I recently bought a batch of early stereo reel to reel tapes. Stereo debuted on reel tapes, as you may know, about two years before the technology was adapted to vinyl records, and most of these tapes were dated 1956 to 1958.
In one of the tape boxes were several advertisements and business reply cards, and I was fascinated by the one for which I've included to the left, and which I've attached as a jpg, below. This sounds a lot like Karaoke, long before the term was ever heard. If you had a reel machine which had "monaural record and stereo playback" capability, these tapes made it possible for you to "add the melody" while the tape played the accompaniment.
The tape was reusable any number of times, and contained the types of songs which Mitch Miller would use to attain great fame doing more or less the same thing, albeit via television, a few years later. And all this could be yours for just $11.95, just about $90.00 in today's dollars. A bargain!
If you broaden your definition of karaoke, this is far from the first... Frinstance, there's "Music Minus One," kind of a karaoke for classical music, which has been around since the beginning of the LP era (their website, musicminusone.com, says "since 1950"). They're really for practice, rather than performance, though you could throw a hell of a Klassical Karaoke party with them.
Broaden the definition a little more, and you get to the "follow the bouncing ball" movie theatre sing-alongs that go back to the beginning of movie sound, and even before (when they were done with slides, and live music from the theatre organist or band). There are lots of Fleischer cartoons using the gimmick. They're audience participation, instead of one brave fool standing up in front of everybody, but kind of the same idea.
Posted by: woid | May 19, 2008 at 03:08 PM