The Webcor Hi-Fi Diskchanger

Oh yes, I do remember those old diskchangers. They killed singles like there was no tomorrow – Ted 😉

The Mystery Solved

Oh shit! So that’s what really happened to him – Ted

Image found at Fifi~Feeling is First

Popular Music History 1945 – 1980 – Part 1 – Rock & Roll

Even the most music interested among us can sometimes get lost in all the different labels music journalists and record companies choose to put on recordings.

The 11 thorough well written articles in “The Rock Primer” takes us through the most important of the different categories in popular music in the period 1945 – 1980.

The categories are:
Rock & Roll, Folk & Blues, Rhythm & Blues, Soul, Country, British Beat, California Sun, Dylan and after, Reggae, Punk and The seventies.

Here’s the Rock & Roll article

Grand-daddy’s Sauce – Part 10

All posts material: “Sauce” and “Gentleman’s Relish” by Ronnie Barker – Hodder & Stoughton in 1977

A Gentleman Calling

Maid:	Are you in, madame?
Madame:	Nearly, I’ve got one leg in. You’d better say I’m out.
Maid:	I told him you were about to step into the bath, so he knows you’re in.
Madame:	I think you’d better tell him ,you made a mistake, and that l’m out. Tell him to come back in half an hour, by that time, I’ll be out, and you can tell him I’m in. Is that clear?
Maid:	No, madame …
Madame:	Look, tell him. . oh, never mind, send him up! "

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• Grand-daddy’s Sauce – Part 5 (retrorambling.wordpress.com)
• Grand-daddy’s Sauce – Part 3 (retrorambling.wordpress.com)
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The Hangover Heaven

Hangover Heaven is the apt name of the unusual bonnet above. Originally developed by makeup man Max Factor for the benefit of actresses who wish to refresh their faces on hot studio sets without spoiling their makeup, the facial ice pack was quickly diverted to another purpose by festive Hollywoodians. The headpiece, adorned with water-filled plastic cubes, is kept in the refrigerator while the water freezes.

Text and image from modernmechanix

Linda Denise Blair – American Actress

Linda Denise Blair (born January 22, 1959) is an American actress. Blair is best known for her role as the possessed child, Regan, in the film The Exorcist (1973), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award and two Golden Globes, winning one. She reprised her role in Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977).

Known background and early career
Blair was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and was raised in Westport, Connecticut. She began her career as a six-year-old child model and started acting with a regular role on the short-lived Hidden Faces (1968-69) daytime soap. Her first theatrical film appearance was in The Way We Live Now (1970). Blair was selected from a field of 600 applicants for her most notable role as Regan in The Exorcist (1973). The role earned her a Golden Globe and People’s Choice Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as an Academy Award nomination. She reprised her role in the sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), garnering a Saturn Award nomination for Best Actress of 1978. Between these two films, she appeared in the television films Born Innocent (1974), Airport 1975 (1974), Sarah T. – Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic (1975) and Sweet Hostage (1975) opposite Martin Sheen.

Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

Leopold Schmutzler – German Painter

Leopold Schmutzler was born at Mies in Bohemia but settled in Munich. His works of the late nineteenth-century, like the Russell-Cotes painting, treat contemporary and ‘frock-coat’ genre subjects with titles such as The Suitor, The Centre of Attention or Woman Eavesdropping on a Conversation. They tend to be painted in a realistic style recalling the ‘gallant’ subjects of eighteenth-century painting that were so fashionable at the time. The Minuet, like many of the artist’s works of this period, is proficiently executed with a detailed but free handling of the paint and it is characterised by a cloying, saccharine quality. In this scene several couples are represented dancing in a luxurious interior. Their smiles appear forced and the figures in the painting, rather than conveying the dynamism of the dance, appear frozen, almost as if they were made of porcelain. In the early twentieth century, Schmutzler exchanged his detailed technique for a broader style in tune with the fashion for Art Déco.

Text from Tott’Art

Pre-War Classics Of The Road – Part 10

1906 Pope-Toledo

The American Colonel Albert Pope ran a complex business empire but, of all the marques under his control. the finest was the Pope-Toledo, with its distinctive peaked radiator, of the 1903-1909 period, The 1906 Type 12 Pope-Toledo had a four-cylinder 35/40hp engine with ‘planetic’ cooling, could seat seven and sold for $ 3700 fully equipped and painted to the customer’s specification.

