CBS Network Evening Aircheck - August 18, 1936
KHJ (CBS Affiliate) Off-Air Capture
Continuous Composite Broadcast Recording

This reel preserves a continuous off-air recording of CBS network programming as heard on August 18, 1936, via KHJ, the Los Angeles CBS affiliate. The recording documents uninterrupted broadcast flow, including sponsor copy, station identifications, program transitions, and ambient room sound.

Contents include:

• Camel Caravan (featuring Benny Goodman and sponsor integration)
• Program interruption announcement for live boxing coverage
• Joe Louis vs. Jack Sharkey heavyweight bout commentary (Ted Husing and CBS sports team)
• Station identifications and commercial transitions
• Complete episode of The March of Time
• Opening segment of Happy Days

The recording preserves network sequencing exactly as aired, including sponsor reads, musical bridges, interruption language, and the tonal shift between entertainment, live sports coverage, and dramatized news programming.

Room ambience and signal characteristics remain intact, indicating continuous off-air capture rather than later edited compilation.

Ethel Waters - Gospel Concert - Sacramento, California | October 6, 1962

Format: ¼-inch reel-to-reel | 7.5 ips • Half-track mono | Runtime: 37 minutes, 50 seconds

This reel preserves a complete live gospel concert by Ethel Waters recorded in Sacramento, California on October 6, 1962. The performance blends hymnody, testimony, humor, and deeply personal reflection, capturing Waters in the final chapter of her extraordinary career.

Opening to sustained applause, Waters greets the audience warmly and establishes an intimate, conversational atmosphere. Between songs, she speaks candidly about a recent life-threatening illness, hospitalization, and recovery — framing the experience as a spiritual turning point. Her remarks move fluidly between humor and solemnity, offering rare autobiographical insight delivered in her own voice.

Waters reflects openly on her decision to sing exclusively gospel music rather than the popular standards that had once defined her public image. “You have to make up your mind,” she tells the audience, a statement met with strong applause. The concert unfolds as both musical performance and personal witness. Selections include traditional gospel hymns such as Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen, He’s My Rock, My Sword, My Shield, and His Eye Is on the Sparrow. Accompanied by piano, Waters’ voice is clear, controlled, and emotionally direct. Room ambience and audience interaction remain intact, preserving the live setting. The program closes with brief words of gratitude and sustained applause, ending without studio fade or post-production alteration.

This recording documents not only a performance, but a moment of spiritual affirmation in the life of one of the most influential American vocalists of the 20th century.

Pigmeat Markham and Moms Mabley |Live Performance Recording | Black Club Showcase

Format: ¼-inch reel-to-reel | Content: Composite live club performance | Era: Mid-20th century

This reel preserves a composite live Black club performance featuring extended comedy sets by Pigmeat Markham and Moms Mabley, along with additional vernacular performers. The material reflects the cadence, improvisation, and audience interaction of mid-century Black nightclub entertainment outside the network radio and television system.

The Pigmeat Markham segment captures his conversational, character-driven style — built around repetition, timing, and escalating narrative momentum. Themes of domestic life, social authority, drinking culture, and urban tension unfold through call-and-response phrasing and rhythmic delivery shaped by live audience presence.

The program then transitions into a sustained performance by Moms Mabley, whose set blends topical humor, moral parable, and pointed social observation. Her material references Cold War anxieties, segregation-era travel discrimination, economic strain, religion, family life, and shifting social norms. Extended storytelling segments, including parable-based reflections, illustrate how comedy functioned not only as entertainment but as commentary and moral instruction within Black performance traditions.

The recording preserves unfiltered, non-broadcast material in continuous live form. Audience response, pacing, and room ambience remain intact, documenting performance context rather than a studio reconstruction. Side B contains approximately nine additional minutes of continuous Moms Mabley stand-up material. A low-level archival buzz is present, but vocal clarity and timing remain strong and fully intelligible. This reel documents a vital cultural soundscape — club-era Black comedy as it was performed, heard, and experienced in real time.

