Phil Gries and his son, Ethan surrounded by his archive of television audio.

Amateur sound recorder Phil Gries is passionate about the audio of television's past. On reel-to-reel tape he has the sound of Roger Maris hitting his record-breaking 61st home run, interviews with Marilyn Monroe and Steve McQueen, and Johnny Carson's early "Tonight Shows."

It all started in 1958 when Gries, at age 15 hooked up his high-fidelty tape recorder to the speaker of his television set and pressed "record." When the VCR rendered his recording method obsolete in 1980, his collection numbered 8,500 shows and 13,000 hours. It holds many of what Gries believes to be the only recordings of many programs, as the networks erased their recordings to make way for the new. He shares some of these historic sounds with us.

If you wish to contact Phil Gries:
Archival TV Audio INC
PO Box 88
Albertson, NY 11507
516-656-5677
Web site: www.atvaudio.com

Courtesy "How Sweet It Was" by Arthur Shulman and Roger Youman (NY: Bonanza Books, 1966), and Art Chimes.

That Was the Week That Was
Produced by Art Chimes

In 1964, NBC took a bold step into satirical live TV with a borrowed British import called "That Was the Week That Was" (TW3 for short). It was live in prime time -- one of the last shows to be live. It was smart and topical. A teenager, Art Chimes, became obsessed with it, and recorded nearly all episodes of the short-lived series. TW3 cultivated great talent: Alan Alda, Buck Henry, Gloria Steinem, Henry Morgan, David Frost, Steve Allen and many others were on the program.

Art Chimes unofficial "That Was The Week That Was" web site: pages.prodigy.net/achimes/tw3.htm