2010-April, by Monte Barry - to Mike Harpring:We worked together at WDRB-TV in Louisville from fall 1975 to summer 1976. I was a videotape operator there. We worked for Bob Cleveland, chief engineer. I gave my 2 weeks notice there. I announced I was going to become a soundman full-time and go to work with a new band.
In 1976 at WDRB, I created and videotaped a Bluegrass music show in the Studio there. You probably helped me out on it. I brought The Bluegrass Alliance band down to the station twice for this effort. They only had one color studio camera. So we shot the "Program" with a wide-shot of the band, and they performed enough tunes for a show. It was likely 60 minutes of tape. I had the band came back again a 2nd time. We played back the master quad tape, and sent the Audio into the Studio. The band lip-synched to it and played their music again. This time we shot a series of tight shots for the vocals and during solos, and recorded the video on a 2nd quad tape.
Then I used the remote-control edit package they had installed for 2 of their 3 RCA 2-inch quadruplex video tape recorders. I did some very simple "video-only" insert-edits into the master tape. We ended up with a faked-out 2-camera shoot. This program aired on WDRB-TV in Louisville in 1976.
It's not like it never happened. For posterity sakes, this tape is obviously very, very valuable. I'm quite sure you did work on it.
I am looking for a copy of this tape. I called WDRB-TV (Fox) over a year ago, and discussed this with them. One guy, who claims to have been there since the late 70s, swears to me that this tape doesn't exist in their tape library or their archives. It vanished!
2010-April, by Mike Harpring (tech ops) - to Monte:I remember taping the Bluegrass Alliance show very well. Steve Doss, you and I all shared the "producer" credit and we taped it over two Sunday nights. We used the Peavey audio board and some mics that I borrowed from my friend who owned Far-Out Music in New Albany. On the first pass, we shot the close-ups then set the camera up on a wide shot, played the tape back and faded between tape and live on the Grass Valley switcher. WAKY disc jockey Tom Dooley was the host of the show. He had really long, full curly hair and a beard.
The second week he showed up with short hair so we had to do the intro and some ins and outs a second time. We didn't set up the questions for the interview ahead of time so every time he asked one of the players a question about the band, they referred him to Lonny. Anyway, the songs were recorded on individual 2" tapes then I guess that's when you edited them into one long piece. I seem to remember seeing some of the tapes later, but I think I might have given them to Steve. I never saw the "show tape" that eventually aired. It's too bad they didn't save that. The show could have easily run again. They probably recorded over it, since a 1-hour reel cost about $200 back then. I've been at WHAS-TV for 26 years doing audio for the news.
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