March 27, 2024

Ford Motor Company 1976 "Starter" Tape (8-Track)

Once upon a time, when you bought a brand new automobile (including cars, trucks, vans, and minivans) from GM or Ford and likely also Chrysler (which was one of the successors to American Motors Corp. best known for its Jeep line of vehicles, preceded by Nash Motors, and as of 2024, was known as Stellantis N.V. which also includes Italy's Fiat, Germany's Opel, France's Citroën and some other auto brands), it was not unusual that if you spent enough money to buy an overpriced sound system from the car manufacturer, the company might also include a "starter" tape (at first they were 8-tracks, and then later, cassette tapes) to accompany their new vehicles in order to show-off their factory audio systems.

Not everyone who bought an auto-maker's sound system received the "starter" tapes, but some did. The starter tapes consisted of licensed popular music for intended for the auto dealers to be able to showcase their sound systems during test drives, and occasionally the auto dealers left the starter tapes in the cars for the new buyers.


Today's post comes from the Internet Archive's audio archive, and it was a "starter" tape from Ford Motor Company in 1976. Apparently, the original tape was found when an heir was clearing out their grandmother's following her death in 1997. The grandmother's husband (the grandfather — had been a salesman for a local Ford, and later Chevrolet dealer until his death in the late 1980's. The Ford "starter" tape was an 8-track from 1976. The music on the tape was classic seventies music (including from stations which played oldies at the time) and a fair amount of this music might have been broadcast on local radio stations at the time.


 


The track listings are as follows:

A1 Hues Corporation*– Rock The Boat
A2 Chet Atkins– Everybody's Talkin'
A3 Harold Wheeler Consort*– Feel Like Makin' Love
A4 Floyd Cramer– Soulful Strut
A5 Doc Severinsen– Touch Me In The Morning
B1 Perry Como– For All We Know
B2 Jack Jones / Susan George– We've Only Just Begun
B3 The Brothers– Never Can Say Goodbye
B4 Ed Ames– This Guy's in Love with You
B5 Henry Mancini– I Can't Stop Lovin' You
C1 Ray McKinley Director, New Glenn Miller Orch*– In The Mood
C2 Ray McKinley Director, New Glenn Miller Orch*– String Of Pearls
C3 Laurindo Almeida– Wave
C4 Perez Prado– Mambo Jambo
C5 Joao Donato*– Samba De Orfeu
C6 Chet Atkins / Arthur Fiedler, Boston Pops*– The Last Waltz
D1 Anita Kerr Singers*– Love Will Keep Us Together
D2 Morton Gould– Guantanemera
D3 Perry Como– The Way We Were
D4 Arthur Fiedler, Boston Pops*– Les Sylphides: Waltz In G-Flat, Op. 70, No. 1
D5 Eugene Ormandy, Philadelphia Orch*– (J. Strauss Jr.) Voices Of Spring, Op. 410

Have a listen to the first segment below, or by visiting https://archive.org/details/StereoForToday19768Track 

 

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