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March 31, 2023
2 new products and 5 featured products from Radio Archives this week!
All new and featured products are discounted the first week.
Tomorrow the first 600 files of the Transcription Transfers project will be sent to all subscribers. I am happy to report that the subscription program is a Go. It’s been an amazing week and we have twice as many subscribers as we had a week ago.
Featured: previously released
Volume 3
A precedent-shattering radio landmark that became a national institution -- its influence is with us yet. And now Radio Archives is proud to take you back to the beginning, with a third volume of exciting broadcasts from the first and second seasons of Jack Webb's police procedural classic "Dragnet."
Police procedurals go back long before "Dragnet's" 1949 premiere -- with an especially strong heritage in Los Angeles. Private Investigator Nick Harris presented dramatizations drawn from his own true-life case files as far back as the 1920s, and the Los Angeles Police Department itself collaborated closely with Don Lee Network producer William N. Robson for the long-running 1930's series "Calling All Cars." But these formats fell from favor by the 1940s, with the advent of the "hard boiled dick" genre of crime programs. An ordinary policeman just doing his job had little chance against the legions of smart-mouthed gumshoes parading across the ether during the postwar years.
But inevitably, that genre collapsed under the weight of its own clichés -- and when "Dragnet" premiered in 1949 it was a breath of fresh air. No wisecracks, no impossibly exaggerated characterizations, no too-purple-for-belief dialogue, just a dedicated law enforcement officer, determined to do his job as completely and as thoroughly as possible. Joe Friday is one of radio's great Everyman figures -- just another workaday guy in a cheap suit, trudging thru his daily routine -- but in Webb's hands, the characterization takes on a fascinating edge of realism. The deliberately-low-key direction and the stylized flat-voiced delivery of the supporting cast adds to this downbeat, it's-really-happening style, giving "Dragnet" a feeling and a mood unlike that of any other radio program of its era.
Programs included in this third Radio Archives collection are from the second year of the program's run and date from May thru September of 1950. It's interesting to note that the essential feel of the series was there from the very beginning of the run: the quiet byplay between Friday and his partner Ben Romero (expertly played by radio veteran Barton Yarborough), the meticulous documentation of the unfolding case, and the careful pacing of each episode as it builds slowly but steadily to a climax. The supporting players are drawn from the ranks of top radio talent, including such performers as Frank Lovejoy, Parley Baer, Hans Conried, and Raymond Burr, and the production values -- layering sound upon sound -- are of astonishing proficiency. It's a collection that shows you just how powerful, just how creative, and just how fascinating American radio drama could be when it found itself in the hands and mind of a master.
10 hours - MP3 regular price $19.99
Featured: previously released
Volume 29
Radio Preservation has always been at the core of Radio Archives. This exciting series is derived from our massive collection of thirty thousand radio shows from 16" transcription discs.
This 20 hour collection includes shows from the classic days of Radio. You'll find rare and obscure as well as mainstream radio shows from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s in the Radio Archives Treasures sets.
These shows have all been restored with state-of-the-art CEDAR technology - the audio processing system used by major recording companies to restore older recordings. We expect the shows to be the best sounding copies available anywhere. Radio Archives Treasures are restored to sparkling digital quality.
Volume 29 includes shows from these series.
The Ford Theatre, The Bing Crosby Show, Maxwell House Coffee Time, The Passing Parade, The Gulf Screen Guild Theatre, The Black Museum, One Night Stand, The Lux Radio Theatre, Your Hit Parade, The Chase, The Comic Weekly Man, The General Store, The Lucky Strike Hour, The Man on The Farm, Chesterfield Time With Paul Whiteman, The Cavalcade of America, Comedy Stars of Broadway, The Blue Beetle, The Guy Lombardo Show, Dude Martin's Radio Rancho, and Dude Martin's Sunrise Roundup.
Featured: previously released
The Jewels of Doom
by G. Wayman Jones
Forged in war, The Phantom Detective wages a one-man battle on crime! Solving impossible mysteries and delivering his own justice, he is the underworld’s masked nightmare!