 

1906 Rover

The first production model from the Rover company was a little 8hp single-cylinder model. designed by E.W. Lewis. which appeared in 1904. In its original form. the 8hp Rover used a backbone chassis in which engine. clutch. gearbox. prop-shaft housing and rear axle formed a single unit. the rear of the body being sprung to the chassis. Later models used a more conventional chassis (bottom) and were built until 1912.

 

1906 Delahaye

According to one writer, the Type 32 Delahaye was ‘absolutely unbreakable’. Certainly, its 1944cc engine was called on to cope with quite massive coachwork, like the limousine de voyage shown here, which it did with silence and smoothness. In 1910, the young Parry Thomas, to achieve fame in the 1920s as a racing driver as well as an engineer, used a Type 32 Delahaye as a test bed for his ingenious electric transmission.

 

1906 Ford Model K

In 1906. at the insistence of his backers. Henry Ford built his first luxury car, the Model K Ford. It was fast but fragile. the two-speed epicyclic transmission being inadequate to deal with the torque of a 6-litre, six-cylinder engine. It did not sell well. and was soon dropped. leaving Ford to pursue his vision of ‘building a car for the multitudes’ .

This Week’s Favourite Female Singer – Wynona Carr

Wynona Carr (August 23, 1924 – May 12, 1976) was an African-American gospel, R&B and rock and roll singer-songwriter, who recorded as Sister Wynona Carr when performing gospel material.

Biography
Wynona Merceris Carr was born in Cleveland, Ohio, where she started out as a gospel singer, forming her own five-piece group The Carr Singers around 1945 and touring the Cleveland/Detroit area. Being tipped by The Pilgrim Travelers, who shared a bill with Carr in the late 1940s, Art Rupe signed her to his Specialty label,  giving Carr her new stage name "Sister" Wynona Carr (modelled after pioneering gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe) and cutting some twenty sides with her from 1949 to 1954, including a couple of duets with Specialty’s biggest gospel star at the time, Brother Joe May.

Not having too much success on the charts (except for "The Ball Game" (1952), which became one of Specialty’s best selling gospel records and most recently featured in the movie 42), Carr grew increasingly unhappy with the straight gospel direction of her career and pleaded with Rupe to let her record "pops, jumps, ballads, and semi-blues". Rupe relented and from 1955 to 1959 Carr recorded two dozen rock & roll and R&B sides for Specialty, which, like her gospel songs, she mostly wrote herself. Despite scoring an R&B hit with "Should I Ever Love Again?" in 1957, overall the change from spiritual to secular music didn’t help Carr much in terms of sales or recognition. Unfortunately she also contracted tuberculosis around this time, which kept her from doing the necessary promotional work and touring for two years, effectively ending her tenure with Specialty in the summer of 1959.

In 1961 Carr signed with Frank Sinatra’s Reprise Records and released an unsuccessful pop album. She moved back to Cleveland, sinking into obscurity and suffering from declining health and depression; she died there in 1976.

Style and appreciation
Carr’s contralto vocals have a sensual, husky quality quite unusual (or even inappropriate) for gospel singers in her day, which made her eventual switch to R&B and rock & roll seem a logical choice in retrospect. The same goes for her idiosyncratic use of metaphors and themes in her gospel songs: Baseball ("The Ball Game"), boxing ("15 Rounds For Jesus") and a popular TV show ("Dragnet For Jesus"). This penchant for novelty-like songs also shows in Carr’s later R&B repertoire, for instance "Ding Dong Daddy", "Nursery Rhyme Rock" and "Boppity Bop (Boogity Boog)".

Carr’s gospel recordings are very much influenced by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, incorporating blues and jazz stylings and already touching on R&B with her take on Roy Brown’s / Wynonie Harris’ "Good Rockin’ Tonight", entitled "I Heard The News (Jesus Is Coming Again)". Her early R&B material (for which she is probably best remembered now) was often uptempo, rock & roll-styled and similar in sound to fellow R&B / rock & roll artists on the Specialty roster like Little Richard, Lloyd Price and Larry Williams, with a strong New Orleans-style backbeat and a rich, warm production. Her final Specialty sessions, conducted by Sonny Bono in 1959, cut down on the rock & roll influences.

