves, started recording, set down the needle, and - - bless its fragile shellac heart - - the record played straight through, persistent pop and all.

A little ProTools TLC turned the most jagged ridges and chasms in the first half of the soundfile back into some shallower waves, a run through SoundSoap softened some of the surface noise without sterilizing it, and voilà - -

- - for all practical purposes, the very last play this decidedly goofy old record will receive was the one that captured a reasonable facsimile of it for some folks to enjoy beyond its lifespan.
Mission accomplished.

It would have been nice if I'd been able to get the B-side ('I Tipped My Hat And Slowly Rode Away') to cooperate as well, but no such luck.
Oh well, I'm satisfied. I wound up with a tale to tell, and anyway, the A-side was better...

UPDATE, 4.13.09: Good news! One of twindowlicker's recent Choosday Choons posts features a MASSIVE trove of archived Red Ingle 78s, including the KIA flipside of this disc (via Pappy Stuckey's collection)! Hooray!

Click over to: Choosday Choons: The Capitol Cut-ups, part 4: Red Ingle!!
at Pet's playin' her old platters, come on in!

Yes, the story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter's path from boxer to prison convict to advocate for the Wrongly Convicted is a fascinating saga, but uh, really I just liked this old photo of him spinning tunes.

This photo ran in the October 24th, 1964 edition of The Saturday Evening Post, in an article about the upcoming championship boxing match in which Carter was the contender for Joey Giardello's middleweight title.

Carter lost the match that December. It was just a couple of years later that he received the first of his two convictions for three 1966 murders. Those convictions were finally overturned in 1985, after Carter had spent almost twenty years in prison.

This image of the legendary
Les Paul as septuplets appeared on the back cover of the October, 1950 issue of Capitol News.

At that time, it had only been a couple of years since Paul began to experiment at home in his garage with multitrack recording. His innovations would soon change the recording industry forever.

- See also: A 2005 Les Paul Interview at Modern Guitars Magazine.

Below, a clip from the documentary 'Les Paul: Chasing Sound!' incorporates excerpts from an appearance with wife
Mary Ford on the Oct. 25, 1953 episode of CBS TV's educational series, 'Omnibus'.
In a brief demonstration of multitracking for host Alistair Cooke, they perform their huge hit,
'How High the Moon'. ⬇

An appeal to the readers of Downbeat Magazine, using their own vernacular.

Like, uh... let's see, a modern equivalent...?

"More DIY emo kids and shoegazers prefer ProTools."

- - Naw, I'm probably not hep enough to quite know the proper current buzzwords.

See also:
- YouTube video clip of a different model of old Pentron in action.

- One metric butt-load of vintage audio ads and photos at The Phantom Reel-To-Reel Tape Recorder Museum!!

My Dad had a big old portable reel-to-reel when I was a little kid. It weighed about forty pounds. A Sony. It fascinated me.

He used to chase my siblings and I around with it, trying to entice us to say cute or memorable things.

I don't think we often performed quite to his expectations...

'It looks and carries like an expensive overnight case!'

Yeah, but can you please pick the records up off the floor?

(click on image to ENLARGE)

'Do you like the two-tone Jamaican Sand and Ivory color combo on this model?'

Yes, I do, I do. It's a gorgeous player. I think I'd like to see it in the Caribbean Blue too. But seriously, those records...
... See, they're gonna get scratched or broken sitting on the floor like that - -

- - 'Motorola shaped the miracle fiberglass material into an almost acoustically perfect case...'

Uh-huh. See one of those dancing kids is gonna step on the records. And they're just - - sitting there, on that hard floor... What is that? Linoleum? Tile?
What - - are they having their little record hop in the kitchen?!? Yeah, I'll just bet THAT'S 'acoustically perfect'...

'Did you notice how even the lid on the player "baffles" and projects the sound like a bandshell?'

Listen, I'm gonna project YOU like a bandshell in a minute.
(sigh) Yes, I know it's none of my business how other people enjoy themselves.
Yes, I know all too well, I'm just an obsessive record-collector nerd, BE-LIEVE ME, I know...

...But for the love of God, CAN YOU JUST humor me, and PICK THE FREAKIN' RECORDS UP OFF THE FLOOR?!?. How hard is it? Put 'em on a table or something.
Gee, you could place them back in their sleeves, there's a thought. I won't even say a word if you don't handle them only by their damn edges. But PICK 'EM UP!!

RECORDS!!
OFF THE FLOOR!!
NOW!!!

(click on image to ENLARGE)



"Ka-CHUNK!!"

It was William Lear (founder of the Lear Jet Corporation) who designed the 8-track tape cartridge in 1964, improving upon the 4-track cartridge introduced in '62.
Initially its use was intended to be for inflight music on his business jets.

Within the next year or so the 8-track was being marketed for consumer use. By 1966 RCA Records was releasing albums on 8-track, and an 8-track player was a common option in new Ford cars.

Likely you know the rest of the story, as the 8-track skyrocketed in popularity and then went the way of all new formats in roughly ten or fifteen years time...

But you can get some more 8-track history and overview info at the Wikipedia entry, then go bask in the glow of 8-track Heaven, a site securing a place for the overly maligned 8-track in the digital age.

(click on links)

Then, by all means go ahead and track down that 1995 documentary film 'So Wrong They're Right' if you've not already seen it, or be sure to add the DVD to your queue!

I came across this full-page illustration in a '57 issue of LIFE Magazine, acompanying an article about the innovations and possibilities of recording tape.

I was struck by artist Richard Erdoes familiar and charming style, as well as the happy and only slightly off-target prescience of the images...

(click on image to ENLARGE on a new page)

"Present and future uses of tape ranges from simple home recordings (top strip) to complex operation of push-button households (bottom)."

In casting about for further examples of Erdoes' work, I was pleased and not at all surprised to discover that there has been at least a small bit of further discussion online: (click on links)

Some images from the 1954 book Jokes, Jokes, Jokes appeared a couple of months back at
Mike Lynch's site (Found via Drawn!), which in turn yielded a link to some 1960's color book illustrations posted at flickr by Eric Sturdevant.

What can be gleaned about Erdoes' from these links is that he supplied many illustrations to LIFE in the fifties, and by the sixties produced artwork for several children's books.

Is there anyone reading this who can share further info about this artist, or point us all to further examples of his work? If so, please drop a line or leave a comment on this post. Much obliged!

ADDENDUM, 4/6/08: Thanks to Sami (see comments) for sharing the discovery of an Erdoes LP cover.

It's the 1953 'studio cast' recording of Rodgers & Hart's 'The Boys From Syracuse'.

Googling about I found a clearer image of the album art.
Agreed, Sami, very Flora-esque!

ADDENDUM, 5/3/10: Thanks to Ariel S. Winter (see comments) for providing a link to his
Flickr sets, including plenty of Erdoes illos!

"...Watch a miracle happen!"

(click on image to ENLARGE)

Home audio as furniture.

There's probably a comment lurking here somewhere about ambient music, or sonic wallpaper, but let's skip it for now.

I like the ad copy's liberal use of superlatives.
Indeed, the set does bear the stamp of 'decorator smartness'.

A couple of points regarding the set design for the ad - -

Other than the fake flowers and 'incidental furniture' in the foreground, please note the barest suggestion of 'home';
The sketch of a bookshelf on the wall, and the drapery rising to infinity.

- - And check out the kicky print on her blouse!
Swingin'!