SPOKEN WORD ARCHIVE -
TONDOKUMENTE ZUR ZEITGESCHICHTE |
| AND POLITICAL ARCHIVE
|
"Thoughts -Always- Under Construction" by
Bernhard Wichert, Roetgen near the City of Aachen/ West Germany
|
This site is not meant to be a detailed survey of Spoken Word recordings
and their history but more a collection of articles and information on that
subject. I will add more as they become available to me- both
articles on specific topics as well as related information on early recordings
that might be of interest to the reader.
A MOMENT IN HISTORY - Germany, October
1944
As a historian I'd like you to share with me a `A Moment in
History´: 60 years ago, on October 21,1944, the city of my birth, Aachen
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aachen
http://www.aachen.de/DE/tourismus_stadtinfo/aktuell/index.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/watchblog/152402610/
was conquered by the
American Army. It was the first German city-situated at the Belgium/Dutch
border- that had fallen into Allied hands. The SS and GESTAPO had followed
their orders from Berlin not to surrender, to have the city destroyed
rather than to surrender, and to fight to the last man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsZZ0tlgdDc
So the city had to
be evacuated. When the Allied troops entered after a long and heavy fight,
only 6,000 inhabitants had remained; the city had fallen to ashes (80%);
only the Cathedral of Charles Magne had survived.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aachen_Cathedral
My village Roetgen,
http://www.roetgen.de/home/index.php
where I settled down in 1980, could welcome the
American First Army already on September 12th. It was the first time
Allied troops entered Germany and so it was the first village on German
soil that had fallen into Allied hands. Robert Reid of the BBC sends a
report to London 'Into The Siegfried Line'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/watchblog/152401427/ [click on the slide
show 'Germany' at the right!]
http://siegfriedline.quickseek.com/
and on September 13th a
recording from inside Roetgen, followed by Robert Dunnett two days later.
The New York Times had an article on this event in its issue of September
14th.
Germany Is Free Again May 8th,1945: The war is over, the
small villages of the Northern Eifel (south of Aachen)
http://www.eifel.info/mainframe.asp?lang=de&e1=149
are destroyed,
houses and churches are in ruins and ashes. About 500 of former 4320 houses
still stand. Just to name two villages: Vossenack: 98% destroyed,
Kesternich: 92%; 1800 dead in the Eifel region; country roads: 94%
destroyed. No current, no telephone communication,water resources nearly
dead; the farmers's income extinct: 11,850 milkcows, with 1,900 surviving.
'It is May 8th, 1500hrs in the afternoon. The bells of peace are ringing
over a demolished Germany. How long have we been longing for that ringing?'
(diary of a peasant)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMJCPxQSpRw&feature=related
A film about Aachen after air attacks in 1943-44, filmed by an Aachen school teacher who had a special
permission to document the devastion caused by 'enemy attacks':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt_H5G_Nm_M&feature=related
On October 21, 1944, MUTUAL-WOR (New York) Newsreel broadcast interviews from Mitchell Field Hospital
with two US soldiers who had crossed the Belgian-German border and gone into Aachen. They talk about the events of that crossing,
how they saw Aachen and were wounded there. (The same broadcast included MacArthur's fighting speech from the Philippines "I have
returned".)
On Sunday, October 29, 1944, at 9:30 a.m. people all over the world could hear this NBC
announcement: 'The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation
with the American Jewish Committee, brings you now a special broadcast of
historic significance with the first Jewish religious service broadcast
from Germany since the advent of Hitler.- We turn you over now to James
Cassidy, NBC war reporter in the AACHEN area....'- James Cassidy: 'We are
speaking from somewhere near Aachen. This brief service is being held in
the open air. The sound of artillery guns may interfer during our service
because the French line is not from where we are now.'... Chaplain Sidney
Lefkowitz (from Richmond, Virginia): 'Profound with me is this service
which we celebrate today. It is... the first we broadcast to the
world.'...
A short video comemorating the event, with sound clips, can
be seen and heard via YOUTUBE
The AJC has an Interview with Max Fuchs, the cantor in the first Jewish religious service
that was broadcast from occupied German territory in 1944 on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCn0ZKanKFk&feature=related
In a round-table discussion on March 21, 1945 called
'Freedom Forum- The Future Of The Rhineland', beamed from London
via short-wave to North America, Ed Muller, 'fresh back from Aachen', talks
about his stay there. 'Aachen was a city difficult to nazify. The only town
I know that even didn't have an Adolf-Hitler-Strasse'.
Aachen, BTW, was the home of Paul Julius von Reuter, the founder of today's 'Reuter' news agency.
See also under the entry of Nov.2, 2009!
Spoken word recordings can be found
all over the world because it has always been man's desire to capture and
preserve the sounds that surround him. That's why we find so many words, so
much life on cylinders, shellacs,discs,and tapes all around the world. And
because man is still interested in his past, be it in written form, in
stone or whatever the human sound is the most interesting of all (IMO).
Does it not bring us back into the past to let us re-live those moments
that perhaps changed world history, does it not let us into the homes and
thoughts of everyday people? 'Print stands for the word, but it never is,
it never can be the word itself. Only the spoken voice can bring the word
fully to life.' (Robert Vincent, MSU,1965)
So, many archives have
begun to re-arrange their holdings to preserve every object for the next
hundred or more years. The International Association of Sound Archives
(iasa) as leading organization tries to gather all data available of extant
sound recordings of spoken word ('label discography').
For further
information see
http://www.iasa-online.de/.
There you click on "Deutsche Nationaldiscographie"; or
www.iasa-web.org
A
specific German collection can be found here:
http://www.lotz-verlag.de/ discography.html
Yet with
innovations in the recording industry the number of media to record on
grew. Wax discs and "black discs" were substituted by Decelith discs in
Germany, by "acetates" in the US, tape recordings in Germany since 1936 and
so on.- Recordings on Decelith of the post-WWII-era can be found from time
to time. There must have been losts of unused material around in East and
West Germany. The last one I found was a 10inch one with a Belgian singing
a Christmas song for his girl-friend, recorded across the border in Aachen,
end of 1948.
That means that it has become nearly impossible to
compile a catalogue of every recording ever made. Private recordings made
on home recorders from radio broadcasts, discs -reporters made in the
field, on the spots of events- all these may still slumber somewhere.
But there are also archives in the East that keep boxes full of German
tapes and discs unopened; unearthed treasures for generations to come! They
'possess' them because the archives could not be transported to the West
before the end of World War II, because they were /are regarded as war
booty.
As an example let's have a look at the Berlin
Phonogramm-Archiv: 'World War II interrupted the activities of the
Phonogramm-Archiv. Most of the cylinder recordings were packed up between
December 1944 and January 1945, and during 1945 four-fifths of them were
sent to East Germany and one-fifth to locations in West Germany. In 1950
approximately 9,000 cylinders were confiscated by the Russians and sent to
Leningrad. That same year a significant number of 78-rpm disc recordings
were smashed by Russian soldiers in the courtyard of the museum that housed
the Phonogramm-Archiv. During the 1950s the cylinders stored in West
Germany were returned to the Phonogramm-Archiv. In 1959 most of the
cylinders in Leningrad were returned to East Berlin, but not to the
Phonogramm-Archiv, which was located in West Berlin. Erich Stockmann
watched over the cylinders in East Berlin, and in the 1960s he assisted
with the return of some cylinders until the East German government put a
stop to it. On May 31, 1990, a sealed room on Unter den Linden in East
Berlin was opened in the presence of Erich Stockmann and Artur Simon, and
the recordings were viewed and counted in preparation for their return to
the Phonogramm-Archiv. Early the next year, 27,347 cylinders and 1,283
78-rpm discs, which had been gone since 1945, were returned to the
Phonogramm-Archiv.' (Das Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv)
(One of the latest great discoveries is a live broadcast of 20/21.April 1931 for the RRG -Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft in Berlin- from a Jazz Club in Harlem, probably the Cotton Club. This report by Hellmut H.Hellmut is the only German live report of those times. It had been recorded in Berlin on wax for a broadcast at a later hour.
Nobody would have listened to it at in Germany at 6 a.m.!) -
When you go the Bear-Family website you should
also have an eye on the excellent 'Beyond Recall' re-issues of
Jewish/Jiddish discs from Berlin!
"http://www.bear-family.de/tabel1/neuheit/fall2003/bcd16340_e.html
As a private
collector of mainly spoken word I have begun collecting -as a student back
in the 1960s- every item that I could lay my hands on. Since then the
number of international recordings has risen to many thousand recordings
and discs. With the stress on German discs it has become unavoidable to add
English spoken word to cover the whole period of recording.
In the last
couple of years we have also recognized how important oral history is.
Personal recollections are nearly as important as the recorded event
itself.
My earliest 'recording' so to say goes back to the year 1852. A
certain Mr Frederick Mead (aged 90) tells about the Duke of Wellington's
funeral where he was present. It was recorded on shellac in 1940.
The
Library of Congrass in Washington D.C. holds a number of personal
recollections of former slaves born between 1832 and 1860 like Laura
Smalley or Irene Williams. 'We were slaves. We belonged to people. They'd
sell us like they sell horses and cows and hogs.'
One should not
forget the importance of Thomas Alpha Edison. He was the one who did record
the first sound on a small piece of foil around a cylinder (1877). And the
first voices we can still listen to come from his cylinders although
recording history has one unique piece of recording:
the
1878-Frank-Lambeth lead-cylinder 'Experimental Talking Clock'. It is
Lambeth reciting the words 'One -ten o'clock, twelve o'clock'. A first idea
was that the 4th section had to be played reverse. Yet, as an interesting
article on that recording shows there is much more to it:
"http://www.pong-story.com/lambert".
In two ARSC articles Stephan
Puille of Berlin University, proves that the date of the Lambeth recording
must be a myth. (Dialogue on 'The Oldest Playable Recording', ARSC
Journal, Spring 2002, pp. 77-84, and 'Dialogue on 'The Oldest Playable
Recording' (continued)', ARSC Journal, Autumn 2002, pp. 237-242). (Thanks,
Stephan, for the info!) More on that to come.
For those who are
interested in early recording devices see
"http://members.aol.com/rondeau7/",
"http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/afteredison.html" ,
"http://www.lotz-verlag.de/Online-Disco-Phonocards.html"
The real recording period then
began on November 22,1880 with William Gladstone: 'The request that you
have done me the homour to make to receive the record of my voice is one I
cheerfully comply with sofar as it lies in my power though I lament to say
the voice I transmit to you is only a relic of an organ, the employment of
which has been overstrained.If I offer to you as much as I possess and so
far as old age has left me with the utmost satisfaction has being at least
a testimony to the instruction and de- light I have received from your
marvellous invention.' (0'58)
An eye-witness account of George
Bulls (born 1863) tells us about that time -1880- when he left Kansas City
for Dodge City, the times of the old 'Wild West' with its gangsters,
sheriffs and outlaws; while a certain Homer Croy recollects his memories of
his neighbour, Jesse James. In that connection I want to mention the last
reunion of the Civil War veterans in July 1938, the seventy-fifth
anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.( Mutual net, WFMD).The programme
was recorded in Gettysburg/Pennsylvania. The average age of the veterans is
94! Interviews with the grandsons of Generals Meade, and Grant, the
grandson and great-grandson of Robert E. Lee. Dave Driscoll(reporter),
Robert E. Lee IV (great-grandson of the general), George Gordon Meade, U.
S. Grant III (speaking from New York City), George Boling Lee (from KDB,
Santa Barbara, California), Tony La Frano (announcer: billed as 'Anthony La
Frano')
In 1888 a bulk of about 40 white wax cylinders were cut in
London for Th.Edison when George Gouraud introduced the Edison wax
cylinder phonograph. Man people were present to celebrate a.o. the Crystal
Palace recordings made with a phonograph on the balcony (on yellow
paraffine cylinders). Not only Arthur Sullivan sent his greetings in an
'after dinner toast' but also the English Postmaster General Cecil Raikes
because the first thoughts had come up of sending cylinders via postal
services. And it was here that perhaps the first German language recording
that survived was cut: The conductor August Mann (who conducted at the
Handel Festival in London a chorus of 4,000 voices) sends his greetings to
his colleague Theodore Thomas in America expressing his hope to make music
with him the following year.
September 11,1888 is the date for the
first Canadian cylinder with Baron Frederick Arthur Stanley of Preston
(Governor General of Canada) with his formal opening of the trade and
industry exhibition in Toronto (recorded at Edison Laboratories).
A very much disputed recording of 1888
is the 'Queen Victoria Cylinder', discovered in 1991, a graphophone
cylinder made at Balmoral by Sidney Morse. Only about 8-10 words can be
understood.
When Thomas Edison's phonograph was demonstrated to the
Queen, she had no use for it, but when it was explained to her that a
border dispute with Ethiopia might be best handled with the backward King
Menelik by sending him a queenly phonographic message, she spoke briefly
but imperiously into a large horn device to express her hope for
'friendship between our two Empires.' The cylinder recording, the Queen
commanded, 'will be sealed up; and destroyed after he has received the
message.' It was duly played by her representative in Abyssinia, accepted
with ceremony-the king stood when he heard Victoria's voice-and replayed
several times, accomplishing its task. Then, Colonel Harrington reported,
'The cylinder was returned to me and immediately broken into pieces as
promised.' But the precious relic-or at least a copy of it-survives
secretly, the Queen's voice raspily preserved for history. It was her only
proven contact with recorded sound.(St.Weintraub, Engines Of Change, no
date)
The following comment comes from our IASA-member Nigel Bewley of the
British Library Sound Archive (2003): 'In 1991 the Science Museum asked the
British Library Sound Archive for help in transferring the cylinder and we
were able to oblige. The cylinder contains three 'tracks' or separate
recordings. One is in the opposite direction from the other two. One
recording is of a man (?) whistling, one has so much surface noise that
nothing can be discerned and another has the recording of a woman's voice.
Some words can be made out: 'My fellow Britons....' at the beginning and
'...I have never forgotten.' at the end, with the 'track' lasting circa
twenty seconds. Even with much CEDAR processing etc we cannot improve on
that (for the time being, anyway). There is no certainty that the recording
is of Queen Victoria. It is possible to be a recording of a lady-in-waiting
or another person present. Queen Victoria was not particularly shy or a
shrinking violet but it may be that to shout or at least speak in an
exaggerated way down a speaking tube (to energise the diaphragm and stylus)
whilst in the presence of a 'tradesman' demonstrating the machine,
representatives of the 'great and the good' of British court society,
visiting dignitaries, servants and flunkies may have been beneath her
dignity. Queen Victoria may have instructed an aide to make the recording
on her behalf. (The opinion contained in this paragraph is my own personal
view). There is, as pointed out by John Ross, a suggestion that Queen
Victoria recorded a message, on disc, for the King of Ethiopia and it was
destroyed according to her wishes after it was played to the King. No
copies have so far surfaced, nor remnants of the original.'
Johannes Brahms plays an excerpt of 'Ungarischer Tanz Nr.1' in Vienna and
was recorded by Edison's European representative Theo Wangemann in the home
of the Fellinger Family in Vienna. It's another piece of music history and
had already been transfered on shellac in 1935, and again restored in 1997
by the Vienna Phonogramm-Archiv.
Between 1889 and 1900 'Lieutenant' Gianni Bettini (* 1860 in
Novara/Italy- +1938 NYC) records a number of vocal performances for his
pleasure on his 'Bettini-Cylinders'.He was a wealthy New York host who
entertained the elite of the opera world in his home and took the
opportunity to record his guests throughout the 1890s. While copies of his
cylinders were very expensive (up to 6 Dollars when the norm was 50 cents),
and had a small distribution, his catalogue eventually ran to dozens of
pages and read like a 'who-is-who' of opera. Bettini's
patented improvements to existing cylinder machines included a playback
device which purportedly improved the sound quality of recordings. Bettini
cylinders are among the rarest in existence. The most intriguing of those
he made were recordings of President Benjamin Harrison (prob.1889) and Mark
Twain, latter now lost.' (LoC)
What persons recorded before the
turn of the 19th century and whose voices can still be heard (not to
mention the many vocalists)?
Here is an incomplete listing (always the
first recorded sound of a person is mentioned, not those that
followed):
Charles Sumner Tainter (1880, wax discs,archived at the
Smithonian Institute and never published)
Emile Berliner (Franklin
Institute) (his first, experimental disc of 25.Oct.1887),
same:
('Twinkle little star') (Berliner #26),
for 1888: see articles on
Edison and the Queen Victoria recording
Nelson Appleton Miles,
US-general,Commander of US Army during the Spanish-American War
(c.1888-1886)
Lord Stanley, Governor of Canada (1888),
Robert
Browning, poet (1888),
Henry Cecil Raikes, British Postmaster-General
(1888),
Sir Arthur Sullivan, composer (Dec.1888),
William Ewart
Gladstone (22-11-1888),
George William Frederick Charles, Duke of
Cambridge (Dec.1888, first ever British Royal recording),
Sir Henry
Irving, Brit.actor ('The Maniac', first verse)[see: The Voice of Henry
Irving: An Investigation, a lecture given under the chairmanship of
Sir John Gielgud on 27 January 1976 by Richard Bebb] (30.Aug.1888),
John O'Terrell, street
vendor ('The Lord's Prayer) (1888- date not verified, could also be 1898),
Cecil Rhodes (c.1888/90) (in the
possession of the Stanley Family),
Hans Mühlhofer with
St.Michael-Kirchenchor (1889),
William Ewart Gladstone, British Prime
Minister (1889),
Benjamin Harrison, US-President (c.1889),
Johannes Brahms, composer and pianist (shouts a few words before a
recording) (Vienna 2.Dec.1889)
Florence Nightingale, engaged with the
Red Cross (30.July 1890),
Lajos Kossuth (played a leading role in the Hungarian 1848 revolt and war vs the Habsburgs)
address to the nation (20.October 1890 in Turin/Itlay)
Alfred Lord Tennyson, poet (1890),
Walt
Whitman, poet (1890),
Sound picture 'Schlacht bei Sedan am 1.September
1870' (1890),
Sound picture 'Die Beschießung von Paris Dezember 1870'
(1890),
Phineas Taylor Barnum (1890/ +1891), head of the famous Barnum
Circus (12.Feb.1890),
Prince Jerome Napoleon, cousin of Emperor
Napoleon III. (1890),
Henry Morton
Stanley ('Stanley of Africa') Edison Cyl. (London 1890)
A recording of
Big Ben sounding (31.Dec.1890),
Dan Kelly (Shakespeare
recitations/later:`Pat Brady´ scenes)(Ohio Phonograph Co.)(July 1891)
Gustave Eiffel (4.Feb.1891),
Grover Cleveland, 22.US-President (1892),
Edwin Booth (+1893), actor, brother of Lincoln's murderer (MArch
1892),
Robert Green Ingersoll, preacher,lecturer (Berliner 697) (NYC,
31.Dec.1897),
Garrett Augustus Hobart, US-Vice President under
Pres.McKinley (1896)[different date I have: 1.May 1889],
William
L.Elterich ['Elherich', spelling varies],German Recitations,1896,
Gaspar Nunez de Arce,
Spanish poet (1898),
Leo Tolstoy, poet (1898),
Trumpeter Kenneth
Landfried (who plays the bugle as he did at Waterloo) (1890)
Oscar
Wilde, poet,writer (although his voice is supposed to be faked)(1892),
Constant Coquelin Ainé, poet (creator of Cyrano de Bergerac)(c.1888),
Louis Glas (1889),
Louis Vasnier (reciting) (Louisiana Phonograph
Cyl.920000)(1892),
Press Eldridge (North American Cylinder 233)
(1892),
A report on a visit of Kaiser Wilhelm II.visiting a factory for
war production (1895),
W.O.Beckenbaugh (auctioneer) (Columbia
Cyl.100009) (1895),
David C.Bangs ('elocutionist')'On The Gramophone'(Berliner 619Z, Feb.1896)
George Graham (Berliner 648-x) (23rd Psalm) (c.May
1896),
President William McKinley (1896),
William Jennings Bryan
(1896),
William L.Elterich, editor of German language newspaper 'The
Washington Revue' (Berliner 1500) (Wash.D.C.30.May 1896)
Frau
Stranz-Führing (private rec. reciting a poem on the Kaiser's birthday)
(1897),
Cal Stewart ('Uncle Josh') (Edison)(1897)
T.De Witt Talmage
(Sermon,recitation from Bible) (Berliner 5009) (8.April 1989)
N.R.Wood
(sounds of animals on a farm) (Berliner 401Y) (5.Aug.1897)
Chauncey
M.Depew (orator;1899-1911 Senator from NY),(Berliner 693,694- 7.Jan.1898),
Garret Augustus Hobart (US Vice Pres.)(1898),
Chauncey DePew
(Senator from NY)(Berliner disc) (1898),
Feb.1898 The Torres Strait
Expedition. some cylinders with spoken words; most with music of the area;
e.g.Cylinder C80 'Speech Crooks' Vocal demonstration of graphophone -
wishing Mr. Ray success on his journey. Mr. Ray's reply followed by
laughter. Vocal group singing 'Auld Lang Syne' with piano. The Cambridge
Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait in 1898 was led by
Professor A.C. Haddon. The other members of the team were Charles Seligman
(originally trained in medicine) C.S. Myers (psychologist and musician),
W.H.R. Rivers (who also originally trained in medicine), W.M. Dougall, A.
