All Aboard for Adventure - Series III - Pgm 10

Awhile back, I picked up around twenty sets of 78 rpm records from “All Aboard for Adventure”.  It was a radio series distributed by the Joint Radio Committee of the Congregational Christian, Methodist and Presbyterian USA Churches.

I won’t be posting the entire series, but I’m offering up a sample to see what other researchers might make of it.  I'm not sure if these are actual broadcasts or restagings of broadcasts or something else.

Each show is recorded on two sides of a 12” 78rpm record and runs anywhere from eight to ten minutes.  There’s an opening to each show, but no closing.

I did some digging and did find a local New York radio series with this title from the time period when the records were released.  As part of the set, there was an audition show that seemed more complete, spread over four 78 rpm sides and running around 15 minutes.  That audition included a ten minute drama and a discussion with some children about it.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to dub the audition since all of the records in that set were broken, so I could only sample what they contained.

So, these records were either dubbed from broadcasts of the local New York show or restaged for these records.  I’m guessing they were pressed and released in sets for use by churches in different parts of the country.

The dramas are competently done and deal with missionary work in various countries.  Most of the discs are from Series III, which deals exclusively with stories about India.

The main problem with the series, at least for a listener today, are the depictions of racial and ethnic stereotypes of simple-minded and superstitious natives being “saved” by better educated (and more intelligent) white Christian missionaries.  They’re a relic of their time.

Program 10 in Series III is about David, “The Boy Who Didn’t Belong”, where Red, the son of a missionary becomes friends with an outcast and sees the discrimination his friend goes through.

Honestly, this episode is just about the least offensive program in the set that I have.

Our mp3 was transferred from a two sided twelve-inch 78rpm vinyl disc, matrix numbers ND6-MC-224 and ND6-MC-225.