Jazz with OT Archive

Step 1. Opening the cassette

Step 2. Baking the cassette

Step 3. Jazz, hot and fresh from the oven

But reviving some of Oscar’s old shows has required technical knowledge, ingenuity and a really good oven.

Bruce Ellis, our production director, found himself with a stack of old reel-to-reel and beta tapes of OT’s old shows (generously donated to the station by Oscar’s family.) The tapes were separating… the protective oxide coating shedding, making them unplayable.

However, Bruce had read where baking the tapes seals the oxide coating long enough for one or two plays to get them transferred into a digital format.

Here are some pictures of Bruce doing the baking and keeping the words and music of Oscar Treadwell alive for future generations.