Adlai E. Stevenson & The Smithsonian

Bakersfield, CA:  I received word that a certain guy had acquired the complete stock from a Bakersfield record store that had closed over a decade ago. After he had removed the most valuable items in the stock, he planed to offer the remainder during his yard sale. While rummaging through the material, I discovered two unusual 12 inch vinyl discs on red vinyl in a plain brown sleeve. Being a fan of spoken word/oddities/radio transcripts, I snapped them up for a quarter each. 

When I returned home, I Googled Adlai E. Stevenson, I was surprised to learn the records were part of Stevenson's 1952 Democratic Presidential Campaign. I now realized these records were more of historical merit, then of monetary value. The 1952 Presidential Election proved to be a 'game changer' in how candidates were presented. Eisenhower's campaign managers went to a Madison Avenue ad agency, the result was 'I Like Ike', a zeitgeist that allowed a war hero with no political experience, to trump Adlai an experienced politician at his own game.

"Your 1952 Stevenson campaign spots and songs are certainly rare, if not unknown. There is a filmed-for-TV jingle that I have seen featuring the song “I Love the Gov” but I haven’t been able to access it to compare the arrangement with your radio spot, perhaps the same singer, etc. It makes sense that the Democratic Women’s Committee (Hollywood) would have tried to maximize its effect by putting jingles together for television and radio.

Candidate Stevenson had no understanding of television, and little of radio. The idea that speeches would be reduced to spots, much less that a campaign would capitalize upon music and popular taste was not available to him. In those days, presidential campaigns were often bombarded from the outside by groups organized to help in any way that they thought they could, with the candidate’s inner circle responding on an ad hoc basis.

 So none of this voluntary, self-produced media came from command central, the way a campaign would run, top-down, today."

2009

It's worth noting, that it was customary for radio stations after airing their radio spots to either return the production copies to the clients, or dispose/trash them. How these items avoided the date with land-fill, ending up in a Bakersfield Yard-Sale, and are now being housed at the Smithsonian is beyond me.