Hi everyone, and thank you for accepting me. I am here because I acquired a boatload of tapes from my father and great uncle. To make a short story long, my great uncle was Lee Forster, he was a country singer and guitar player, square dance caller and was a DJ at WJJL, WWOL, and WKBW among others, from the late '40s until probably the mid '60s. His wife and musical partner (bass player), Ruby Lee was my paternal grandmother's sister. She had a show on some station in Salamanca at one time. My father was Ernie Jones, and was station engineer and DJ at WBLK (Mr. Blues), WUFO, WYSL, WWVA in Wheeling, WVA and WAMO in Pittsburgh among others, as well as an engineer at WNED TV, and cameraman at WKBW TV, starting in about 1959 through to the NABET strike of 1972. He worked with George Lorenz from WBLK's inception, and had a hand in setting up the studios in 1963-64. He had a falling out with Lorenz over one too many bounced paychecks, and left somewhere in late '66. With our family growing (my sister born in '66 and me in '71) he decided to get out of the business for something more stable and went to Bell, and then to Moog, where he worked until he passed in 1992. These tapes have been kicking around for years, I heard a lot of them growing up - various spots and ads, as well as some complete shows - Then when Lee died, his son in law gave us bins of HIS stuff. I finally pulled up my dad's old Ampro 757 he bought in 1956 to practice with (he built a "studio" in his room with a pair of turntables, the Ampro, and a mixer he built) and got it up and running again after almost 30 years, and I have been going through these tapes in hopes of digitizing all of my dad's, and at least SOME of Lee's (there are a TON). I want to find something to do with them when I finish with them. I was hoping there might be some kind of Buffalo Radio historical society that may be interested in giving them a home.....or are they just family junk?
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Hello from a newbie...Long winded old radio tape collection question
- Thread starter andyjon100
- Start date
I now consider my own tapes family junk, so...
Thank you for the input! That's what I figured, but I wanted to see if there was any place that might want something like that before I just tossed them. Maybe the stations I can identify (WBLK, WUFO, etc.) might want some of them?
Hi, before you just toss them, contact Steve Cichon at http://www.staffannouncer.com He has a collection of old Buffalo stuff, including radio. He may take some off your hands, better than ending up in some landfill.
Are there any items beyond recordings such as station promotional material, coverage maps, brochures, booklets or whatever?
You could consider donating your old tapes to UB's Department of Media Study.
If you have the time and equipment, transfer the tapes into your computer and then upload them to www.archive.org for historical preservation. There are many old radio airchecks that have been uploaded to that site.
I haven't looked as I do not use the Internet Archive but do they allow airchecks with full music, or just scoped ones?
Plenty of people have posted full airchecks including music. Theoretically it'd be subject to DMCA just like any other site, but I don't think any copyright holder would bother sitting through hours of 50-year-old radio airchecks just to find a song they can file a copyright takedown against.
It's not individual songs they look for. And it is not just the DCMA.
In the case of composers and authors, it is ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. And for a digital source, of course, it is the individual labels which today means just a small handful. The performing rights groups have people doing nothing but looking for violations like that. Several of the aircheck sites have had to either edit or remove airchecks that had full songs.
And they don't file takedown requests... they calculate the potential unlicensed plays and send a bill.
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At the Buffalo Broadcasters Association website we have a collection of audio archives http://www.buffalobroadcasters.com/audio/ so your collection would be a nice addition. We are in the process of upgrading our website to be able to include more content. Rich Newberg has been working with newyorkheritage.org to present many video clips from the local stations.
No other promotional stuff, although there are some Demo tapes sent to my g.u. from people trying to get their stuff on the air - one 5" reel I ran across is a guy named Ronnie Murray, post marked Mar. 9, 1964. It has an introduction followed by snippets of multiple songs, and business cards with his head shot - one his manager's and one his... There is a tape of nothing but introductions (rapid intros) done by the Louvin Brothers, who stopped performing in 1963 when one of the brothers was killed in a car accident. Lee saved EVERYTHING, and I'm sure there was TONS of things in the house when he died, but his kids cleared most everything out by the time they invited us to come take what we wanted...
kevtronics;6329632} If you have the time and equipment said:
I am currently in the process of doing just that (for personal use, but now I know I can upload them there, too Thank you!)
i will happily pass them on when I finish, if you want them. They weren't stored properly, so EVERY splice comes apart when it runs through the machine.....resplicing is a huge time consuming P.I.T.A!
One other archive you might want to investigate is the Belfer Audio Archive at Syracuse University:
https://library.syr.edu/scrc/collections/preservation/belfer-lab.php
They have facilities there to transfer from any audio source, including wire recorders.
https://library.syr.edu/scrc/collections/preservation/belfer-lab.php
They have facilities there to transfer from any audio source, including wire recorders.
Have you ever heard of that actually happening with material on the Internet Archive (archive.org)?
The Internet Archive recently got used for copyright violation, but not by music agencies -- rather by a group of book publishers, since they have full scans of many old books. The Internet Archive's defense is that they act as a library, because only one user is allowed to access any material on the site at a time. The book publishers insist that this still counts as "stealing". The lawsuit could have implications of whether or not online public libraries could ever exist and operate in the same way that brick-and-mortar ones do.
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/03/8688...ernet-archive-for-mass-copyright-infringement
p.s. I remember many years ago when ASCAP or BMI (I forget which) found an online database of FCC Part 15 microbroadcast stations and proceeded to contact every one on the list asking them to pay up for a license to broadcast music -- including myself. I told them I had ceased operation (which was true at the time) and they went away.
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I haven't heard the name "Ernie Jones" in over fifty years. He did have a great voice and I wondered what became of him. I started my career on WBLK in late 1965 and can say with certainty that Jones had departed by then. I can confirm the bad paychecks. In those days nobody would have dreamed that WBLK would someday be owned by CBS Radio and even become top rated. I remember Lee Forster mostly on WADV which would later become WYRK. I know a few people who would really love to have those tapes.
Well, as soon as I finish with digitizing them, I will certainly make them available to whoever wants them. However, I'm wondering if I should pass them into private hands or to one of the places mentioned here, where they'll be available to everyone. I thought my father worked at WBLK until after my sister was born in September of '66... My dad's been gone since '92, so I can't ask him, and my mother is pushing 80 and doesn't really remember exact dates. They were married in '64. She DOES remember George Lorenz being an arrogant jerk who expected people at the station to cover for him with his wife when he was out with his girlfriend. He was at the Genesee show with his girlfriend one night, (apparently after my father quit) and my parents ran into them. When the movie they were seeing let out, Lorenz was already gone and the top to my father's brand new '65 Falcon convertible was cut.
Yes, there are quite a few collections I was told to look for that by then had been deleted.
But that can happen for any number of reasons. How do you know for sure it's because ASCAP/BMI/etc. came after them asking for royalties?
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