From the Encyclopedia of American Radio 1920-1960, The Anderson Family was
"A 30-minute syndicated program. The Anderson Family told of the funny adventures of an 'average' American family. The cast included Dick Lane, Louise Arthur and Walter Tetley (30 min., weekly, 1948)."
Broadcast historian Bob Dunn notes:
“Not to be confused with The Andersons, a short-lived 15-minute NBC daytime soap opera (1942).
Walter Tetley was is ALL sorts of shows--Buck Rogers, The Great Guildersleeve, Fred Allen, and with Phil Harris and Alice Faye on The Fitch Band Wagon (I always thought it was the Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show) among others. Heck, he was even "Sherman" on the Peabody and Sherman segments of Rocky and Bullwinkle!”
Program disks 1-36 were physically cleaned and transferred in 2003, and electronically restored by me as a hobby effort in Natick MA.
These particular vinyl 16” lateral cut transcription disks were once aired by WAYN radio (900AM, 1kW Rockingham, NC) as there is writing by pen on each label listing the date of airing. The programs were produced by Hollywood Broadcasters and published by The Cardinal Company of Hollywood, also creators of such shows as Adventures By Morse, The Johnson Family and Barnyard Jamboree. The disks were cut by union members of IBEW 45, North Hollywood CA. There are about 15 minutes on each 16-inch disk side at 33RPM, outside start.
The first Anderson Family program was recorded in 1947. There are shows at least to 1951 as programs 1-47 are known to have been made; but not all have surfaced in the OTR world yet. My transfer effort seems to have the most programs (36), and the highest quality. Do you know of others? I’d be happy to transfer and restore any Anderson disks you have. Let’s get the full run in the public domain!
From my listening, it seems that many of the program’s open and close organ music was recorded on disk and dubbed into the show as a new show was recorded. I am pleased at the wide dynamic range, frequency response and low distortion of most of these recordings.
It is listed on some websites that Howard Schwartz and Herb Litton wrote these programs. I think Howard’s last name sounds like Schwarz, as I cannot heard the “T” in these recordings. I’d love to learn more about this show series, especially the technical details.
After cleaning, I transferred these recordings using a Technics SP10 Mark 2 turntable, Stanton and Shure cartridges, a modified Radio Systems professional phono preamp feeding a Lynx One sound card. Some records were transferred wet, but most were done dry, with the stylus cleaned multiple times during a transfer. A few records were transferred twice, and many skips were edited out.
Restoration was painstakingly done using Adobe Audition 3 where the recordings were carefully de-clicked, pops either automatically or manually removed, very slight noise reduction added, stereo to mono conversion and corrective EQ added. No limiting was done. This effort has taken weeks of my time.
Please enjoy for private listening, but do not sell or air on a commercial station (non- commercial stations are fine). Do not edit or modify these MP3 files.
Finally, let me know what you think!
References