Early reel to reel tape

Here's one of the earliest and most unusual pre-recorded reel to reel tapes I've seen turn up on ebay.

This is the soundtrack album for "The Living Desert", Disney's first "True Life Adventure" film. The tape is basically made on a stock Scotch blank tape with a label pasted over the box; it has an unusual large flange reel with the title and speed directly printed on the reel itself. It probably dates from 1954 or '55. (It reminds me of some of the early Columbia reel to reel tapes that turn up once in a while that have a generic Columbia box with small labels printed on them for the particular tape inside.)

I'd be curious how many of these were produced and if Disney put out other reel tapes in the mid-fifties.

auction at ebay

Letter from Vietnam

Continuing with excerpts from my uncle's tapes, here's a short two minute excerpt from one of his voice letters. He would send them on 3" reels of tape while he was stationed in Vietnam; on this one, recorded in August 1967, he couldn't think of much to say. So, he turned the microphone over to two of his fellow soldiers. I can't identify their names, but the first is Allen from Mocksville, North Carolina; the other soldier is from Youngstown, Ohio.

This tape was one of the few in the collection that had serious issues. It was improperly spooled and had suffered some deterioration over the years; the tape had buckled and wouldn't stay flat on side two. I gently held the tip of a cotton swap on the head of the deck as the tape played to flatten it out so it could be transferred. The sound still fades in and out a bit.

Voiceletter excerpt (2 mins, MP3 format)

Sounds of Vietnam

My uncle William "Burl" Flannery served in Vietnam from 1965 through 1967 with the 121st Helicopter Assault Company stationed in Soctrang. While there, he made many short "voice letters" on 3" reel to reel tapes that he would mail to the family (our family, in turn, would record voice letters for him).

Recently, I borrowed the tapes to transfer them to CD since my uncle hasn't had a reel to reel deck in many years. Included in the collection were tapes of music and other material he recorded while in Vietnam and in the early 1970's. In the blog, I'll be highlighting a few more interesting excerpts of the tapes.

One 5" reel contained a compilation of other tapes with some introductions by Burl. Titled "Songs of Vietnam", it included the following material. Each MP3 is a selection of highlights from that section of the tape and runs two or three minutes.

Pop music from Vietnam - A selection of pop records played on the Vietnamese radio stations.

Amateur singers - Recorded at a party in Saigon, highlights of some young girls singing for the microphone. One wonders what happened to them.

Sounds of war - Material recorded during a company patrol.

Vietnamese rock musicians - Recorded at the Whiskey a Go Go in Saigon just before my uncle left the country, the recording is a group of Vietnamese soldiers who performed rock music at the club.

New book on recording the Beatles

A new book has been released that chronicles, in excrutiating detail, how each of the Beatles's albums were originally recorded. The authors, who have done professional recording themselves, interviewed the original engineers and poured over recording logs to reveal the tricks they used in the studio. And there's lots of pictures of vintage equipment, too.

While the Beatles were certainly innovative in the pop music field and changed how music in the genre could be recorded and presented on an lp, I'd like to see a book that takes the same approach to explaining how some of the great classical lp's were recorded - the early Mercury Living Presence albums, the RCA Living Stereo recordings, or even works like Harry Partch's "Delusion of the Fury".

article at Wired.com

Reel of the day - DisinHAIRited

Our first reel of the day on the coolcatdaddy blog is DisinHAIRited, RCA Victor TO3-1015, a collection of songs cut from the Broadway production of Hair. The album was released in 1970 as the cast album was climbing up the charts and RCA thought that a followup lp might generate some new revenue.

The songs are quite interesting; some are more raunchy or a little more "out there" than tunes in the final show. The tape, found on ebay, was still sealed and runs at 3.75 ips - the sound is quite good for something recorded at this speed. (I don't know if RCA released it at the 7.5 ips speed.) I'd highly recommend it for your collection.

Here's a brief (400 kb) excerpt so you can get an idea of the sound quality; the MP3 emphasizes the hiss a bit more than what it's like in the original tape. It's one of the better 3.75 ips open reel tapes I've found.