File #733 UFO  – Courtesy of Jack Jenkins. This record may not be copied without his permission.

Sometimes the weird records I buy take me on weird journeys. This one was one of the weirdest, but also the most fun and surprising.

File #733 U.F.O. is a documentary record. I posted one of these a few months ago, although that record – which was a collection of interviews with prostitutes – was more exploitation than proper documentary.

This record is far more serious and well-produced than that piece of pseudo-titillation. But what is it?

I’ll let the record’s linear notes explain:

“What is a U.F.O.? If you’re looking for a simple answer to this question, you won’t find it in this album. Instead you will hear eye-witnesses claim the UFO’s they’ve seen to be from football-sized to 70 feet wide, flashing every color of the rainbow. Some insist the UFO’s are here on a peaceful mission; another quotes an Air Force officer who states UFO’s accounted for the utter disappearance of three of our aircraft. And a Florida resident wears a lump of scar tissue on his forehead where he says a UFO shot him with a blinding beam of light.

“FILE #733 UFO brings actual voices of Americans who are just like you and me…except for one or two startling experiences. Like the lady who played hostess to seventy people, and every one of them saw the frightening glowing objects that plagued her hillside home for weeks. Or like the California man who rode in a fourteen-room, thirty-foot tall space ship and discussed religion with the commander but who has been asked by the Air Force to soft-pedal the experience. Or the lady whose journey to the corner store was delayed by a firey flying object which stopped her car and ruined the battery. Or the…

But what do the ‘officials’ say? The Air Force spokesman questioned on UFO’s seems to brush the subject aside, leaving only a crack of light beneath a curtain of indifference: yet their project “Blue Book” admits a small percentage of UFO sightings remain unexplained. Scientists meanwhile back away from the subject.

Whatever your notion about Unidentified Flying Objects, “FILE 733, U.F.O.” will be an absorbing listening experience you’ll play over and over again. And, who knows? It may turn out to be history in the making!” – Jim French Radio K.I.R.O.

If you have any interest in UFOs, then you should get a real kick out of this production. The interview subject range from 100% credible to 100% certifiable (more on that in a bit) and regardless of their believability, they’re always entertaining and interesting.

I’d never heard anything like this record and wanted to know more about who made it. The linear notes did include a bit about the record’s producer/narrator, Jack Jenkins:

“Who is Jack Jenkins? The young producer-narrator of FILE #733 UFO is Jack Jenkins, a Korean veteran and inveterate seeker of truth, whose part-time hobby investigating unidentified flying objects reports has consumed thousands of hours – and hundreds of dollars. His search for information on the UFO has taken Jenkins to plausible-seeming pilots, earnest and modest matrons, impassioned self-professed prophets and nerve-wracked homemakers who have grown to wish they’d never been visited by UFOs. The narration contained in this album is concise and documentary in tone, and the voices of the actual UFO contactees or authorities were recording by Jenkins with a minimum of tape-editing, removing only pauses and redundant material. As a broadcast, as well as a long time friend, it’s a pleasure to know that thousands of Americans will now enjoy the opportunity of meeting one of the communications industry’s most promising young men: Jack Jenkins. – Jim French

Those notes did a good job of answering the question “Who is Jack Jenkins?” But I wanted to know “What happened to Jack Jenkins?” I also wanted to find out how he put this record out, what he tought of it, and what he did after it’s release! But as you can probably imagine, information on a 40+ year old record about UFOs is hard to come by, so I had to do the digging myself.

As you can probably imagine, Jack Jenkins is a pretty common name, so finding any information on this Jack Jenkins was really tricky at first. I did searches for “Jack Jenkins KIRO” “Jack Jenkins UFO” and “Jack Jenkins Century Records,” all with no luck. I tried countless other variations as well, each with no credible results. Eventually, I did a search for “Jack Jenkins radio commentator” and I came up with this: a commercial for a film about growing your own food “narrated by former nationally syndicated radio commentator, Jack Jenkins.”

That sounded promising.

