John R. Hickman Collection

Last night I happened upon an online library collection of digitized reel-to-reel recordings that I'm not sure has been widely publicized among OTR listeners.

The American University Library has posted a few hundred radio programs from what I surmise was a donated collection from an early OTR collector. They've posted no in-depth information on Mr. Hickman, but the nature of the recordings reminded me of the Joe Hehn Memorial Collection.

Here's the description from the website:

The John R. Hickman Collection consists of broadcast quality audio recordings of vintage radio news and entertainment programs, from the 1920s through the 1970s. The digitization of this collection is a work in progress. Select reel-to-reel tapes of major news events from 1939 -1953, and episodes from Amos 'n' Andy, Biography in Sound, The Cavalcade of America, The Goldbergs, Hear It Now, Life Can Be Beautiful, Lux Radio Theatre, Mary Margaret McBride, One Man's Family, Our Gal Sunday, The Original Amateur Hour, and The Romance of Helen Trent have been digitized.

The shows are available for listening, not download, and so far consist of over 300 Cavalcade of America and a few of the other programs mentioned, plus a *previously uncirculated* (to my knowledge, it's not been available anywhere) episode of Biography in Sound (Architect of Victory - George C. Marshall 58-07-03).

Here's the webpage: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Three cheers for the American University Library and Mr. Hickman or his heirs for making this collection publicly available! I look forward to seeing more shows posted.

Kelli

Here's the George Marshall

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Thank you, Wildcat!!

There's a way to record these using VLC Media Player, but I can never remember how to do it.

Thanks, Bobby! I've used SoundTap from NCH for recording streaming shows (usually from the BBC). Very easy to use and creates a WAV file.

I recorded a Goldbergs episode from the Hickman collection and discovered that there is a Joyce Jordan, MD episode appended to the track that the archivists did not split off. I've notified them and also asked if they have any information on the date of the Joyce Jordan.

The Joyce Jordan is from 44-06-07 The same as the Goldbergs

Thanks, Wildcat!!

I remember listening to John Hickman as host of "The Big Broadcast," playing several hours of OTR every Sunday night on WAMU FM in Washington back in the 1980s.

Mr. Hickman joined the staff at WAMU-FM in 1964 when he created "Recollections," a program featuring vintage broadcasts from the "golden age of radio." This program later became "The Big Broadcast," which is hosted by Ed Walker and is WAMU's longest-running program. Until his stroke in 1990, Mr. Hickman was the show's host. He was born in Washington and graduated from St. John's College High School. He attended Belmont Abbey in North Carolina and graduated from American University.

More biographical info:
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and
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Has anyone contacted the group hosting the Calvalcade episodes to discuss what exactly they have copyrighted?

otrhead wrote:Has anyone contacted the group hosting the Calvalcade episodes to discuss what exactly they have copyrighted?

When I first discovered the site, I emailed the archive to thank them for making the shows available and enjoyed a subsequent email exchange with one of the librarians. She said they are in the process of digitizing the reel-to-reel tapes and was very happy that someone was enjoying their efforts to make them accessible. She also said she'd let the administration know so that they can reevaluate their priorities in getting them done--in other words, the more positive feedback they receive, the faster they will be able to digitize.

Copyright never came up. As this is a library archive of a university, I think they'd probably regard their posting of the Cavalcade shows as fair use, but that's just a surmise.

The contact email is [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], and as I said, any positive responses help them determine how much time and effort to spend on digitizing and posting the collection, which would be wonderful to have widely available. And many thanks to Bill Goodwin for posting about Mr. Hickman's important and early role in preserving golden age radio!

How to record a Calvalcade episode.

I am using Firefox so can't say what happens when using other browsers.

1. Click an icon to open it for listening.
2. Hit the PLAY arrow to play the episode.
3. Stop the play by hitting pause in the lower left of the icon.
3. Right click on the icon and select "Save Audio As"
4. In the pop up window "PROXY_MP3.mp3" will come up and allow you to rename the episode.
5. save file to your favorite directory.

Any trouble remember I am using Firefox. This method has worked for the first 87 episodes without problems.

Another way to grab them (using Firefox)....

Right click any of the icons and then select "View Page Source".

Scroll down the page and look for a line of blue highlighted text that will look something like:

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Right click on the text and click in the pop up "Save Link AS"

Rename the highlighted text (looks similar to "UesOv0NV") adding ".MP3"

otrhead what was the name of the show you posted

thanks

The first icon on the page that is pointed to by...

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is.....
Amos 'n' Andy (Program 360) May 29, 1929

found by scrolling down the page when viewing "View Page Source"

and save the link:

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Easier is to start play and pause it, right click the icon and "Save Audio AS"
which will look like this in the pop up window "PROXY_MP3.mp3"

I have the first 5 pages downloaded. I will post them today up on pcloud. Save yourself some work and start on page 6.

Calvalcade of America pages 1 through 5.....

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Here is page 6.....


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If you don't mind the janky filenames and file hosts:

I wrote a python script last night and scraped all the audio from that site.  ~419 audio files, 5.5 GB

Cavalcade of America, Part 1: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Cavalcade of America, Part 2: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Not Cavalcade, Part 3: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

If anyone has an organized plan on comparing this collection to known audio files available at otrr.org or archive.org, holler.

Cavalcade of America 1938-06-29 Eleuthere Irenee Du Pont.mp3

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Cavalcade of America 1938-03-09 The Last of the Scouts.mp3

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If you are a listener, A tooth for Paul Revere is more a fable than the factual stories you usually hear on the Cavalcade. But it is a good story and Raymond Massey as the lead actor does not disapoint.

Clicks removed, skips that repeat fixed saved as a cbr64kb file.....

COA 420511 A Tooth for Paul Revere

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