My Dad had a portable reel-to-reel we used to play with. Back in the day all the music that was released on vinyl was also released on r2r. This was before 8-tracks and long before cassettes. Splicing was routine, splicing made it possible to edit, you could make radio interviews flow by cutting out the dead space and the mis-speakings, you could edit your garage band recordings, for the first time you could record church services for distribution, etc. You could make concert bootlegs which was revolutionary. R2r was immensely important into the 70s.

Here is an r2r bootleg of the last time Duane Allman played the recently composed "Blue Sky" live before he died, no studio version with Duane was ever made but we have this.