Category Archives: Music

Saturday Night Country takes you ‘down under’ for the holidays

Felicity Urquhart, host of ABC's Saturday Night Country. (photo: ABC)

Felicity Urquhart, host of ABC’s Saturday Night Country. (photo: ABC)

If you’ve been reading the SWLing Post for long, you’ll know how much I love ABC’s Saturday Night Country, which I tune to every Saturday morning starting on 9,580 kHz.

Yesterday, host Felicity Urquhart produced another great mix of interviews and music, including some uniquely Australian Country Christmas songs.

You can download the recordings of the show as MP3s by clicking here for the first hour of Saturday Night Country on 9,580 kHz and here for the rest of the show on 11,945 kHz, or by simply listening via the embedded player below:

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NPR: WWII ‘Canteen Girl’ Kept Troops Company From Afar

(Photo source: NPR)

(Photo source: NPR)

Long before the Internet and satellite phone, Phyllis Jeanne Creore Westerman brought soldiers home at Christmas via shortwave radio:

(Source: National Public Radio)

American service members have long spent holidays in dangerous places, far from family. These days, home is a video chat or Skype call away. But during World War II, packages, letters and radio programs bridged the lonely gaps. For 15 minutes every week, “Canteen Girl” Phyllis Jeanne Creore spoke and sang to the troops and their loved ones on NBC radio.

Her Christmas shows were morale boosters. America must “use more sentiment and less tinsel, and that’s the way it should be,” she told her listeners during one wartime Christmas broadcast. Now 96, Phyllis Jeanne Creore Westerman sits in her apartment on New York’s Fifth Avenue, remembering those seasonal broadcasts she recorded 70 years ago.

[…]She did a bit of radio work, found singing jobs with various bands at hotels like the Biltmore, and volunteered at the Stage Door Canteen. That’s where she got the idea for a regular radio show — to reach more troops — across the U.S., and in Europe by short wave.

Read the full article and listen to Susan Stamberg’s interview on NPR.org.

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Pirate Radio Recordings: True Classic Rock Radio

Last weekend, I caught a shortwave pirate I’d never heard before: True Classic Rock Radio.

Well, at least I’m pretty confident that’s their name. When I first heard their ID I couldn’t confirm it, but when I passed the clip to my buddy Andrew, he nailed it.

Funny thing is, when I go back and listen to the station ID now (check it out around 17:30, and then again at the end of transmission) it sounds so obvious.

This short broadcast includes some great classic rock and ends with Hendrix. I didn’t note the exact time they began to broadcast, but I heard them on between 3:00-4:00 UTC, on 6,925 kHz AM, December 8, 2012. Click here to download the mp3 directly, or listen through our Archive.org player:

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Radio Australia: Saturday Night Country mixes in holiday music

Yesterday, like most Saturday mornings, I sipped my coffee while listening to ABC’s Saturday Night Country from Radio Australia’s Shepparton shortwave transmission site on 9.58 MHz.

In this program, SNC’s host, Felicity Urquhart, shuffled in some holiday tunes with her normal mix of country music, news and interviews. Fortunately, I captured the whole show in two recordings (starting on 9.58 MHz for the first hour, then moving to 11.945 MHz for the rest of the show).

Enjoy:

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Shortwave Radio Recordings: Voice of Greece music

For your listening pleasure: over three hours of music, and a little Greek commentary, from the Voice of Greece. Recorded on  November 26th, on 9.42 MHz.

In the last half of the recording, after an adjacent station went off the air, the audio fidelity is simply amazing–especially for a station over 5000 miles from my receiver.

Click here to download the MP3 of the recording, or listen below:

Need more Voice of Greece music in your day? Click here for more.

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Help Myke fund a 2013 ShortWaveMusic series on Socotra, Yemen

We’ve mentioned Myke Dodge Weiskopf before on the SWLing Post, he’s a radio producer, historian, broadcast artist, multi-instrumentalist, sound recordist, and composer based in Los Angeles, CA.

Myke travels around the world with his trusty Eton E1 and recording equipment in tow to capture both sounds from the ether and live performances. He then makes them available on his website, Myke.me.

He’s now planning a recording trip to isolated island of Socotra and needs your help.  He has a Kickstarter campaign which outlines plans for his trip. Watch the video below and consider helping him by contributing to his goal of raising $3,500 US.

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Get your radio nostalgia fix from The UK 1940s Radio Station

Several months ago, I wrote a post confessing that I recently embraced internet radio, and since then have been using a very affordable Cricket Android Phone as an inexpensive, portable wi-fi radio. You see, though I prefer listening to shortwave radio, and though there are notable exceptions, it’s not always the best source to pipe music through the hi-fi system in our house.

At one point, I actually subscribed to XM satellite radio. I eventually dropped it, and found there were only two things I really missed from XM: Tom Petty’s Buried Treasure, and the 40s on 4 station, which played music from the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s.

Introducing The UK 1940s Radio Station

Fortunately, there is an excellent radio station–indeed, better than XM/Sirius’ 40s on 4–that fills my need for nostalgic radio,  The UK 1940s Radio Station.

The UK 1940s Radio Station runs 24 hour a day and plays an amazing mix of 1940s era music. Unlike 40’s on 40,  The UK 1940s Radio Station has authentic recordings of news clips and even original advertisements they play throughout their music mix.  The 40s on 4, at least when I last listened, still had a pseudo-1940s-sounding announcer (Ed Baxter) and often reproduced news broadcasts; I prefer the real period recordings, personally. Also, The UK 1940s Radio Station has interviews and commentary from experts on the era.

The UK 1940s Radio Station are supported by their listeners, so if you like their programming, consider supporting them with a donation via PayPal.

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