Speaker 1: It's Monday, June and I wanted to take a moment
Speaker 1: to thank you for tuning into this second season of Ephemeral.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everyone who's listened Britain, followed, reviewed and recommended
Speaker 1: our show to a friend. It has been so great
Speaker 1: to be back. Also, we have news we're taking next
Speaker 1: week off and then starting July twelve, we'll be releasing
Speaker 1: a new episode of Ephemeral every other week at infinitum,
Speaker 1: so at least two new episodes a month, with no
Speaker 1: more breaks between seasons. Choot me an email let us
Speaker 1: know what you think. We're at Ephemeral at ihart media
Speaker 1: dot com. A femeral is a production of My Heart
Speaker 1: three D audio listened with that songs yea, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: The amazing thing about recorded music is how it can
Speaker 1: freeze time, not only the moment in which it was performed,
Speaker 1: but the points of your life when you're listening. Most
Speaker 1: anyone who's ever fallen in love with the song can
Speaker 1: experience this phenomenon, including our friend Bob Purse. My name
Speaker 1: is Bob Purse. I'm originally from Northfield, Illinois, which is
Speaker 1: a tiny summer of Chicago, and I have been since
Speaker 1: my early adulthood a massive collector. I suspect that I
Speaker 1: own at least ten thousand individual pieces of recorded sound.
Speaker 1: One record that scored the major events of Bob's adult
Speaker 1: life was so obscure that it set in motion his
Speaker 1: collecting obsession. Some thirty five years ago, in May, on
Speaker 1: the verge of his twenty fifth birthday, a young Bob
Speaker 1: Purse was looking for what was next to his life.
Speaker 1: My future was staring in the face, and I didn't
Speaker 1: know exactly what I was going to do. I had
Speaker 1: had an off again, on again relationship with college, and
Speaker 1: I was just a week or two away from graduating
Speaker 1: with my bachelor's degree in human services and intended to
Speaker 1: find a job working with children. Now if everyone seated
Speaker 1: where he can see everyone out five, I was living
Speaker 1: at home. As I mentioned, I grew up in Northfield,
Speaker 1: which is sort of the baby sister of a town
Speaker 1: called Winnetta. Winetta, Illinois, is home to a special annual event.
Speaker 1: It's built as the world's largest one day rummage sale.
Speaker 1: And looked it up and it's still built that way. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it didn't happen this year, but it's happened since nineteen
Speaker 1: o two. It's held in a building owned by the
Speaker 1: Winnetka Congressional Church, the Wineka Community House, the enormous building
Speaker 1: if it's basically used for the public. Once a year
Speaker 1: they take everything else out of all these rooms and
Speaker 1: fill them up with grummage sail items. He writes the
Speaker 1: price on a slip of paper and attaches it to
Speaker 1: the bag, and it's a one day sail. It's on
Speaker 1: a Thursday, I think, the first Thursday in May. Bob
Speaker 1: wasn't a dedicated collector, truth be told, He only went
Speaker 1: to buy a pocalle. It's essentially a ukulele with an
Speaker 1: odd shaped body and a neck that's about two ft long,
Speaker 1: and then the curves at the end. My friend Paul
Speaker 1: and I both thought pokol ales. And while I was there,
Speaker 1: I looked through the records. Honestly, that was probably the
Speaker 1: start of my interest in buying large numbers of unusual
Speaker 1: records in order to see if there was something interesting
Speaker 1: among them. I would guess that I bought some of
Speaker 1: the thirty and forty five albums, and probably some five,
Speaker 1: and undoubtedly some tapes. The shoes tape Shore Shoes, shoes Shooth, Shooth.
Speaker 1: I guarantee you I got that there probably benda is
Speaker 1: that church is a mile away from the school that
Speaker 1: they mentioned island. What is that we cover this tape
Speaker 1: in our pilot episode. I probably bought some stuff that
Speaker 1: was pretty mainstream that I didn't have yet. I think
Speaker 1: I bought some sound effect records small calibration shaker in
Speaker 1: the space lab, and I may have gotten some radio
Speaker 1: production records there which had like music to use behind
Speaker 1: promos and things like that. Among the piles of musical ephemera,
Speaker 1: Bob spotted an unassuming LP. It was just in a
Speaker 1: plane sleeve inside a plane cardboard sleeve. It looked like
Speaker 1: something that was home produced, and all it says on
Speaker 1: it is musical Memories of Camper and Avin. Part one
Speaker 1: is on the front side and part two is listed
Speaker 1: on the back and then says simple Recording Service, Ryanander, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: If I saw a record like that anywhere, I would
Speaker 1: snatch it immediately, like, well, what is this? I then
Speaker 1: had to walk probably close to a mile to get
Speaker 1: back to my car with a box full of at
Speaker 1: least forty albums. I graduated like ten days later. We
Speaker 1: all returned back to my house for a celebration afterwards,
Speaker 1: and I had this box of records, and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: you want to hear some of the stuff I got.