The Phantom Detective pits his strength and ingenuity against the fiendish perpetrators of sinister criminal machinations originating in India and involving American gangdom — bringing death and disaster in their wake. Wherever the grim game of life and death is played — wherever criminals are tightening their fiendish grip on society — the Phantom Detective takes a hand! The world’s greatest sleuth — master of disguise, deduction, psychology — holds the ace in the dramatic game played by the underworld against the forces of law and order. Thrill to his exciting adventures, breath-taking perils and astonishing cleverness in a smashing, action-packed narrative of death and disaster in the wake of a gigantic, sinister plot only The Phantom Detective can uncover!
Somewhat aimless upon his return from the war, Richard Curtis Van Loan confided often in a friend of his father’s, the rather influential Frank Havens, the publisher of the Clarion newspaper. A father figure to Van Loan in many ways since he had been orphaned as a child, Havens provided the advice to the young man that would change his life and the course of pulp history forever. Noting a particular crime that the city’s police were having trouble solving, Havens challenged Van Loan to try his hand at solving it. Van Loan does just that and in the process discovers his purpose. Not only that, but Van Loan learns of the true level of corruption and crime riddling his city and the world at large. Determined to strike back for justice and ordinary citizens, Van Loan decides to create another identify for himself and take his fight literally to the streets.
The Jewels of Doom was originally published in the July 1933 issue of The Phantom Detective Magazine and is read with pulse pounding intensity by award winning voice actor Milton Bagby.
5 hours - MP3 regular price $9.99
Featured: previously released
Slaves of the Crime Master
by Norvell W. Page writing as Grant Stockbridge
Never before has the Spider, Master of Men, crusader extraordinary against the Underworld, been faced with such overwhelming difficulties. A magically persuasive radio voice luring thousands of young people to crime; a scientific madman dealing germicidal death over the nation; every criminal gang in the country organized to levy toll by stark terror... How can Richard Wentworth link these facts, weave a web of retribution for the Doom Dealer? With his beloved Nita captured and waiting for a ghastly old-world torture, his one-time friend Kirkpatrick ordering police on his trail to ‘Kill at Sight!’, his every movement hampered not only by outlaws but by the law itself — can even the Spider find a way to free humanity from the grip of wholesale destruction being planned for it by the greatest of all Crime Masters?
The Spider did not speak lightly of evil. He was too gentle, too tender a lover, to blot the glamorous night with useless vaporings. He was too courageous to take fright from vague notions. But through years of ceaseless struggle and hourly danger—not alone from the Underworld but also from the police who considered his brand-marked executions of criminals only murder—he had developed an uncanny feeling like the sixth sense of bats. Flying in the dark, scarcely seeing, the convoluted facial feelers of a bat received, apparently, an impact of air waves which forewarned the animal of obstacles in its path. So something—thought waves?—warned the Spider of danger.
Nick Santa Maria brings the Spider to vivid life in one of the most dramatic Spider stories ever recorded. Slaves of the Crime Master originally published in The Spider magazine, April, 1935.
Radio Archives Pulp Classics
Total Pulp Experience. These exciting pulp adventures have been beautifully reformatted for easy reading as an eBook and features every story, every editorial, and every column of the original pulp magazine.
Black Book Detective magazine was probably best known for its long-running series of adventure stories featuring the crimefighter known as The Black Bat. But The Black Bat didn't appear until six years into the magazine's run with the July 1939 issue. The magazine first hit the newsstands with the June 1933 issue. For the next six years, it tried different approaches. Issue one began with a featured novel and several backup short stories. The following year it started promoting "three new complete novels" in each magazine, but abandoned that approach after four issues. It then tried shorter novelets, combined with short stories. In 1935 and 1936, it tried the "weird menace" approach, featuring scantily-clad women in peril on the covers, then switched back to hard crime. In 1938 they tried featuring recurring characters in their main novel. Gentleman thief Raffles appeared in two consecutive issues. Jonathan Drake, Ace Manhunter appeared in three issues.