Wilkin and Sidney Ray. This was the first British expedition to use the
phonograph for research purposes.
Dr.B. Sunderland (Bible recitations)
(Berliner 5012) (9.April 1898)
'Buffalo Bill` Bill Cody (on the Cuban
question)(Berliner 5014) (20.April 1898)
William F.Hooley
(a.o.`Gettysburg Address` recitation)(Berliner 6012)(NYC,21.Sep.1898)
Russell Hunting ('Casey'-stories)(Berliner 629Y) (20.March 1898),
Frank
Kennedy (a couple of discs on `The Schultzes`)(1898),
The later
President Theodore Roosevelt ('Teddy') announing bugle calls as played at
the Battle of San Juan Hill, with Emil Cassi, chief trumpeter of
Roosevelt's Rough Riders (28.Nov.1898),
Leo Tostoy (in Russian) (1898),
Spanish-American War 1898:
- On Board The Oregon
(Descriptive; Col.cyl.9044)(NY 1898-99)
- The Capture Of Santiago
(Descriptive; Col.cy.15191) (NY 1899)
A meeting of artists at Wilhelm
Leibl's villa in Kutterling (1899),
Imitation of voices of Vienna
Hofschauspieler by Eduard Kornau (1899),
Adolf Rechenberg greets his
wife via phonograph (private rec.,1899),
Ludwig Heinrich Friedrich
Haase (reciting Lessing, 1899),
Felix Mills 'Introduction to the
Gramophone'(1899),
Josef Lewinsky, Austrian actor (Gramophone
Company/Berliner 71136)(Vienna 1899)
Dwight Lyman Moody 'Evangelist'
(1899)
Julius Bergmann, philosopher (1899),
Felix Dahn, writer
(1899),
Adolf von Sonnenthal, actor (Bettini cylinder no number; NYC
1899)
Engelbert Humperdinck, composer (1899),
Emil Berliner
('Grüße an Frau Hahn') (Philadelphia 18 Nov.1899)
Recordings made between 1900 and 1903
IN PROGRESS
1900 and 1900a
Several German private recordings (family greetings) (1900)
Gustav Schoenwald (1900)
Funeral Services in Vienna,10th District (sound picture) (1900)
Robert Streidl (sound picture) (Berlin 1900)
Das Aufziehend der Schloßwache in Berlin (sound picture) (Berlin 1900)
Das Ablösen der Schloßwache in Berlin (sound picture) (Berlin 1900)
Carl von Zeska, actor) (Gramophone Rec G&T 41225) (c.1900)
Edison Laboratory Boys (satire on McKinley's campaign; Edison)(1900)
Kaiser of Austria Franz Josef I. (Paris,April 1900)
Burt Shepard (Berliner 1064W) (8.May 1900)
Theodore Roosevelt (Speech To Labor, Ed.7612) (c.Aug.1900)
O'Henry (William Sydney Porter) (on the 'Short Story')(c.1900) (Edison)
William Jennings Bryan: (fundamentalist,orator) Speech of Acceptance
(Ed.7611), (NYC Aug/Sep.1900)
G.H.Chirgwin, British Music Hall Entertainer (burlesque sketch) (c.1900)
William Gillette, actor (sherlock Holmes) (c.1900)
Mark Sheridan (A political speech) (Zonophone X41037)
1901
Ernst von Possart, actor (Grammophon 41037) (Munich 1901)
Fritz Dietrich, actor (1901)
Adolf Selig, actor (1901)
Max Goldschmidt, actor (Frankfurt am Main 1901)
NN Speech on the Splendor of the German Reich (Edison)(25.Feb.1901)
Otto Reuter, satirical couplets (Berliner 42328) (Berlin,Oct.1901)
1902
Heinrich Eisenbach (humorous sketch)(Gramophone Concert Rec.G.C.41154)(1902)
Sarah Bernhardt (1902)
The Czar of Russia, Nikolaus II., on his visit in Paris speaks in French (Discurs et résponse du Président Francais)(1902)
Josef Kainz, actor (17.May 1902)
Tyrone Power, actor (June 1902)
1903
Joseph Jefferson, actor (1903)
Otto Sommerstorff, actor (Grammophon 41282) (Berlin,c.1903)
Pope Leo XIII: Ave Maria and the Pontifical Benediction
rec.by Bettini (sold in the States by Columbia Phonograph Co.), (Rome 5.Feb.1903)
Len Spencer (prob.): McKinley Memorial (Col.639) (Feb.1902)
Harry Spencer: Address by the late Pres.McKinley of 2May01 (Col.833) (May 1902)
Max Devrient, actor (Grammophon 41230) (Vienna 1902)
Len Spencer: Pres. McKinley's Pan-Am.Exposition Speech (Vic.2170) (17.April 1903)
Leonard G.Spencer: Portions of the Last Speech of Pres.McKinley (VTM 2170) (Camden 1903)
Queen Elizabeth of Rumania ('Carmen Sylva') (poem; G&T GC-1235), Bucharest
1903
Tone Pictures Of The 71st Regiment Leaving For Cuba (Descriptive,
Col.cy.1601) (NY c.Sep/Oct.1903)
Rosa Albach-Retty, actress (Grammophon
41330) (Vienna, mid 1903)
DID YOU KNOW
Except for Edison cylinders and discs, most
early sound recordings will remain copyrighted and not enter the public
domain until February15,2067
Edison cylinders were not mass produced by
molding until 1901.
Until mass production began in 1901, most cylinders
were duplicated pantographically or by dubbing.
The cylinder boom started in 1897, when 500,000 cylinders were produced.
'Dialect
recordings' were common cylinder recordings and were often negative b
portrayals of the Irish and African-Amerircans.
Edison originally
envisioned sound recording as a tool for office dictation, not
entertainment.
Many Edison Blue Amberol cylinders are dubbed from
Edison Diamond Discs.
Edison's first two cylinder phonographs were the
'New' and 'Improved' models of 1887.
Most cylinders play at 160 rpm,
though 19th century Brown Wax cylinders play at 120 or 144 rpm.
Edison Concert cylinders were 5inch in diameter and were intended for public
performance where more volume was needed.
U-S Everlasting Records in
Cleveland, Ohio produced 1,000 cylinder titles between 1910 and 1913.
The Stroh violin was invented to produce a louder sound that would record
better on acoustic cylinders and discs. http://historywired.si.edu/object.cfm?ID=46
Columbia cylinders were also sold through Sears-Roebuck under the name
Oxford.
Most early cylinders had a spoken announcement at the beginning with the
name of the piece, performer and company. The practice ended around 1909.
The first African-American recording artist, George W. Johnson, became
famous for his song 'The Laughing Song.'
Some instruments recorded better than others with the acoustic recording
process. Typically loud instruments like brass recorded well, while softer
instruments violins didn't.
The Columbia Phonograph Co. was the only major company to make both
cylinders and discs. They stopped producing cylinders in 1909.
Some of the rarest of all cylinders are 'pink' Lambert cylinders, early
celluloid cylinders made between 1900 and 1902
Cylinders are acoustic recordings--performers sang or played into a
recording horn, not a microphone. Microphones were not in widespread used
until 1924 with the advent of electrical recording.
Until 1904 cylinder records were not labelled except for separate paper `title slips` curled
up and stored inside the cylinder box. Spoken announcements appeared on these
unlabelled records (performer/title/firm). A reason may have been to protect the
recording from illegal dublication by record pirates.
One of the most wanted and searched for
cylinder is the one the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck must have made.
Newspapers in Germany reported in October 1889 about Theo Wangemann,
Edison's representative in Europe, being introduced to Bismarck then
resident at his Gut Fiedrichsruh. Wangemann played 'the Radetzkymarsch'
from a cylinder recorded earlier and t caused the old Bismarck to say a few
words such as a part of the poem: 'Als Kaiser Rotbart lobesam...' and
'Gaudeamus igitur'. Unfortunately the cylinder has never turned up!
About the same time when Th.A.Edison came to Europe, Emile Berliner
appeared in Hannover, Germany, on September 11,1889...
Another mystery is George Orwell. We have a description of his voice but so far not one snippet of his voice recording has
been discovered. Sometimes recordings turn up in the archives of
overseas stations. But even here nothing could be found.
To go on with 'mystery cylinders': the Mark Twain cylinder(s). Twain
changed his mind about dictating a book a few years later and filled more
than one- hundred Edison wax cylinders with dictations for THE AMERICAN
CLAIMANT (1892) before abandoning the scheme. None of those cylinders are
known to survive, nor any other authentic recording of his voice, although
several others were made. (Kevin Mac Donnell,First magazine,Inc.)
In 1863, nearly 15 years before Thomas Alva Edison created the first
phonograph, an inventor named Leon Scott is said to have visited the White
House. If historical anecdotes are accurate, he made a tracing of President
Lincoln's voice with his newly invented 'phonautograph', a machine that
scratched sound vibrations onto a soot-blackened sheet of paper wrapped
around a drum. The cylinder on which a paper record of Lincoln's voice was
apparently made has never been found.(The New York Times,March 25,1999)
Having said that another recording
mystery comes to my mind: the "faked" recordings. I mean all
those recordings that bear the "speaker's name" but were actually
recorded by actors or other voice impersonators. The earliest here are -of
course- cylinders: from President McKinley's voice (... more will follow),
to "Churchill's speeches". In November 2000 `The Observer´
reported that proof had been found that some of Winston Churchill's most
famous wartime radio broadcasts were delivered by the British actor Norman
Shelley, after a 78rpm record had been found among Shelley's private
effects labelled 'BBC,Churchill: Speech.Artist Norman Shelley,September
7th,1942' Shelley himself had admitted in a BBC interview of 1978 that he
had recorded the 'Fight On The Beaches'-speech for the British Counsil for
use in the U.S.A. Since then myth and reality have gone hand in hand and it
is still not verified which speeches are 'original Churchill' and which
not. See :
http://www.radiofax.org/, open: audio archive- 'The Churchill Tapes',
and:
http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/Shelley/Shelley01.html
Also the circulating 'We interrupt the programme' recording of Dec
7,1941, when John Daly is interrupting the Philharmonic Concert on CBS to
announce the Pearl Harbor news is a fake - a mixture of recordings,
probably arranged in the early 1970s: At the time the first P.H.news
bulletin hit- 2:22 PM EST - Daly would have been acting as
announcer/narrator for the program 'Spirit of '41'. 'Spirit Of '41.
happened on CBS between 2:22pm and 2:30 PM -there are statements that Daly
broke into 'Spirit Of '41' at approximately 2:25 PM to read the initial
bulletin, and there have also been statements that CBS chose to wait until
its regularly-scheduled news, scheduled news period at 2:30 to go with the
report. No recordings are known of the 'Spirit Of '41'
broadcast.(E.McLeod,1999)-NB: It also appears on the Murrow albums (see
below).
Another fake appears on the Murrow-series `I Can Hear It Now`:
some of the material simulated on the third album recreates broadcasts that
never happened at all -- the simulation of the Lindbergh coverage with
George Hicks and Lowell Thomas being the most obvious example, as Dr.
Michael Biel pointed out a few years ago when ABC passed this off as an
'authentic recording' in a documentary. The original album cover for Vol. 3
acknowledges that recreations are used, but no such acknowledgement appears
on Vol. 1, the album which includes the recreated Bob Trout surrender
broadcast.
For the Oscar Wilde Cylinder of 1890: see an interesting article at
http://www.geocities.com/~newgeneration/wilde/wilde_voice.html and: http://www.h
u mnet.ucla.edu/humnet/clarklib/wildvoic.htm
The following can be filed under FAKES or MOST WANTED: the Walt Whitman
Cylinder: W.W.reciting from his 'America'. Here is a part of an article of
1992; the complete one can be read at:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE0DA113CF935A25750C0A9649
58260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
'Two Walt Whitman scholars have found what they say could be a voice
recording of the American poet, reading four lines of his 1888 poem
'America.' - The tape, part of an audiocassette collection of poetry
readings, appears to be taken from an NBC radio broadcast from the early
1950's. On the tape, the broadcaster Leon Pearson identifies himself and
briefly introduces what he refers to as a wax cylinder recording of
b Whitman made in 1890. - If authentic, it would be the only known
recording of the poet's voice. - Uncertainties about the provenance of
the recording, however, cause experts to hesitate before pronouncing it
authentic. The cylinder itself has been lost. Although the technique of wax
cylinder recording was well established by 1890, Whitman never mentioned
making such a tape, nor did any of his contemporaries. Most specialists in
the history of the phonograph agree, however, that the possibility of
outright fraud or a hoax is unlikely. Audio experts who have heard the tape
say they believe that it is a recording of a wax cylinder. And the poem is
obscure even for Whitman scholars, and therefore not a likely choice for
anyone concocting a fake. A President or an Actor? - But historians of
early phonograph recordings cite a number of cylinders initially attributed
to a famous personage that later turned out to be performances by actors. -
One instance is legendary among historians: a cylinder of President William
McKinley's last speech before he was assassinated in 1901. The speech is
read not by McKinley but by a celebrated actor of the day, Len Spencer'.
br>
This short
35mm-film was a test for Edison's 'Kinetophone' project, the first attempt
in history to record sound and moving image in synchronization. This was an
experiment by William Dickson to put sound and film together either in 1894
or 1895. Unfortunately, this experiment failed because they didn't
understand synchronization of sound and film. The large cone on the left
hand side of the frame is the 'microphone' for the wax cylinder recorder
(off-camera). The Library of Congress had the film. The wax cylinder
soundtrack, however, was believed lost for many years. Tantalizingly, a
broken cylinder labeled 'Violin by WKL Dickson with Kineto' was catalogued
in the 1964 inventory at the Edison National Historic Site. In 1998,
Patrick Loughney, curator of Film and Television at the Library of
Congress, retrieved the cylinder and had it repaired and re-recorded at the
Rodgers and Hammerstein Archive of Recorded Sound, Lincoln Center, New
York. Since the Library did not possess the necessary synchronizing
technology, Loughney - at the suggestion of producer Rick Schmidlin - sent
multi-Oscar winner Walter Murch a videotape of the 17 seconds of film and
an audiocassette of 3 minutes and 20 seconds of sound with a request to
marry the two. By digitizing the media and using digital editing software,
Murch was able to synchronize them and complete the failed experiment 105
years later.
In this connection I must inform the
reader that meanwhile a CD has been issued by the Berliner
Phonogramm-Archiv with 'Wax Cylinder Recordings of Japanese Music
1901-1913'. These recordings, made in Berlin (1901,1909) and in Japan
(1911/1913), provide an impression of Japanese music from the beginning of
the last century and are unique in every way. (You may purchase the CD via
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin -Order N° BPhA-WA1. Go to my entry of June
27,2006.)
A second CD was released in 2003: 'Walzenaufnahmen aus Perus
1910-1925' (Grabaciones en cilindros del Perú) with recordings made on the
spot by Hans Heinrich [Don Enrique] Brüning (1848-1928). (Order N°
BPhA-WA2). Both CDs have booklets of 80-100 pages with all kinds of
information.
Let us wander through the years
of recording history to our neighbouring country AUSTRIA, where one of the
earliest sound archives is founded, next to the Berlin Phonogram Archive,
the Phonogrammarchiv der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in
Vienna. ....(to be continued)
TWO PREDECESSORS OF THE
GERMAN RADIO ARCHIVE BEFORE 1929
On April 1st,1920, a new department with the Preussische Staatsbibliothek (State Library of Prussia) in Berlin was opened: the LAUTARCHIV (Sound Archive).
Two main tasks had to be fulfilled:
1. to collect the voice, the music, and the sounds of all peoples on
disc records and to document them;
2. to start a 'voice-museum'
of leading personalities of Germany and abroad.
The initiative lay in the hands of Professor Dr Wilhelm Doegen from 1920 - 1938. Indeed it was Doegen himself who was the pioneer in the field of collecting voices especially in the early 1920s, and it was the only existing institution because the recording industry did not have any or nearly no interest in voice or ethnic recordings because of the lack of buyers of such discs. Radio stations began to record their sounds only from 1929 on.
The earliest 'Phonogramme' (as these recordings were called) were produced
in Vienna in 1899 for the Akademie der Wissenschaften (about 150) and made
with the help of the 'Wiener Archivphonograph', a modified Edison machine
with 100 grooves per inch but recorded on discs instead of cylinders
(more of it at a later date); then followed Berlin in 1905.
The Berlin 'Phonogrammarchiv' was deposited with the Psychological
Institute of Berlin University in 1900. It was established by Carl Stumpf
and headed by Erich Moritz von Hornbostel, a prominent ethno-musicologist,
from 1905 till 1934. Carl Stumpf who was head of the psychological
department with the Berlin University was interested in the question how
music in general is perceived. In 1886 he had written an article about the
songs of the Belakuda Indians. As at that time no Edison phonograph was
available he only could write the notes down on paper. Years later, around
1900, Hornbostel asked all the missionaries to bring phonographical
material home from their journeys to Berlin. Even private travellers were
asked to do the same. The idea behind it was (as he expressed it in 1905)
that the true artefacts of foreign cultures should be collected in the
musical field before they had become spoiled and hopelessly lost by
'Europeanism' (as he called it).
From 1922 on it was financially supported by the German Government. By 1906 the collection included about 1,000 Edison cylinders - all of them field recordings - and by 1939 the number had grown to 11,000. In 1934 the Archive became part of the Berlin Museum fuer Voelkerkunde (Museum for Folk Culture). The first recording was of an Ensemble of musicians from Thailand then 'touring' in Berlin. Thus the Berlin "Phonogrammarchiv" was the basis of a first systematical collection of ethnic music ever.
It is sad to say that only about 20 percent of the holdings survived World War II. In 1948 these holdings were transferred to the Berlin Free University. Two years later the folk material (from countries such as Turkey, Lapland, Yugoslavia, Kurdistan, Corsia, Tunisia, New Guinea, the Ellice Islands) was deposited with the Berlin Museum again. But it has not played any role in any discography on sound recordings so far, neither does a catalogue or listing exist. One can only suggest that it is in deep slumber, well boxed and far away from any greedy collectors' hands!
In contrast to that was the recording of languages and voices by the LAUTARCHIV. It is not exactely known how many recordings were made, who was recorded and when. In this respect it has something in common with the PHONOGRAMMARCHIV. Only a small portion (about 100) of these sound recordings are in the archive of the DRA .
Wilhelm Doegen war born in Berlin in 1877 where he died in 1967.In his era 250 peoples' voices were recorded. He had studied in Berlin and Bonn a.o.subjects National Economy, Cultural History, New Languages, Literary History. In 1898 he was in Oxford listening to Professor Sweet's "English and Phonetic" lectures. He then became a teacher at the Berlin Borsig Real-School where he used recorded sounds on discs as a means of teaching for the first time (1906). In 1909 he developed his own recording machine, the 'Doegen Lautapparat' (D.Sound Apparatus). The recording was made by speaking into a one-meter-long horn, the sound vibrations were cut into wax. Via a copper-matrix shellac discs were pressed. Four minutes could be cut on a disc. Thus most recordings in the LAUTARCHIV are no longer than four minutes. - Doegen used this method to process his own language courses on discs and invented a way for the listener to be able to find the exact places on the disc to re-hear the sentence(s), the vocabulary etc. - One year later he was decorated with a gold medal for introducing the Phonodisc in Arts and Science.
In 1915 Doegen became head of a 'Phonographic Commission with the Prussian
Ministry of Culture'. Together with leading linguists and music
ethnologists he 'toured' war prison camps and recorded more than 2,000
different languages and dialects on 3,000 discs: from India, the Himalaya,
from the Sudan and japan, Scotland, France; in Jiddish and in German
dialects of the German colonists in Russia. One of these extant recordings
is e.g. a Muslime call for prayer, recorded at PoW camp Wuensdorf. These
discs formed the basis of the Sound Department with the Prussian State
Library, Berlin. According to information of these times there had been
9,000 copper matrices. Yet, the annual report of the Prussian State Library
for 1931 only mentions 3,000 sound discs. A contradiction that has not been
cleared so far.
Doegen's favourite plan to build up a Sound Archive of international theatre performances with voices of famous actors could not be realized because of lack of money. One has survived: Irma Strunz reciting Goethe's "Erlkoenig". (Erl-King) of March 1926.
After 1931 the Archive was moved to the Berlin University where it seemed to have remained till 1938.During the war all copper matrices (the originals of the shellac discs) were "victims" of an air attack. The written archive with all the information on the project could be saved. After the war the remaining rest became part of the "Oeffentliche Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek" (Public Scientific Library) in East-Berlin, i.e.the Communist part of Germany that did not correspond in any form with the West, did not give any information on holdings etc.. A short time later it was deposited with the Humboldt University there where it got forgotten till the fall of the walls and frontiers to the East. The traces to the Archive could be found in the "Zeughaus" of East-Berlin. This building (formerly a house that had weapons of all kinds and generations in its holdings) , now "Museum for German History" had become the new "home" of the discs in 1954, had, indeed, in its cellar cupboards with these discs, dusted, unarranged but well-preserved. A part of them were already in the DRA, but about 40 were of great historical importance: Journalist Maximiliam Harden speaks parts of an article he wrote on January 18th,1896 in the "Zukunft" (Future) on the Reich's 25th anniversary. Reichstag President Konstantin von Fehrenbach's opening of the Reichstag debate of October 5th, 1918; Eduard David, a Social Democrat, who became President of the National Assembly in Weimar on February 7th, 1919 with parts of his address (recorded in 1927); Gustav Bauer, Minister President, speaks of dramatic moments in the National Assembly on June 23, 1919, when the note had come to the members that the victory powers did not accept their articles 227-231 (the Emperor Wilhelm II should be sentenced, the German Reich should be regarded as guilty for the cause of WWI).