Speaker 1: I pulled out probably three or four records, and that
Speaker 1: was one of them. We touched down the needle on
Speaker 1: a couple of spots. I kept listening lists for most
Speaker 1: of my adulthood. What were listening to this week? What
Speaker 1: we're listening to this month? I'm certain, but I didn't
Speaker 1: listen to the Musical Memories of Campering Albin album all
Speaker 1: the way through until October. In those days, I would
Speaker 1: tape record them and listen to them to and from
Speaker 1: my way to work or wherever else I was going.
Speaker 1: If there were four uniw records that I hadn't listened
Speaker 1: to me, it might take a while before I got to.
Speaker 1: Throughout the episode, we'll place selections from the original Camper
Speaker 1: and Often Way, as well as tracks reimagined by musician
Speaker 1: Nathaniel Krause. More details on both in the credits. I
Speaker 1: really was entranced by the sound of the thing, the
Speaker 1: ambiance of it, This wonderful echoe piano going on playing
Speaker 1: some tunes that I know, a lot of tunes I
Speaker 1: don't know, and some of that I know the tune,
Speaker 1: but not know what it is, but not a single
Speaker 1: one of the songs that I do recognize has the
Speaker 1: lyrics that go with it. Every word I can make
Speaker 1: out at least is about the camp. For example, consider
Speaker 1: Yourself from Oliver, which is so I probably never not
Speaker 1: known because it was written my nond was about four
Speaker 1: or five years old. At some point I played parts
Speaker 1: of it for my mom, who was a professional musician,
Speaker 1: and she recognized a bunch more songs, and then a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of songs that I just don't recognize at all.
Speaker 1: In addition to the ambient texture of the recording and
Speaker 1: the idiosyncratic nature of the cover songs, the vocal performance
Speaker 1: struck a chord. I like to hear kids singing when
Speaker 1: they're singing because they want to sing, and not because
Speaker 1: someone strained them as how to sing like an adult,
Speaker 1: ab how to sing properly, And this is just a
Speaker 1: bunch of girls singing their hearts out for fun. My
Speaker 1: second favorite album is an album by the Lime Lighters,
Speaker 1: who were a wonderful FULK trio in the sixties and
Speaker 1: then came back in the eighties, and it's recorded live
Speaker 1: in concert at a show they did along with a
Speaker 1: bunch of grade scores. It's called True Children's Eyes. Probably
Speaker 1: my favorite track anybody's ever recorded is on that album.
Speaker 1: In other words, this was a natural for me. The
Speaker 1: one I like the most immediately is near the end
Speaker 1: of the album. It's sung to the old Shirley Temple
Speaker 1: hit the cod Fish Vault. Come along and follow me
Speaker 1: the bottom up the tree, We're join in the Jamuary
Speaker 1: and the Codfish Fine. It's a song about life at
Speaker 1: the camp. The whole first verse is composed of all
Speaker 1: the different wonderful things about the camp, and then they
Speaker 1: sing it again and everything is negative. I could not
Speaker 1: make out every word, but I got out enough of
Speaker 1: it that I got the humor of it. The key
Speaker 1: line at the end of each verse is atronovin camp
Speaker 1: for girls, and in the second verse it's sung as
Speaker 1: a question with the girls. That's the one that I
Speaker 1: immediately played, probably five or six times, almost as much,
Speaker 1: and then within a month much more was this song.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know the song at the time, but
Speaker 1: it's called the Missouri Walts and it's from the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: As the years have gone on, I've heard many other
Speaker 1: renditions of his melody, and I just love it the
Speaker 1: words that are very snimental and very sweet about nighttime
Speaker 1: at Camper and Aubin. Underneath the silvery beams of Champer
Speaker 1: and Aubin's night, her lovely curtain drops and ends the
Speaker 1: day too soon. Neath the sheltering pines we find the
Speaker 1: soul of happiness. Learn to give and take and think
Speaker 1: itself a little less. Who writes like that? That's beautiful.
Speaker 1: It's maybe the only song on the album that's sung
Speaker 1: in harmony. Probably for the next year and a half.
Speaker 1: That was the track I listened to more than anything
Speaker 1: else on the radio or in my collection. The third
Speaker 1: one that I really liked is to tune called Let's
Speaker 1: Get Away from It All and again the song is great,
Speaker 1: the melody is indelible. It was a bigger hit in
Speaker 1: the forties with its real words. From that one, he
Speaker 1: is absolutely about how the day goes by. It starts
Speaker 1: with waking up a name, what their activities are like.
Speaker 1: It ends with what they do in the evening. On
Speaker 1: the LP, there are a total of thirty seven songs,
Speaker 1: all performed in the same manner live stripe piano and
Speaker 1: a chorus of school age girls. Over the years, I
Speaker 1: have identified all but about seven or eight of them.
