Radio Drama · Listeners' uploads · Variety & music

"Blueberry Hill" Series Preview: recorded @ CBS, Hollywood on March

Networks
CBS (as its archives name them)
Heard
1943
Episodes
1

This is an edited excerpt from a remarkable 30 minute recorded preview of the proposed CBS series “Blueberry Hill”. In the cast were Benny Carter’s Orchestra, Ernest Whitman, Mantan Moreland, Lou Mel Morgan Trio, Hattie McDaniel, and The Charioteers. My focus on this program is, for the purpose of this posting the memorable music. However, I’ve included the program opening and closing.

More about it

The latter is particularly interesting because the announcer explains the circumstances under which the production was done. The program clearly was designed primarily for a black audience. But no announcement was made of its segregated intent. The duration is 21:41.

The series was never aired on any of the four (NBC, CBS, Blue, Mutual) radio networks. It was evidently produced as “Jubilee” (I assume, at or by by CBS) for the AFRS (Armed Forces Radio Service).

The source was three sides of two 16” lateral cut 33.33 vinyl pressings. All (the fourth side had no grooves) of the sides were perceptibly but not egregiously worn. But they contained multiple scratches ranging from minor to significant. Circa 1973, I transferred the material to 15 ips tape. I digitized it about 5 – 10 years ago. This is a current (2012) work-in-progress. Therefore noise still reducible noise is still audible.

I am intolerant of the undesirable digital side effects that are caused by over-aggressive use of various tools, or poorly designed ones. Analog issues also often perpetrate various problems. Unfortunately…

Episodes, in broadcast order

  1. BlueberryHillPvw 1943

    No date given · 18 min

Where it comes from 1

The archive items its episodes are played from, best first, with each one’s rights as its archive states them. An episode two sets both hold is played from the first.

  1. "Blueberry Hill" Series Preview: recorded @ CBS, Hollywood on March 24, 1943

    Listeners' uploads · Shiffy 48 · 1 episode here · archive.org

    Uploader’s mark: CC0 1.0: Marked CC0 1.0 by its uploader at the Internet Archive; the record gives no basis for it.

Uploaded to the Internet Archive by the person named, outside its radio collections.

More Variety & music

Radio drama, old-time radio and historic broadcasts from the Internet Archive (its Old Time Radio collection with the Old Time Radio Researchers' sets, WWII Era Audio Recordings, the Pacifica Radio Archives, the Radio Haiti Archive, German radio plays and listeners' uploads), Wikimedia Commons (with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision's broadcasts) and the Library of Congress. Every episode plays from its archive, which this site does not copy; rights are as each archive states them. Nothing here is called public domain on this site's say-so. In the United States, sound recordings first fixed before 15 February 1972 have federal protection under the Music Modernization Act of 2018, for most until 2067 at the latest, so most American radio of the 1930s to the 1950s is not in the public domain there. Each set shows the licence, mark or statement its archive gives, and says whose it is. Horror, crime, war and westerns are for teenage and adult profiles, racist caricature for adults only, and children’s profiles hear what was made for children. More about these archives.