Memory Lane - American Airlines A&M Program*

Steve Sidoruk

Founder, A&M Fan Net
Staff member
Moderator
Here is a program book for inflight entertainment on American Airlines - Program W-38. The program contains 64 tunes on a 7" open reel tape and runs three hours. You'll note that the credit indicates, programmed by Billboard Magazine.

AA#38Front.jpg

AA#38Rear.jpg
 
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Would guess about '67. I do have the tape and have thought about simulating a long CD on the iPod. For the tracks not digitized yet, would have to grab from the vinyl or the 3 3/4 ips tape. Not the best way, but it is a great listen in sequence, though you do have to turn the tape over halfway through. :)
 
Steve Sidoruk said:
Would guess about '67. I do have the tape and have thought about simulating a long CD on the iPod. For the tracks not digitized yet, would have to grab from the vinyl or the 3 3/4 ips tape. Not the best way, but it is a great listen in sequence, though you do have to turn the tape over halfway through. :)

I looked through my digital library and found that only four more songs in this list needed to be digitized. All four were Chris Montez songs that I had on LP. One more Chris Montez song I found on that A&M POP BOSSA compilation from Japan ("The Girl From Ipanema").

All the rest I already have in my music library. Now I just need to figure out the best way to sequence them onto CD-R.

[Note: edited thread title to be more descriptive for future searches.]

Harry
 
Now I just need to figure out the best way to sequence them onto CD-R.

Sounds like a very cool set Harry! I'm leaving tomorrow for a 2 week Florida vacation on American Airlines no less! Would have been a great nostalgic 3 hour set to have for the trip.

Why not just split them into 3 CDRs of about 60 minutes each? I assume that you are using lossless files and not nasty Ipod MP3s right? The standard CDR is 80 Minutes these days, so you are going to need at least 3 CDRs to keep the files lossless or uncompressed in any way.

Looking forward to hearing how it turned out!:cool:
 
Actually, I mostly use Windows Media Audio (wma) files at the highest 192kbps setting for my online library. I have the original CD's for lossless listening and use the compressed files on my mp3 player and for long CD-R in-car listening.

Harry
 
Slightly off track: WMA and Apple's lossy compression both beat plain MP3 at the same bitrate. In fact, I'm hard pressed to hear many artifacts in the WMA 10 Pro codec at 192kbps (and I'm extremely fussy about these things). I occasionally hear issues, but they're very faint. MP3 at 320kbps is the closest equivalent, in my experience.

I'll still demand lossless for any CDs I burn, but for portable use, WMA 10 Pro has not let me down yet.

I may try to duplicate this playlist in my Zune, provided I have all of the tracks. (I have most.)
 
OK - I figured out that with my Nero Express burning program, I can re-order the WMA track numbers by simply changing the first two digits of the file name in the burning list before burning. I thought I'd tried that before and it hadn't worked, but it seems to now.

I think my problem was I was trying to order the tracks for my mp3 player and the player still used the track numbers embedded in the ID tag, or did it in alpha order, one or the other.

For CD-WMA burning, the re-numbers that I type in are used, allowing me to re-order the tracks any way I'd like.

Bottom line is I now have all of the FUN IN FLIGHT #38 in WMA files, in order, on one CD-R for in-car listening.

Harry
 
Meanwhile, back to the track listing...

I notice that the American Airlines printed listing has a couple of typos:

- "I Say A Little Prayeer"
- "Whatch What Happens"

...but they got "Mas Que Nada" corrected.

I also notice their strict use of the "from" device, where if a song is from a show or movie, it's listed. I don't think I've ever seen a record label or CD track list showing "The Joker" as being from "The Roar Of The Greasepaint - The Smell Of The Crowd".

Harry
 
I was surprised to see that as well. I always thought that song was a Sergio "discovery" that nobody else had ever heard of!
 
A little analysis of the American Airlines programming:

Code:
#     SP#      Album Title
Trks
7    3001    A Day In The Life
3    3002    Wave
3    4113    For Animals Only
3    4116    HAP Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66
6    4117    Guantanamera
4    4118    Watch Out
3    4119    SRO
6    4120    Time After Time
4    4121    Claudine
1    4122    Equinox
5    4124    Sounds Like
1    4129    Look Of Love (Claudine)
4    4130    Child Of Clay
8    4131    Reach Out
3    4134    Herb Alpert's Ninth
2    4136    Fowl Play

Harry
 
I'd take a trip on American Airlines just to hear this playlist. Nice compilation. Ampex duplicated these tapes and for 3 3/4 IPS tapes, they are very good quality.
 