Speaker 1: Just two of them are really one and a half
Speaker 1: of them are traditional camp songs, but everything else has
Speaker 1: been written. There are white songs from various colleges, Ohio Hand,
Speaker 1: Ohio State, and more Dame. The rest of them are
Speaker 1: just a cross section of twentieth century song scatter Brain,
Speaker 1: which is the thirties hit right when You Wish Him
Speaker 1: on a Star, which is from Penocchio, see Little Lindo,
Speaker 1: which is a famous Mexican song, Enough Swanny, I Don't
Speaker 1: love You, I Don't love you, after White Coral Bells,
Speaker 1: a song called good Morning Mrs Pockhead, my Wonderful One,
Speaker 1: which is probably something my mom identified because I've never
Speaker 1: heard that song, The Sweetheart of Sigma Kai, which is
Speaker 1: another real set of metal song, my dreams, Hey look
Speaker 1: Me Over, even the Chicken Reel, which is not a
Speaker 1: nineteenth century violin peaks Oh by Jingo, another thirties records
Speaker 1: by Along a Moon River, which has been the sixties
Speaker 1: days of Wine and Roses, Why Yea. These probably cover
Speaker 1: from the eight nineties right up until the year this
Speaker 1: album was recorded. The tracks appear to be grouped thematically,
Speaker 1: providing a window into life at camp bring often during
Speaker 1: some long past summer. Yeah, it starts off with a
Speaker 1: group of very general welcoming and cheering from the camp
Speaker 1: sort of songs. Most camps of those days, maybe even today,
Speaker 1: assign everybody into one of two groups. If you're on
Speaker 1: the Green team, everything that you do athletic or other activity,
Speaker 1: you're trying to win points for the Green team. If
Speaker 1: you're in the Orange team, vice versa. So there are
Speaker 1: ten songs on side one. Half of them are for
Speaker 1: the Blue team and half of them are for White team.
Speaker 1: Then it goes back into some celebratory things about life
Speaker 1: at the camps and specific things about why they liked
Speaker 1: the game, just reinforcing out one of the campus yea
Speaker 1: and including one in which there's nothing but a serious
Speaker 1: complaints about collar they get treated by other campers. After that,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of real sentimental numbers. One song for
Speaker 1: the old college song of Halls and Ivy, which is
Speaker 1: one of the longest tracks on the album, and then
Speaker 1: two good night songs. The one song to the tune
Speaker 1: of Let's Get Away from It All breaks down the
Speaker 1: camper's daily routine wake up each morning with the bugle
Speaker 1: after a great night of sleep, dressed in a hurry,
Speaker 1: scamper and scurry to breakfast, and know how we eat,
Speaker 1: sit on the floor with our teammates, join in a
Speaker 1: song or a yell. Next comes inspection, and here's the
Speaker 1: suggestion tuck everything away. Well, now don your garb for
Speaker 1: what comes next. A swim, perhaps a ride, rifle ry
Speaker 1: and tennis too. We'll all play side by side, more
Speaker 1: fun again in the evening after the day's setting sun
Speaker 1: Gryn Alvin's great gals and how she does great gals.
Speaker 1: It's best when it's all said and done. I always
Speaker 1: thought the rude wifeilely and tennis too was a really
Speaker 1: weird phrase. I can't think of two things that have
Speaker 1: less in common. And at the top of the first side,
Speaker 1: there's a song for visiting day everybody. It's to the
Speaker 1: tune of a song called scatter Brain, which, as a
Speaker 1: complete unrelated note, was a favorite of John Runnins. Somebody
Speaker 1: would ask for something for us to say anything exactly.
Speaker 1: If you go to this camp, or any camp, you
Speaker 1: probably keep going every year until your age out. So
Speaker 1: if you're new there, whether you're the youngest age of
Speaker 1: these people, seven or eight, or you're just starting to go.
Speaker 1: Even though you're in the middle of range in the ages,
Speaker 1: you're surrounded by people who already know the songs, So
Speaker 1: I think you learned a pretty quick. Bob could consider
Speaker 1: himself lucky to have stumbled upon such an endearing work,
Speaker 1: but he had no idea what rabbit holes it would
Speaker 1: eventually lead him down. By the fall of a young Bob,
Speaker 1: person's future was taking shape. I had gotten my first
Speaker 1: job that required my degree, which was as I had expected,
Speaker 1: at a daycare center. The C b A record was
Speaker 1: along for the ride. My drive to work was over
Speaker 1: half an hour, so I was probably listening to this
Speaker 1: a lot on the way through the from work. Two
Speaker 1: weeks into my new job, one of my part time
Speaker 1: co workers told a friend of hers, Hey, there's a
Speaker 1: guy working at the daycare now. You should come over
Speaker 1: and meet him. So she walked in, and I just
Speaker 1: assumed he was a parent or maybe an employee I
Speaker 1: hadn't met yet because I've been there all of nine days.
Speaker 1: We got to talk and she explained that she had
Speaker 1: worked there and to shorten things down, right around the
Speaker 1: time I started this going to the album is when
Speaker 1: she asked me outum, her name is Gina, and we've
Speaker 1: been together ever since. That probably corresponded down to a
Speaker 1: ten day frame between her asking me out and he
Speaker 1: listened to this record. I continue working at this job
Speaker 1: and it's not what I hoped it would. I decided
Speaker 1: at some point along the way that I needed to
Speaker 1: go to graduate school. Gina. I had been engaged for
Speaker 1: almost a year and a half and we're actively planning
Speaker 1: a wedding for late May. I'm no longer working full time.