Jerry Garcia Radio Interview with Bob McLay | Concluding Broadcast Segment | Early 1970s | Format: ¼-inch reel-to-reel | Type: Radio broadcast segment

This reel preserves the concluding portion of a long-form radio interview with Jerry Garcia, conducted by interviewer Bob McLay in the early 1970s. The segment captures the final broadcast hour of what is referenced on air as a multi-hour conversation.

Garcia speaks informally about the band’s recent return from a European tour, upcoming performances including the Hollywood Bowl, and reflections on legal issues and prison outreach efforts. The tone is relaxed and conversational, consistent with early FM-era interview programming.

The recording retains original broadcast structure, including period commercial breaks for products such as Remington electric shavers and the Ford Gran Torino. The program concludes with a musical sign-off using Uncle John’s Band, followed by a clean on-air handoff to the next DJ, identified as Richard Gossett. The reel ends immediately after this transition.

Embedded sponsor segments, music cues, and broadcast sequencing remain intact, preserving the rhythm and atmosphere of early-1970s radio production. Earlier portions of the interview are not present on this reel. This recording documents not only a conversation with a defining figure of American music, but also the sound and structure of FM-era radio at a formative cultural moment.

The Voice of Firestone Metropolitan Opera Stars & Classical Showcase | ABC Radio Network | March 1955

Format: ¼-inch reel-to-reel | Type: Complete ABC Network broadcast

This reel preserves a complete ABC Radio Network broadcast of The Voice of Firestone, aired in March 1955. The program presents operatic, operetta, and orchestral repertoire performed by leading Metropolitan Opera artists, conducted by Wilfred Pelletier with the Firestone Orchestra and Chorus.

The broadcast opens with full sponsor identification, situating Firestone as both industrial manufacturer and cultural patron. Sponsor messages are integrated formally into the program’s structure, reflecting mid-century network broadcasting practice in which commerce and culture were presented as complementary rather than separate domains.

The musical program spans a broad range of repertoire:

• Jerome Hines performing Ernest R. Ball’s When Irish Eyes Are Smiling in recognition of St. Patrick’s Day
• Hines in Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele (“Son lo spirito”)
• Operetta selections from Victor Herbert’s The Red Mill and Sigmund Romberg’s The New Moon
• Excerpts from Massenet’s Manon
• Roberta Peters singing the “Hymn to the Sun” from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Le Coq d’Or
• Emmanuel Chabrier’s orchestral work España

Announcer narration guides listeners through composers, dramatic context, and performers, reinforcing the program’s educational tone alongside its entertainment value. The broadcast concludes with network promotion for upcoming radio and television presentations and a public-service tribute to the American Red Cross, followed by full Firestone sign-off language.

This recording documents a moment when national radio, corporate sponsorship, and classical music converged to shape shared listening culture in mid-20th-century America.

American Baptist Convention “Cavalcade of Freedom” Independence Square, Philadelphia May 26, 1962

Format: ¼-inch reel-to-reel | Type: Complete live event recording

This reel preserves the full proceedings of the American Baptist Convention’s “Cavalcade of Freedom,” held at Independence Square in Philadelphia on May 26, 1962. The event commemorated freedom, Christian responsibility, and the dedication of the Convention’s new national headquarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

The recording documents the complete arc of the gathering, including invocation, proclamation, keynote addresses, musical performances, scripture readings, denominational greetings, and concluding dedication remarks. The program reflects early-1960s civic theology, intertwining religious conviction with Cold War–era language of liberty, dignity, global responsibility, and democratic purpose.

Speakers include national religious leaders and public officials, among them Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and former Governor Harold E. Stassen. A formal telegram of greeting from President John F. Kennedy is read during the ceremony. Ecumenical and international messages from Protestant, Orthodox, and Baptist bodies further underscore the event’s national and global framing.

Musical selections and ceremonial trumpet calls punctuate the proceedings. Notably, the recording continues beyond formal program elements, preserving ambient on-stage conversation, logistical announcements, and crowd atmosphere — including helicopter photography coordination and bus departures for Valley Forge. The tape concludes abruptly due to exhaustion of the reel during closing remarks.