The recordings of that Archive, now part of the DRA
Wiesbaden, formerly Frankfurt am Main, have come from various libraries of
phonetic institutes or from different radio stations that had got dubs in
those times, especially Doegen's 'Autophone', voice recordings of leading
personalities. (He probably chose that word in derivation from the Greek
'Autograph' which means Original Manuscript). Of course, under the
technical conditions of those times it was impossible to make on-the-spot
recordings. So the authentic texts had to be spoken into the horn or
microphone months or even years later.
'Autophon' #1 was Emperor Wilhelm II. speaking his 'Aufruf an das deutsche
Volk' (Addressing the German People on the occasion of the beginning of
WWI) on August 6th, 1914 (recorded later on January 10th, 1918 at Berlin
Schloss Bellevue).
'Autophon' #37 is Philipp Scheidemann proclaiming
the Republic (Berlin Nov.9th,1918) (recorded on January 9th,1920),
'Autophon' #39 is Friedrich Ebert's address after becoming Reich President
(August 1919).
In June 1921 the Indian philosopher and Nobel-prize
winner Rabindranath Tagore was in Berlin where he recorded a speech for
Doegen on reconciliation of all peoples ('The Idea Of Freedom').
Another 'Autophon' is Reich Chancellor Wilhelm Marx who recorded parts of
his Reichstag speech of August 23rd, 1924, when they talked about the
London Conference of Reparations and the French Minister President's
promise (Mr Herriot) to remove all occupation troops from the Ruhr Area.
These specific German proceedings and events will probably say nothing
to non-historians abroad. But, to come to an end, let me mention that
Doegen also recorded Churchill in 1918 and Geneviève Parkhurst in May 1926
when she was in Berlin. She read a part of her article that appeared in
the 'Pictorial Review' on 'The New Woman of a New Germany' where she comes
to the conclusion that her ideas of American women being more emancipated
than German women have to be corrected. She is surprised and very glad to
see that in the new Germany the women are politically free and can
pronounce their own opinions and ideas. Other English speaking celebrities
were John Galsworthy and Arthur Eddington ('On Radiation And Gravitation',
28.Aug.1921), and Ramsey MacDonald's short statement on 'My Visit In
Germany' (7.Oct.1925; 0'55).
To give an idea of what his ethnic recordings were about, here is a
short listing:
The first of these records was made on December 29th, 1915, in the PoW Camp Doeberitz. It was a choire of Russian inmates singing;
an acoustic recording by a male vocalist in Berber (Hamitiroh) language: Dschunka-stories (in the dialect of the Algerian Loharia),
c.1923, male vocalist & instrument in Serbian language: Song of the King
Vukasin;
c.1923, male vocalist sings in Samoan language the Lord's
Prayer and a tale of the creation of Samoa;
c.1923, recordings by
members of the Ewe-Synougma (East Ghana): a tale and a war chant;
6.6.31 , Koffie Jackson of the Joruba tribe (Nigeria) sings and tells a
tale;
8.6.33 , John Ahuma of the Fanti tribe (South Ghana) tells
about idolatry with the Fanti;
17.10.33, Said Ben Belaid tells a Berber
tale and renders a love letter in the Schilh dialect;
25.7.34, a male
vocalist from the Bantu tribe tells a tale in Suaheli on wedding
ceremonies.
An interesting broadcast on the PoW recordings during WWI in those camps
and outside was the BBC Radio4 'Barbed Wire Ballads' feature of
May11th,2005 with Mike Kington.
Today the Archive is with the Musikwissenschaftliches Institut at the
Humboldt University in Berlin and waits to get its well deserved place in
the sound recording history.
THE NATIONAL VOCARIUM LABEL
The NV's motto was 'Dedicated to the Perpetuation of The Living Voice' and
was founded by Robert G.Vincent in 1939 to issue or reissue historically
important spoken word recordings, They were marketed strictly to academia.
Some of the discs have a large label pressed on the reverse side that
eplains the background and significance of the recording.
Here are some of them:
RV-21 Thomas Alva Edison: address at the Opening of the NY Electrical Show
(Oct3,1908) 'Comm.the Jubilee of the 1st Atlantic Cable of 1858 and 25
Years of Edison Electric Lightning Service on Manhattan Island'
RV-22 Kenneth Landfrey: The Bugle Call for The Charge of the Light Brigade
(re-sounded on the original Waterloo bugle by the surviving trumpeter on
Aug.2,1890) (notes on reverse)
TNV-108 James Ramsey MacDonald: A Tribute to Robert Burns (with a word of
advice from George Bernhard Shaw) (notes on reverse)
TNV-109 Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes, Explained by his Creator (1928)/
Presented in Action by William Gillette (1936)
TNV-123 Nellie Melba: Says Farewell at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
(June8,1926)/ reverse side: Ernestine Schumann-Heink: Speaks to a Mother
about Children (1935)
TNV-124 William Jennings Bryan discusses "imortality" (1904), proceeded
by Ira D. Sankey singing one of his famous hymns.
TNV-125 William Ewart Gladstone: A Personal Greeting to Thomas Edison
(sent to America in 1888 via cylinder and prefaced by Col.George E.Gourard;
notes on reverse side)
TNV-131 Sarah Bernhardt: L'Aiglon, Scene V, Act V
TNV-134 James Whitcomb Riley w/comments by William Lyon Pheips: Little
Orphant Annie
TNV-138 Will Rogers: Bankers and Other Timely Topics (1928)
TNV-? Mary Adelaide Nutting: appraisal of the legacy of Florence Nightingale and
the value of schools of nursing. This speech is followed by an introduction and the voice of
Florence Nightingale from recording made in 1890
(parts taken from: Kurt&Diana Nauck's Auction Catalogue 38, 2005 -
www.78rpm.com )
G.ROBERT VINCENT'S LIFE'S WORK AND HIS V-DISC
PROJECT At this place I want to give the reader some information
on G.Robert Vincent. Vincent was born in 1900; he served as a
dispatch courier in the French Army in WWI and later in the American army
as an ambassy officer in Paris.
In 1913 he went to President Teddy Roosevelt to interview him for the
'Boys' Progressive League' magazine. One day later he got Teddy's
permission to record his message to the boys on a wax cylinder. In 1938
Vincent talked about those days on a WOR Special features Division
programme.
In 1942 he was back in the Army where he helped to
establish Armed Forces Radio where he worked with Bronson's 16-inch
transcription discs, and created the V-Disc project.- In July 1943, Vincent
discussed the project with Major Bronson. Bronson okayed it, but told
Vincent that there was no money in the Army budget to start a record
company. Undaunted, Vincent met with the Army's fiscal officer, Major
Howard Haycraft, who immediately allocated one million dollars to Vincent's
new project. With money in hand, Vincent devoted all his time to the music
program. He recruited Steve Sholes, a former A&R man at RCA Victor who
supervised jazz recordings by Sidney Bechet and Jelly Roll Morton, to
assist him. Vincent's record company now had a name - 'V-Discs', a
sobriquet coined by Vincent's secretary. It also acquired a logo - a
red-white-and-blue graphic designed by a staff artist at Yank magazine on a
$5 retainer. The first problem was trying to find a suitable substitute for
shellac, the main component for records. Four out of every five
transcription discs sent overseas arrived in pieces. And when the Japanese
took over French Indochina, America lost its supply of imported shellac.
Although shellac could be recycled and reused (and many Americans donated
their old 78's in scrap drives for war materials), the music was drowned
out by the loud surface noise on recycled shellac discs. - Because of the
AFM strike, Petrillo asked that the recordings not be used for any
commercial purposes; that the records not be sold; and that all V-Discs
were to be destroyed after the war. From that moment on, artists who wanted
to record now had an outlet for their productivity - as well as a
guaranteed, receptive, enthusiastic worldwide audience of soldiers and
sailors. - Another key person, Sgt. Tony Janak, joined the project, and
would stay with V-Disc throughout its existence. Janak, a former recording
engineer for Columbia Records, produced special V-Disc 'remote' recording
sessions, setting up 400 pounds of 'portable' recording equipment wherever
artists played - in concert halls, in jazz clubs, in apartments. 'In the
beginning,' wrote Janak, 'we chose material from broadcasts and the files
of the record companies that were contracting on the project. Then we got
into doing live sessions of our own: [we] were always dreaming up new
recording dates. We recorded at Columbia Records, RCA Victor, NBC, World,
and Carnegie Hall with Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey, and Duke Ellington;
jazz at the Metropolitan Opera House and Stuyvesant Casino; at West Point
with the Military Academy Band.' Music for V-Disc came from almost
everywhere. Radio networks sent airchecks and live feeds to V-Disc
headquarters in New York. Some movie studios sent rehearsal feeds from the
latest Hollywood motion pictures to V-Disc. Artists gathered at several
V-Disc recording sessions in theaters around New York and Los Angeles,
including CBS Playhouse No. 3 (currently the Ed Sullivan Theater), NBC
Studio 8H (the current home of 'Saturday Night Live'), and CBS Playhouse
No. 4 (reborn in the 1970's as 'Studio 54').
Every month, a V-Disc kit of 30 records was sent from the RCA plant in
Camden, to ports of call and bases around the European and Pacific theaters
of operations. Inside the kit, along with the V-Discs, was an assortment of
steel needles for the phonograph, a set of lyric sheets, and a
questionnaire that the soldiers could fill out and return, asking what they
liked the best, what they liked the least, and what they wanted to hear in
the future. Because the 12-inch V-Discs could hold up to six minutes of music per side, it allowed more flexibility and longer jams from jazz artists and big bands. "When a lot of these guys recorded in the studio," said DiGi, "they did it under a very staid condition. When they did V-Discs, some of them already had a couple of shots and were warmed up. It was very informal, and the things just rocked. If they wanted to jam for six minutes, we could do it."
By 1944, Captain Vincent found a new way to make the public aware of
the V-Disc project - as well as make new recordings for the servicemen at
the same time. 'For The Record', a program broadcast on New York's WEAF and
simulcast through the NBC network, had a rotating orchestra, master of
ceremonies and vocalists throughout its seventeen-week summer run.
Overseeing this new project was a new member of the V-Disc project, Cpl.
George Simon, a music writer for Metronome magazine who had played drums
for the Glenn Miller Orchestra in the 1930's, and who knew almost every
jazz musician and band member on a first-name basis.
During the first week of the V-Disc project, 1,780 boxes of 30 V-Discs and assorted needles were shipped to Ports of Embarkation, and from there to the troops. Within a year, production of the V-Discs tripled, so that the Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard would have enough V-Discs of their own. By 1945, more than 4 million records had been shipped from the Camden plant (along with 125,000 spring-wound V-Disc brand phonographs, and billions of steel needles). Even the Office of War Information and Office of Inter-American Affairs wanted V-Discs - they were used by shortwave operators as propaganda materials to Latin American and European countries; a counterbalance to Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose.
In May 1949, the final kits - a box of ten discs containing tracks
from Sarah Vaughan, Tex Ritter, Buddy Rich, Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra
and Leopold Stokowski - were the final records ever released by V-Disc.
After the V-Disc program ended in 1949, the Armed Services set out to honor
the original AFM request that the records not be used for commercial
purposes. Original masters and stampers were destroyed. Leftover V-Discs at
bases and on ships were discarded. On some occasions, the FBI and the
Provost Marshal's Office confiscated and destroyed V-Discs that servicemen
had smuggled home. An employee at a Los Angeles record company even did
some jail time - his crime was the illegal possession of over 2500 V-Discs.
Different kinds of labels were used on V-Discs: 'War Dept Music Section
-Athletic and Recreation Branch- Special Service Divisions', Discs Nos. 1-
340
changed to:
'War Dept Music Section - Entertainment and Recreation Branch - Special
Service Divisions' Nos. 341- 440; some of Nos -460
then to:
'War Dept. Music Branch- Special Services Division -Army Services
Forces'
Nos from 515 on:
'Army, Navy, Marine Corps. Coast Guard - produced by the Music Branch-
Special Services Division Army Services Forces'
Robert Vincent was awarded the Legion of Merit for his
contribution to the morale of the U.S.troops by producing the best in the
musical fields even a recording bann was going on in the USA, and for
sending the discs to all the US war theatres entertaining the fighting men
and keeping the link with home. - In 1945 Vincent also served as Sound
Recording Officer at the Plenary Sessions of the UN in San Francisco and at
the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. - His love for recorded sound began in
1913 when he took a recording device, borrowed from the Edison Labs via his
friend Charles Edison (Thomas Edison`s son), to the Oyster Bay home of
Theodore Roosevelt ('Teddy'-not FDR). Vincent recorded Roosevelt in situ,
giving a pep talk to the 'American Boy'. (March 4,1913; 1'28)- In the
1920s he apprenticed at the Edison labs in New Jersey, and in 1935 opened
his own recording studio, the 'National Vocarium', at Radio City in NYC.
Here he both pioneered the restauration of early Edison cylinders and
recorded famous voices (such as explorer Richard Byrd).- In 1962 Vincent
presented his collection of over 8,000 voices to the MSU where he became
head of the new National Voice Library till 1973 when he retired. G.Robert
Vincent died in East Lansing in November 1985.-
My good friend Dr Maurice Crane followed him in office at 'The Vincent Voice
Library'(Michigan State University) where he remained till he retired in the mid 1990s.
On May 29,1929 German radio
began recording and archiving their broadcasts on thick wax discs. Thus the
first disc of that series was the laying of the foundation stone of the
'Haus des Rundfunks' in Berlin-Charlottenburg, Masurenallee. Only two discs
of the event have survived. From the beginning on every disc the
Reichsrundfunk recorded or acquired was carefully filed. (to be continued)
In the NS-propagandafilm 'RUNDFUNK IM KRIEGE' one can see the different
ways they recorded their broadcasts: the wax-disc recording system, cutting
Decelith foils, and tape recording.
With January 30, 1933, the National
Socialists were the rulers in Germany- and with that they also gained
control over the radio. It became the Reich Government's mouth for
everything they wanted to spread. Their first broadcast was that the
Drahtloser Dienst (Wireless Service) of 12 noon the same day informed the
public that ReichsPresident von Hindenburg had proclaimed A.Hitler
ReichsChancellor. At 19oo hours the Berliner Funkstunde honoured this event
in a special broadcast of Zeitfunk. At 22:20h a recorded 20-minute-report
of the Nazi torch march through Berlin Brandenburg Gate and Wilhelmstrasse
was broadcast by all German stations, except by the Bavarian Radio Munich.
This broadcast had been commanded by the Minister of Interior, a member of
the NSDAP and in charge of radio. It was announced to the State
Commissionars of the Radio Broadcasting Stations as 'Proclamation to honor
the ReichsPresident and the ReichsGovernment'. No-one suspected a political
misuse by the NS-Party. But when it turned out to be one the Bavarian Radio
Station interrupted the broadcast. Further commanded broadcasts by the new
government followed: On Februray 1st, Hitler -just like all the Weimar
Republic Chancellors before him- spoke his Governmental Proclamation into a
microphone of Berliner Funk-Stunde , positioned in the ReichsChancellary
in Berlin at about 2200 hrs. This speech, also broadcast to America and
translated by NBC's Max Jordan, formed the beginning of a hitherto unknown
one-sided election campaign on the radio. (The speech was re-recorded by
Hitler and broadcast several times the following day.) Till the beginning
of the election to the Reichstag on March 5th, 1933, Hitler travelled to
all those cities that had a broadcasting station. The introductory words
were always spoken by NS-Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, in a
form of a radio report, 'to convey to the listener the magic and the
atmosphere of our mass demonstrations': Cologne 19.2., Frankfurt/Main
22.2., Frankfurt/Main 3.3., Hamburg 3.3., Königsberg (East Prussia) 4.3.,
to name a few. He reached these places by using a plane and to 'come down
on Germany like God from the skies'. Critics got the answer that the
National Socialists did only what former governments had done before the
same way. Only slight resistance came up to stop the Nazi misuse of radio
in times of elections: On February 15th,1933, a group of Communists and
members of Unions cut the cable that sent out Hitler's words from his
microphone in Stuttgart Townhall and interrupted the speech after nine
minutes. Parties of the Left and Centre never got a single broadcasting
time, NSDAP coalition party DNVP (Deutsch-Nationale Volkspartei) got a few.
But, inspite of this 'masterpiece of agitation' (Goebbels) with about 45 NS
election broadcasts within two months, the Party only reached 44% of the
votes, and again in coalition with the DNVP 52%.. After the elections
Goebbels could verify his plan to build up a 'Ministerium für
Volksaufklärung und Propaganda' (Ministry for Public Enlightenment and
Propaganda). It should control all mass media like the press and radio, but
also cultural institutions like theaters, film and literature. Radio should
get a leading role as guiding instrument of the Government. Therefore
Goebbels had the Minister of Interor assign him the complete surveillance
of radio personnel and programming. He used these new competences on the
occasion of opening the Reichstag session of March 21,1933, to arrange a
grand NS-propaganda show. In the presense of ReichsPresident von
Hindenburg, the newly elected Reichstag met in Garnisonskirche (Church) of
Potsdam, a place where the old Prussian spirit was still alive and where
von Hindenburg (who hoped for a 'unified,free and proud Germany') met
Hitler who pronounced what the aging von Hindenburg (86) wanted to hear:
'The old Prussian spirit, represented by the General Field Marshal' and the
'young A.Hitler, a representative of the new awakening Germany'. With the
sounding of the bells and the singing of Brahms' 'Wo ist ein so herrlich
Volk' (Where can such a beautiful people be found), a wreath was laid down
at Friedrich The Great's tomb. And Eberhard Freiherr von Medem who not only
reported but interpreted the symbolic act spoke these words into the
microphone: 'Everybody leaves this place with an inner conviction that this
has not only been a state act but that it has been like the hour of birth
of a new Germany.' The next day radio control moved from the Ministery of
Postal Service into the hands of Goebbels' Ministry for Propaganda.
Report on German Gramophone
Records by Capt.W.Glanville Brown
Excerpts of the file of the
Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office, London
As the article in the News Chronicle mentioned (see below) there was
an examination of a large collection of gramophone records unearthed in Germany.
This is the report of November 1945 on his investigation by Captain W.Glanville Brown who has been in charge.
There are more than four thousand records here….All were records of
German broadcasts, mostly of speeches by leading Nazis, but some of
demonstrations of music. … Almost all the records have nothing to identify
them except for numbers on both sides, but it is to be noted that the
numbers on the two sides bear no relationship to each other. There are a
few cases where the numbers on the two sides are in sequence, but such
cases are so rare that these sequences appear to be occasional accidents.
In the huge majority of case the two sides of the same record have nothing
to do with each other from any point of view. For example, one record has
on one side a speech by von Papen made in 1932 and on the other side a
speech by Hitler made in 1937. It is therefore quite impossible to arrange
the records in order according to their German numbers. - If, which is by
no means certain, we have all the records from the lowest to the highest
numbers, with none missing, it would in time be possible to identify them
all, for speeches are preceded by, and ended with, statements by
announcers. This would, however, only be possible if none, or at least not
many, are missing, and would, in any event, be an extremely lengthy job,
for some speeches cover as many as sixteen records. If too many are
missing, identification would have to be dependent on former BBC monitors
recognising voices and this clearly presents great difficulties. I can
imangine how at least the British judges at Nuremberg would hesitate to
accept, as conclusive proof, a monitor's uncorroborated evidence that the
voice on a record was that of one of the accused. - (To make an index of
the records) I took the records round to a Polish Repatriation Camp, where
the recordsa were indexed by a hundred Poles in one day, I then brought the
records back. - It is as well to explain of what the indexing consists.
Each record has now been given a number by us, an index has been made
showing to which two numbers already on each record our number corresponds,
and the reocrds are now inorder according to the numbers which we have
given them. With the help of the official German catalogue [of broadcasts
made between 1929 and 1936 issued by the RRG] it will therefore now be
possible to find any record needed [by the IMT] up to 1936. If we can get
an official German catalogue up to a later date we can then find records up
to that date also. We have therefore sent a message to hamburg asking for
any official German catalogues they can find from 1936 up to as late a date
as possible. We have also asked them whether they can send us such
catalogues or not, to find out for us the numbers of the records containing
Ribbentrop's 1941 and 1942 speeches on the anniversary of the Tripartite
Pact. - Meanwhile, from the catalogues we have made a list of all the
recorded speeches of those now accused at Nuremberg from 1929-1936. -
[Brown goes on saying that he doubts that the recordings would be of any
help for the Nuremberg prosecution because 'I doubt whether any of them -
the accused- has ever made, in a public speech, a statement or admission
which could be used against him at Nuremberg.']
For those readers who are more interested in discographical details on Nazi
recordings I recommend again the DISCOGRAPHIE DER DEUTSCHEN SPRACHAUFNAHMEN in 4 vols by Rainer Lotz and Walter Roller. On more than 1400 pages you
will find recording dates, recording places, matrix numbers of the shellac
discs, speakers, and detailed contents. (see above under I.)
