Here’s a program from late in the old time radio era, but the long-running series was well known during the era.
“Guest Star” was a program promoting US Savings Bonds. It usually included musical guests that performed their latest tunes, but also included other types of performers hawking for the Treasury Department.
Program 679 for broadcast the week of March 27, 1960 features Warren Covington and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. The first tune on the show is “The Tea for Two Cha-Cha”. Del Sharbutt is the announcer.
At this point in the series, rock n’ roll had taken over AM radio and “Guest Star” was concentrating more on what we would think of today as “easy listening” or “adult contemporary” artists for their more adult audience. This was from the microgroove era when four shows in hi-fi would be distributed on one 16” transcription. It’s the type of show that might have popped up on the adult-oriented FM radio outlets of the period and gives us a glimpse of how the big bands and vocalists soldiered on through this new era of youth-oriented music that changed the industry.
Our show was transferred from an original 16” vinyl microgroove Treasury Department transcription. My apologies for the skip that occurs during the opening tune.
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