Canary Training Record / Training Your Parrakeet To Talk (1952)

A double-shot of helping people, which is what we do here...well, if you own a small and ridiculous bird, that is.  This is your one-stop shop for training your small and ridiculous birds.

First up is the well-titled "Canary Training Record," Featuring "The Hartz Mountain Master Canaries."  Take a moment to appreciate this.  These aren't just any run-of-the-mill padawan canaries; they are on the Council!

When I was young, my mother owned a parakeet, so I don't know much about canaries, but I do know this:  you can teach canaries to sing.  It's what they do.  I thought the purpose of this record was to teach them THESE SONGS, as in, the ones that are on the record.  The two sides of this record contain six classical songs (for want of an appropriate category) performed on organ and, for some strange reason, marimba.  

Well, if that is possible, it won't be with this record, because it sounds like the organist (and marimba-ist) are set up in a pet store.  There is random canary singing--several at once--going during the entire time each song is playing.  And no, it's not following along.  It sounds like complete chaos.
Maybe the point of this record is just to teach them to sing, randomly, and hearing other birds causes this? I don't know; I'm not a canariologist.

This record is undated, and the back shows you that you need approximately 25 different Hartz products to keep your one-ounce bird alive, so good luck!

Next on our agenda is "Training Your Parrakeet to Talk," from 1952.  You will notice right away that they use the archaic spelling of "Parrakeet," which my spell-correct keeps underlining, because today we (meaning "we" in the bird-training-record-posting field) use the more common "parakeet."  

Also right away, you will see that the bird featured on this record is named "Peter Parker."  Now, this pre-dates AMAZING FANTASY #15 by a good 10 years, but is it possible that Stan Lee's (or Steve Ditko's) wife had a non-talking parakeet, and one of them went out and bought this very record, which ended up inspiring the name of the alter-ego of their newest super hero? As Hong Kong Phooey would say, ".......could be!"

This record has instructions, but also has an announcer, who reads you the instructions, which takes up half of the first side.  It's funny, but when I first heard this record, I was positive that the bird's talking was faked.  As I said, having lived with a parakeet, I am aware of what they sound like (I thought), but, well, see the comments below!  Peter could surely talk; his counting was a little wonky, but hey, he's just repeating what he hears.  (Also, I wish I had a record of my grandmother.  How lucky is that?)

There is a second side to this record, but unfortunately, it's the "teaching" side, which means it's just a woman repeating a few phrases over and over (one of which, oddly enough, is "take a bite." I don't know why you would want your bird to say that.)  If all of this sounds familiar to you, it's because we have visited an entire LP of bird-training before, a couple of years ago.  You may still bear the scars.  

Here, for your listening torture, are both records, in one convenient place! Another funny thing is that, originally, I set out to merely find unusual records and post them, but I realized later that some could actually be helpful to somebody...and it's not like you can just buy these things in a store like you could years ago, so enjoy--even use them if you need!

LINK:  Double-dose of Bird Training 45's