At this point I'd
like to give attention to an interesting article by Cornelia Weber, general
manager, researcher, and lecturer at the Helmholtz-Zentrum für
Kulturtechnik with the Humboldt University of Berlin:
http://www.lib.mq.edu.au/mcm/umac/2004/weber.doc In her Abstract she
writes: 'At present the UMAC Worldwide Database of University Museums &
Collections contains information about six archives that preserve historic
sound storage media in Germany: the Phonetic Collection of the Martin
Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, the Audio Visual Archive of the
Catholic University, Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, the Hoerburger Archive at the
University of Regensburg, the Deutsche Sprachatlas at the Research
Institute for German Language of the Philipps University, Marburg, and the
Sound Archive and the Archive of Animal Sounds of the Humboldt University,
Berlin. In the past these different holdings have played an important role
in the development of specific academic disciplines, particularly in the
fields of phonetics, musicology, ethnology, and zoology. The paper
describes the sound archives as historical and cultural testimonies, based
on the relationship between the collections and their corresponding
disciplines. The main focus will be on the special character of these
collections and their importance as research sources in past and present.
Istimonies, based on the relationship between the collections and their
corresponding disciplines. The main focus will be on the special b
character of these collections and their importance as research sour in
past and present.'
The "Volksgerichtshof" under
its President Roland Freisler (who died during an air attack in 1945)
was in charge to prosecute and to sentence to death the 'traitors' of the
plot against Hitler of July 20, 1944 in East Prussia. - As it was not
allowed to make minutes of the trials the remaining sound recordings are a
'treasure' for historical research and documents of the infamous ways of
the Nazis to practice lawlessness. The only written fragments of the trials
of 7th and 8th August 1944 were secretly made and can now be read in Vol.33
of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal Series; the official transcripts
burned to ashes in February 1945 during a bomb raid on Berlin.- The court
hearings were filmed by Deutsche Wochenschau teams to be used in the weekly
newsreels. A full film was made entitled: 'Geheime Reichssache - Verräter
vor dem Volksgerichtshof' and was bound to an official discretion for those
Gauleaders who were chosen to view the film (otherwise it would have been
punished as treason). The film was not shown to the public as intended
because of the way Freisler acted. One expected an uncontrolled positive
feeling for the accused instead of the contrary.- One copy of the film
survived, the rest was destroyed by order of Goebbels. The trial days were
also cut on tape by a Nazi Party recording unit, not by the
Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft(RRG). The microphone was hidden under
Freisler's desk which caused a lot of problems to the sound engineers
because Freisler shouted constantly at the defendants whereas these stood
far away from the mike and spoke softly. - Nobody knew about these tapes
until they were found in the early 1950s. - The people who lived near the
place where they were found reported that near the end of the war a
car-train of the NS-Propaganda-Command was hit by an Allied low-flying
plane and tumbled down a slope near Wallberg Street at Tegernsee near
Rottach-Egern (Bavaria). The cargo of the car-train - tape recordings - got
stuck in the trees or rolled further down into rotten greenery where they
remained, exposed to weather.- About 1946 the cars were towed by Americans
to a depot for military vehicles in Scharling; the tapes remained
unnoticed. - The finder of the tapes was a native. He carried them home
where he tried to dry the partly frozen tapes and clean them. Later they
were taken to an institution where they were professionally cleaned and
made ready to be played.- Most of the tape-findings were acquired by the
'Münchener Illustrierte' (a popular German illustrated magazine). They
printed parts of the minutes of the recordings that could be clearly
identified. Later, in 1960, these more than 100 tape torsi were handed over
to the Lautarchiv des Deutschen Rundfunks (founded in 1950)
http://www.dra.de/dra/chronik/1950.html [i.e.Sound Archives of the
German Radio] and joined by contents as far as possible. The record-firm
'Ariola', then part of 'Bertelsmann' (now BGM), bought the rights of the
sounds from the finder, yet gave copies of them to the Lautarchiv for
further examination. - What remains today are about 100 excerpts under 10
minutes of length, only ten with more than 10 minutes of length, many taken
from the Nazi propaganda-film 'Traitors Before The People's Court' (182
minutes long), of which a 30-minute-excerpt had been made for educational
purposes, and the Ariola-LP 51193K (released in October 1961), a
collector's item.
If you think illegal copying of sounds is a
modern thing then you should read the following articles that will show you
'everything has been there before'! :
-
http://www.intertique.com/PiratesOfTheHighCs.htm
-
http://www.mainspringpress.com/pirates.html
The story about
White Records starts with Mr. White who was a former Edison
employee. He took all the secrets of cylinder manufacturing and founded his
own label 'White Record' under the name of the General Phonograph Company.
This adventure did last only for a short time - until Edison shut him down
by lawsuits.
April 5th, 2005 - Librarian
of Congress Names 50 Recordings to the 2004 NATIONAL RECORDING REGISTRY
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has made his annual
selection of 50 sound recordings for the National Recording Registry. Under
the terms of the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, the Librarian
is responsible for annually selecting recordings that are "culturally,
historically, or aesthetically significant." Registry recordings must be at
least 10 years old. In announcing the registry, the Librarian said, "Once
again, we have the opportunity to celebrate the rich variety of music
recorded in the United States and the importance of sound recording in our
lives."
1. "Gypsy Love Song," Eugene Cowles (1898)
2. "Some of
These Days," Sophie Tucker (1911)
3. "The Castles in Europe
One-Step"("Castle House Rag"), Europe's Society Orchestra (1914)
4.
"Swanee," Al Jolson (1920)
5. Armistice Day broadcast by Woodrow Wilson
(1923)< surviving sound recording of a regular radio broadcast. It is also
b believed to be the earliest known example of a recording made by r
electr, rather than acoustic, means."
6. "See See Rider Blues," Gertrude
"Ma" Rainey (1923)
7. "Charleston," Golden Gate Orchestra (1925)
8.
"Fascinating Rhythm" from "Lady, Be Good!" Fred and Adele Astaire; George
Gershwin, piano (1926)
9. NBC radio broadcast coverage of Charles A.
Lindbergh's arrival and reception in Washington, D.C. (1927)
"NBC radio's June 11, 1927, coverage of the arrival of Charles A. Lindbergh
in Washington, D.C., was a landmark technical and journalistic achievement
for the fledgling network. Radio reporters were stationed at the three
locations in the city to provide successive, live descriptions of the
pilot's arrival: the Washington Navy Yard; the procession along
Pennsylvania Avenue; and his reception at the foot of the Washington
Monument by President Calvin Coolidge. The young radio network captured the
voices of President Coolidge and Colonel Lindbergh as they spoke to the
nation."
10. "Stardust," Hoagy Carmichael (1927)
11. "Blue Yodel
(T for Texas)," Jimmie Rodgers (1927)
12. "Ain't Misbehavin'" Thomas
"Fats" Waller (1929)
13. "The Suncook Town Tragedy," Mabel Wilson Tatro
of Springfield, Vt. (July 1930)
14. "Gregorio Cortez," Trovadores
Regionales (1929)
15. Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor,
Sergei Rachmaninoff, piano; Leopold Stokowski, conductor, Philadelphia
Orchestra (1929)
16. Rosina Cohen oral narrative from the Lorenzo D.
Turner Collection (1932)
17. "Stormy Weather," Ethel Waters (1933)
18. "Body and Soul," Coleman Hawkins (1939)
19. Sergey Prokofiev,
"Peter and the Wolf," Serge Koussevitzky, conductor; Richard Hale,
narrator; Boston Symphony Orchestra (1939)
20. "In the Mood," Glenn
Miller and His Orchestra (1939)
21. Edward R. Murrow broadcast from
London (1940) "Edward R. Murrow's eyewitness news broadcasts of the Battle
of Britain presented the emotions and sounds of a city under siege to
audiences throughout the United States. One of the most remembered of that
series of 1940 broadcasts was on September 21 when Murrow dispassionately
described the bombing of London from a rooftop during the blitzkrieg."
22. "We Hold These Truths," radio broadcast (1941) "Commissioned to
celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, "We Hold These
Truths, a drama exploring American values, aired one week after the
invasion on Pearl Harbor. The broadcast was carried on all four radio
networks simultaneously to an audience of more than 60 million listeners,
roughly half of the U.S. population at the time. It was the largest
audience in history to listen to a dramatic presentation."
23. Peter
Ilich Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1, op. 23, B minor, Vladimir
Horowitz, piano; Arturo Toscanini; conductor; NBC Symphony Orchestra
(1943)
24. "Down by the Riverside," Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1944)
The rest ist post-1944.
In June 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt
installed a recording device to ensure accurate records of presidential
meetings were kept. While running for his third term as President in the
fall of 1940, Roosevelt was worried about being misquoted by the press. The
Secret Service installed the RCA Continuous-film Recording Machine which
recorded approximately eight hours of meetings and conversations from the
Roosevelt administration. These recordings consist mainly of fourteen press
conferences and several accidentally recorded meetings held in the Oval
Office between August 23 and November 8, 1940. By recording his dealings
with the press, Roosevelt intended to ensure an accurate record of what was
said. - There are approximately eight hours of recordings from the
Roosevelt administration. These primarily consist of fourteen press
conferences held in the Oval Office between August 23 and November 8, 1940.
The machine was often left on after the press conferences ended,
inadvertently recording meetings, office conversations, and room noise.
Recording technology was still very primitive and much of the recordings,
despite recent digital enhancement, is unintelligible. - Roosevelt made the
decision to record his press conferences following an incident in January
1939. That month the New York Times printed Roosevelt's private comments to
members of the Senate Military Affairs Committee. Not only was Roosevelt
angered that his comments had been leaked to the press, but he was also
furious because the press account was inaccurate. In a press conference
three days later, Roosevelt called the quote attributed to him in the Times
`a deliberate lie`. He directed his official stenographer, Henry Kannee, to
find a way of ensuring that his comments were accurately recorded.-
Initially, Kannee used a rudimentary Dictaphone machine. Unfortunately, the
machine did not work and Kannee continued his search for a machine that was
satisfactory. In June of 1940, an RCA representative presented Kannee with
a gift: an experimental model of the RCA Continuous-film Recording machine
which inventor John R. Kiel developed. As tape recorders, per se, had not
been invented, this prototype utilized both motion-picture sound technology
and motion-picture film. Kiel's idea was to use a motion-picture machine
`filling a reel of film with nothing but one sound track after another,
side by side`. The machine used a 35 millimeter film called "scribed
acetate sound film." Sound was recorded on the film transversely as opposed
to longitudinally. The result was that a substantial amount of conversation
could be recorded on a very short piece of film. The machine incorporated
a voice-activated record mode. Roosevelt or Kannee could turn the machine
on, but it would only record when a sound activated the system. It is for
this reason that many office conversations, other meetings, and room noises
are recorded. The RCA Continuous-film Recording Machine was large and
bulky: it was over three feet tall and almost two feet wide. The Secret
Service installed this machine directly under the Oval Office, concealing
it in a specially built chamber with a padlocked door so that White House
staffers who used the room to store gifts would not be able to see the
machine. Only Roosevelt, Stenographer Kannee, his successor Jack Romagna,
inventor Kiel, the RCA representative, and the Secret Service agents who
installed the machine, were aware of the recorder's existence. A single RCA
microphone was installed in the lampshade on the President's desk, which
explains why Roosevelt's voice is recognizable but other voices are not.
Wires ran from the lampshade down the side of the desk. One set of wires
threaded through a hole in the Oval Office floor and into the machine
concealed in the room below. The second set of wires went through a hole in
the President's desk to a control box located in his desk drawer. Roosevelt
could activate the system by pushing a button on the control box. Likewise,
Kannee, who had the key to the padlocked closet containing the machine,
could activate the recording system by flipping a switch on the machine
itself. (Source: White House; for further reading: Robert Butow in:
American Heritage,issues of Feb/March and Oct/Nov.1982)
Discographie
der deutschen Sprachaufnahmen 4 Vols
http://www.lotz-verlag.de/series4.html
http://www.lotz-verlag.de/series5.html
Nazi Propaganda Swing: Charlie and His Orchestra
In: Lotz/ Bergmeier
Hitler's Airwaves (incl.a CD)
Yale University Press, New Haven & London 1997
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300067097
Schallaufnahmen des Deutschen Rundfunks
Band 1 + 2: 1929 bis Anfang 1936 [Berlin 1936]
(was not for public sale, for internal use only; not continued)
Schallaufnahmen der deutschen Rundfunkgesellschaften im Jahre
1932
pp368, (no info on publisher; prob.RRG 1933)
Schallaufnahmen politischen Inhalts des Deutschen Rundfunks 31.1.1933 bis 15.1.1935 Berlin 1935
(Nachstehend aufgeführt sind die Schallaufnahmen politischen Inhalts des Deutschen Rundfunks vom 31. Januar 1933 bis 15. Januar 1935. Sie enthalten alle über die Sender des Deutschen Rundfunks gegangenen Aufnahmen, begonnen mit dem Marsch durch das Brandenburger Tor in der Nacht zum 31. Januar 1933 und abgeschlossen mit der Verkündung des Ergebnisses der Saar-Abstimmung am 15. Januar 1935 vormittags. Über die Aufnahmen, die den Vermerk gesperrt tragen, ist im Schallarchiv der Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft Näheres zu erfahren.)
157 pp.
Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv
Veröffentlichungen des Deutschen Rundfunkarchivs - Tondokumente zur
Kultur- und Zeitgeschichte- Ein Verzeichnis
new series: 1888-1932; 1933-1935; 1936-1938; 1939-1940
old series:
1939-1940; 1933-1945; 1933-1938; 1946-1950
Edison Cylinder im DRA
Writers on German Radio 1924-32, a catalogue
http://www.dra.de/rundfunkgeschichte/schriftsteller/autoren.php?buchst=A&aname=Hans Karl Abel
Judenverfolgung und jüdisches Leben unter den Bedingungen der
nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft: Tondokumente und
Rundfunksendungen
- 1930 - 1946
- 1947 - 1990
Tondokumente zu Buch und Literatur 1945 - 1949
http://www.dra.de/publikationen/buecher/publika_liste.php?reihe=btv
Tonaufnahmen zur deutschen Rundfunkgeschichte 1924-1945
Bild-und Tonträgerverzeichnisse Nr.1
Frankfurt am Main 172 (out of print)
Zeugnisse jüdischen Lebens- Tondokumente im Schallarchiv des Bayerischen
Rundfunks 1948-1988
Bayerischer Rundfunk in cooperation with the Historical Commission
Munich October 1988 (out of print)
Rundfunk in Bayern- Tondokumente im Schallarchiv des BR 1906-1988
Bayerischer Rundfunk, Munich Jan.1989 (out of print)
Goebbels Reden 1932-1945
hrsg. von
Helmut Heiber; Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1971
this book contains the
transcripts of 37 of Goebbels' speeches as deposited in the DRA (out of
print)
Der gute Wille, etwas Neues zu schaffen- Das Hörspiel in Deutschland von
1945 bis 1949
(a review with a complete listing of radio plays on German radio from
1945-49)
by Hans-Ulrich Wagner; Potsdam 1997
Features und Reportagen im Rundfunk der DDR Tonträgerverzeichnis
1964-1991 by Patrick Conley, Berlin 1999
Diskographie der deutschen proletarischen Schallplatte in der Zeit vor
1933
Veröffentlichung der Akademie der Künste der DDR- Sektion
Musik-Arbeiterliedarchiv Bearb.v.Elfried Berger u.Inge Lammel VEB Deutscher
Verlag für Musik Leipzig 1980
Tonaufnahmen des Rezitators Mathias Wieman
website under construction: on LP
http://www.dieterleitner.de/w6_ton.htm
Wieman's radio appearances:
http://www.dieterleitner.de/w5_funk.htm
Katalog historischer Tonaufnahmen 1900-1941
Katalog der Tonbandaufnahmen
- 1965
- 1974
- 1975
- 1976
Österreichische Phonothek, Vienna 1974-1978 (all out of print)
BBC Sound Archives in the Imperial War Museum: World War 1939 -1945 :
IWM Department of Sound Records, London 1987 (second ed.) (out of print)
The World at War- 1939-1945/ Thames Television Recorded Interviews (30pp)
Imperial War Museum, Dept of Sound Records, London 1980 (2nd ed.)
BBC Sound Archives: Catalogue of Recorded Talks & Speeches
Supplement I: A to Z, London April 1970
Supplement II: H to M, London January 1967
Volume III: N to Z, London 1967
Probably continued (all out of print)
British Library Sound Archive Catalogue
http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/sound.html
Discography of Historical Records on Cylinders and 78s
compiled by Brian Rust; Greenwood Press; Westport/Conn. 1979 (out of print)
The Complete Entertainment Discography, 1897-1942
by Brian Rust and Allen Debus (1989,2nd ed.)
David Mason's Documentary Recordings on 78
Catalogue, pp.71 , private printing of 1995
Not directly a discography but a Handbook of existing sound recordings of
radio broadcasts directed vs the Third Reich in the archives of the NA and the LoC:
'Rundfunk gegen das Dritte Reich' by Conrad Püttner (Munich 1986) (out of print)
Discographie deutschsprachiger Interpreten is a search data-bank. Go to 'Archiv' and then to `Datenbank`.
You can search for German language shellac interprets, songs etc, based on Leimbach's book who gave the authorization
to publish it on the Net for information and correction.
http://www.schellackfreund.ch/ziele.htm
David Goldin's data base on thousands of US radio broadcasts-recordings online can be found here:
http://www.radiogoldindex.com/frame1.html
Captured German Sound Recordings- select audio records issued by the National Archives Trust Fund Board, Wash.D.C.
http://www.archives.gov/research/captured-german-records/sound-recordings.html
" The publication of a list to a heretofore little-known collection of captured Nazi recordings should require no elaborate justification. Serious historical inquiry and unflagging popular interest virtually guarantee that nazism and the Third Reich will be ever topical and relevant. Similarly, both the public and the scholarly community readily agree that recorded oral history provides us with a unique historical perspective on our times. Thus the combination of an important historical subject and a fruitful form of source material should, in itself, be sufficient reason to produce such a list, provided that the material in the collection is historically significant and does not simply duplicate what is already available elsewhere. "
If someone has a question re these recordings I might be of help.
A catalogue of Voices of the Postwar Era 1945-54 in the National Archives is available here:
http://www.archives.gov/research/voices-of-postwar.html
and a catalogue of TV Interviews 1951-1955 by Longines Chronoscope in the NA :
http://www.archives.gov/research/formats/tv-interviews-1951-to-1955.html
New Zealand Sound Archives, holdings: available as .zip-files:
http://www.soundarchives.co.nz/What-we-have/default.asp
Vertical-cut Cylinders and Discs; A catalogue of all 'Hill-&-Dale'
recordings of serious worth made between 1897-1932 circa
(pages 168 - 173 contain 'Declamation -or Speech- recordings)
by Victor Girard and Harold M.Barnes
British Institute of Recorded Sound, London, 1964
The New Catalogue of Historical Records 1898-1908/09
Robert Bauer; London 1947; last known reprint is of March 1972
contains a small list on two pages of 'Talking', indicating that 'only a
small selection of the most important talking records is given'
Gramophone Records of the First World War- An HMV Catalogue
1914-1918
introduced by Brian Rust; USA+GB+CAN c.1960s
contains music and speeches
Catalogue of N.B.C.Airchecks, transcribed by Victor Girard [late],
Concord/CA / The Free Company Log as b'cast on WABC
privately issued and sent to me by my friend Vic in the 1990s; mostly drama
performances
Catalogue Of Recordings in the possession of Peter Copeland [late],
Bristol, October 1991
-Peter was Conservation Manager at the British Library National Sound
Archive (now the British Library Sound Archive) for 15 years until his
retirement in 2002-
privately issued listings (pp424) sent to me by Peter in 1991
contains music as well as spoken word records
'Otter', a database of American Old-Time Radio broadcasts of the OT
Radio Researchers Group
http://www.otrr.org/pg02b_otter.htm
OTTER is a significant tool
for the OTR hobbyist. OTTER is a free downloadable interactive software
program (pc only) designed to compare a user's MP3 OTR file titles against
a known and corrected database. This program can compare thousands of
titles against the existing database. It will display missing episodes,
incorrect dates, and incorrect titles. The database, containing well over
164,000 listings, has been developed, researched and is maintained by the
OTRR Group.
Voices of WWII 1937-1945
select audiovisual records , leaflet by the National Archives, Wash.D.C.
1994; pp21
Spoken Word Catalogue First Edition
Contains information on over 10,000 currently available Spoken Word
recordings
Gramophone Music Master; Retail Entertainment Data
Publishing Ltd., London 1995
Spoken Records Third Ed. by Helen Roach; The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Metuchen,N.J. 1970
Includes: An Introduction to Spoken Recording/ Documentaries, Lectures, Interviews,
and Speeches/ Authors' Readings/ readings by Other than Authors/ Plays
(special stress on reissues on LP)
History in Sound by Milo Ryan; Seattle, Washinghton, 1963
The Frazer Collection of Wax Cylinders (recordings made by
ethnologist C.G.Seligman in 1906, studying the Veddas, the aboriginal
inhabitants of Sri Lanka, now extinct)
in: Recorded Sound 85, January 1984 (Publication of the National Sound
Archive, London)[#86 is the last number of that Journal]
The Truesound Online Discography Project, contains a.o. EDISON RECORDS. Here one may find spoken word recordings as well:
http://www.truesoundtransfers.de/disco.htm
With tapes deteriorating through chemical processes tapes tend to stick together and cause a hissing noise
when being played. (Some recommand baking the tape and record immediately
after -but then it cannot be played again a second time. I have experienced
using cleaning gasoline (for household, clothes etc.)('Benzin für Haushalt
und Feuerzeug') containing naphtha (crude) .If you drop it on the running
tape constantly or from time to time the tape will not stick. Of course
heads must be watched and cleaned as often as possible because one cannot
avoid that particles of the tape remain there. In addition to a 'normal'
CD-R dub, I use to make an mp3-copy (44kHz/320 bitrate). The originals are
stored away- but not thrown away after transfering to linear sound files!