Both Carr’s gospel and R&B recordings went largely unappreciated during the time they were released, but found a new audience when Specialty Records released two CDs, covering Carr’s entire output on the label and adding previously unreleased material, such as a recording with Rev. C.L. Franklin (father of Aretha Franklin) and his New Bethel Baptist Church Choir in Detroit. Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The next 7 days you’ll find all tracks from this LP in the box widget in the right column

 

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The Meyra 200

The Meyra 200 was first manufactured in Germany in 1950.  the first Meyra was of a one wheel at the front and two at the back design that featured a canvas hood and an almost vertical windscreen.

In 1955 the vehicle changed dramtically now having two wheels at the front and one at the back. It was powered by a single cylinder 199cc two-stroke engine which drove the single rear wheel by a chain.  Entrance to the vehicle was via a door at the front of the vehicle and so due to its ease of access the vehicle was mainly aimed for invalid drivers.  Production ceased in 1956.

Text from 3wheelers

Mike Ludlow – Pin-up Artist & Illustrator

Ludlow was a glamour illustrator who did much pin-up work in the late 1950s for Esquire. He painted the entire twelve-page calendar for 1957 – the last published by the magazine. His pin-ups also appeared in the series of three-page centerfolds known as Esquire’s Lady Fair. For these works, Ludlow often called on actresses like Virginia Mayo and popular personalities like Betsy Von Furstenberg in addition to professional models.

Besides painting his Esquire pin-ups, Ludlow had another entire career as an illustrator of romance articles, providing pictures of beautiful women to mainstream magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping, Collier’s, and Family Circle. From 1950 to 1960, he also painted many front covers for paperback novels, including among his clients Pocket Books, Dell Books, and Bantam Books. All his paperback covers had a strong air of sensuality and featured sexy pin-up girls as the main figures.

Ludlow was born in 1921 and grew up in Buffalo, New York. He attended the Art Students League, where he studied with William McNulty. His first commercial art assignment, for the Sunday supplement of the Journal American, came in 1948. From the beginning, Ludlow has specialized in glamorous subjects and made beautiful women his trademark.

Text from mutoworld

Skoda 1102

The Czech company, founded in 1923, produced technically advanced cars before and during the war. In 1939 the German army conquered the country and they seized the company.Therefore, the production of passenger cars was closed down. After the war the company was nationalized and tried to resume the manufacture of small model 1101 and larger vehicles for the top leaders of the new Czech state.

Despite belonging to a communist economy country, the Skoda company was semicapitalist. The Model 1102, introduced this year, shows a great influence from the design and styles of American cars.The model range of the Skoda 1102 car was 1 liter sedans includes two and four doors, a convertible and a station wagon. All versions underwent periodically modernizations.

Cylinders: 4 in line
Displacement: 1,089 cc
Power: 32 hp
Valves: 8
Engine position: Front
Shaft: Rear
Cooling: Water
Maximum speed: 100 km / h.

Text (washed) from cartejeu

This Week’s Retro Recipe – Drinks & Cocktails Part 1

You’ll find the recipes HERE

The Retro DIY Project – Kitchen Chair Sled

You haven’t exhausted all the possibilities of sled construction till you’ve made this little gadget. It’s nothing more than a chair mounted on a pair of runners.

I made a a similar one when I was a kid. It was simply a kitchen tabouret mounted on a pair of shortened skis. Not the safest way to go down a steep hill, but great fun – Ted

Description and plans HERE

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Holiday Afloat, 1950s Style

Movie found at travelfilmarchive on YouTube

Retro DIY Project – A Barrel Stave Bob

It is not necessary to have a steel runnered sled to attain great coasting speed on a snowy hill. A bobsled can be built of an ordinary 2×12 inch plank and barrel staves which will pass anything on any hill, especially in deep snow. Besides the material just mentioned all that will be needed are a few pieces of 2×4 and a couple of carriage bolts.

Check out the whole project HERE

The Caille Five Speed Outboard Motors

Round Britain By Railway Posters – Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire (/ˈkeɪmbrɪdʒʃər/ or /ˈkeɪmbrɪdʒʃɪər/; also known, archaically, as the County of Cambridge; abbreviated Cambs.) is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west. The city of Cambridge is the county town. Modern Cambridgeshire was formed from the historic counties of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, together with the Isle of Ely and the Soke of Peterborough; it contains most of the region known as Silicon Fen.

Cambridgeshire is twinned with Kreis Viersen in Germany.

History
Cambridgeshire is noted as the site of some of the earliest known Neolithic permanent settlements in the United Kingdom, along with sites at Fengate and Balbridie.