Speaker 1: I'm working part time. I'm doing some other stuff, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to school for a degree in psychology. We
Speaker 1: have a special department here of social workers. You go
Speaker 1: along and see one of them and you're fine. They
Speaker 1: can help you with your problem. The Amblotic condo which
Speaker 1: was in disrepair and we were fixing it up. Are
Speaker 1: offense didn't often overlap with each other, so when I
Speaker 1: was there by myself, I often put on the whole album.
Speaker 1: My overall affection for the album grew exponentially at that point,
Speaker 1: and that's when I wanted to find out everything I
Speaker 1: put about the camp in the album. The cod fish
Speaker 1: Ball track that I mentioned her star Fast and Swimming
Speaker 1: is great. I was hearing the next line is all
Speaker 1: that snow and what a lake? That made no sense
Speaker 1: to me because it doesn't snow in northern Wisconsin in August,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know what they were saying. I was
Speaker 1: literally buying my wedding gift for my wife at a J. C. Penny's.
Speaker 1: I'm listening to the tape of the record in my car,
Speaker 1: as I probably was incessantly in that moment. I was
Speaker 1: about to get out of my car and they're saying
Speaker 1: Lake Snowdon. It's on Lake Snowdon. Within minutes, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's what they're saying in that other song, and two
Speaker 1: other sets of lyrics that didn't make sense to me
Speaker 1: suddenly were clearly Lake Snowdon. If campern often had seemed
Speaker 1: like a mythical place, existing only in the ballads and
Speaker 1: odes of its admirers, this single clue brought with it
Speaker 1: the hope of geographical specificity. So I'm like, well, now
Speaker 1: I know what to look for at that moment. Now
Speaker 1: I meant I'm getting married in a couple of days,
Speaker 1: so I'm not doing anything with this. But when I
Speaker 1: got back, I went out to Northwestern and look to
Speaker 1: see whether they would have stuff that would be of
Speaker 1: help to me. I found very very detailed maps of
Speaker 1: Wisconsin and identified Lake Snowden. I found that it was
Speaker 1: out a rural route about four or five miles east
Speaker 1: of ryan Lander, on a road that made a semicircle
Speaker 1: off of the rural route, which was called Camper and
Speaker 1: Oven Road. In the libraries archives, I found two different
Speaker 1: catalogs of camps the parents could buy to know where
Speaker 1: to send their kids and how much things were need
Speaker 1: to contact, and that this rusted camp bounded by hiking
Speaker 1: trails and lakeside activities, one from the twenties and one
Speaker 1: from the forties and fifties, I think, both of which
Speaker 1: had listings for campering, an archery range, a tennis court,
Speaker 1: and arts and crafts building, plus a large meeting hall
Speaker 1: and the campfires circle. Now I knew that it had
Speaker 1: been around since at least the twenties. It was in
Speaker 1: an area where my family and I had vacation when
Speaker 1: I was five, and it was an area where Gina
Speaker 1: and I had already camped because she introduced me to camping.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite areas in terms of the
Speaker 1: look of the place, the climate, the foliage is almost
Speaker 1: entirely to these massive pine trees, which immediately brought to
Speaker 1: mind the camperovin moon Song, the ones for two of
Speaker 1: the Missouri walls neath the sheltering pines, to find the
Speaker 1: soul of happiness. But at that point I had no
Speaker 1: idea whether the camp still existed. I requested that we
Speaker 1: make our next camping trip back up to the Rhinelander
Speaker 1: area tent camping. Yes, and me and our dog. That
Speaker 1: sounds idyllic. The first night we camped, I drove by
Speaker 1: and saw that there was indeed a camp there, and
Speaker 1: that it was called Camp Algonquin. There it is. The
Speaker 1: next day I went over and there was no life
Speaker 1: in sight. There was no camping session. This was late August.
Speaker 1: Campin is gonna get this night. When I pulled in,
Speaker 1: it was a big gravel parking one. There's patents with
Speaker 1: cabins dotting along the way, and then the lake which
Speaker 1: is Lake Snowden, has a couple of peers going out
Speaker 1: into it, and everything pulled up on the shore. Wow,
Speaker 1: I wonder like there was an office there. I don't
Speaker 1: remember if I went up to the office or if
Speaker 1: a guy saw me pulling the parking lot, but he
Speaker 1: came out and his name was Don McKinnon. Alight all right,
Speaker 1: called I think he used to be here, and that
Speaker 1: was it. He told me that the camp had been
Speaker 1: Campell Donquins since the nineteen seventy five season, when it
Speaker 1: had been sold by the previous owners, and that the
Speaker 1: Campernovin ended the nineteen seventy four but that virtually all
Speaker 1: of the facilities were the same as had been there
Speaker 1: when it was Camper and Avin. The camp Algonquin grounds
Speaker 1: were like a museum of the old Camper, and often
Speaker 1: Bob wondered if he may finally have his questions answered
Speaker 1: around the origin of this mysterious record. Do you know?
