Up for Sale is an Australian,  10 inch, 4 track, Radio Show for 2GB Radio in Sydney in 1957,
featuring horse-race commentator  Ken Howard
in
"Ken Howard's Racing Scrapbook"

This ten inch, vinyl, 33 rpm, 2GB Radio Station record from 1957, has four short tracks. It stops in between each track & does not play on, as it consists of 4 episodes of a Horse Racing Show by well known,

Australian Race Caller, Ken Howard.

Each track opens with the line- “Thrill to great races of the past with ace race caller, Ken Howard as he turns the pages of his racing scrap book”.

Then Ken talks a bit on each track about horse racing in general, and then he plays the end of a famous race in Australian Horse Racing History.

1. On the first track, Ken Howard Talks about the famous New Zealand race horse, Rising Fast. Then he plays the end of the Caulfield Cup in 1955, won by Rising Fast and informs us that another horse in that race, “Red Craze”, went on to win the 1956, Caulfield & Melbourne Cup.

2. On the Second track, Ken Howard plays the end of the Chipping Norton Stakes at Warwick Farm, NSW on March 28, in 1953, featuring the horses, Karaoka, Hydrogen & Advocate.

3. On the third track, Ken talks a bit about the vastly different methods people use to pick their horses. He then plays the end of the 1949 Melbourne Cup, featuring the horses in order of finishing, 1st. Box Army, 2nd. Hoyce, 3rd. Benbol.

4. On the fourth and last track, Ken talks about colour of the Jockey Silks which are a hoodoo for the Melbourne Cup, that colour being purple. He then plays the end of the 1953 AJC St. Ledger, which was won by the horse, Sea Sovereign at 23 to 1!

CONDITION:

On side one: the record is NEAR MINT with no damage or wear 

whatsoever. The label is also bright, shiny, crisp, & clean- NEAR MINT

On side two:, Side two is blank. But it has some spindle marks

PLAY:

On side one, the record has been personally play tested

by myself and there is not a hint of any background noise whatsoever,

it plays MINT.

The jacket is generic, please see my detailed,

macro photographs for the condition of the record.

Ken Howard's Racing Scrap Book, Ken Howard- Australian Horse Racing Caller. 1913-1976.

Label:

Artransa-Amco Sydney- 2GB Radio Sydney ?– LGB-6508

Format:

Vinyl, 10 inch- 4 track MONO, 

Country:

Australia

Released:

1957

Genre:

Radio Show

Style:

Horse Racing

Howard, Kenneth Percival Frederick (1913–1976)

by Richard Waterhouse

Kenneth Percival Frederick Howard (1913-1976), racecaller, was born on 2 December 1913 at Waverley, Sydney, son of Percival Thomas Howard, a window-dresser from Victoria, and his Sydney-born wife Brenda Florence, née Knight. As a schoolboy, Ken studied racing colours, breeding and records. He became a cadet journalist, probably on Truth, before joining radio station 2SM as a messenger-boy; in 1936 he made his first race broadcast from Moorefield as understudy to Reg McKenzie. A few years later Howard moved to radio 2KY. At the district registrar's office, Paddington, on 4 September 1939 he married Iris Adelaide, a hairdresser and daughter of the horse-trainer Joe Cook. In that year he replaced Melbourne radio station 3XY's racecaller Harry Solomons, gaoled for his role in a scheme to defraud starting-price bookmakers.

Back in Sydney in 1941, Howard joined radio 2UE. He also called trotting and greyhound races, and commentated on boxing and wrestling matches. Until 1952 neither the Australian Jockey Club nor the Sydney Turf Club allowed commercial radio stations to describe races from their courses. Howard had to use precarious, off-course vantage points: at Rosehill he broadcast from a tower on an oil-storage tank, at Canterbury from another tower on top of a fowlhouse and at Randwick from the roof of a block of flats. An official threatened him with a shotgun for broadcasting from a tree adjacent to the Pakenham racecourse. For the next meeting the club erected a hessian screen to block his view, but Howard foiled this move by using a hot-air balloon.

Early Australian broadcasters, led by the Australian Broadcasting Commission's M. A. Ferry, described races in a calm and carefully modulated manner. In contrast, Howard's rising tone of excitement could turn even 'a maiden handicap of hacks into a Homeric struggle'. He was known for such colourful phrases as 'lunging for the wire' and 'London to a brick' (first used during the Blitz). Howard was an extremely accurate caller, naming the position of each horse in the race once every furlong, rather than focussing only on the front-runners.

In the early 1950s he moved to radio 2GB, where he remained. Howard presented Australia's first television turf programmes, including 'Racing Review', on TCN-9 in December 1956. With faith in his own judgement, he earned the nickname 'Magic Eye' for his accuracy in calling the first-placed horse immediately a race had finished. He was not always right, however: in 1968, after he incorrectly called Royal Account as winner of the A.J.C. Derby and Joking as winner of the Epsom, the Victoria Amateur Turf Club replaced him as its broadcaster of the Sydney races relayed to Caulfield.

Howard had been appointed M.B.E. in 1967. He described his last Sydney race at Randwick on 31 December 1973. In retirement, he still called the Bowraville races, but devoted most of his time to fishing, lawn bowls and gardening. Survived by his wife, he died of coronary vascular disease and cirrhosis of the liver on 21 October 1976 at his Nambucca Heads home and was buried in the Catholic section of Botany cemetery, Sydney.

 ***********************************