Broadband Sound and Video - WINDOWS MEDIA FORMAT
Please ensure before attempting to play or download these files you are equipped with Microsoft's WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER
Note that these is one huge file, if your internet connection is fast, it should stream OK, otherwise "right click" on your Windoze desktop and "save as..." and note that since it is a huge file, and download speeds from this web host have been in doubt lately, it could take days/weeks/months, to complete. I was unable to chop it into smaller files, sorry, but I was able to "tweak" the brightness as the original files were too dark to see; the quality of everything is poor by today's standards, these films go back a long way; they were telecine converted into a VHS camera sometime long ago, and the results do not exactly yield 'hi-def' but it is invaluable material, about an hour and a half worth of enjoyment. File size is 409 MEGABYTES. Try to watch it a little at a time in Windows Media Player. If I start getting charged for excess traffic all download the site may be disabled or shut down.
from the Ed Prentiss Television show entitled "Music of the 60's"
(note: this is a 261 megabyte file; it may stream on a good broadband connection, if not right click and "save as" before trying to play)
Alan Bunting, who graciously provided this film, has remastered it and added titling, offering us a rare glimpse into the past. It's the real thing - real mikes, music stands, composer-conductor-arranger (!) and that same parquet floor you see on the back of the BROADWAY BOUQUET album, 3 years or so before that album was recorded. It was originally found on 16mm film.
I just looked at this clip. It's awful. However, after all my moves and scattering and destruction of original material which was pretty bad in the first place, I'm not sure re-recording the clip will help. Translation: VHS is awful. VHS copied to copies that are copied is beyond awful. Windows Media Encoder loses it with poor VHS noisy video. I have higher standards and will continue to experiment, but poor quality VHS yields even poorer quality digital transfers.
I'm not sure that this interview is complete, there are some words truncated, but it has been a long way to get it here. I had edited it to put in stereo tracks for listening, but was criticized big-time for doing that (one comment said that I was taking the listener's valuable time...grrrrr.) so here it is UNedited from the EDITED copy and not everthing is here; many full commerical Faith tracks were played on the show, but this clip attempts to bring only fade-outs of songs, and I spent some quality time removing all my "stereo" tracks. Sadly, I'm not sure it is complete. I made a cassette copy when visiting Marilyn in 1991, and rushed to get it on open reel, but it was spread about in pieces. Just this last summer I got my 30 year old TEAC A-3300SX tape deck working so now we can all enjoy what I could get out of it! The last few minutes include Marilyn "Faith" Leonard speaking!
This was the 1-hour show that once commercials, Paul Harvey, newscasts, ID's and promos are deleted, amounts to about 19 1/2 minutes; but enjoy. I know I did, I was seated next to Percy Faith and got to ask him lots of questions during all those "breaks" (Tom had programmed many Faith tracks, it wasn't all commercials). I had edited them out, crudely, but the fast-paced engineering at WMAL didn't make that easy so it has a few boo-boos. After the large build-up at the end of the interview for "The Hill Where The Lord Hides" I decided to leave this in, and crudely spliced in the track from the then brand-new Lp "New Thing" in stereo. The interview sounds very low-fidelity because I had to set up my equipment to run unattended to record this show while I was at the studio myself, and used some horribly low speed (don't remember, but may have used 1 7/8 i.p.s. speed on an open reel Sony, but it was worth it to be able to drive to DC and not have the tape run out! Meeting Percy Faith was great, and I'll always be grateful to Tom Gauger for letting me in the studio against management rules (!) for that great hour. That picture somewhere on this site of me standing next to Percy Faith was taken outside the then-new building where WMAL had put in their new studio on Jeniffer Street in Northwest section of Washington, DC.
Next is a new contribution for 2006, captured by Bert Richard; where you might see Toscanini conducting a classical masterpiece at 2:38:15 am on a Wednesday on cable (I'm making this all up) - here you will see PERCY FAITH conduct THE VOICE OF FIRESTONE orchestra in 1958 - two selections - Georges Auric's MOULIN ROUGE, which of course you can compare to Percy's conducting with his own studio orchestra from Alan's film clip above; then MORITAT (Mack The Knife?) by Kurt Weill. Incredible shots of Percy conducting in this one. The critic in me was a little let down by the accordionist with timing and embellishment disagreements, and I don't understand some of the brass punctuations that had not appeared in the '56 version from PASSPORT TO ROMANCE - same sort of thing happened with a film clip in 1955, from the Paul Whiteman show where Percy oddly had brass punching in on SWEDISH RHAPSODY. OH well. This is such a rare opportunity to glimpse into the past; we have the wonderful recordings to celebrate but precious little video of the orchestra, so thanks to Bert Richard, here's a bit more!
Notes on video play: These files are in Windows Media format and are huge. This is no big deal for a broadband connection but will take quite a while to download and begin playing in a dial-up connection. My suggestion, right click on the above links and "save as" to capture the entire file and play it later offline if you are using dialup; read several chapters of a large book, do the laundry, cut the grass. If you have call waiting cancel it (prefix your call with *70 in most areas) and during the tremendous downloads, no one will be able to call you (they'll of course get a busy signal). After great expanses of time the file should be captured on your PC. As with the musical selection below, your Windows Media Player associations must be set up correctly. Browse Microsoft's site for instructions. I cannot provide this file in any other format and without huge sacrifices in quality.
Click to hear PERCY FAITH and His Orchestra play PERPETUAL NOTION, a stunning Faith original from 1949, in Windows Media format. It is optimized for 64 kbps, too fast for dialup connections; if you can't "buffer and play" try right clicking on the link and use "save target as" to capture the .wma file for use with your Windows Media Player.
PLEASE DON'T FORGET; These videos and audio clips are for HISTORICAL purposes. Do me a favor and enjoy them but they are not for reposting on other sites.
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