Speaker 1: Do you know about this record that I'm talking about?
Speaker 1: Don McKinnon did not have a copy of the album,
Speaker 1: but he knew about it. I found it, I found
Speaker 1: and he clicked in. Really. He took me into the
Speaker 1: office and showed me some pamphlets from the Camperanovin days,
Speaker 1: and some song sheets that he had mimeographed or something
Speaker 1: unlike legal size paper, and they had the lyrics to
Speaker 1: dozens of songs typed out, each one of them numbered.
Speaker 1: He would let me make copy machine copies. I'm looking
Speaker 1: at this There's eleven songs on the first sheet, and
Speaker 1: at least four of them are not songs that I
Speaker 1: know from the album. Here's one to the two exhibity Dodo,
Speaker 1: which is not on the album. The mimiographed pages also
Speaker 1: introduced a new character into the story. We're going to
Speaker 1: break up into groups now. And if you'll notice your
Speaker 1: locks are different colors. The sheets have a half a
Speaker 1: dozen references to Old Bratty. When the great, big white
Speaker 1: moon shines on the camp among the pines, then think
Speaker 1: of you, dear Brady, hears to you. How do you do?
Speaker 1: Old Bratty was a lot of broad Bridge, and by
Speaker 1: the time the album was made, she had sold the camp.
Speaker 1: I was going to have the Blue Rocks going one
Speaker 1: group and the red Locks in another group, so all
Speaker 1: references to her were taken out, and new sheets must
Speaker 1: have been how many reds are here? There was a
Speaker 1: brother camp a couple of miles down the road on
Speaker 1: a different road, called Camp teer Horn, which was still
Speaker 1: owned by a lot of Broadbridge's brother or his descendants,
Speaker 1: which he had opened shortly after a lot of opened
Speaker 1: Camper Novin my understanding is it's still in that nuy
Speaker 1: Mr McKinnon was very accommodating and told me that I
Speaker 1: could go in any building that was unlocked. You're welcome
Speaker 1: to all right, thank you. I immediately took off and
Speaker 1: started filming around the ground sheltering pines. I interviewed him
Speaker 1: with the lens on the camera and just used it
Speaker 1: as a paper corner off in me. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I can't remember if I was actually carrying the album
Speaker 1: around our little boom box or not. As I walked
Speaker 1: through these buildings, I may have done like snowdon what
Speaker 1: are like? And then I found the cabins, and the
Speaker 1: cabins were a revelation graffiti in the bunkhouse. The cabins
Speaker 1: were full of graffiti a white Ya blues from campers
Speaker 1: going all the way back. I think the oldest one
Speaker 1: I found was named nineteen two, right up to the
Speaker 1: president of a recent stuff. Some of it was much
Speaker 1: more coarse than would have been done by the girls
Speaker 1: in the sixties or seventies. Like I found the drawing
Speaker 1: off a middle finger that I was pretty sure had
Speaker 1: come from the mom campers disco ruless, so I think
Speaker 1: that was made after it was camping Cambo dun Quin grace.
Speaker 1: Mr McKinnon did let me into one lock building, which
Speaker 1: was where the counselors could go to relax when they
Speaker 1: didn't have to be with the girls, and it too
Speaker 1: had graffiti, but it had very fancy stuff panels that
Speaker 1: were painted with texted, very elaborate ways. That was all
Speaker 1: the build the cans Belt in nineteen seventeen. He had
Speaker 1: told me to make sure that I saw what they
Speaker 1: called the main Bungalow or the main bungle, which still
Speaker 1: makes me laugh. That's building place here. It had been
Speaker 1: designed by students of Frank Lloyd Wright, who was of
Speaker 1: course associated with Wisconsin. Right. This is a gorgeous large
Speaker 1: wooden building with wooden rafters, almost built like a church
Speaker 1: the film. It's basically t shaped. There's a long meeting
Speaker 1: hall with stone fireplaces at each end. Behind each fireplace
Speaker 1: and accessible through doors on either side, is a stream porch.
Speaker 1: Extending out from the very center of that room is
Speaker 1: a second part pointing away from the lake with dining tables,
Speaker 1: and behind that as a kitchen pitting next to where
Speaker 1: the room opens up with the dining part, there's a
Speaker 1: grand piano which is covered entirely and next to the
Speaker 1: fireplace is a spin of piano. There's another piano, prahaps
Speaker 1: this is the door. The spin a piano is basically
Speaker 1: a small upright. It was clear that this was the place.
Speaker 1: There was no doubt in my mind that that was
Speaker 1: where it was reported with that's going to be the piano.
Speaker 1: It was the record Even though one of the songs
Speaker 1: were first to the girls sitting to sing, I'm immediately
Speaker 1: picturing them for the recordings standing in front of the
Speaker 1: fireplace and singing along to this piano, which, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: the equeness of it or the old bedrooms of it,
Speaker 1: suggests to me that she's playing on an old, worn
Speaker 1: out piano. So I'm filming. I'm filming and filming. I
Speaker 1: put the camera down, and I am a piano player.