Cambridgeshire was recorded in the Domesday Book as "Grantbridgeshire" (or rather Grentebrigescire) (cf the river Granta). Covering a large part of East Anglia, Cambridgeshire today is the result of several local government unifications. In 1888 when county councils were introduced, separate councils were set up, following the traditional division of Cambridgeshire, forthe area in the south around Cambridge, and
the liberty of the Isle of Ely.

In 1965, these two administrative counties were merged to form Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely. Under the Local Government Act 1972 this merged with the county to the west, Huntingdon and Peterborough (which had itself been created in 1965 by the merger of Huntingdonshire with the Soke of Peterborough – previously a part of Northamptonshire which had its own county council). The resulting county was called simply Cambridgeshire.

Since 1998, the City of Peterborough has been a separately administered area, as a unitary authority, but is associated with Cambridgeshire for ceremonial purposes such as Lieutenancy, and functions such as policing and the fire service.

In 2002, the conservation charity Plantlife unofficially designated Cambridgeshire’s county flower as the Pasqueflower.

A great quantity of archaeological finds from the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age were made in East Cambridgeshire. Most items were found in Isleham.

The Cambridgeshire Regiment (or Fen Tigers) county based army unit fought in South Africa, First World War and Second World War.

Due to its flat terrain and proximity to the continent, many airfields were built for RAF Bomber Command, RAF Fighter Command, and the USAAF during the Second World War. In recognition of this, the only American Second World War burial ground in England is located in Madingley Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial.

Most English counties have nicknames for their people, such as a Tyke from Yorkshire and a Yellowbelly from Lincolnshire; the traditional nicknames for people from Cambridgeshire are ‘Cambridgeshire Camel’ or ‘Cambridgeshire Crane’, referring to the wildfowl which were once abundant in the fens. The term ‘Fenners’ has been applied to those who come from the flat country to the north of Cambridge; however in recent times this term is considered to be abusive and its use is now less widespread.

Original historical documents relating to Cambridgeshire are held by Cambridgeshire Archives and Local Studies.

Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paris Plaisirs – French Magazine

Another favorite French magazine of the 1920s and 1930s is the, mostly unknown, Paris Plaisirs. It is comparable to the legendary, large format art deco era, La Vie Parisienne in style and size, while focusing on the stars of the music-hall. Paris Plaisirs also differed in another major aspect: it used photographs as well as illustrations in each issue. Many covers featured the creativity of Austrian photographer Manasse.

Part of the attraction of Paris Plaisirs, besides the obvious, is the amazing (unintentional) lines created by the French in the way they used images of women as the seductress. The representations ranged from hard boiled, tough girl, Kiki de Montparnasse (above) to passive posing (cover below) to all out femmes fatale as seen in most of the remaining covers in this post. Later, in the early 1930s, Paris Plaisirs and many other European pop-culture magazines recognized the attraction of Hollywood celebrity. In the last two covers, this "magazine tres Parisian", puts two major American movie stars on covers: first Ginger Rogers and on the final cover in this post, Jean Harlow.

Note that all the photographs used in Paris Plaisirs were made in black and white as the first true color film was not available until 1937. The creative solution was quite ingenious and used to lesser and greater success by many publishers. A "color separator" working with a "colorist" would create areas of color in solids, shades and tones similar to the method used to color the artwork for comic books. Other than the techniques needed to make this process convincing was the necessity to let the photo "come through" the colorization and not creating an illustration.

Interior pages of photos and illustrations and front covers follow without captions and in no particular order. Click on each image and a larger version of the scan will open in the same window.

Text from vasta-images-books

Abomah – The Tallest Woman In The World

Mme. Abomah (born 1862?) was known as the Amazon Giantess and the African Giantess. She has traveled all over the world as the tallest woman in the world: Australia, New Zealand, South America, France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, England, Scotland and Ireland. She was billed as being 7’6" tall, but photographic evidence suggests she was more in the 6’10" – 6’11" range. We have put her height at 6’10.5" tall. In the grouppicture below, althoug aging (63) and probably not at her peak height anymore, she is a lot shorter than the giant Jim Tarver (who might be standing on some kind of platform) but also clearly shorter than the giantess Londy Wagner. Furthermore, in the picture with ‘Transparent Williams, the living skeleton we can see that she is wearing high heels. It is probably safe to assume that she was wearing similar high heels under her long dress.

It is assumed that her surname was Grigsby, and originally came from Laurence County, South Carolina, United States.

Text from thetallestman