The newest tries in preserving sounds is photography:
http://www.eif.ch/visualaudio/
An interesting article "Can we
save our audio-visual heritage?" can be found at:
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue39/teruggi/
From the iasa-taskforce
guidelines (Technical Committee) 2004:" The greatest problem with magnetic
tapes is the material which binds the magnetic pigments to the substrate.
Generally, traditional binding materials have a good to fair reputation of
stability. From the mid-1970s onward, however, new polyester polyurethane
binders (PEU) have been used, which, to various degree, are prone to
hydrolysis. Water present in humidity of the air reacts with the binder,
which leads to its chemical transformation, accompanied by a different
physical performance. Binders loose their binding properties, which lead to
a loss of pigments. In the course of the replay process, these pigment
particles are deposited on tapes guides and replay heads swifly impairing
the quality of the replayed signal. This phenomenon is called "Sticky
tape/sticky shed syndrome" and is often accompanied by a squeal in the
replay process, caused by undue friction of affected tapes in the tape
guides. In severe cases this friction may even lead to the break down of
the tape travel. Sometimes, massive oxide shedding and even a total
peeling-off of the magnetic layers can be observed. ... It is yet unclear
whether binder degradation is the problem of a limited number of
ill-designed or ill-produced tapes, or whether sooner or later all magnetic
tapes will affected by this phenomenon. The development of methods to
predict life expectancy of magnetic particle binder is in its infancy, and
considerable research is needed before a valid methodology will be
available. Consequently, most of the tapes produced after the mid-1970s
should be suspected of being inherently unstable. Before efficient and
easily applicable LE tests become available, utmost vigilance is necessary
to find potentially affected stocks by labour intensive individual tape
inspections...."
In an interesting feature of October 6th,2004 , Richard Hollingham on BBC4
described how we are "Losing The Past" because a substantial amount of
material stored on computers, magnetic tapes and even CDs is no longer
accessible due to rapid deterioration and obsolescence. He reveals that
the UK census data from 1951 are lost, as are significant parts of 1961 and
1971, that valuable music recordings can't be played anymore because of
tape damage. For example,the master tapes of The Eagles' `Hotel
California´, or REM's `Automatic for the People´ have fallen victim to
"sticky shed syndrome"; other recordings in the recording industry's vaults
at the risk of being lost as the technology has become obsolete, and so the
machinery to play them becoming increasingly rare. While films from the
1920s are so flammable they have to be kept in low-temperature bunkers away
from human dwellings. (A couple of years ago the German National Film
Archive at the Bundesarchive in Koblenz set itself in flames because the
nitrate films had not been stored at the proper temperature!)
With the years one realizes what one should have had an eye on . . .
e.g.legendary Forces Radio broadcastings like AFN, BFN resp.BFBS, now as
well wanted as recordings from the 30s, 40s, and 50s!
Collections in my archive are:
Any spoken word (main interest ,of course, German language and Germany related
recordings) of every decade,
V-Discs (910 had been
issued and distributed)(more about them and Robert G.Vincent to come,
especially on the Nuremberg Trial against the Major War Criminals 1945/46,
where he was the leading engineer to adjust the simultaneous translation
and recording system!)
[see: http://vvl.lib.msu.edu/record.cfm?recordid=8633]
and his 'National Vocarium' label (see above).
Old-Time Radio(OTR) recordings [to see what series were aired go to:
http://x.otr-tnt.com/phpBB2/serieslist.php?sid=fbea5a4e566357219cb923944f126e70,]
Propaganda and educational films,
eye-witness accounts on the
times of the late 1900s to the present,
Jewish/Yiddish recordings (78rpms
of the early times, recordings made in Nazi Germany), Yiddish radio
programmes in the USA in the 1940s,
Edison Diamond Discs [including a pile
of unissued ones],
US/GB Folk Music, Old-time Blues, Old-time Country
Music, Live music recordings, Field Recordings from the rural areas of the
southern USA, etc.
Last but not least: my adoration still goes to
composers/singers like
Woody Guthrie, whose "This
Land is Your Land" (1944) was listed in the 2002 National Recording
Registry :
("As folk poet, he had a strong influence on the folksong
revival of the 1950s. He wrote or adapted over 1,000 songs, including the
classic 'This Land´.
Guthrie intended the song to be a grassroots
response to `God Bless America'.")
Bob Dylan
(earliest recording: The John Bucklen Tape, Hibbing, MN c.1958 and Karen
Wallace Tapes, St.Paul,MN May 1960),
and Canadian Gordon
Lightfoot. His folk classics "Leaving On A Jet Plane", "Early
Morning Rain" and lots more have become standards nowadays. My earliest
Gordon songs come from his CBS- TV appearence at 'Country Hoedown" -about
1960- where he sings "Remember Me-I'm The One - ".
They all have
enriched my life from my early teens on so much that it is `a must´ for me
to mention their names (among many others, of course!).
Above I have already mentioned
some American eye-witnesses who recall these early days. I now have begun
to look for German language recordings of that kind. As far as I
have found out nearly all are lost; (or maybe in some American archive like
the LoC or NA- who knows...){see my notes on looting etc.}.
March 31,1930 8'30 'Georg Kaiser on his Life' {writer,1878-1945} (Radio
Station Berlin/RRG) [lost]
July 4, 1930 4'15 'Clara Viebig on her
Life' {writer,1860-1952} (Radio Station Berlin/RRG) [lost]
Jan.18,
1931 4'00 'Franz Blei on his Life- from his Childhood' (Radio Station
Berlin) [lost]
Feb.27, 1931 18'00 'The 104-year-old farmer Anna Krämer
is interviewed by W.Wahl and Paul Heinrich Wantzen' (rec. at Waldliesborn
by Radio Cologne)[lost]
Oct.30, 1931 7'40 'Wilhelm Adolf, born in 1857
in Silesia, talks to Dr Fritz Wenzel about 'Old Times' (recorded by Radio
Breslau) [lost]
Jan.18, 1932 12'00 'Wilhelm Gillig, the 86-year-old
owner of the Goethe-Friederike-Museum in Sesenheim talks about his life and
the history of his museum' (recorded by Radio Stuttgart) [lost]
Aug.25,
1932 4'37 '80-year-old Clipper-Captain W.R.B.Hillgendorf talks about his
life' (recorded by Radio Hamburg)(on his own request it should only be
broadcast after his death!) [extant]
Aug.25, 1932 10'55 'The
85-year-old Max Enenkel is interviewed by Dr Fritz Wenzel on his
recollections of the war of 1870/71' (recorded by Radio Breslau)[lost]
Aug.28, 1932 3'45 'The 85-year-old Robert Fleiß is interviewed on his
recollections' (recorded in Hirschberg by Radio Breslau) [lost]
Aug.29, 1932 2'46 'The Veteran Christian Danckert on his experiences at
Sedan' (German-French War of 1870/71) (recorded by Radio Station Hamburg)
[extant]
Nov.16, 1933 5'34 'A Veteran of 1870/71, Johann Treidler, is
interviewed about the Battle of Weißenburg and about the Battle of Sedan'
(rec.by Radio Breslau) [lost]
Nov.27, 1933 6'49 'Talks with War
Veterans: Ernst Kipper, a veteran of 1864, is interviewed by Dr Fritz
Wenzel/ Wilhelm Zahl, a veteran of 1866, is interviewed by Dr Fritz Wenzel'
(rec.by Radio Breslau) [lost]
Jan.18, 1934 17'51 '18.1.1871- Personal
recollections of veterans, Excellency Hans von Gronau (11'13);
Oberstleutnant Hermann Retzlaff (6'39)'; Berlin RRG Senderaum - a broadcast
for the short-wave station KWS [lost]
March 27,1934 7'30 'War veteran
Hermann Pudritzki talks about the battle of Nachod in the year 1866'
(recorded by Radio Station Breslau)[lost]
Jan.10, 1935 8'05 'Radio
talk with Herr Göbel' (100 years old) on the Saarland plebiscite; his
service with the military 1857-58; participation in the wars of 1866
(G-Austria) and 1870/71 (G-France); his jobs in the wool industry; his
travels a.o.to Syria [extant]
-to be continued-
May
1, 1930 8'54 Prof Dr Nicholas Murray Butler, head of Columbia University in
NY, is interviewed by Alfred Braun on the occasion of his Berlin visit
[lost]
Aug.08, 1930 4'21 Senator A.Reed is interviewed by Dr Kurt
Heymann on the Democrats' attitude towards Europe and Germany (recorded by
Radio Berlin) [lost]
Dec.21, 1930 4'00 Edgar Wallace is interviewed by
Dr Kurt Heymann on his interests in international crime, his work, and on
spiritualism (rec.by Radio Berlin) [lost]
Dec.29, 1930 5'51 Sinclair
Lewis is interviewed by Dr Kurt Heymann on his impressions of Berlin
(rec.by Radio Berlin) [lost]
Aug.24, 1932 4'30 "Chicago's Mayor Anton
J.Czermak is interviewed by Kurt Heymann on America's financial situation
and on his position in America" (rec.at Hotel Adlon by Radio Berlin)
[lost]
Dec.09, 1935 6'26 "The Secretary-General of the National
Committee for Education by Radio in the USA, Dr D.C.F.Tylor, talks to
Johannes Schmidt-Hansen on the German and American "Educational
Broadcasting" ("Schulfunk") as well as about his impressions of the
Third Reich (rec.by KWS-Short-Wave Station,Berlin) [lost]
-to be
continued-
(in progress...I am
still waiting for their promissed info for my site) Two useful links
are:
http://www.akustische-chronik.at and http://www.mediathek.at
On the history of
radio broadcasting in Austria 1939-1955 see articles with audio-clips
especially on the post-war-times:
http://members.aon.at/wabweb/radio_a/radio_a2.htm
With all the spoken word documents
existing one should never forget the BLUES- a musical style that expressed
in many ways the life and times of people in the USA. It always had me in
its grip ever since the time I first heard it via British Forces
Broadcasting Service (BFBS)/Cologne in Germnay (especially thanks to my
late friend Wally Whyton who I first met in London in 1971, who ran a Folk
music programme called "Hello Folk" there). - Back in the 1990s my good
friend Johnny Parth from Vienna had begun to re-issue the old Blues
shellacs recorded before the 1942-ban. On his DOCUMENT RECORDS label more
than 800 CDs represented the ways black people expressed what they had on
their minds. A couple of years ago he sold everything to an Englishman who
continues the production of these CDs. A worthwhile undertaking. Although
their CD sales prices are very high they sometimes have special offers. -
What Johnny had intended was to give every Blues lover access to an
original dub of the shellac existing- without de-noise or de-clicking .
Many treasures were discovered; sometimes discs were taken off walls of
Mississippi huts where they served to keep the wind out.
http://www.home.schule.at/cometo/tommy/htm/i%20johnny_parth.htm
(Johnny on his work)
http://blues.about.com/library/blkba2001.htm (Johnny getting the 2001
'Keeping Blues Alive Award')
http://www.wirz.de/music/matchfrm.htm (Johnny's reissues on the
MATCHBOX label-vinyl)
http://www.wirz.de/music/rootsfrm.htm (Johnny's
reissues on the ROOTS label-vinyl)
'DAS LAUTDENKMAL REICHSDEUTSCHER MUNDARTEN' (Sound Monument of
German Dialects) :
In the years 1936/37 the Reichsbund deutscher
Beamten (Reich Organization of German Officials) gave the order to produce
a series of recordings that should represent the complete German dialects
within the borders of the German Reich. In the end it turned out to be a
series of 300 shellac discs (c.3 mins each), recorded with the most
sophisticated equipment of that time by 'Telefunkenplatte GmbH' (formerly
ULTRAPHON -1932)Special Division. A special cupboard was designed by Prof.
Schneckenberg who had also developed the design of the VE301, the most
popular radio set after 1933 (301 = 30 January 1933). The middle part
contained a grammophone with speakers and space for the discs. The right
and left side could be opened like wings. They showed, in woodwork, the map
of Germany with the recording place of each disc.- The reason for that
enormous undertaking was Hitler's 48th birthday (20.4.37). - From the
information leaflet to the work: 'Never before has the technique of
recording the human voice been put in the service of cultural and historic
work in such a range. Nearly over eight months the recording van of
Telefunkenplatte travelled from place to place in Germany to record
speakers, away from all recording studios.Thus an effigy of German mental
character in landscapes and education in a diversity as it has not been
collected before has been created. The Telefunkenlatte has used all its
technical means and could, with the help of Marburg University professors
Nartin and Mitzka (of 'Deutscher Sprachatlas'- German Language Atlas), and
Vogel and Dr Debus (Berlin) overcome all difficulties of field recording.'
- All in all the idea turned out to be a tragic-comic example of a wrong
combination of science and politics. Nazi policy was to unify and simplify
the German language (as developed in the plans of Rust, Minister for
Education),and to get rid of everything that showed any individuality. -
Besides, Hitler would not have been able to understand most of the
dialects, of which many are extinct nowadays. - In his recorded dedication
the initiator, Hermann Neff, says (among many other things): 'My Führer! I
ask you to accept this work as a sign of love and dedication by the newly
united German officials, the Lautdenkmal of German ways, German life, and
folklore, German history, work and customs. Volksgenossen of all ages and
different professions talk in their own tongue about important events of
their being, about daily life, their piece of Heimat (the place where their
live on), our People and Fatherland, about a new Germany. None of the
speakers knew that his voice would sound for you, my Führer. Simple and
plain, as you want your people to be,the Volksgenossen talk in their mother
tongue on their homeland clod. After long times of inner alienation from
themselves, the German man recollects- thanks to you and your Movement- the
eternal roots of his strength. .. The Lautdenkmal will be a sounding
commitment to all ways of a national-socialist world of emotions and
thoughts. ..' - This euphuistic speech shows that it was not only a
collection of German folklore related material but also a piece of
devotion and ingratiation. - Of course, these spontaneous recordings do not
contain any critical words on the NS régime. Although most recordings
contain the chocolade sides of daily life , there are some voices that talk
about the negative political sides before Hitler (such as 'black occupation
soldiers', the Separatist Movements, inflation, etc.; some are about
Hitler's seizure of power,or 'The Führer comes'). One must not forget that
those who spoke into the microphones belonged to the simple 'working class'
that had no car, a bath tub was luxury, no newspaper subscription; they got
their political information in the pubs;they believed what they read on
imminent menace by other countries, by the Jews. So they accepted the new
military draft. ('My husband still looks good in his new uniform'.). They
lacked any inside view into the industrial rise and armament, they see the
new Autobahns but not what was behind it. They see that the worker, the
farmer is celebrated in all fields of life. But they can't see why.
('That's what we have our Führer to thank for'.) They enjoy the new
comradship in the HY and women's organizations, the sportive activities . .
. - These recordings are not a reflection of Germany but they show how the
Nazis had understood perfectly to bedazzle too many. - These lines are in
parts based on the scientific research into the linguistic problems of the
'Lautdenkmal' by my long-time acquaintance, Professor Wolfgang Näser who
teaches German Language and Literary Studies at Marburg University. He has
put together a pile of excerpts from the 300 discs on his homepage
www.staff.uni-marburg.de. They are linked with a map of their recording
places.
********************************************************************************************************************************************************
ADDITIONAL - VARIOUS SOUND RELATING SUBJECTS -
:
PAST BUT STILL OF INTEREST:
2003: I want to give a link to an interesting article on the BEAR
FAMILY PROJECT on Jewish Music in Berlin in the 1930s which by now has
become reality. The article is in German but I think it is worth while to
go to BF Records' own web site for detailed info on the discs.
http://www.phonomuseum.at/index2.php?showID=vortrag_rainer_lotz
IASA Conference in Barcelona Nov.11-15, 2005: General Theme in
Barcelona Conference is "Archives speak: Who listens?". For further
information, you can find the Conference Preliminary Programme at the
conference website: http://www.gencat.net/bc/iasa2005/index.htm
The
timetable for the Discography Committee Working Session that will be held
on the first day: Sunday 11th, 9.30 - 10.30.
IASA
Germany/German-Speaking Switzerland CONFERENCE 4.+5.November 2005
Jahrestagung (annual conference)will be in Fribourg (Switzerland)
PAST
Radio in Germany DEUTSCHLANDFUNK May16th,2005 30mins, Cajo Kutzbach on the
unsolved questions how long digital information will be available and
accessible - Are we losing parts of our heritage/ of documents because of
the flood of information to be digitized? (b'c has been archived)
The
2005 ARSC Conference, March 30 - April 2, in Austin, Texas, will feature a
particular emphasis on technical issues. Eleven papers, presented by
leading authorities, will explore a variety of topics, ranging from the
details of playback and restoration, to the design of audio preservation
projects.Restoration sessions will include talks on a new process to
eliminate sticky shed syndrome, the correction of wow and flutter
artifacts, and a comparison of software-based restoration methods.Sessions
focused on preservation projects will include presentations that examine
audio preservation digitization at small institutions, technical metadata
and storage issues for small archives, and the management and storage of
digital audio files.
ARSC is pleased to announce
the finalists for the 2005 ARSC Awards for Excellence in Historical
Recorded Sound Research. Winners will be announced in October 2005. Awards
will be presented at a ceremony in Seattle, Washington on May 20, 2006,
during ARSC's annual conference.- Begun in 1991, the awards are presented
to authors and publishers of books, articles, liner notes, and monographs,
to recognize outstanding published research in the field of recorded sound.
In giving these awards, ARSC recognizes outstanding contributions,
encourages high standards, and promotes awareness of superior works. A
maximum of two awards is presented annually in each category, for best
history and best discography. Winners are chosen by the ARSC Awards
Committee: five elected judges representing specific fields of study, the
ARSC President, and the Book Review Editor of the ARSC Journal.
The
following research, published in 2004, has been nominated:
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED BLUES
Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, by Elijah
Wald (Harper Collins).
Moanin' at Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin' Wolf, by James Segrest
and Mark Hoffman (Pantheon).
Robert Johnson: Mythmaking and Contemporary American Culture, by Patricia R.
Schroeder (University of Illinois Press).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED CLASSICAL MUSIC
Adrian Willaert: A Guide to Research, by David Kidger (Routledge).
Alan Rawsthorne: A Bio-Bibliography, by John Dressler (Praeger).
Dmitri Shostakovich, Pianist, by Sofia Moshevich (McGill-Queens University
Press).
Leroy Anderson: A Bio-Bibliography, by Burgess Speed (Praeger).
Performing Music in the Age of Recording, by Robert Philip (Yale
University Press).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED FOLK or COUNTRY MUSIC
Country Music Records: A Discography, 1921-1942, by Tony Russell (Oxford
University Press).
Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie,
by Ed Cray (Norton).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED WORLD MUSIC
Albanian
Urban Lyric Song in the 1930s, by Eno Koco (Scarecrow Press).
Arrest
the Music!: Fela and his Rebel Art and Politics, by Tejumola Olaniyan
(Indiana University Press).
Git Zaman Gel Zaman, by Cernal Unlu
(Fonograf Gramofon Tab Plak).
Soweto Blues: Jazz, Popular Music and
Politics in South Africa, by Gwen Ansell (Continuum Books).
BEST
RESEARCH in GENERAL HISTORY of RECORDED SOUND
Capturing Sound: How
Technology Has Changed Music, by Mark Katz (University of California
Press).
Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry
1890-1919, by Tim Brooks (University of Illinois Press).
BEST RESEARCH
in RECORDED JAZZ
Albert Ayler: Holy Ghost, by Ben Young, ed. (Revenant
Records).
The Complete Columbia Recordings of Woody Herman, 1945-1947,
by Loren Schoenberg (Mosaic Records).
Django: The Life and Music of a
Gypsy Legend, by Michael Dregni (Oxford University Press).
Queen: The
Life and Music of Dinah Washington, by Nadine Cohodas (Pantheon)
.
Satchmo: The Louis Armstrong Encyclopedia, by Michael Meckna (Greenwood
Press).
Tom Talbert: His Life and Times, by Bruce Talbot (Scarecrow
Press).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORD LABELS
Fonotipia Recordings: A
Centennial Survey, by Michael E. Henstock (published by author).
Discography of OKeh Records, 1918-1934, by Ross Laird and Brian Rust
(Praeger).
Syrena Record: Poland's First Recording Company, 1904-1939,
by Tomasz Lerski (Editions Karin).
Victor Red Seal Discography: Vol. I:
Single-Sided Series (1903-1925), by John R. Bolig (Mainspring Press).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED POPULAR MUSIC
Andrews Sisters: A Biography
and Career Record, by H. Arlo Nimmo (McFarland).
Celia: My Life, an
Autobiography, by Celia Cruz and Ana Cristina Reymundo (Harper
Collins).
That Moaning Saxophone: The Six Brown Brothers and the
Dawning of a Musical Craze, by Bruce Vermazen (Oxford University Press).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED RHYTHM & BLUES, SOUL, or GOSPEL MUSIC
Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield and the Rise
and Fall of American Soul, by Craig Hansen Werner (Crown).