Speaker 1: So I sit down at the piano and start pounding
Speaker 1: on it, and no sound comes out whatsoever. It doesn't work.
Speaker 1: The keys are moving, the connection to the keys are moving.
Speaker 1: There don't seem to be any hammers in this piano,
Speaker 1: or if there are, there are no strings. That's never
Speaker 1: happened before, So I'm not going to uncover the grand
Speaker 1: piano player. I felt like that would be overstepping. I
Speaker 1: was just incredibly glad to have been able to follow
Speaker 1: the cruise and to be allowed to be there there.
Speaker 1: It's even before we got to the campsite. I went
Speaker 1: into the town to the library to look up to
Speaker 1: see if there was a civil recording service in town,
Speaker 1: knowing that it had been twenty three years since the
Speaker 1: album was room, that seemed rather unlikely. It seemed like
Speaker 1: a small business at the time, and there was no
Speaker 1: civil recording service, but there was a simple photography service.
Speaker 1: The objective of the sound van is to record intelligible sound.
Speaker 1: I drove to that address. It was a house. It
Speaker 1: had the name of the company out front. An older
Speaker 1: couple in their sixties. I say that I'm sixty now
Speaker 1: invited me in. Mr Simple was a photographer, and he
Speaker 1: told me that in the mid sixties he had gotten
Speaker 1: into his head to branch out and have a local
Speaker 1: recording service for the area. Okay, let's have a sound check.
Speaker 1: And then it never really went newhere we're getting a
Speaker 1: hum from something. Simple remembered the CB a record off
Speaker 1: the top of his head. Didn't ask him, but I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised if that's the only business he ever
Speaker 1: got for that In terms of how he recorded, is
Speaker 1: that you think like single mike in a room. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's in monrole, and very little doubt that it was
Speaker 1: done on a real TiAl machine. And then whoever he
Speaker 1: was working with transport and had they album stanped out.
Speaker 1: This is a rehearsal sound writing rolling. It didn't occur
Speaker 1: to me until at least ten years later that I
Speaker 1: should have said to him, hey, do you still have
Speaker 1: the tapes? The camp could handle as many as three
Speaker 1: girls I think is the number. And even if they
Speaker 1: wanted to try to sell it to families who came
Speaker 1: the next year, I can't imagine they made more than
Speaker 1: four or five dred copies. So it's got to be
Speaker 1: an exceptionally rare record. A work trip put Bob in
Speaker 1: the vicinity of Rhinelander, so he paid another trip to
Speaker 1: the Office season Camp all Conquin. In two years a
Speaker 1: lot had changed, and not for the better. Some of
Speaker 1: the cabins graffiti had been painted over. I went to
Speaker 1: an area I had not gone to before where there
Speaker 1: was storage, and it was kind of just haphazard. The
Speaker 1: piano that I mentioned that couldn't play had been moved
Speaker 1: to this storage area in a sort of an outdoor area,
Speaker 1: so it was going to get destroyed. It just felt
Speaker 1: sadder and it didn't feel like the same place again.
Speaker 1: Now that Bob and the backstory of the record, the
Speaker 1: question he was left with was what to do about
Speaker 1: its legacy. In the early nineties, Bob and Gina's lives
Speaker 1: got busier and busier, we had daughters in everything sort
Speaker 1: of changes at that point. I found myself listening to
Speaker 1: any music far less, and yet the cb A record
Speaker 1: still seeped its way into the purse family consciousness. I
Speaker 1: think I played individual tracks for them, or they just
Speaker 1: happened to be in the car when I was listening
Speaker 1: to it. M h. I had a tradition of singing
Speaker 1: songs to them every night. My wife would sit with
Speaker 1: one of the girls, I would sit with one of
Speaker 1: the others, and whoever I was sitting with would get
Speaker 1: to request a song, or if they didn't want to,
Speaker 1: I would just pick one, and then I would sing
Speaker 1: either one or both of good night songs should be
Speaker 1: end of the album, more often the next to last one.