The DVD was being released by Country Living Grain Mill, so I visited their website and sent an email to their contact address:

This is going to sound very strange, but I’m trying to track down someone named Jack Jenkins who produced a record in the 1960s about UFOs called “File #733 UFO.” It’s a documentary record that claims to have interviews with actual abuctees and assorted other people connected with UFOs….I know it’s an incredible long shot, but are they the same person? If so…I’d love to get a chance to ask Jenkins a few questions about it. If not…I’m sorry to waste your time with such a very strange question!

The response shocked me:

My father, Jack, produced and narrated File #733 after visiting and interviewing a number of people who claimed to have experiences with UFOs.  He’s not around today, but he’ll be in tomorrow if you’d like to give him a call and chat with him.

-Joel Jenkins

(It is at this point that I would like to remind any of you looking for a freelance researcher/writer that I am always looking for additional work.)

Well, I wasn’t going to turn down an offer like that, so last Wednesday I talked to Jack on the phone for about half an hour. He seemed just as shocked that I was able to track him down as I was, with the first words out of this mouth being “You should be a genealogist! You dig deep!”

After I told him how I was able to find him, he told me the story of how File #733 UFO came to be.

In the mid-1960s Jenkins was a radio host for KING radio in Seattle. During that time he would frequently get calls in from people claiming to have seen UFOs. He already had an interest in the subject, as did many at the time, and these phone calls piqued his curiosity even higher. Starting with the people he talked to on the radio and then going from there, Jenkins went out with a reel-to-reel tape deck and microphone, recording conversations with all kinds of people who claimed to have encounters with alien spacecraft.

But anyone can do that, so how did Jenkins manage to get his conversations pressed to vinyl?

Well, Jenkins knew how to record an album, and he was able to get it pressed, because he was a franchise for Century Records, a small record label based out of California. Working with Century, Jenkins recorded hundreds of local bands, choirs, vocal groups and other acts who wanted their music released. He had this record pressed just like all those others. About a thousand were made, and they were sold primarily in the Pacific Northwest.

As for the content itself, Jenkins considers some of the stories on File #733 UFO to be highly plausible, with reliable witnesses telling credible stories. At the same time, there are also many crackpots on the record whom Jenkins exposed as such. According to Jenkins, this created some scary situations after the record came out.

“I started to get thinly veiled threats that made me begin to worry about my wife and family” he said.

Thankfully, it soon became apparent that the crackpots just wanted what every crackpot wants: money. Eventually, they caved in on their threats and asked Jenkins for a cut of his profits. Since the record didn’t actually make any money for Jenkins, that ended that issue.

As for the more credible people on the record, Jenkins stayed in touch with some of them years after the record was released. He tried to stay in touch with Sid Padrick, one claimed abductee on the record, but some years ago Padrick had apparently vanished without a trace. According to Jenkins, Padrick did always say that he believed the aliens would return for him someday…

(Cue X-Files theme music).

As for Jenkins himself, he eventually left the recording and radio industries altogether. Today, he runs Country Living Mills, selling home grain mills to people around the world. The obvious enthusiasm and energy young Jack Jenkins displayed while talking about aliens on File #733 UFO, the 77-year-old Jenkins shows while discussing grain and grain mills. He believes that people today are too reliant on mass-produced grain and other foods that suck out all the nutrients and are full of harmful chemicals. According to Jenkins, more people should rely on locally grown food and, when possible, prepare their own grain and other foods.

While so many people preaching against big business and corporate food sound like the very crackpots Jenkins exposed on his record, Jenkins comes off incredibly likable and polite, explaining his views in a way that makes sense even to someone like me, who knows next to nothing about food production.

Although Jenkins is no longer involved in radio and he hasn’t worked on another UFO-related project since this record, he’s still immensely proud of the record he made all those years ago, and his faith in the subject remains unwavering.

“I’m delighted with it. I know UFOs are out there and there’s no question about it. And I consider some of the people I met absolutely honest and very plausible. It’s one of those things we probably won’t know for quiet a while. But that’s okay. It’s good to have a few mysteries.”

I thank Jack Jenkins for the opportunity to talk to him about his unique record and I would also like to thank him for letting me share it with all of you. I hope you all find it as fascinating as I do.