House on
Fire: The Rise and Fall of Philadelphia Soul, by John A. Jackson (Oxford
University Press).
I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You: Aretha
Franklin, Respect and the Making of a Soul Music Masterpiece, by Matt
Dobkin (St. Martins Press).
Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther
Vandross, by Craig Seymour (Harper Collins).
Original Marvelettes:
Motown's Mystery Girl Group, by Marc Taylor (Aloiv).
People Get Ready!:
A New History of Black Gospel Music, by Robert Darden (Continuum
Books).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED ROCK or RAP MUSIC
Del Shannon:
Home and Away: The Complete Recordings, 1960-1970, by Brian Young (Bear
Family).
Freddy Fresh Presents the Rap Records, by Freddy Fresh (Nerby
Publishing).
Never Break the Chain: Fleetwood Mac and the Making of
Rumours, by Cath Carroll (Chicago Review Press).
Nirvana: The Complete
Recording Sessions, by Rob Jovanovic (Firefly).
Smoke on the Water: The
Deep Purple Story, by Dave Thompson (ECW Press).
Steve Marriott: All
Too Beautiful, by Paolo Hewitt and John Hellier (Helter Skelter).
Sep.15, 2005: BBC News: A rare TV interview of 1959 with Hitler's
sister Paula Wolf has been found in a hunt for missing TV shows. Paula Wolf
shared her personal stories about her brother in the documentary by Peter
Morley ("Tyranny- The Years of Adolf Hitler"). The film was discovered by
TV historian Dick Fiddy in ITN's archives.
Sep.24, 2005: BBC-British Library is going to release a CD
"Voices of History" this month , imcl.a.o. Tolstoy, aviator Louis Blériot,
cricketer Jack Hobbs, explorer Ernest Shackleton, Th.A.Edison, Arthur
Sullivan. (The Daily Telegraph, Sep.24,2005)
Washington DC – Oct 1, 2005 The Library of Congress has
contracted to use The System for the Automated Migration of Media Archives,
or SAMMA, to migrate their extensive collection of audio-visual material in
preparation for their move to the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center
in Culpeper, VA. Over the next several years the Library will use SAMMA to
migrate and digitize over 500,000 television items and close to 2,000,000
audio recordings.
The Library realized that it would take almost one hundred years, and
be prohibitively expensive to migrate and digitize the audio-visual collections
manually. To have the material accessible at the Culpeper facility, a more
practical, cost effective, and efficient method had to be found. In examining
the alternatives, the Library concluded that Media Matters’ innovative
migration automation system would provide the high quality necessary to
preserve the recordings while meeting the required cost and time restraints.
SAMMA integrates robotic tape handling systems with proprietary tape
cleaning and signal analysis technologies. SAMMA’s expert system supervises
b quality control of each media items’ migration. From a thorough
examination of the physical tape for damage to real-time monitoring of
video and audio signal parameters as the media item is being migrated,
SAMMA ensures that magnetic media is migrated with the highest degree of
confidence and the least amount of human intervention. SAMMA also gathers
technical metadata throughout the entire migration process, ensuring that
the process is documented in depth and gathering important metrics about
the state of an entire collection. The modular, portable system will be
installed on-site and run 24/7. The final product is a re-mastered
cassette and/or a digital file copy of each master tape at preservation
quality and the technical metadata describing the condition of the media
item and the migration process.
Oct 2, 2005: EU: Commission unveils plans for European digital
libraries: The European Commission today unveiled its strategy to make
Europe's written and audiovisual heritage available on the Internet.
Turning Europe's historic and cultural heritage into digital content will
make it usable for European citizens for their studies, work or leisure and
will give innovators, artists and entrepreneurs the raw material that they
need. The Commission proposes a concerted drive by EU Member States to
digitise, preserve, and make this heritage available to all. It presents a
first set of actions at European level and invites comments on a series of
issues in an online consultation. See:
http://copyrightandculture.com/main.php?page=news/10_05/eu_plan_digital_libraries
Oct 6, 2005: BBC Governors Radio Archive Consultation- is the BBC
going to open its Archive of about 750,000 hours to the public? See:
http://bbcgovernors.co.uk/haveyoursay/consultations/radioarchive.txt
Oct 27, 2005: UNESCO's proclamation of the World Day for Audiovisual
Heritage - it means a substantial upgrading of the AV archives all over the
world.
Nov 5, 2005 "The British Library's sound archive of Shakespeare is
a treasure-trove", writes the Telegraph /arts on November 5.And so it
launches a double CD-set featuring audio excerpts of 20 RSC productions
spanning six decades. Many are audience recordings replete with audience
coughs, splutters and even inappropriate titters. "Close your eyes during
David Warner's splendidly low-key account of "To Be or Not to Be", and you
imagine yourself not just in the presence of Hamlet but also
within breathing distance of the rumbling traffic outside the Aldwych and
glaring distance of someone unwrapping a sweet". (Dominic Cavendish in the
Telegraph) ["The Essential Shakespeare-Live" available from the BL;
GBP15.95 or the internet sales site]
Nov 20, 2005:The Nuremberg Trial vs the Major War Criminals
began 60 years ago. It was recorded on 3700 meters tape and 7000 discs. The
official transcript was delivered in 1949 to major institutions; in Germany
especially to the libraries of the Justice Depts. ("Blue Series"). In Germany
the Sueddeutscher Rundfunk, Munich, and different other broadcasting stations
throughout Germany and Austria broadcast daily. Of these reports and comments
only a few have survived. Among the various radio commentators was Markus Wolf who later became
the Head of GDR's Secret Service
- and a mysterious "Dr Gaston Oulman (Ulmann)"
whose identity is still unknown although speculations say that was an impostor
and had had nothing to do with radio before.
NEWS CHRONICLE 7 Nov 1945 "SECRET RECORDINGS MAY PRESERVE MUNICH
TALKS- from Ian Bevan, News Chronicle Special Correspondent
HERFORD
(Germany), Tuesday
Gramophone recordings of the Hitler-Chamberlain talks
at Munich are thought to be among a collection of Nazi Party official
recordings found in a German salt mine.
If this is confirmed, the
recordings must have been made by means of apparatus hidden in the
conference room. The collection has been kept secret in case the records
were used as evidence at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. It now appears
unlikely they can be produced at Nuremberg because of the legal difficulty
of proving when and where the records were made.-Being
played More than 4,000 metal negatives, or matrices constitute the
collection, which was once the property of the Reichsrundfunk-Gesellschaft,
the German equivalent of the B.B.C.- British Signals staff have already made
records from many of the matrices, and these are being played to
intelligence officers and war crimes investigators, who are endeavouring to
identify the voices.- Unfortunately no list of recordings has been found
and there are no identification marks on the matrices. ... The custodian of
the collection...believed that among them were many private conversations
between Nazi leaders, and also recordings of important diplomatic
negotiations, such as the Hitler-Chamberlain talks.- Some of the matrices
have been wilfully thrown into the salt by the German guards in the hope
that they would be destroyed by corrosion, but the low humidity in the mine
preserved them unharmed." (Note: as far as it is known no
"conversation disc" exists...)
On Nov 30, 1945, The Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign
Office informs R.D.J.Scott-Fox with the Foreign Office that Captain
Glenville Brown "has received an answer from Nuremberg requesting a number
of the records specified in the catalogue. he has succeeded in finding
about half of these and is despatching them to Church House today,..."
(F.O./Pol.Intell.file FO1050/1431). The catalogue they are referring to was
a listing of the above mentioned captured records, indexed by a hundred
Poles at a Polish Repatriation Camp. In his "Report on German Gramophone
Records" Cpt Brown describes the difficulty of indexing them and is
"increasingly doubtful whether they will be of any use whatever at
Nuremberg. On these records, when one hears the Nazi leaders, one hears
them making public speeches. I doubt whether any of them has ever made, in
a public speech, a statement or admission which could be used against him
at Nuremberg. ...for even the docile Germans might have objected if the
Nazis' true aims had been stated in public."
Dec.1,2005:
2005 ARSC ( Committee of the Association for Recorded Sound
Collections )AWARDS
ARSC is pleased to announce the winners of the 2005 ARSC Awards for
Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research. Begun in 1991, the awards
are presented to authors and publishers of books, articles, liner notes, and
monographs, to recognize outstanding published research in the field of
recorded sound. In giving these awards, ARSC recognizes outstanding
contributions, encourages high standards, and promotes awareness of superior
works. A maximum of two awards is presented annually in each category -- one
for best history and one for best discography. Certificates of Merit are
presented to runners-up of exceptionally high quality. The 2005 Awards for
Excellence honor works published in 2004.
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED BLUES
Moanin' at Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin' Wolf, by James Segrest
and Mark Hoffman (Pantheon).
Certificate of Merit.
Robert Johnson: Mythmaking and Contemporary American Culture, by Patricia R.
Schroeder (University of Illinois Press).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED CLASSICAL MUSIC
Best Discography.
Leroy Anderson: A Bio-Bibliography, by Burgess Speed, Eleanor Anderson, and
Steve Metcalf (Praeger).
Best History.
Performing Music in the Age of Recording, by Robert Philip (Yale University
Press).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED FOLK or COUNTRY MUSIC
Country Music Records: A Discography, 1921-1942, by Tony Russell (Oxford
University Press).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED WORLD MUSIC
Git Zaman Gel Zaman, by Cemal Unlu (Fonograf Gramofon Tab Plak).
Certificate of Merit.
Albanian Urban Lyric Song in the 1930s, by Eno Koco (Scarecrow Press).
BEST RESEARCH in GENERAL HISTORY of RECORDED SOUND
Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry 1890-1919, by
Tim Brooks (University of Illinois Press).
Certificate of Merit.
Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music, by Mark Katz (University
of California Press).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED JAZZ
Albert Ayler: Holy Ghost, by Ben Young, editor (Revenant Records).
Certificates of Merit.
Tom Talbert: His Life and Times, by Bruce Talbot (Scarecrow Press).
Queen: The Life and Music of Dinah Washington, by Nadine Cohodas (Pantheon).
The Complete Columbia Recordings of Woody Herman, 1945-1947, by Loren
Schoenberg (Mosaic Records).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORD LABELS
Discography of OKeh Records, 1918-1934, by Ross Laird and Brian Rust
(Praeger).
Certificates of Merit.
Fonotipia Recordings: A Centennial Survey, by Michael E. Henstock (published
by author).
Syrena Record: Poland's First Recording Company, 1904-1939, by Tomasz Lerski
(Editions Karin).
Victor Red Seal Discography: Volume I: Single-Sided Series (1903-1925), by
John R. Bolig (Mainspring Press).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED POPULAR MUSIC
That Moaning
Saxophone: The Six Brown Brothers and the Dawning of a Musical Craze, by
Bruce Vermazen (Oxford University Press). BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED RHYTHM
& BLUES, SOUL, or GOSPEL MUSIC People Get Ready: A New History of Black
Gospel Music, by Robert Darden (Continuum). Certificate of Merit. House on
Fire: The Rise and Fall of Philadelphia Soul, by John A. Jackson (Oxford
University Press).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED ROCK or RAP MUSIC
Freddy
Fresh Presents the Rap Records, by Freddy Fresh (Nerby Publishing).
Certificate of Merit. Nirvana: The Complete Recording Sessions, by Rob
Jovanovic (Firefly).
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
ARSC annually
presents a Lifetime Achievement Award to an individual, in recognition of a
life's work in recorded sound research and publication. The 2005 award was
presented to Chris Strachwitz, for his pioneering work in researching
traditional musics in the Americas. Strachwitz founded Arhoolie Records in
1960 and, over the decades, amassed a catalog containing hundreds of great
sets, most of them produced by Chris himself. In 1995, he established the
not-for-profit Arhoolie Foundation to preserve the rarest portions of his
collection of commercial recordings. Strachwitz's Frontera Collection of
30,000-plus Mexican and Mexican-American recordings is being cataloged and
digitized for eventual on-line display with the help of the UCLA library
system and the financial assistance of the Los Tigres Del Norte Foundation.
AWARD for DISTINGUISHED SERVICE to HISTORIC RECORDINGS
ARSC's Award for Distinguished Service to Historical Recordings honors a
person who has made outstanding contributions to the field, outside of
published works or discographic research. This year's award was presented
posthumously to John R. T. Davies (1927-2004) for his meticulous transfers
of classic recordings of jazz and blues. Davies' transfers of King Oliver,
Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, The New Orleans Rhythm
Kings, Joe Venuti, the great big bands of the 1920s and 1930s, and blues
singers were universally applauded for presenting the music in the best
possible sound. He worked for Doug Dobell's 77 Records label, formed his
own Ristic label, and was the driving force behind Retrieval records. His
work also appeared on other small jazz labels including Frog, Hep, JSP,
Timeless, Cygnet, and Jazz Oracle.
2005 AWARDS COMMITTEE
Winners
are chosen by the ARSC Awards Committee: five elected judges representing
specific fields of study, the ARSC President, and the Book Review Editor of
the ARSC Journal. The members of the 2005 ARSC Awards Committee are:
Robert Iannapollo (Awards Committee Chair)
Brenda
Nelson-Strauss (ARSC President)
James Farrington
(Book Review Editor, ARSC Journal)
Cary Ginell (Judge-at-Large)
David Hamilton (Classical Music Judge)
Dan Morgenstern (Jazz Music
Judge)
William L. Schurk (Popular Music Judge)
Richard
Spottswood (Judge-At-Large)
Dec.9,2005: A new report has been published about copyright in the
US, commissioned for and sponsored by the National Recording Preservation
Board, Library of Congress: June M. Besek "Copyright Issues relevant to
Digital Preservation and Dissemination of Pre-1972 Commercial Sound
Recordings by Libraries and Archives". For those who are interested in
the full text:
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub135/contents.html
Dec.17,2005: ARSC announces its 40th annual conference to be held in Seattle,
Washington, May 17-20, 2006. Hosted by the University of Washington School
of Music.
ARSC is dedicated to the preservation and study of sound recordings -- in
all genres of music and speech, in all formats, and from all periods.
Reflecting this broad mission, the upcoming conference offers a vast array
of appealing talks and sessions. A few samples from the program currently
being prepared are:
- Carl Haber, "New Imaging Methods Applied to Mechanical Sound Carrier
Preservation and Access"
- Mark Hoffman, "Blues and the Power of Myth:
Ten True Tales about the Big Bad Wolf" (Howlin' Wolf)
- Copyright and
Fair Use Session: David Levine from Stanford's Center for Internet and
Society, speaking on the implications of the Naxos decision
Technical Committee Roundtable Discussion: Audio Preservation in the
Digital Domain.
The pre-conference workshop, "A Tutorial on the Preservation of Audio in the
Digital Domain," will take place on May 17. This tutorial will introduce the
basics of digital-audio preservation, addressing some of the difficult
equipment, metadata, and storage issues that must be resolved if enduring
preservation is to be achieved. Speakers include: Mike Casey (Associate
Director for Recordings Services, Archives of Traditional Music, Indiana
University); Konrad Strauss (Director, Recording Arts Department, Indiana
University Jacobs School of Music); David Ackerman (Audio Preservation
Engineer, Archive of World Music, Harvard University); Sara Velez (Assistant
Chief, Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, New York Public
Library); John Spencer (President, Bridge Media Solutions Inc.); and Jon
Dunn (Associate Director for Technology, Digital Library Program, Indiana
University Libraries, Indiana University).
Jan.1, 2006: For the first time in its history BBC News is opening
its archives to the UK public for a trial period. You can download nearly
80 news reports covering iconic events of the past 50 years including the
fall of the Berlin Wall, crowds ejecting soldiers from Beijing's
Tiananmen Square and behind-the-scenes footage of the England team prior
to their victory over West Germany in 1966. - for UK subjects only -
see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/calc/news/
Jan.18,2006 The Outreach Committee of the
Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC):You are invited to
propose candidates for the 2006 ARSC Awards for Excellence in Historical
Recorded Sound Research. Nominations may be made by anyone, ARSC member or
not. The deadline for nominations is January 31, 2006. The ARSC Awards
typically recognize histories, discographies, or biographies representing
the "Best Research" in these recording genres: Blues or Gospel Music;
Classical Music; Country Music; Folk or Ethnic Music; Jazz; Popular Music;
Rock, Rhythm & Blues, or Soul; and Spoken Word. Additional categories
include: General Research in Recorded Sound; Record Labels or
Manufacturers; Phonographs; and Preservation or Reproduction of Recorded
Sound.The Awards Committee especially welcomes information concerning
eligible journal articles, as well as foreign and small-press publications
that might otherwise be overlooked. eMail to: rfschwar@ku.edu
March 4,2006 BBC4 Famous Norman Corwin talks about his radio career.
"Hailed as American radio's 'poet laureate', Corwin, now 95, is still making radio programmes, as well as teaching journalism at the University of Southern California. He remembers some of his most significant productions from the golden age of radio including:
They Fly Through the Air - his response to Mussolini's bombing of Ethiopia.
We Hold These Truths - a drama commissioned by Roosevelt to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, which was listened to by 63 million people - the largest audience in recorded history for a dramatic performance.
An American in England - a series made to give Americans a better
understanding of the British, and the programme which is still considered
( his masterpiece - On a Note of Triumph." (BBC)
This can be re-heard till March10th.
March 28,2006: The very interesting book Shubha Chaudhuri and
Anthony Seeger edited, based on a 1999 conference, called Archives for the
Future, Global Perspectives on Archives in the 21st Century, published by
Seagull Press (Calcutta) in 2004, is also available online for free
download. Recommended are some of the summary documents--especially on
advisory boards, institutional affiliation, and the 10 papers by colleagues
in other small research archives around the world contain some useful
lessons. It has some fairly non-technical and general discussions of
technology, copyright, ethics, and strategies for research archives
http://www.seagullindia.com/books/default.asphttp://www.fcw.com/print.asp
April 15,2006: "Audio recordings are an endagered species", article
by Allya Stemstein, FC Media Group, an article that in many points gives me
questions of understanding. Any help in
understanding what a "microfilm tape" is or "grooves
on tape" are ,etc., is welcome! http://www.fcw.com/article92802-04-03-06-Print
April 2006: forthcoming on BBC R4 July06- Info from my friend Patrick
Morley, GB, a researcher and collector in the field on AFN: "At long last
the BBC has decided to do not one but two programmes on AFN after a radio
producer came across my book in the BBC library.
Disappointingly he has decided to concentrate only on the war years and not
to cover AFN's long history on the Continent in the post war years." (no
comment from my side to that!)-
I'd like to recommand that highly
respected book "This is the American Forces Network-The Anglo-American
Battle of the Air Waves in World War II" (London,Praeger 2001; 174pp)to
anyone interested in Forces Radio and WWII radio.
May 6th,2006: BBC archive catalog- prototype online:
http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/infax// and
http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogueblog/2006/04/welcome_to_the_bbc_programme_c_1 .html"
June 1,2006: UNESCO has launched a public consultation on the objectives, practicalities,
costs and expected results of a "World Day for Audiovisual Heritage" to be celebrated annually on 27 October to build global awareness of the various issues at stake in preserving the audiovisual heritage. In response to a proposal by the Czech Republic in October 2005, UNESCO's General Conference approved the proclamation of 27 October as the annual World Day for Audiovisual Heritage. The World Day for Audiovisual Heritage can be a means of building global awareness of the various issues at stake in preserving the audiovisual heritage. In accordance with normal practice, a feasibility study has been commenced to test the objectives, practicalities, costs and expected results of such an annual commemoration. The date is significant. On 27 October 1980, the General Conference adopted the "Recommendation for the safeguarding and preservation of moving images", the first international instrument to declare the cultural and historical importance of film and television recordings, and calling for decisive steps to ensure their preservation. - In today's digital age, that call is going out to an even wider spectrum. More recent initiatives, such as the "World Appeal for the Preservation of Broadcast Heritage" (initiated by the International Federation of Television Archives) - which has so far garnered over 10,000 signatures - will also be embraced in the feasibility study. - Public consultation is a crucial part of the feasibility study, and it is open to everyone. UNESCO has therefore established an online platform with background documents, a public forum and a questionnaire. You can access
full details via this link:
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=22265&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTI
ON=201.html
June 14, 2006: Austrian Radio "Ö1" broadcasts 25mins on
"Restaurierung historischer Tonaufnahmen- Projekte des Phonogrammarchivs
der Oesterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften" (Restauration projects
in the Austrian Phonogramm Archive)
June 27,2006: The Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv has issued a new book on their "Wax Cylinders of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archive"
by Susanne Ziegler. It's in German and in parts in English, 512 pages incl.a CD-ROM. For
those who are interested in very early sound recordings go to
http://http://www.museumshop.de/msuebersicht.asp?kat=3
June 29,2006: News from Rainer Lotz, German discographer: His new discography on German
Cake Walk, Ragtime, Hot Dance, and Jazz has been published,
"Deutsche Hot-Discograhpie"; 480 pages plus CD (ISBN 3-9810248-1-8). He- in
cooperation with Susanne Ziegler- has issued the "Discographie der ethnischen Aufnahmen" (Discography
of Ethnic Recordings) [see above for his site!]
July 2006: see entry April 2006! The progs, I have been informed, are at 11:30-12:00
British Summer Time (i.e.W.Europe +1hr) on July 11th and 18th.