Speaker 1: Now run along home and jump into bed, saying your
Speaker 1: prayers and cover your head, the very same thing I say,
Speaker 1: I'm see you you dream of me and I'll drink
Speaker 1: of you. I don't think they ever really understood or
Speaker 1: knew her care that it came from the album, but
Speaker 1: they certainly knew it. Bob went online once I figured
Speaker 1: things out. I think to myself, hey, I should look
Speaker 1: to see if there's any references to Camper not an
Speaker 1: online What comes up is addresses that are on Camper
Speaker 1: and No Road, including Campbell Gangu, which are more your
Speaker 1: familiar with. Nothing that's that's going to help me. But
Speaker 1: in early two thousand two, the Camp Algonquian website suddenly
Speaker 1: had an alumni page, which included a sub page for
Speaker 1: alumni of Camper and Oven. You opened it up and
Speaker 1: it had everybody who's signed up to identify itself as
Speaker 1: a Campernoven alumni and their email addresses. So I wrote
Speaker 1: to everybody hold them how much I love the album,
Speaker 1: how much joy it had brought me, and that I
Speaker 1: would love to hear more about the camp. Seven or
Speaker 1: eight people wrote me back, one of them having been
Speaker 1: the camp secretary in the early sixties and worked under
Speaker 1: both a lot of Broadbridge and her successor, I knew
Speaker 1: a lot about the history of the camp. Others gave
Speaker 1: me more sort of the feel of what it would
Speaker 1: like to attend. Suddenly, this unearthed time capsule had context
Speaker 1: in nineties sixty four, a lot of Broadbridge was in
Speaker 1: her eighties and I think maybe had passed on the
Speaker 1: leaders going to one group and half of the leaders
Speaker 1: going to another group, and decided to sell it to
Speaker 1: a married couple of both of whom had worked there
Speaker 1: the previous couple of years. They decided to make the
Speaker 1: album before the nineteen season, rolling under the suggestion of
Speaker 1: the piano player that worked there. I just can't say
Speaker 1: enough good things about I play stride piano myself very badly,
Speaker 1: and her abilities are just astounding. Her name was Laura Elberry. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's have a sound check. They recorded it at some
Speaker 1: point in the summer of I was corrected in my
Speaker 1: thought that they were standing up. I just pictured people
Speaker 1: standing when they're singing, But they were sitting in that
Speaker 1: section right in the middle of the main bungalow where
Speaker 1: it opens up in their dining hall, facing the piano,
Speaker 1: wearing their counter blue shirts and dark blue shorts, be
Speaker 1: as they'd say. I wanted the songs. And then the
Speaker 1: errands who bought the place got divorced, and for a
Speaker 1: variety of reasons, it was too difficult for the former
Speaker 1: Mrs Arrans to continue, and she announced at the end
Speaker 1: of the seven fourth season that she couldn't find a
Speaker 1: buyer that wanted to continue with the traditions of Camper,
Speaker 1: and Avin ended up retaining the rights to the name
Speaker 1: and sold the property to the person who turned it
Speaker 1: into Campbell Countrey, which was a reading in math camp
Speaker 1: I believe for boys initially and then eventually for the
Speaker 1: younger boys and older girls. In its heyday, Campering often
Speaker 1: held an air of exclusivity. It was kind of the
Speaker 1: camp for the elite. The wealthy set their daughters there.
Speaker 1: I don't know if Betty Ford was there as a child,
Speaker 1: but she worked there as a counselor. I'm going as
Speaker 1: myself and if they don't like it, then they'll just
Speaker 1: have to throw me out. Lorretty Young said her daughter there,
Speaker 1: that really can only do what I like to do.
Speaker 1: And Jane Mansfield had at least one daughter that went there.
Speaker 1: A star owes it to her public to bring the
Speaker 1: public into her life. Multiple alum sent Bob copies of
Speaker 1: promotional booklets advertising Campering, often to parents at the time,
Speaker 1: touting activities like horseback riding, fencing, and a regatta weekend. Again,
Speaker 1: it reflects what a high end place this was. An
Speaker 1: he can is going to try to make the camp
Speaker 1: book the best that it is in this place looks
Speaker 1: amazing other campering. Often ephemeris circulates aided by the Worldwide Web.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of postcards out there floating around, especially
Speaker 1: from the early days. Well here it is the And
Speaker 1: if I don't get this off thin, these guys aren't
Speaker 1: even going to get locals have turned up at some
Speaker 1: point bought a signature book that the girls were issued
Speaker 1: to get their friends like thoughts of the statements and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I have that and people sent me
Speaker 1: tons of pictures. But the Musical Memories album remains an
Speaker 1: absolute rarity. It's about the Dictionary definition of esoteric, so
Speaker 1: I really get it. It turns out that camp records
Speaker 1: are in fact their own small genre. Hey, okay, I
Speaker 1: have three that would probably qualify as the same general concept.
Speaker 1: I have one called Musical Memories of Chalk Hills Camp,
Speaker 1: which is a now defunct Girl Scout camp. It was
Speaker 1: still in operation when I found that record, and I
Speaker 1: was very, very excited to find that album, hoping that
Speaker 1: it would be something along the same lines. It's entertaining,
Speaker 1: and there's probably a half a dozen songs on there
Speaker 1: I enjoy, but it doesn't have the ambience, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have the arrangements. It's acapella. There's no instrumentation at all.
Speaker 1: It's much more professionally produced. The girls sound much more trained,
Speaker 1: and they're doing entirely established songs. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And then the other one that I would say that
Speaker 1: I like second best and not in a close race
Speaker 1: both ways. Record is a tiny label, left wing label
Speaker 1: out of New York City that operated from the forties
Speaker 1: into the nineties when its owner died, and it is
Speaker 1: now part of the SMITHSNY collection. In the late fifties,
Speaker 1: they recorded at holm called Songs of Camp, primarily around
Speaker 1: a campfire at a place called Camp Hilly Leads somewhere
Speaker 1: in New England, and it's remarkable for the content of
Speaker 1: the songs and also the audio verity of the recording.
