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1956 Recordings ?
Date: 05-27-2006
By: 4MONTAGE
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It was 1956. I was 11 years old. My family lived in the small (then remote) town of Lakewood NJ. I couldn't sleep. I had the urge to listen to some talk on the radio. It was after 1 o'clock in the morning. I turned on the AM Radio in the room that I shared with my brother.
Turning the dial, the only station that I heard with someone talking was WOR. Someone with a light, gravely voice was talking about his addiction to papaya juice from Gray's Papaya in Manhattan. I kept waiting for the other guest or host to comment; no one did. After a while I realized, with astonishment, that this individual was talking to himself. Further amazing was that he continued to talk about his addiction (which I couldn't make out as fact or fiction) for 3 hours, until 4 AM. Shepherd. I was hooked.
Soon I bought by mail a tiny crystal radio set from Johnson Smith Novelties. It had a ground cord with clamp. I found that the ground clamp worked if I connected it to the metal reading lamp above my bed. Now my brother was no longer disturbed by my nocturnal habits.
It turned out that the crystal radio only got two stations: one in Charlotte NC for some reason, and the other WOR with its 50,000 watt
antenna. Shepherd was my 1-4 AM god.
Some years later I spoke to Shepherd briefly on 2 occasions: In 1968, while I was in law school, I was a guest on Barry Farber, WOR, and met Shepherd after the show. He was at the elevator with a gorgeous chick dressed in skin-tight white pants, to whom he was paying no particular attention at all (he seemed bored). The other occasion was around 1971
at one of his personal appearances, after which he took questions. On both occasions I asked him only 1 thing: Were there recordings available of his show -- did WOR tape them? He answered, "The broadcasts are not taped. There are no recordings of them." "Do you really mean to say," I said, "that all this wonderful stuff has simply been lost on the airways of time?" "Yeah," he said, seemingly unconcerned, "though I think someone at the University of Arizona made some tapes."
I have only now discovered, much to my delight, that Shepherd was wrong. Thank God for whoever made those recordings.
But my question is this: The existent recordings seem to date from about 1961 on. Has anyone made any recordings of Shepherd's 3-hour monologues that he did 1-4 AM in the late 1950's on WOR? Gosh I'd like to find that 3-hour addicted-to-papaya-juice 1956 recording.
[:(]
Larry |
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