July 6, 2006: While making CDR-dubs of my tapes I came across the Eichmann interrogations of 1960; Israeli Captain Avner Less
interrogated Eichmann in 1960, beginning May 29,1960 over a period of eight months (in German). These
recordings, broadcast in Nov.1977 by SWF in Germany,
have never been aired before or after!
July 14, 2006: Annual Report on Preservation Issues For European Audiovisual Collections
see:
http://www.prestospace.org/project/deliverables/D22-6.pdf
also of interest:
http://www.prestospace.org/project/public.de.html
July 15, 2006: interesting site- http://www.loc.gov/preserv/bachbase/bbcsound.html
Read that the BBC used German military TONSCHREIBER-machines to record radio plays with, such
as In Search Of Rusty
The Dog (22.Feb.1945), Young Mrs Barrington (9.Sep.1945), and Poison Pen (16.Jan.1946).
The TONSCHREIBER,
developed in cooperation of AEG Berlin and Reichsrundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG), was the first portable
magnetic tape recording device, run under the identification code 'R 23a`. It was especially used
for military issues and could be carried in a field pack by
propaganda company units. In 1940 it was very much
improved by RRG engineer
Walter Weber, and became the best sound recording equiment ever. On June 10,1941 it was presented
to the public
at `UFA-Palast am Zoo` in Berlin and widely reported about in newspapers (e.g.Berliner
Lokalanzeiger 12.June 1941, Deutsche Allgemeine
Zeitung 12.June 1941). (Which speaks against the story
reported after the war that the tape recording had been a secret, and against the story by John
Herbert Orr on Radio Luxemburg and its tape machines...). From January 1943 on experiments in
stereophonic
recording were done. About 250 stereo performances were recorded; five of them still exist in
Germany; the rest
lies, probably, somewhere in Russian archives or dark cellars. That presumption comes from the
fact that
the five recordings were handed over to a West German radio station by Russia in 1990. And it is
a fact
that piles of recordings in RRG boxes were seen by German experts in a Russian cellar somewhere in Moscow!
August 3,2006: I just came across one of those legendary STEREO tape-recordings of the Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft
-RRG- recorded in Berlin September 1944:
Beethoven: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra N°5 in E flat Major Op.73 'Emperor` with Walter Gieseking (piano) and Großes
Rundfunk-Orchester Berlin, cond.by Artur Rother, issued by the Italian
CD-firm The Radio Years RY #67
September 10,2006: Feature by Ulrike Koeppchen on ´Wilhelm Doegen and the Berlin Lautarchiv` on Hessian Radio HR2 18:05h
An interesting and long article on the Bell-Tainter recording of 1881 can be found here:
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/graphophone.html#group01
and
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/ar303.html
September 19,2006: Radio Prague has a 17-minute-feature on its radio history with some sound clips. The audio and the script can be found at:
http://www.radio.cz/en/current/special
September 24, 2006: Pre-publication announcement of an important discography: Discography of
Judaica Recordings; An annotated 78rpm discography of sound documents relating to Jewish life in Germany, or in German language, or recorded in Germany,
covering Jewish life, humour, music and religion, Zionism, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust. Compiled and issued by Rainer Lotz (see above) -600 pages ,
150 copies available, 60 Euros plus p/p World Surface 7,
World Airmail 26 Euros; due out in December 2006
September 25, 2006: LATEST FROM THE FRONT. "UK music archive in decay warning Published by BBC News: 2006/09/25 12:36:17 GMT
Part of the UK's national music archive could be lost as a result of copyright law, the British Library has warned. The library's Sound Archive cannot copy audio from fragile or obsolete formats for posterity until copyright runs out. And Sir Cliff Richard is leading a music industry campaign to extend the copyright on sound recordings beyond the current 50-year limit.
The library said a "significant" part of the collection could "decay and be unavailable for future
generations". The Sound Archive holds more than a million discs, 185,000 tapes and many other sound and video recordings.
It currently collects about 75% of all music released commercially in the UK and also includes plays, poetry, speeches, interviews, and wildlife sounds.
Launching its intellectual property "manifesto" on Monday, the British Library called on the government to ensure recordings are not left to rot. "Currently the law does not permit copying of sound and film items for preservation," the manifesto said. "Without the right to make copies, the UK is losing a large part of its recorded culture. "Many original audio and film formats we hold are becoming increasingly more fragile," the library said, and "face irretrievable decay" if not preserved. As well as old and fragile formats, the archive must also copy recordings on obsolete formats - such as Betamax and reel-to-reel audio tape - to ensure they can be heard in the future when machines no longer exist to play them. The decision on extending the term of copyright should be based on "sound economic evidence and the needs of all members of our economy and society", the library said. Sir Cliff, along with major record labels and other ageing rockers, wants to extend the term because royalties will no longer be paid for recordings over 50 years old. He says recording artists should receive the same rights as songwriters, who get royalties for life plus 70 years. His first hits are due to go out of copyright in two years. But the British Library said it was "concerned from a preservation perspective that any extension will adversely affect our ability to archive
sound recordings". If THAT does not leave us speechless!
October 1, 2006: If you want to know more about the roots of my collecting then you might read the article in the July 2006
issue of the "iasa information bulletin" #56.
October 13, 2006: Here is something that every sound archivist can sign, the Copyright Statement of the ARSC:
Resolved by the Board of Directors, Association for Recorded Sound Collections, Inc. -ARSC- of October 26, 2005
Sound recordings are a vital part of America's, and the world's,
cultural heritage. Since the first examples were created more than one hundred years ago they have served as a reflection of cultural and social history, captured and preserved in a uniquely compelling manner.
History speaks to us, in its own voice, through sound recordings. Whereas one of the principal purposes
of the Association is to "foster recognition and use of sound recordings as sources of
information by students and research scholars" (Bylaws, II.c); and Whereas another purpose
is to "develop standards of bibliographic control and access to cooperating sound recordings collections
assembled for research or instructional purposes" (Bylaws, II.e); and Whereas another purpose
is "to foster improvement of techniques for the reproduction, storage and preservation of sound
recordings" (Bylaws, II.f); The Association for Recorded Sound Collections finds that several
provisions of U.S. copyright law impede the effective preservation of historic recordings and unduly restrict public access to those recordings. The Association recognizes the valid purposes of copyright in rewarding creators of recordings with a temporary exclusive right to the exploitation of those recordings, thus encouraging them to create. However, the Association believes strongly that neither creators nor the public are served by excessively long monopoly periods, especially those that exceed the period of commercial viability, or by restrictions on access to recordings that rights holders do not wish to exploit. The Association believes that both state and federal copyright terms for sound recordings are excessively long. Regarding preservation, the Association believes that current copyright laws and regulation should be modified to eliminate many of the restrictions present in the law. For example, current law limits duplication to materials that are already damaged or deteriorating (sec. 108(c)), which virtually assures sonically deficient archive copies; and limits archives to no more than three backup copies, which does not take into account the need for distributed copies, mirror sites, and backups in order to responsibly maintain digital repositories of files created in a preservation environment. There should be no legal barriers to the professional reformatting and preservation of published and unpublished historical recordings, with copies of the best possible quality sustained in perpetuity so that humanity's aural heritage may remain accessible for study and enjoyment.Regarding dissemination, the Association believes that copyright law should encourage and facilitate the widest possible dissemination of out-of-print recordings, whether by physical reissues using modern technology (e.g., CDs), Internet availability, or other means.The Association is concerned about the large number of older recordings originally produced for commercial purposes that are now virtually inaccessible due to current laws. The Association notes that hundreds of thousands of historical recordings are controlled by rights holders who have shown little commitment to the preservation or dissemination of these recordings. The Association believes that when rights holders choose not to make historical recordings accessible, or are unknown, institutions and individuals should be permitted and encouraged to make those recordings available, on reasonable terms and without undue risk or encumbrance. The Association believes that facilitating dissemination would serve to foster appreciation of our recorded cultural heritage by making recordings generally available for study, as well as increase the likelihood of the survival of the sounds embodied in those recordings. The Association strongly urges that these concerns be taken into consideration in copyright legislation.
October 14, 2006: If you want to get frustrated then read
this: http://www.billholland.net/words/vault.html
November 2,2006: 'Risks Associated with the Use of Recordable CDs and DVDs as
Reliable Storage Media in Archival Collections - Strategies and Alternatives' by Kevin Bradley has
recently been published online by UNESCO
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001477/147782E.pdf
November 12, 2006: The following message has been posted by the Outreach Committee of the
Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC).
--2006 ARSC AWARDS--
The Association for Recorded Sound Collections is pleased to announce the
winners of the 2006 ARSC Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound
Research. Begun in 1991, the awards are presented to authors and publishers
of books, articles, liner notes, and monographs, to recognize outstanding
published research in the field of recorded sound. In giving these awards,
ARSC recognizes outstanding contributions, encourages high standards, and
promotes awareness of superior works. A maximum of two awards is presented
annually in each category -- one for best history and one for best
discography. Certificates of Merit are presented to runners-up of
exceptionally high quality. The 2006 Awards for Excellence honor works
published in 2005.
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED BLUES, RHYTHM & BLUES, or SOUL MUSIC
Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke, by Peter Guralnick (Little, Brown).
Certificate of Merit:
Dewey and Elvis: The Life and Times of a Rock 'n' Roll Deejay, by Louis
Cantor (University of Illinois Press).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED CLASSICAL MUSIC
Best History:
Rachmaninoff: Life, Works, Recordings, by Max Harrison (Continuum).
Best Discography:
While Spring and Summer Sang: Thomas Beecham and the Music of Frederick
Delius, by Lyndon Jenkins (Ashgate).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED COUNTRY MUSIC
King of the Cowboys, Queen of the West: Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, by Ray
White (University of Wisconsin Press).
BEST RESEARCH in FOLK, ETHNIC, or WORLD MUSIC
Bob Marley and the Wailers: The Definitive Discography, by Roger Steffens
and Leroy Jodie Pierson (Rounder Books).
Certificate of Merit:
The Encyclopedia of Native Music: More than a Century of Recordings from Wax
Cylinder to the Internet, by Brian Wright-McLeod (University of Arizona
Press).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED RAP or HIP-HOP MUSIC
Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, by Jeff Chang
(St. Martin's Press).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED ROCK MUSIC
Grit, Noise, and Revolution: The Birth of Detroit Rock 'n' Roll, by David
Carson (University of Michigan Press).
Certificates of Merit:
Soft Machine: Out-bloody-rageous, by Graham Bennett (SAF). >br>
Dream a Little Dream of Me: The Life of "Mama" Cass Elliot, by Eddi Fiegel
(Chicago Review Press, U.S.; Sidgwick and Jackson, U.K.).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED JAZZ MUSIC
Best Discography:
Stan Getz: An Annotated Bibliography and Filmography with Song and Session
Information for Albums, by Nicholas Churchill (McFarland).
Best History:
Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, by Doug Ramsey and
Paul Caulfield (Discography) (Parkside Publications).
Certificates of Merit:
Pioneers of Jazz: The Story of the Creole Band, by Lawrence Gushee (Oxford
University Press).
Bix: The Definitive Biography of a Jazz Legend: Leon "Bix" Beiderbecke
(1903-1931), by Jean Pierre Lion (Continuum).
The Uncrowned King of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz, by
Jeffrey Magee (Oxford University Press).
BEST RESEARCH in RECORD LABELS and GENERAL HISTORY
Best History:
Echo and Reverb: Fabricating Space in Popular Music Recording, 1900-1960, by
Peter Doyle (Wesleyan University Press).
Best Discography:
Edison Blue Amberol Cylinders, by Allan Sutton (Mainspring Press).
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
ARSC annually presents a Lifetime Achievement Award to an individual, in
recognition of a life's work in recorded sound research and publication. The
2006 award was presented to Allen Koenigsberg for his pioneering work in
documenting the first 50 years of recorded music.
Koenigsberg was the founder, editor, and publisher of The Antique Phonograph
Monthly (1973-1993). His articles for APM and other publications have been
on subjects as varied as the 1889 introduction of the phonograph into
Russia, Lambert cylinders (discography), the origin of the telephone
greeting "hello," and debunking the "Walt Whitman cylinder."
Koenigsberg also authored two books. "Edison Cylinder Records, 1889-1912"
catalogs and dates over 10,000 songs and artists from the period. "The
Patent History of the Phonograph, 1877-1912" contains listings of 2,118 U.S.
sound recording patents issued to 1,013 inventors, and a detailed commentary
on 101 most significant patents and designs. Koenigsberg has contributed generously
to the works of many other authors, and has
issued numerous reprints of early literature on phonographs and recordings.
ARSC's Award for Distinguished Service to Historical Recordings honors a
person who has made outstanding contributions to the field, outside of
published works or discographic research. This year's award was presented to
Franz Lechleitner, the Chief Audio Engineer of the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv,
until his retirement in 2004. During his 31-year tenure at the Phonogrammarchiv, Lechleitner worked tirelessly to improve various technologies and standards, serving
preservation and access for historical sound recordings. His achievements
included the design and development of several generations of machines for
archival cylinder playback. He expertly preserved recordings held in many
important collections in archives throughout Europe and Asia, including more
than 2000 unique, field-recorded cylinders. One set of his transfers formed
the basis of a major Phonogrammarchiv project: "The Complete Historical
Collections, 1899-1950," a CD set commemorating the archive's 100th
anniversary in 1999. Lechleitner served on the Audio Engineering Society's SC-03 "Subcommittee on the Preservation and Restoration of Audio Recording." He has been a member of the IASA Technical Committee since 1977, and has published numerous
technical papers and discographies. As a consultant to the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv and
other institutions, Lechleitner remains active in the field of historic recordings.
December 2, 2006: Interesting articles on radio can be found at :
http://www.radiorecall.com/rr.htm
Those who are interested in the history of FOLKWAYS RECORDS and the story of its founder Mo Ash should go to:
http://www.folkways.si.edu/learn_discover/folkways_collection.html . Founded in 1948, FW Records released more than 2100 albums and its archive of folk music is considered of such importance that it is now under the care of the Smithonian Institute.
December 9, 2006: Here is an article (in German) by the former head of the Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv-DRA
Joachim-Felix Leonhard: Heute entscheiden, für morgen bewahren
http://www.miz.org/musikforum/mftxt/mufo9202.htm
December 16, 2006: Radio stations launch drive to save historic recordings
Filed by Charlie Imes
Stations to Air Classic Excerpts and Voices of Peace:
Without a doubt, some of the most compelling and informative programming on the radio comes from listener-sponsored stations. The PBS network is by far the largest and most well-known, followed by NPR, which was founded in 1970. But it was the much smaller Pacifica Radio network that broke the ground for listener-sponsored spoken word radio back in 1949. Over the years, Pacifica was there to broadcast and record many history-making events and personalities, and today Pacifica faces a challenge to save our history through the preservation of its extensive library of tapes.
The Pacifica Radio Archives (PRA) is the oldest and largest audio collection of public radio programming in the United States. The archives consists of 50,000 master reel-to-reel tapes that represent the broadcast history of listener-sponsored free speech radio for over fifty years, from 1949 to today. For Brian DeShazor, Director of PRA, this daunting responsibility is a sacred trust.
"Visionary thinkers, the voices of the voiceless, the people in the fields, the people in the marches, women, the disenfranchised -- Pacifica was where these people went," says DeShazor. "If you think of the Civil Rights Movement before it really became successful, from the very beginning with Rosa Parks in 1955, Pacifica Radio put those voices on the air, free to speak their truth as they wished."
As those who are old enough will remember, the '50s and '60s offered people and moments that are forever etched in the landscape of American history. The early '50s saw the final rounds of testimony of the McCarthy hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee in its witch hunt for Communists in Hollywood. Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat on the bus to a white passenger, leading to her arrest and triggering the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which launched Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence. The later '50s saw the rise of the Beat Generation, led by a collection of poets, authors and artists that gave voice to the anti-conformist youth of the time.
PRA has built up an astounding chronicle of those times. "We have a 1956 interview with Rosa Parks, which is considered to be the very first surviving interview that she gave," Mr. DeShazor stated. "Dr. Martin Luther King, Coretta Scott King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers. Poets and political historic figures, artists, journalists, writers & authors all came through Pacifica not just to discuss their new product or what they'd written or what they'd produced, but they discussed the times that they're in, and who they were and how the things worked and what they thought. So if you imagine James Baldwin, the great author and poet, or Lorraine Hansberry, the author of "A Raisin In The Sun" (a Pulitzer Prize winning play), and Langston Hughes who wrote the poem, "A Dream Deferred" -- all three of those historic figures, in one room together in 1961 talking about the Negro in American culture. Talking about how they felt as black people in a time when they were not seen as human.
it's an extraordinary recording."
Free Speech, Poetry and Protest
The original founders of Pacifica Radio were conscientious objectors, poets and journalists. The Beat movement in San Francisco came through Pacifica and found a voice. Allen Ginsberg's highly controversial poem "Howl" (1956) became the subject of an obscenity trial. It also became one of the most widely read and translated poems of the century and made its public airwaves debut on Pacifica Radio.
"'Howl' did change the world," according to DeShazor. "Lawrence Ferlinghetti was arrested for publishing the poem, as well as Ginsberg and the founders of Pacifica. After the FCC Regulations, they went back on the air to inform the public as to what censorship was about. why is it so difficult to deal with this poem "Howl" in terms of censorship and obscenity. It wasn't the language, it wasn't the words or the seven dirty words that you can't say on the air, but it was about ideas and that was the danger in what some people thought that poem was about."
As the '60s came along, so did an expansion of the rebellion against voices of authority, bigotry and war. The Beat Generation gave way to the Hippies, the Vietnam War protests and the Civil Rights Movement, resulting in acts of incredible courage and cruelty. The era stands as both one of the brightest and darkest times in American history.
As this remarkable period of protest and activism began to ebb in the early '70s, Pacifica Radio found itself in the forefront of one of the final and most dramatic chapters of the era. After Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army and subsequently swore her allegiance to her captors, they communicated with the public through a series of tapes delivered to KPFK in Los Angeles, a Pacifica station. Today all of those original tapes, including the tape of Patty Hearst's letter to her mother, are part of the PRA.
Preserving History
Mr. DeShazor is providing various outlets with copies of these audio treasures. Many are being made accessible through transcripts or through streaming audio on websites. PRA also recognizes the educational value of the tapes. "As really good educational tools, most of the Civil Rights movement and African American studies collection -- once those were digitized we donated them to universities history departments, like Howard University and University of Pennsylvania's Research Dept., etc," DeShazor said. "So we're doing all we can to first rescue the tapes, preserve them for the future and then make them accessible as best we can with the modest funds that we have."
On November 29, Mr. DeShazor will testify before the Library of Congress' National Recorded Sound Preservation Board. "There are funds that have been allocated by Congress during the Clinton Administration, I believe, for the Sound Preservation Board of the Library of Congress to do a study on the state of sound preservation in the United States. They've invited me to testify to give them information to re-authorize those funds, and also to represent spoken word public media and what this archive has to offer as far as representing our American memory, our conscience and conscious memory of what we were."
Up to now, the Sound Preservation Board has been focusing on historically-significant musical recordings, such as those of Louis Armstrong, along with a few famous speeches like Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream." However, the Library of Congress has few spoken word tapes. "When we look at Coretta Scott King and Fannie Lou Hamer and all of the recordings that we have, they really aren't represented anywhere else. The fortunate thing is that we're elevating this collection and these voices to the level of the Library of Congress to study them as historic artifacts to be preserved for our nation, not just the Pacifica Radio Company," said DeShazor.
From Magnetized to Digitized
The challenge is that all of these extraordinary events are recorded on magnetic reel-to-reel master tapes, which are deteriorating at a predictable rate. That's why PRA has undertaken an active campaign to preserve these tapes by transferring them to digital media. So far, their efforts have been funded by modest grants from the Ford Foundation and the Grammy Foundation, but that's not enough.
That's why PRA is presenting some very special programming to highlight their public fundraising drive. From Tuesday, November 28th through Wednesday the 29th at 8:00 p.m., they are pre-empting regular programming on all five Pacifica stations. "We'll be presenting some of these historic audios to the public, sometimes for the very first time since their original broadcasts in the 50's and 60's. Some materials have been recently rescued from a flooded basement in Berkeley," DeShazor said.
Mr. DeShazor elaborated on some of the special programming being featured during the fundraising drive. "We will also be featuring, or premiering a new radio documentary celebrating the life and times of Pete Seeger. It features a new interview. we took Academy Award winning actor, Tim Robbins, to New York to Pete Seeger's home and filmed and recorded a 5-hour interview and that is now mixed with some unique audio recordings from these master tapes. So we'll be presenting audio of Pete Seeger that some have never heard before. For instance, we have a concert in Nicaragua where he sang for the workers there. Just incredible stuff that I'm really looking forward to letting people hear. Not only what we have in the archives but these glimpses of people that have been our heroes, and we should be celebrating their lives and times."
Overall, according to DeShazor, the special programming will be focused on Voices for Peace and Non-Violence. "Going into our archives and pulling everything we can find from the very beginning of every voice for peace, of every action against war, every lecture on the philosophy of peace. Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson, a woman known as the Peace Pilgrim (Mildred Lisette Norman) who walked across America many times, put 25,000 miles on foot for peace. She did that for 20-some years. So we have interviews with her from 1961 to 1969 or something like that. So we're really interested in looking into the landscape of the American Conscience in terms of how we feel about war. All of these voices mixed together make the message of peace timeless, as war is. unfortunately."