I took a 75-minute drive over to near the Tampa airport on Sunday to meet up with my nephew, visiting Florida on business, and decided to dig out this CD-R/WMA compilation disc I'd made last year (from Steve's info and this old thread) to entertain me on the long-ish drive. The three hour disc more than got me there and back. In fact, yesterday on a quick trip around home, I noticed it was still loaded and up to about track #54 ("Daytripper" -Sergio Mendes).

This thing really is well-programmed, and I have to give credit to whoever at BILLBOARD did it all those years ago, and I'm happy I was able to re-create it and have it survive into the 21st century. One neat programming move was to place Burt Bacharach's "Message To Michael" just after Herb & the Brass' "Casino Royale". There are a few neat Brazilian transitions as well. It's certainly way better than what I would have found on the radio...

Harry
 
I should get around to assembling this one myself. I probably have most of these on my Zune already; it'll be even easier once I get a music server and Squeezebox setup here at the house.
 
Rudy wrote:
>I should get around to assembling this one myself.

I have quite a few of the American Airlines tapes on digital (there is a fan base out there, and the tapes show up on eBay regularly) and let me point out one thing most folks don't realize unless you've heard the...the stereo quality and separation is far superior to the albums. You can actually hear the "three track sound" on many of the songs the way they were originally envisioned. Three tack as I define it is being able to tell the left , center and right sound field individually. You can really hear the quality of the recordings better than on LP. CDs are probably that way too, but it seems more pronounced on the reels for some reason, maybe they were specially remixed for super stereo and headphone listening as that is how American Airlines wanted it. Most LPs and CDs are mixed for speaker listening. Just an observation.

Great to have the booklet!
 
I have several of the A&M programs as issued on reel to reel by Ampex tapes.
PGM 17 titled 65 Fascinating Stereo Favorites from A&M, Time and Mainstream Records. Apparently there weren't that many A&M artists when this one was issued as they paired A&M with Time Records for this in-flight program. The rest of the programs are strictly A&M recordings.
PGM 38 Stereo Cruise-A-Long from A&M Records (the one starting this thread)
PGM 47 Heavenly Highway from A&M Records
PGM 60 Magnificent Panorama of Stereo from A&M Records
PGM 72 Kaleidoscope of Stereo Sound from A&M Records
PGM 80 Stereo Pleasure Dome from ODE and A&M Records

There may have been others but these are the only ones I know of...I have converted them to two MP3 disks that I play in my car stereo.
 
That would make some great car listening. I've put a hard drive in the car that I've loaded up with tracks. It is nice to have so much available without worrying about discs in the car.

I'll have to post about my setup later today.
 
I dug out my CDR of American Airlines #60 program. This one has some Christmas stuff and a good bit of the CTi tracks, so it's a good time of year to listen.

As always, these things are well-programmed and I enjoyed the first 45 minutes on a short drive this morning. The program smoothed out the frustration of heavy traffic.

AA#60Front2.jpg

AA#60Rear2.jpg
 
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I dug out my CDR of American Airlines #60 program. This one has some Christmas stuff and a good bit of the CTi tracks, so it's a good time of year to listen.

As always, these things are well-programmed and I enjoyed the first 45 minutes on a short drive this morning. The program smoothed out the frustration of heavy traffic.

AA#60Rear2.jpg
A Very nice Playlist indeed
 
In my travels yesterday, I managed to get through the first two columns of songs on that label posted above, which probably works out to two hours on the road. That's fairly unusual for me in retirement, but I had to go up to Celebration for a doctor's appointment and then there was a long trip in traffic back from a lunch just south of us.
 
For all of the labels in the American Airlines series, see this thread:

 
I dug out my CDR of American Airlines #60 program. This one has some Christmas stuff and a good bit of the CTi tracks, so it's a good time of year to listen.

As always, these things are well-programmed and I enjoyed the first 45 minutes on a short drive this morning. The program smoothed out the frustration of heavy traffic.

AA#60Front2.jpg

AA#60Rear2.jpg

Music for the Jet Set, and programmed with superb taste.
 
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