This recording documents a mid-century American civic–religious gathering at one of the nation’s most symbolically charged locations. It preserves not only speeches and ceremony, but the lived sound of public faith and institutional dedication in 1962.

A Studs Terkel Broadcast with Charlemagne Rollins | Christmas Gift - Black Memory, Song, Story, and Witness Chicago | 1972

Format: ¼-inch reel-to-reel | Type: WFMT radio broadcast (composite live program)

This reel preserves a layered 1972 radio program hosted by Studs Terkel featuring an extended on-air conversation with librarian, anthologist, and cultural historian Charlemagne Rollins. Broadcast from Chicago on WFMT, the program centers on Rollins’s landmark anthology Christmas Gift, a collection of poems, songs, folklore, sermons, and narratives written by and about Black Americans from slavery through the twentieth century.

Rollins draws on both literary scholarship and personal family history, including memories passed down from her grandmother who had been enslaved. The conversation moves between discussion, dramatic readings, and reflection on Black Christmas traditions, dialect as cultural preservation, and the endurance of faith and storytelling within African American communities.

Extended readings include folktales, poetry, sermons, and a full dramatic presentation of The Legend of the Black Madonna, a parable addressing racial prejudice through Christian symbolism. Musical selections — including spirituals, jubilee songs, and choral performances — are woven into the program, reinforcing the continuity of song, faith, and collective memory.

Midway through the broadcast, the program is interrupted by live news bulletins, including Associated Press updates regarding the declining health of former President Harry S. Truman. The interruption preserves the structure of live public radio and situates the cultural program within its broader historical moment.

This recording documents a rare convergence of scholarship, oral tradition, music, and live journalism, capturing how Black literary and spiritual voices were presented and heard in early-1970s public radio.

Al Jolson Holdings - A multi-format record of Al Jolson’s presence in American broadcast culture, 1932–1975.

Formats: Reel-to-reel, broadcast recordings, television segments, commercial disc sources, film soundtrack material

This collection documents the broadcast, recording, and film legacy of Al Jolson across four decades of American entertainment. The holdings span network radio, early television appearances, wartime performances, sponsored music programs, discographic studio recordings, and motion-picture soundtrack material.

Network & Tribute Broadcasts

Includes named memorials and retrospective programs such as the CBS Al Jolson Memorial (1950), The Immortal Jolson (1963), and subsequent centennial tributes. Variety appearances with figures such as Eddie Cantor and ensemble anniversary broadcasts are preserved alongside standalone interview and television segments.

Prestige & Historical Appearances

Network openings and commemorative broadcasts from the 1930s are represented, including the NBC Hollywood Studios opening (1935), CBS network material (1938), and the George Gershwin Memorial broadcast (1937), where Jolson performed “Swanee.” Political and civic rally recordings from the early 1930s are also included.

Sponsored Radio Programs

The collection contains material from the Life Buoy Program, Colgate broadcasts, and Kraft Music Hall, including complete and partial episodes featuring Jolson alongside prominent contemporaries. These recordings preserve mid-century sponsor-era program structure and live studio performance.

Shell Chateau & 1935–1936 Network Performances

A near-continuous run of mid-1930s network performances from Shell Chateau and related NBC broadcasts documents Jolson’s sustained presence in early sponsored radio music programming.

Film & Soundtrack Holdings

Selections and soundtrack material from major films including The Jazz Singer, The Singing Fool, Rose of Washington Square, Hallelujah, I’m a Tramp, The Singing Kid, The Jolson Story, and Jolson Sings Again are preserved, along with related reference and outtake material.

Military & Overseas Recordings

Includes wartime and overseas performance material, including recordings associated with Jolson’s 1950 visit to troops in Korea.

Discographic Sources

Structured and labeled commercial recordings from Brunswick and Decca matrices, V-Discs, alternate takes, and specialty pressings form a documented discographic component of the collection.

This collection represents a broad cross-section of Jolson’s public career — from early network radio through postwar film revival and tribute culture — preserved across broadcast, studio, and soundtrack formats.