You're luckier than me--you get to listen to the sounds without having to smell the musty jackets. Someone dumped a good number of these Evanston (IL) Township High School "yearbook records" in a local Goodwill, all having apparently been stored in a very humid environment for who knows how long. But the discs looked fine, with no sign of mildew--no mildew visible to the naked eye, that is. I knew they'd clean up fine. The jackets contain barely any track-specific information, so I was at the mercy of the label listings. There are two years represented per disc: 1955-1956; 1956-1957; 1957-1958, and 1963-1964. The first two jackets use the same cover art, while the third (not pictured) shows the school. The fourth (1963-64) jacket design for the yearbook record can only be described as groovy. Sort of like if Picasso (in a more conventional mood) designed a rock poster:
Initially, I though I was up a crick in terms of matching discs to jackets, as the first three jackets are without numbering or track listings. Luckily, the three discs have RCA custom pressing numbers, and the three prefixes--G, H, and J--give me the years 1956, 1956, and 1958. For some reason, RCA skipped the letter I. The 1963-64 LP cover lists track titles, so no problem there. By that point, Columbia was doing the custom pressings, though Delta Records of Chicago was doing the producing and "publishing." (My headache threshold is being breached--I can feel it.)
I had to adjust the uneven volume levels and bypass a lot of choppy edits, or t least soften their effect. Recording quality ranges from pretty bad to good. I have two E.T.H.S. all-Christmas LPs from c. 1971 on the way which contain tracks ranging from good to unbelievably good. I'm currently struggling with scanning the inside of the gatefold jacks for those--an epic task. I tried simply photographing them, but the results were dismal. I hate it when scanning issues hold up a post, all while every other part is ready to rock. I'm sure we all hate that. Recent polls (that I just made up) show that 80 percent of Americans who live in red houses and own dogs and are undecided about Impeachment and lease 2.3 cars and have never used a trampoline hate it when posts are held up by scanning issues. We're talking scientific proof, here.
Since the Christmas sections of these "yearbooks" aren't very long, I decided, in the interests of presenting a cool Midwestern high school time capsule, to include an elaborate talent show sketch (quite dated, in a delightful way), the E.T.H.S. marching band doing the chorus of Rock Around the Clock in 1955 or 1956, and some astoundingly good Dixieland ("trad jazz," the Brits would say) from the Windjammers, who are 99.9 percent certain to be this group, which recorded for Argo in 1965:
Pic from eBay, though I used to have my own copy. In the liner notes, the group is said to be from "the Chicago area," and Evanston is twelve miles north of downtown Chicago, so draw your own conclusions. Preternaturally good young talents.
The band playing Sleigh Ride on the 1963-64 Hi-Lights is also terrific, though maybe not quite as, and the audio is a major step up from the 1950s tracks. At 99 cents apiece, the entire pile would have been too much cash to risk (in case the stuff proved inadequate for my blog), so I picked and chose. Hence, the gap: 1955-1958, then 1963-64. Those three RCA custom matrix numbers were a post-saver, given the absence of track listings on the corresponding jackets. If little of this is making sense, you're fine--I'm confusing myself, too. Some of these posts require a staff, and I don't have one....
A deliciously fun time capsule follows. I'm considering going back for more (I doubt anyone has grabbed any), but I think maybe I've inhaled my mold and mildew RDAs for 2020, and it's still 2019.
As the track listings don't contain credits, I would have had to fetch that info from the audio introductions (which some tracks lacked), and that proved too much work--too time-consuming, anyway, with everything else I was juggling. I'll leave it to you to pick up the specifics by ear--I just gave sketchy credits (e.g. "Music Department"). As a listener, you're not slicing and dicing files and trying to match jacket to disc, or any of that distracting stuff. Nor did you have to wade through adults going "Blah, blah, blah, blah, as we look to the future, blah, blah, we'd like to thank this or that member of the blah, blah, blah committee, without whose axe murders we would have had to rely on attrition, blah, blah...."
Only after ripping these did it occur to me that the happy, silly, and talented teens on the earliest sides here are all 80 now, or pushing 80. It was a "gulp" moment....
Enjoy!
DOWNLOAD: E.T.H.S. High School Christmas
1. 1955-1956 Talent Show
2. Rock Around the Clock (one chorus)--E.T.H.S. Marching Band, 1955 or 1956
3. Christmas Show--Music Department (1955)
4. The Christmas Festival--Music Department (1956)
5. Christmas Festival--Music Department (1957)
5. Sleigh Ride (Anderson)--E.T.H.S. Band (1963)
6, No track title--The Windjammers (from Hi-Lights '63-'64)
Lee
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