Hit Parade and TRSE Missing "Episodes"
Tonight, I digitized three more episodes of the old Tape & Record Show Enterprises "fake radio series", "Jerry Sanders' Hit Parade", episodes 3, 5, and 6.
Okay, you are saying to yourself, "Hey! Where's FOUR???". Well, that is a GOOD question. For the earliest "Hit Parade" episodes, Jerry kept his "master cassettes". I'd bring them to the "main studio"(my house) to copy and edit into the finalized "broadcast versions". Sometime after initial "broadcast", my edited broadcast version got "misplaced", and hasn't been rediscovered to this day. I reached out to Jerry to borrow the master again, only to discover he had it stored in a rented storage unit, which had been broken into and looted. As a result, since this was decades ago, it is probably safe to say, THAT particular tape, along with the other stuff from Jerry's storage unit, will NEVER be recovered. SO... episode 4 is officially "lost to time". This episode "could" be "reconstructed" though, minus hosts announcing the songs (and apparently a Richard Pryor skit), since I still have the program description from the original "broadcast" index card file, and I could get the opening/closing theme music from the previous episode. It was also repeated a couple times, so more than one copy of the description card... "Jerry Sanders' Hit Parade: Episode 4. Broadcast Sunday, January 30, 1983 at 1:30pm central. Theme Music: Morning Star(Kool & The Gang). Songs include: Good Vibrations(Beach Boys), Dance Floor(Zapp), Steppin' Out(Kool and the Gang), You're The One That I Want(Olivia Newton-John), The Dearly Departed(Richard Pryor). Co-hosted by James Stricklin."
Due to my OWN "sloppy tape storage", in my home closet, I'm positive I'll run across "missing episodes" of other shows, ESPECIALLY the over 400 episode "flagship" show started in 1979, "The Tape & Record Show", and most of THOSE missing episodes will most likely be ones from the first three years. Since it was just me at age 13 when I started the "organization" in June of 1979, when I'D listen to a "broadcast", I'd put the tape with the theme music in, switch out the tape to the "main feature", play that, then put the tape with the closing theme in. I didn't have the duplicating equipment the first couple years, just a single, portable monophonic deck, so the shows weren't duplicated and edited onto a separate cassette as in the later years. However, I DID keep a record of the contents of each "show", on 3x5 index cards, all of which I still have.
Digging through the old tapes, I had forgotten that in the late 1980's, I did however, go back and compile the first 40 or so episodes from 1979 onto cassettes, so those, at least, will be an easy digital conversion. Found the boxes with most of the hundreds of old, cheap cassettes I bought back in 1979-forward with the audio recordings I made from TV, which was the main content of the show back then. Also located the original "theme music recording" cassettes, so MAYBE, once I start on "The Tape & Record Show" itself, I'll be able to digitize MOST of them... IF the old tapes are still playable. Saving those for last though, unless, like some of the later episodes of "The Tape & Record Show" actually have my friends and I in them, then THOSE episodes get "priority" for digitization.
The other stuff, if I spend enough time, can be "re-created" for the most part, even if the old tapes are fubar. Over the years, with my classic TV collecting on DVD, I now have a LOT of the shows "aired" on "The Tape & Record Show" in those early years on my shelf. I could just extract the audio from the DVDs.
Okay, you are saying to yourself, "Hey! Where's FOUR???". Well, that is a GOOD question. For the earliest "Hit Parade" episodes, Jerry kept his "master cassettes". I'd bring them to the "main studio"(my house) to copy and edit into the finalized "broadcast versions". Sometime after initial "broadcast", my edited broadcast version got "misplaced", and hasn't been rediscovered to this day. I reached out to Jerry to borrow the master again, only to discover he had it stored in a rented storage unit, which had been broken into and looted. As a result, since this was decades ago, it is probably safe to say, THAT particular tape, along with the other stuff from Jerry's storage unit, will NEVER be recovered. SO... episode 4 is officially "lost to time". This episode "could" be "reconstructed" though, minus hosts announcing the songs (and apparently a Richard Pryor skit), since I still have the program description from the original "broadcast" index card file, and I could get the opening/closing theme music from the previous episode. It was also repeated a couple times, so more than one copy of the description card... "Jerry Sanders' Hit Parade: Episode 4. Broadcast Sunday, January 30, 1983 at 1:30pm central. Theme Music: Morning Star(Kool & The Gang). Songs include: Good Vibrations(Beach Boys), Dance Floor(Zapp), Steppin' Out(Kool and the Gang), You're The One That I Want(Olivia Newton-John), The Dearly Departed(Richard Pryor). Co-hosted by James Stricklin."
Due to my OWN "sloppy tape storage", in my home closet, I'm positive I'll run across "missing episodes" of other shows, ESPECIALLY the over 400 episode "flagship" show started in 1979, "The Tape & Record Show", and most of THOSE missing episodes will most likely be ones from the first three years. Since it was just me at age 13 when I started the "organization" in June of 1979, when I'D listen to a "broadcast", I'd put the tape with the theme music in, switch out the tape to the "main feature", play that, then put the tape with the closing theme in. I didn't have the duplicating equipment the first couple years, just a single, portable monophonic deck, so the shows weren't duplicated and edited onto a separate cassette as in the later years. However, I DID keep a record of the contents of each "show", on 3x5 index cards, all of which I still have.
Digging through the old tapes, I had forgotten that in the late 1980's, I did however, go back and compile the first 40 or so episodes from 1979 onto cassettes, so those, at least, will be an easy digital conversion. Found the boxes with most of the hundreds of old, cheap cassettes I bought back in 1979-forward with the audio recordings I made from TV, which was the main content of the show back then. Also located the original "theme music recording" cassettes, so MAYBE, once I start on "The Tape & Record Show" itself, I'll be able to digitize MOST of them... IF the old tapes are still playable. Saving those for last though, unless, like some of the later episodes of "The Tape & Record Show" actually have my friends and I in them, then THOSE episodes get "priority" for digitization.
The other stuff, if I spend enough time, can be "re-created" for the most part, even if the old tapes are fubar. Over the years, with my classic TV collecting on DVD, I now have a LOT of the shows "aired" on "The Tape & Record Show" in those early years on my shelf. I could just extract the audio from the DVDs.