The editors struck gold with The Black Bat, who first appeared in the July 1939 issue. Supposedly blind District Attorney Tony Quinn was secretly the master crime fighter known as The Black Bat. The stories were credited to the house name of G. Wayman Jones, but in actuality were written mainly by Norman A. Daniels. The Black Bat stories ran exclusively in the bi-monthly Black Book Detective magazine until it finally printed its last issue in the Winter of 1953. Black Book Detective returns in these vintage pulp tales, reissued for today’s readers in electronic format.
Radio Archives Pulp Classics
Total Pulp Experience. These exciting pulp adventures have been beautifully reformatted for easy reading as an eBook and features every story, every editorial, and every column of the original pulp magazine.
Death strikes in the night! Murder inside a locked room! For thrills, chills and action galore, readers of the 1930s, 1940s and into the 1950s clamored for a pulp magazine by the name of Thrilling Detective. Thrilling Detective magazine was one of the earliest pulp answers to America's insatiable appetite for mystery and detective tales. It was the first of Ned Pines's long line of pulp magazines, starting in 1931 and running for an amazing 213 issues before closing down in the Summer of 1953. Thrilling Publications was responsible for other long-running pulps such as Startling Stories, The Lone Eagle, Black Book Detective and Thrilling Wonder Stories. Famous pulp characters The Phantom Detective, Captain Future, the Black Bat and Captain Danger, all appeared in other Thrilling publicaions.
Each Thrilling Detective magazine started off with a book-length mystery novel, and then was followed up by a half-dozen or so shorter stories of thrills and danger. Appearing solely in Thrilling Detective were recurring characters like Doctor Coffin, The Green Ghost, Craig Kennedy, Raffles, G-Man Jones, Mike Shayne, Race Williams and Mr. Death. Some of America's most foremost writers took up their pens to write for the magazine. Names like Arthur J. Burks, Wayne Rogers, H.M. Appel, George Allan Moffatt, Norman A. Daniels, Johnston McCulley, George Fielding Eliot, L. Ron Hubbard, Paul Ernst, Emile C. Tepperman, Edmond Hamilton, Laurence Donovan, Ralph Oppenheim, Robert Sidney Bowen, Henry Kuttner, Murray Leinster, Fredric Brown, Brett Halliday, Carroll John Daly, Louis L'Amour and Bruce Elliott. Thrilling Detective returns in these vintage pulp tales, reissued for today’s readers in electronic format.
Featured: previously released
Radio Archives Pulp Classics
Total Pulp Experience. These exciting pulp adventures have been beautifully reformatted for easy reading as an eBook and features every story, every editorial, and every column of the original pulp magazine. As a special bonus, Will Murray has written an introduction especially for this series of eBooks.
Another epic exploit of America’s best-loved pulp-fiction character of the 1930s and 1940s: The Spider — Master of Men! Richard Wentworth — the dread Spider, nemesis of the Underworld, lone wolf anti-crime crusader who always fights in that grim no-man’s land between Law and lawless — returns in vintage pulp tales of the Spider, reissued for today’s readers in electronic format.
Radio Archives Pulp Classics line of eBooks are of the highest quality and feature the great Pulp Fiction stories of the 1930s-1950s. All eBooks produced by Radio Archives are available in ePub and Mobi formats for the ultimate in compatibility. If you have a Kindle, the Mobi version is what you want. If you have an iPad/iPhone, Android, or Nook, then the ePub version is what you want.
The Bargain Basement is where you find all the discounted Audio CDs including everything featured in this newsletter.
Comments From Our Customers!
Bob Johnson writes:
The Spider Audiobook #17 The Pain Emperor. Thrill-a-second Spider adventure, read with great gusto!
If you'd like to share a comment with us or if you have a question or a suggestion send an email to Service@RadioArchives.com. We'd love to hear from you!
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Audio CD ordering information
We offer Audio CDs of all of our Old Time Radio sets and Pulp Audiobooks. To order click here for the Audio CD Order Form or by voicemail at 800-886-0551. All discounted Audio CDs are in the Bargain Basement.
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