Friday, March 16, 2012

Columbia Record and Tape Club, November 1973

I stumbled on this while sorting through papers at my parents' house. It's a magazine/catalog for the Columbia Record and Tape Club from November 1973. Club members received these in the mail every month.

Right click on the image, then left click on "Open Link in New Window" to get a zoomable enlargement big enough to read...






In those days, albums were available in LP, 8-Track, cassette or ubersexy reel-to-reel. And if you wanted that month's selection you need do nothing!





The theme that month was famous musical duos, including Ferrante and Teicher who appear to have had special toupees made for the occasion.





Next were the rock selections.  I wonder whatever happened to Blue Mink?





Then we get into Pop and Easy Listening. Imagine being the writer that had to come up with these album blurbs. It must have been difficult to find fresh ways to say basically the same thing over and over.




More Pop, including the great Lawrence Welk. I can hear him now: "Wunnerful, wunnerful! Now da boys are gonna play dat great Duke Ellington hit, Take A Train!"





Here's some Country selections. It's surprising to see Jimmy Buffet in this category. And weren't Redd Foxx albums a little risque for Columbia?




Then we have a sort of genre free-for-all. Seiji Ozawa only recently had to cut back his schedule due to age and health. He's been conducting a long time.





And here we have a belly dancer and Boot Randolph side by side with Beethoven and Bach. Boots had a great career as a country-western sax player, of all things. If you ever watched Benny Hill, you've heard Boots.




Here we have the entire Jazz and show tune selection, pretty pathetic. One of the soundtrack albums even features the N-word. Amazing. Columbia Record and Tape Club was definitely not geared to the musical tastes of urbane sophisticates.
On the right is an offer for a gizmo to store your 8-Tracks. Even in today's dollars 14 bucks plus shipping seems a little pricey for a box that only holds 24 tapes.








Columbia Record and Tape Club, November 1973

I stumbled on this while sorting through papers at my parents' house. It's a magazine/catalog for the Columbia Record and Tape Club from November 1973. Club members received these in the mail every month.

Right click on the image, then left click on "Open Link in New Window" to get a zoomable enlargement big enough to read...






In those days, albums were available in LP, 8-Track, cassette or ubersexy reel-to-reel. And if you wanted that month's selection you need do nothing!





The theme that month was famous musical duos, including Ferrante and Teicher who appear to have had special toupees made for the occasion.





Next were the rock selections.  I wonder whatever happened to Blue Mink?





Then we get into Pop and Easy Listening. Imagine being the writer that had to come up with these album blurbs. It must have been difficult to find fresh ways to say basically the same thing over and over.




More Pop, including the great Lawrence Welk. I can hear him now: "Wunnerful, wunnerful! Now da boys are gonna play dat great Duke Ellington hit, Take A Train!"





Here's some Country selections. It's surprising to see Jimmy Buffet in this category. And weren't Redd Foxx albums a little risque for Columbia?




Then we have a sort of genre free-for-all. Seiji Ozawa only recently had to cut back his schedule due to age and health. He's been conducting a long time.





And here we have a belly dancer and Boot Randolph side by side with Beethoven and Bach. Boots had a great career as a country-western sax player, of all things. If you ever watched Benny Hill, you've heard Boots.




Here we have the entire Jazz and show tune selection, pretty pathetic. One of the soundtrack albums even features the N-word. Amazing. Columbia Record and Tape Club was definitely not geared to the musical tastes of urbane sophisticates.
On the right is an offer for a gizmo to store your 8-Tracks. Even in today's dollars 14 bucks plus shipping seems a little pricey for a box that only holds 24 tapes.








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