Optigan

Awhile back I got a small package of cassettes from Jennifer LeDoux, Mike LeDoux’s widow. Before he passed away, Mike had told me that he’d given me all the Optigan-related items he thought he had, but apparently he missed these cassettes. They contain mostly demos and promo spots of various sorts. I finally got around to putting them together for this blog post, though I didn’t really do any heavy editing or clean-up, so they are what they are.

First off, a 60-second radio spot for the Optigan:

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Here’s an audio excerpt from the Dinah Shore TV show “Dinah’s Place,” dated Dec. 21, 1972. Barry Goldwater is the guest, and this clip features Goldwater attempting to play an Optigan whilst Shore attempts to sing along. Optigan had its first (and probably only) big promotional campaign during the 1972 holiday season, so this bit was most likely a part of that campaign. If anyone has a video copy of this, I’d love to get it from you!

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Finally, we have a large number of songs written by someone named Arlene Buckner. As far as I can tell, these are demos of her songs, maybe recorded by something like a song-poem service, all featuring Optigan backing tracks. They are all published by Lark Ellen Music, ASCAP. The singer(s) are not identified, and I don’t know anything else about these songs. Neither Buckner nor her publishing company appear in ASCAP’s search engine. And since Mike is no longer with us to clue me in, I’ll probably never know for sure!

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