When I was a kid, I loved making audio tape recordings of monologues and silly little family interviews, or just joking around into the microphone and listening back. I’m not sure at that age if I giggled more during the recording or the playback.
(It was around 1967. Go back and ask younger me, and I might have told you that I was the first podcaster, but that wasn’t a word yet.)
It all started with my uncle’s colossal reel-to-reel tape recorder. The reels were each 7 inches wide, and I’m guessing it weighed 30-40 lbs. It was magic. Even though we were reaching for the Moon in the late ‘60s, sound recording at home was not the commodity it is today.
My aunt and uncle lived downstairs from us, and my uncle worked nights, so we’d have time in the late afternoon to goof around. He had a spare reel of tape for me to use, and we’d go at it.
When one of my birthdays came around, my aunt and uncle gave me my own portable reel-to-reel tape recorder, with little 3-inch reels (the size of just the inner hubs on the above reels). It had a clip-on microphone, a lid that you could shut, and a carrying handle. It was actually light enough to carry, but like any reel-to-reel, you had to thread the tape from supply reel to take-up reel, just like you would still do now with a film projector.
A year or two later, the cassette tape format hit its stride with mainstream consumers. It was remarkable that the small tape was self-contained, no threading required, and the sound quality was improving as technology progressed.
A couple of years into its well-used life, I retired my reel-to-reel unit, replaced by a generous gift from Santa Claus, the Panasonic RQ-209S cassette recorder. I was a lucky kid, as these things were still not commodities. The RQ-290S sold for $40, which I seem to remember is how much a weekly trip to the supermarket cost then.
The ritual of stringing the reel tape was gone, and I actually missed it a bit. Like cooking a three-hour meal, the act of threading the tape created a feeling of anticipation that you were going to really accomplish things. But there was something just cool and convenient about being able to slap different cassettes in, and not have the loose reels unwind in your hand as you were trying to laboriously tuck them back into their boxes.
The new recorder came with its own small microphone (complete with an unheard-of pause button) and a demo cassette. One side of the cassette was blank, so you could record right out of the box, in case Santa forgot to also deliver a blank tape. (He didn’t forget.) The other side of the tape contained an era-appropriate instrumental musical version of When the Saints Go Marching In.
Once I inserted that demo cassette and played it back, the experience was intense. Not only could I make my recordings, but I could also listen to store-bought music! But exciting as it was, listening to retail music on this recorder would remain only a capability, not a reality.
We had the family stereo that I had virtually monopolized, and it was much better sounding than my little cassette recorder. When you have limited resources (and are young enough to not listen to 90% of your music in the car), you don’t buy the tape. You spend that 4 or 6 bucks that you saved up, on the album that will sound loud and great on the big stereo. My cassette player, which had good sound for its time, had a 3.5-inch speaker, after all.
This meant that when I was in the mood to take pre-recorded music for a spin in the little Panasonic, in went the demo tape. I must have listened to When the Saints Go Marching In hundreds of times. I was always worried I would wear the tape out.
After all these years, I can still hear the ‘60s pop-jazzy rendition of the demo cassette in my head- every single note. I can’t remember lyrics for anything, but I have a photographic (phonographic?) memory for musical notes. I’ll leave it to you to judge whether this rendition is cheesy, or retro-chic.
So… while watching the New Orleans Saints vs. the Las Vegas Raiders on tonight’s Monday Night Football- you know, New Orleans and all- this song came into my mind.
I rolled the dice and typed Panasonic Saints Go Marching In into a YouTube search.
And there it was. At least one human soul has posted that old demo tape recording, along with a photo of the actual tape. You can play it above, or here.
So the vinyl album/family stereo combination always ruled for store-bought music, while my monologues, musings, family interviews, and other recordings continued unabated in my then-new cassette format.
It’s been a long time since I’ve made a recording. Maybe I should do a podcast.
Many thanks to wef63 on YouTube for posting the above recording and bringing back these memories.