Speaker 1: You know, you can hear the fire crackling and it's
Speaker 1: just spoke singers and the kids singing. And there's a
Speaker 1: couple of tracks on there that are just wonderful, but
Speaker 1: none of these examples has special quality of the CB
Speaker 1: A record. Bob made it his mission to preserve this
Speaker 1: one of a kind work for the generations past and future.
Speaker 1: I got so many comments from folks, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to give back to them. I don't think any of
Speaker 1: them had the album. I don't think any of the
Speaker 1: people I talked to had been on the record been
Speaker 1: there that year, but they wanted a copy. And again,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of obsessive, so I made it into a
Speaker 1: big production. He darts the job, but preparing the story
Speaker 1: so it can be printed. I was already editing sound
Speaker 1: and making CDs for myself. That's music recorded as a
Speaker 1: series of electronic pulsis, and I bought some software that
Speaker 1: allowed you to make CD booklets. The surface is covered
Speaker 1: by a layer of transparent plastic, so you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about grubby fingers or even scratches. So I
Speaker 1: had to piece it together. It takes many lines like
Speaker 1: this do make a page right all the text picture.
Speaker 1: It takes up the face of many lines. I've finished
Speaker 1: the CD project in the winter of two thousand two
Speaker 1: thousand three, so it was within eight or ten months.
Speaker 1: A hearing back from these people. Now, what are the
Speaker 1: market for this kind of disc remains to be seen.
Speaker 1: Bob continues to ship copies of the CD out to
Speaker 1: cb A alumni at cost. I made a point of
Speaker 1: telling people, I'm not trying to make money on this.
Speaker 1: What I'm going to charge you is as close to
Speaker 1: what it's costing me as I can get. But I'm
Speaker 1: sure I've sold somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty two over the last eighteen years. Has the
Speaker 1: CD had any kind of reaction from people? Yeah, people
Speaker 1: are very thankful. Thank you for bringing this back to me,
Speaker 1: Thank you for making this available. I've and sing along
Speaker 1: with it all day. The question I'm left with is
Speaker 1: what was special about this time and place, the sunny
Speaker 1: little corner of Wisconsin in the summer of nine. Was
Speaker 1: that specialness captured in the recording? And how could Bob
Speaker 1: somehow here frozen into the grooves of the record when
Speaker 1: he first brought the LP home and let the needle
Speaker 1: touch down. All I know is that people that write
Speaker 1: me about Camper and Aven have overwhelmingly wonderful memories and
Speaker 1: continue to stay in touch with people that they do
Speaker 1: their fifty and sixty years later. They obviously had a
Speaker 1: very special time and would look forward to it all
Speaker 1: year round and have retained their memories. They can still
Speaker 1: sing some of these songs. People will write to me
Speaker 1: and say, you know, I remember this song? Is it
Speaker 1: on the album? Not having talked to anybody else about
Speaker 1: their experiences of other camps, I have no idea whether
Speaker 1: or not it's special in terms of what people would
Speaker 1: say about why they went there, but it sure is
Speaker 1: a beautiful place. I can tell you confidently that there
Speaker 1: are camps that people dread going to. Okay class are
Speaker 1: ready to learn about music? Yeah, yeah, all told. It
Speaker 1: is still astounding to me that this incredibly rare record
Speaker 1: happened to end up in the hands that it did.
Speaker 1: Bob may have had the only extant copy of the
Speaker 1: musical Memories of Campering Offen, or at least it seemed
Speaker 1: that way. I do a search for all things Campering
Speaker 1: Aven on eBay, and for the first time two months ago,
Speaker 1: a copy of the album came up for sale and
Speaker 1: sold for fifty dollars. That's the second copy I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: I paid a buck for mine. M ephemeral is written
Speaker 1: and assembled by and produced by Matt Frederick, Trevor Young,
Speaker 1: and Max Williams. Sample more of the vast libraries of
Speaker 1: oddities Bob Purse has collected on his blogs The Wonderful
Speaker 1: and the Obscure Bob Pert blogspot dot com and inches
Speaker 1: per Second inches dash per dash second dot blogspot dot com.
Speaker 1: And listen to the musical memories of Camper and often
Speaker 1: reimagined by Nathaniel Krauss. That's k R a U s
Speaker 1: E at Nathaniel Kraus dot and camp dot com. You'll
Speaker 1: find links to these and more at ephemeral dot show
Speaker 1: Next time on Ephemeral. Seven years ago, I was in
Speaker 1: Greece hanging out my family. On a whim. I did
Speaker 1: an Internet search for Tony Rice and I got two hits.
Speaker 1: One was a Greek Wikipedia article that mentioned his name
Speaker 1: in quick passing, and then the other one was from
Speaker 1: a music library in Greece. When I went to the
Speaker 1: music libraries online database, I found the thing that started
Speaker 1: at all, which was the cover of the piano and
Speaker 1: vocal score for a song that had my grandfather's portrait.
Speaker 1: And I was like, wait, what nation support Ephemeral by
Speaker 1: recommending an episode, leaving a review or dropping us a
Speaker 1: line at ephemeral Show. More podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows, and learn more at ephemeral
Speaker 1: dot show