By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
WBEN Sports, 1955 style
Chuck Healy, Ralph Hubbell, and Dick Rifenburg… what a team right there!
From an AHL Buffalo Bisons program of the mid 1950s.
Buffalo in the 50’s: the WBEN Sports Aces
Tag: Dick Rifenburg
WBEN 1973- Clint Buehlman, The Buffalo Braves, and more….
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Originally Posted: February, 2008
Just unearthed! Recordings of entire days of WBEN Radio… Unheard since the days they were broadcast over 35 years ago! Names like Clint Buehlman, Van Miller and the NBA Buffalo Braves! Read on!
So where did these tapes come from? In 1995, Lin Television performed a massive cleanout of the 2077 Elmwood Avenue building they had just purchased as a part of their buying WIVB-TV.
Among the “treasures” I found dumpster diving, was a box of Reel-to-Rel tapes that appeared to be WBEN Radio Logger tapes from the early 70s. Many of the reels were blank… But even those with the audio intact were nearly useless… The tapes were recorded at 15/32 IPS. That is very slow, and at the time the tapes were rescued, the only way to hear the tapes properly involved about 4 hours of work for an hour of final product. For 13 years, I’ve been trying to figure out how to play these tapes back… And now… thanks to a new reel deck.. and some new digital audio editing programs, viola!
The audio quality is not the best… Its warbly sometimes… And it jumps quite a bit… And These logger tapes were in the Engineering Shop because there were problems with the recording…. But what is really amazing. Imagine your grandparents listening to WBEN all day… That’s what you get here. Things were slow to change at WBEN. Clint Buehlman’s Show in 1973 was not really all that different from the show in 1953. Van Miller is in great voice and cadence calling Buffalo Braves basketball. As far as I know, these are the only complete recordings of Braves basketball in tact.
Below, you’ll find exactly what and who is on these tapes… and some brief cuts from each.
Clint Buehlman
One of the most often asked questions to this website is, “What was the name of Clint Buehlman’s theme song?” The answer is, there were dozens of light airy instrumentals that were used to open each hour of the Buehlman show, after newsman Jack Ogilvie introduced Your AM-MC after each newscast. Listen below for several such opens, along with other snippets from the Buehly.
Buffalo Braves Basketball
Another of those popular questions is Do you have any Braves Games? Apparently, the answer has been yes for quite a long time… only they’ve been stuck on tapes I couldn’t play. But now, I have at least three Braves games in their entirety.
Braves vs Lakers: December 19, 1973
Kareem Abdul Jabbar visits Memorial Auditorium
Braves vs Bucks: February 2, 1973
Wilt Chamberlain visits Memorial Auditorium
Some Highlights from WBEN Friday December 28, 1973
Some Highlights from WBEN March 15, 1973
Random Highlights from WBEN 1973
