Looking for Jack Benny Recordings

[shamus]

I'm looking for a nice collection of Jack Benny Recordings from his Jack Benny Show (radio days)

Anyone know where to find them? I'd like to put them all on my ipod and be that guy just chuckling to himself for no apparent reason.

 

[Captain Krunch]

Old Time Radio Show Catalog

Shamus, you can get them from Otrcat.com. They have a 13 CD set for $65. It includes 939 shows for a total of 435 hours. The complete list of episodes is located here. I purchased the set a couple of years ago, and I'm still on the first CD! The quality of the early recordings on disc 1 are pretty bad, since they're from the early-to-mid '30s, but they eventually get better. Be aware that they don't have every single episode, but since you're a Jack Benny fan, it's still definitely a worthwhile investment.

Krunch

 

[scotrace]

A Start

Shamus, I have this collection, which includes a fantastic array of historical radio broadcasts and programs, including Jack Benny. I wish I still had an ordinary old turntable that I could play these on and pipe them to digi files. Working on it.

 

[shamus]

thanks guys... I think I'll go for that 400+ hours of Jack!

 

[Ricko]

See also www.rusc.com for some old radio shows of Jack along with many others.

 

[Jack Armstrong]

http://154.ca/otr/list.cgi?id=15

 

[The Wolf]

What I have

I've been collecting old radio shows for decades. Unfortunately most of my collection is on cassettes. That works great in my car but it is an out-going technology. You are welcome to borrow any of my Jack Bennys.
I'm slowly getting more on CD and MP3. The MP3s aren't as versatile but, gee whiz, they hold a lot.

Good luck,
The Wolf

 

[TheRetropolitan]

I hope you didn't go for the $65~ CD set, 'cause a while back I got a 28 DVD set of Old Time Radio for about ten bucks higher, including hundreds of episodes of Jack -- I think there was one full DVD devoted solely to him. Search for "Old Time Radio DVD" on eBay; when I ordered, the seller was just mass producing the sets and listing five or six of them at a time.

It was so chock full of old time radio that I figured out that at a half-hour apiece, it would take me something like a minimum of two-and-a-half years of listening back-to-back to get through all of them. I transferred a fraction of them to my mp3 player, and I've been entertained ever since.

 

[J. M. Stovall]

Hey Retropolitan, are the quality of those pretty desent? I can't tell you how may times I've almost bought those collections on Amazon that are $40 for 20 cds.

 

[topcat]

I once came across a website that had ONE collection of OTR programs,just ONE COLLECTION mind you ,that had 70,000 hours......

For any and all OTR fans there is more out there to listen to and to purchase,
then you could ever possibly listen to within one lifetime. Just do an internet search, website after website, offering OTR programs.

 

[Radioflyer]

Howdy! I'm new to this forum and this is my first post. A question about OTR will always generate a response from me. A great starting point is http://www.brandoclassicotr.com/index.asp and another is http://www.rusc.com/. You can also look up a bunch of cool stuff at http://www.otrplotspot.com/Plot_Archives.htm.

I too load my mp3 player and ride the bikes at the spa... got about 7000 shows. OTR is almost a full-time hobby what with all the assets on the web these days. Glad they're here!

rf

 

[jbrown173]

You really can't beat this site for price:
http://www.oldtimeradiohome.com/
You can get 690 episodes in mp3 format all on one DVD for like 8 bucks. It seems crazy but I've ordered a bunch of CD's from that site. They're obviously slapped together by a guy in his basement, with cheesy labels on random blank cd's, so they're not great as gifts, but the sound quality seemed just fine to me. A great source for loading directly to an mp3 player (ipod or otherwise).

 

[TheRetropolitan]

The sound quality of the DVD files was about as good as you can expect -- I mean, heck, once they're made digital, they're probably not going to degrade. I imagine that the seller just bought up collections and added to his own digital library, since the new collections are running at about 40,000 episodes -- I bet that ordering from one company is as good as ordering from another, unless you're going cassette for some reason.

So far, the only problems I've had were from my careless scratching of the discs.

*slaps self on wrist*