DeShazor paused a moment before adding, "We sure hear a lot of justification for killing people, but we rarely hear these historic voices or even current voices about what's good about the other ideals."
Pacifica Radio is broadcast in the five cities listed below.
KPFA 94.1 FM in Berkeley, CA / KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, CA / KPFT 90.1 FM in Houston, TX / WBAI 99.5 FM in New York, NY/ WPFW 89.3 FM in Washington, DC
http://www.supportpra.org/
December 30, 2006: Go to NPR for three short features on the
recording history on cylinders and on shellac.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6645723
Fine March Of Time footage of one of the most famous Blues performers
LEADBELLY (Huddie Ledbetter), performing and talking to
LoC Folksong Div. Alan Lomax Sen. : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCU4QLLx_js&mode=related&search=
January 17, 2007: According to Patrick Morley, researcher in AFN matters (see above), only four fragments of AFN broadcasts have survived
while it was stationed in GB. Two of them had been included
in a BBC programme Oranges and Lemons of July 28,1945 and thus available. But even
AFN's final day of broadcasting in GB exists only in two short segments of 2'45" (close down announcement and Star Spangled Banner).
If there is a reader with information on any other war-time AFN snippets or full-length
broadcasting, we'd be glad to hear from him/her!
February 10, 2007: Could get hold of two rare Reichsrundfunk Decelith discs of 1942, used at the eastern front to make minority groups serving in the Russian
army desert to the German army as well as a copy of a FUNK-STUNDE A.G.Berlin Nov.16,1931 disc which is part of a three-disc-recording of a radio play of 'Oberst Chabert' by
de Balzac (with Ida Ehre, Werner Kraus, Robert Assmann etc.); from 1929 on the RRG cut a few recordings on shellac for radio broadcast. Nearly
all got lost during the war.
February 20, 2007: Brian DeShazor Testimony before the Library of Conngress on 'Preserving the Pacifica Radio Archives'
In recent years increasing attention has been paid to recovering and preserving our aural heritage. With more than 50 year's of broadcast recordings, the Pacifica Radio Archives holds a significant part of that history. On 11/29/06 Brian DeShazor, Director of the Pacifica Radio Archives, described the holdings and their importance at the Library of Congress' National Recorded Sound Preservation Board Public Hearing on the State of Preservation in America
(for download)-
http://www.albany.edu/talkinghistory/arch-recent.html
February 24, 2007: I found an older article of Feb.2001 "Rescued: Mandela's Cry For Freedom"
'The last speech made by Nelson Mandela before he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 has been replayed for the first time in 37 years
, thanks to special equipment devised by researchers at the British Library.- The three-hour oration against the injustices of Apartheid by the African
national Congress leader, which held the court spellbound during his trial, had been feared lost because the plastic on which the speech had been recorded
had deteriorated with age.- Court clerks recorded the entire trial on a machine that used loops of plastic known as Dictabelts. During years of storage
the belts hardened and could no longer be played by a stylus.- Staff at the BL's oral history department have spent four months developing a way of playing the
recordings once again and have now transferred the speech to CD. - Dictabelts were developed by the Dictaphone Company during the 1940s as a successor to the wax
cylinders. The belts could be flattened and sent through the post but could not be wiped and reused.- ...Dr Rob Perks, the BL's oral history curator, said: `...Initially we thought
we would not be able to retrieve any sound at all because the stylus wouldn't track the kink in the belt. But the quality is remarkably good and you
do hear the atmosphere of the court quite clearly. Our technichians had to gp to incedible lengths to modify the surviving
Dictaphone equipment, changing the running speed and varying the power supply, just to get some sound at all. And the belts themselves
were subjected to a slightly unusual heating process before they yielded their contents...` .Dr Perks said that he hoped technicians from the BL would,
in due course, get to work on the hundreds of other belts used during the Rivonia Trial to make the
speeches available." (The Sunday Telegraph, 11 Feb.2001)
March 2, 2007: One fine (German) collector's item is the series that station WDR
(West German Radio) broadcast from the early 1950s onward: The SCHULFUNK. A series of educational programmes in the style of entertaining young boys and girls
and parallel introducing them into the world of history, geography, biology, arts, and English language etc. - It ran every day at nine o'clock in the morning and
was repeated in the afternoon at three, till the mid 1980s. - Everybody who grew up in the 1950s and 60s
will still recall the intro-music of Haydn's Symphony 28 in A flat, a
signature tune that indicated a relaxing and exciting time, when we kids
could listen to re-enactments of how Pizarro conquered the Inca state,
where to leave the rubbish, how certain birds live, how scissors were
produced in Solingen etc. Every broadcast was full of information and
nobody was bored. You learned by pure listening, something that pupils of
today can't do anymore.- This was written because of a re-broadcast of some
broadcasts of those days gone by, by WDR today.
The earliest radio
broadcast of that kind that I found is of Nov.2, 1932 by Radio Stuttgart
"From the Economic Life in Our Homeland, pt.VII-Sowing,a radio report by Dr
Huberta von Bronsart"
March 18,2007: A personal annotation: Archives live from exchanging information and sounds.
Yet, in the last couple of years it has become nearly impossible for private collectors to keep up contacts with people in charge there, and it seems that the principles the IASA (Int'l Assn of
Sound Archives/German branch) established a few years ago on a meeting in Cologne have been completely forgotten: there were strong complaints about
the lack of interest esp.by German archives
to accept private collectors as an important factor in the "business" and a change in their attitute
was promissed! What was regarded as valuable and essential in
former times has now become nuisance. It's a great pity... .
Just to remind the reader that way back in 2001 and 2003 the BBC started a big search for lost
recordings and asked its audience
to help. In the end a pile of "lost" (i.e.wiped out) programmes were sent in that listeners had recorded on their home equipments. To name a few:
a live performance of the Beatles, which was broadcast only once in 1963, an entire `Kenneth Williams Playhouse´ comedy series,
a missing episode of `The Archers´ of 1975, which features the debut of Brian Aldridge, one of the soap's most enduring characters;
an early example of a radio-documentary-drama from 1961 on the Zeppelin raids on London
during First World War, several other comedy series like `I'm Ken and He's Bill´. - The 2001
appeal was considered a success, partly because it uncovered missing episodes
of `Hancock`s Half Hour´ and `Dad's Army´.- As a thanks to the listeners the BBC broadcast highlights of its recovered items via Radios 4 and 7.
April 26,2007: Three things worth mentioning: 1)The broadcast of a radioplay on DEUTSCHLANDRADIO/KULTUR on May 1st based on the book by
A.H.Schelle-Noetzel alias Arnolt Bronner (1895-1959) "Kampf im Äther oder Die Unsichtbaren".
His book appeared in 1935 and deals with the beginning of radio in Germany esp.the various interest groups. He describes the broadcasting history
as a fight between the powers of the people vs a system that fools and subjugates the people.
2) I've just seen the film "Hitler Speaks", a BBC docu that shows how German technicians bring sounds to the old colour-films
of Eva Braun that she shot at Berchtesgarden, and to some other film excerpts. Via a lip-reading PC-programme that combines
the forms of Hitler's lips with the alphabet. After a trial run the programme proves to be near-to-perfect, so that we
now have "private words" spoken by Hitler, not meant to be for the public. This film can be watched via googlevideo.com.- There was also an
article in THE DAILY TELEGRAPH of Nov.22,2006 'Lip-reading technology catches Hitler off guard in home movies' by Neil Midgley.
3) Looking through the old Reichsrundfunk catalogues "Schallaufnahmen des Deutschen Rundfunks" I found two items of recollections of days
long gone by when they were recorded. So I have decided to have a closer look for these eye-witness recordings and will file them under
"Chapter 20". Any additions are welcome if they are about pre-1900-times!
April 28, 2007:"Poet Laureate of Radio" Norman Corwin turns 97 on May 3rd; interesting speech by him of 31 March 1946 at Testimonal Dinner from
the Florentine Room of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, L.A., host: Robert Young, speaker: Paul Robeson
For more info on him see: http://www.normancorwin.com/Bio.html
April 29,2007: Station WNYC is moving. "WNYC’s diverse personnel are in the midst of packing up and moving to larger quarters in July 2007, the first move in 80 years. The current space is inundated with over 50,000
audio formats of all types, 30,000 of which Lanset has listened to, reformatted and catalogued. They represent the compressed history of New York City’s unique municipal broadcasting station for some 70 years.
... A study published in 2005 found that some 84 percent of historical sound recordings spanning jazz, blues, gospel, country and classical music in the United States, made
from 1890 to 1964, have become virtually inaccessible...." The whole article can be found here:
http://www.thevillager.com:80/villager_207/forwnycarchivist.html
May 12, 2007: I've just heard an excerpt of an NBC broadcast of Dec.18,1955,
"Roger Baldwin recalls Clarence Darrow and the Scopes Trial"; a broadcast of "'Biography in Sound':
Clarence Darrow for the Defense".- It features Roger Baldwin's recollections of famous U.S. defense
attorney Clarence Darrow and his involvement in the Scopes "Monkey Trial". - For more
info on that trial [a court case in Tennessee involving the teaching of evolution in Public Schools] go to :
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/scopes.htm .
As there are no sound recordings in existance, the two very short video clips of that trial may be
a substitute. Only a June 1925 recording of Vernon Dalhart exists:
"The John T.Scopes Trial" (American Columbia 15037-D;mtx.W140680)(=Cameo 792)
May 13, 2007: Forthcoming shortly "8.Diskografentag der Gesellschaft für Historische Tonträger" (8th Meeting of collectors of historical sound-carriers)
in Immenstadt/Allgäu - S.Germany, May18th -May 20th. For more info write to
office@phonomuseum.at attn.Frau Christiane Hofer.
Topics are a.o."Zeppelins on Records", 'How to archive -software for
collectors', 'Good and bad examples of restoring and
re-issuing', Digital restauration, a demonstration of cutting foils as it happened in the 1930s; open forum etc.
May 14, 2007: In the currently running series DAS NEUE FUNKKOLLEG "Erlebnis Zuhören" (Adventure Listening) of Hessian Radio 2
the IASA (see below) was featured in prog.#26 "Töne der Welt" (Sounds of the World). For those who are interested there
is a podcast available of that series: podcast.hr-online.de/hr2_Funkkolleg/podcast.xml
June 6, 2007: BBC Radio Scotland runs a series on "Magnetic memories". This week's programme is about 1940s Forces Broadcasting (available til the 10th)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainframe.shtml?http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio2_aod.shtml?radio2/mikeh
June 26, 2007: MUSIC INDUSTRIES ARE GOING TO RUIN MUSIC ON THE WEB!
Today, June 26, 2007 Radio Dismuke joins thousands of Internet radio
stations in observing a Day of Silence to call attention to the
impending shutdown of the vast majority of Internet streams if the new
sound recording royalty rates are allowed to go into effect on July 15.
For today only, listeners who tune in will be directed to a non-music
informational stream explaining the crisis facing Internet radio and
featuring testimonials from a variety of broadcasters. Normal Radio
Dismuke programing will resume on Wednesday.
The Internet Radio Equality Act has been introduced in both the US House
and Senate which would establish Internet radio royalties at a rate that
is equal to the more reasonable percentage of revenue model that
satellite broadcasters pay for airing the exact same music. By contrast,
the rates which are scheduled to go into effect on July 15 are based on
a per-song per-listener basis and would amount to well over 100 percent
of most existing webcasters' annual revenues - and they would be applied
RETROACTIVELY back to January 2006. The Act would also do away with a
$500 per channel minimum so-called "administration fee" that is part of
the new rate structure. Radio Dismuke's service providers, Live 365 and
LoudCity host THOUSANDS of Internet radio stations. This administration
fee alone is likely to send them into bankruptcy. Indeed, based on the
number of unique channels they offer, four of the top Internet radio
networks, Live 365, Rhapsody, Yahoo and Pandora alone would owe
SoundExchange, the RIAA's royalty collection arm, approximately $1
BILLION per year for these administration fees alone IN ADDITION to the
very expensive royalties. To illustrate how absurd this is, that $1
billion in "admin fees" from those four webcasters alone would vastly
exceed the $20 million in total royalties that SoundExchange collected
last year from all Internet radio stations combined.
The new rates are nothing more than a thinly disguised attempt on the
part of the RIAA to kill off a rapidly emerging medium which, by
bringing the public's attention to an unprecedented range of independent
artists and niche genres, threatens the market share the RIAA labels
have held for decades. According to Live 365's Director of Engineering,
last month the several thousand stations across the Live 365 network
featured recordings by over 250,000 artists. That's probably around
249,000 more artists than you would likely be able to hear on your local
FM radio stations - artists who would have almost no opportunity for
broadcast air time to expose their works to new audiences were it not
for Internet radio. That's 249,000 artists whose existence and music the
RIAA would prefer that you to not know about.
The major RIAA labels make their money by selling mass market recordings
aimed at the widest and lowest common denominator - i.e., the sort of
music you will hear on FM radio and find in the limited assortment of
CDs available at your local discount retailer. The degree to which
audiences discover and become enthusiastic about the wide variety of
wonderful artists and music that fall outside of the RIAA labels' lowest
common denominator offerings is the degree to which their market falls
apart on them. Every time I receive an enthusiastic email from a high
school student telling me how, as a result of discovering Radio Dismuke,
1920s and 1930s popular music is now his or her favorite type of music,
that is one less person who is likely to act like a good little sheep
and buy the latest hit recording that has been played over and over
again on half the FM stations in town. And the same is true for the
people who, through Internet radio, discover stations which play
Ukrainian folk music, or ragtime, or polka, or blues, or jazz or even
features some group of young rock musicians who perform at local clubs
and are not famous enough to get FM airplay.
Internet radio is at the forefront of a wonderful revolution in both how
enthusiasts listen to music and how aspiring artists promote themselves.
It is bringing about a world where audiences will have endless options
to access an unprecedented variety of quality music and where artists -
especially those who previously had little hope of getting past the
focus groups and "gatekeepers" at the RIAA labels and FM radio stations
- will have new opportunities to make themselves known to new fans and
to promote their recordings and live performances. The RIAA does not
have any special advantage in such a world and will face new competition
>from a wide variety of sources, including artists who in an earlier day
would have signed with an RIAA label but now realize it is increasingly
advantageous to remain independent and thereby retain ownership and
control of their music and keep all of the financial rewards for
themselves. Therefore, the RIAA has used its political pull in an
attempt to kill off the new and increasingly popular industry which is
making such a world possible: Internet radio.
If you value the music that I and countless other Internet broadcasters
present, please do not allow that to happen. Please telephone your
Congressperson and both of your Senators TODAY and ask them to support
the Internet Radio Equality Act. In the House, the specific bill is H.R.
2060. In the Senate the bill is S.1353.
For those who have responded to my previous requests to contact your
representatives, I and all other Internet broadcasters thank you. Your
letters, phone calls and emails were what has made it possible for bills
to exist today in both houses of Congress. But there is still a lot of
distance that needs to be covered before the future of Internet radio is
secure. Now that there are very specific bills on the table, please
consider contacting your representatives AGAIN and encourage them to
support the Internet Radio Equality Act.
Hearings on the Internet Radio Equality Act begin soon so it is
important to take action NOW. By contacting your representatives, you
will be doing your part to ensure that the Day of Silence is only a DAY
of silence and not a permanent reality after July 15.
June 26, 2007: The UNESCO/Jikji Prize for 2007 is awarded to the Phonogrammarchiv,
an institute within the Austrian Academy of Sciences .-
The UNESCO/Jikji Prize, consisting of an award of US$ 30,000, is given
every two years to promote the objectives of the Memory of the World Programme.
It is named after the oldest known book of movable metal print in the world,
made in Korea. The prize is funded by the Republic of Korea. - The 2007 prizewinner,
the Phonogrammarchiv, is recognized for its substantial contribution to the
advancement of audio and video preservation. The oldest sound archive of the world,
founded in 1899, its collection now includes more than 50,000 recordings. -
More information about the prize can be
found at: http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=16050&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
July 6, 2007: From my Scottish friend Graeme I received this interesting article by Robert Colvile
(The Daily Telegraph, London) of July 5th: "How to stave off a digital dark age"- When Microsoft and the National Archives announced yesterday that they had joined forces to save the nation's information, they spoke in terms of averting a crisis. The danger was of a "ticking time bomb" of data loss, "a huge digital black hole", even "a digital dark age".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2007/07/05/nosplit/dldarkage05.xml
July 28,2007: Info by Simon Rooks (Sound Archivist/BBC Information and Archives)
on forthcoming programme on BBC4: on September 1st, 8p.m. "The Archive Hour"
will be about the early days of BBC Archives. Please check their website (or use the "Listen Again" facility).
August 14, 2007: Tape recordings of 12 hours duration of the trial vs the RAF ("Rote Armee Fraktion") terrorists (Baader, Meinhof, Ensslin, Raspe) in Germany May 1975-April 1976 found: The recordings of last sessions of the trial were found in the archives of the Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg. They had been used and reused, meant to be a help for the written minutes; the reason why they were deposited in the Staatsarchiv is unknown. For the first time these voices can be heard on
the radio as station SWF2 has put them online in excerpts of 10 minutes. They also have a review of August 1, 2007 available as audio-on-demand with statements of those people who discovered and made
available these documents. The radio station bought the rights from the archive for 71Euro per minute.
The former presiding judge sold the rights on his voice to SPIEGEL-TV. On Sep.9th and Sept.10th,2007
ARD-TV will broadcast a documentary on RAF activities in the 70s.
August 15, 2007: News on the BBC Archives as received from my
friend Graeme Stevenson in Scotland:
"This week's edition of Ariel (the
BBC staff magazine) carried the following piece by Carla Parks : 'How to
find your piece of audio - in just a few seconds' : If you wanted a
piece of audio from the global newswire team at Bush House (BBC World
Service HQ) four years ago, you would have had to visit the sixth floor of
the building, go through a huge box of tapes and spool through perhaps 100
news items to find what you were looking for. In other words, you wouldn't
get it in a hurry.- Today, the same process takes just a few seconds
because 350,000 news items - gathered by the former actuality unit since
1971 - have been archived online. - Because of the archives size, it took
ten technical assistants three years to play in the audio from 4500 reels
of tape and to copy the material from 500 double- sided magneto optical
discs. Another 6 people spent two years transcribing 30,000 news stories. '
The project was driven by the need to preserve and digitise these fragile
assets - analogue tapes, magneto optical discs and paper copies of scripts
and cues - so that they could be used in a modern production environment '
explains media asset manager Russell Gould, who oversaw the
migration......- ' It also includes unique news items from our language
sections at Bush House - in the original language - which no other
broadcaster or archive would have', says producer Jonathan
Fenton-Fischer."
August 18, 2007: My friends David and Susan Siegel have issued a new informative book due out in September 07:
"Radio and the Jews-The Untold Story of How Radio Influenced America's Image of Jews".
From stereotypes to role models, the first comprehensive look at how Jews were portrayed on radio from
the 1920s to the 1950s. From struggling immigrants to prominent men and women who were recognized for
their significant contributions in their chosen fields.From comedic characters who made a nation laugh
to more serious ones who brought comfort and reassurance to generations of listeners.-
For those who are interested in another important chapter of radio history: go to
http://www.bookhunterpress.com/index.cgi/jews.html
Sep. 1, 2007: see under July 28th!- A special mention here goes to Mrs Marie Slocombe who in 1936 was working as a
summer relief secretary at the BBC. One of her tasks was to sort out -and dispose of- a pile of dusty broadcast
discs. She noticed that among them were recordings by GB Shaw, HG Wells, W.Churchill, Herbert Asquith and GK Chesterton. So she hesitated.
In that moment was the humble beginning of what became one of the most important collections in the world: the BBC Sound Archive.
If you are interested in reading more about her and the archive go to
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6968321.stm
Sep. 7, 2007: The 'Archive Hour' on BBC Radio 4, Saturday 22nd September, at 8pm UK time
is about the American, German and Czech radio coverage of the 1938 - 39
Czechoslovac Crisis.
Sep. 8, 2007: October 27th has been declared UNESCO's World Day for Audiovisual Heritage
Sep.11, 2007: In an impressive ceremony held on 4 September 2007 in Cheongju City, in the Republic of Korea, the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences formally received the UNESCO/Jikji Memory of World Prize certificate and cheque.- The ceremony was held at the Grand Hall of the Cheongju Arts Centre for some 1,200 specially invited participants. Previously recorded congratulatory video messages were delivered by UNESCO's Director-General, Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, and the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Ban Ki-Moon, in addition to speeches delivered by the Minister of Culture, the Governor of Chungcheungbukdo Province and the Mayor of Cheongju City.
The UNESCO/Jikji Memory of World Prize, the first prize in the field of documentary heritage, was established by UNESCO in April 2004 to commemorate the inscription of Jikji, the oldest surviving book made with moveable metal characters, on the Memory of World Register. The Prize, consisting of an award of US$30,000, along with a certificate, is given every two years to individuals or institutions that have made a significant contribution to the preservation and accessibility of the documentary heritage. The National Library of the Czech Republic was the first recipient of the 2005 UNESCO/Jikji Memory of the World Prize. Recognition received through the Prize greatly helped to initiate several important activities and to expand the scope of its ongoing work. It also led to closer cooperation with a number of other institutions outside Europe, such as the National Library of China and the National Library of Kazakhstan, but more importantly, it also fostered new forms of cooperation with the National Library of the Republic of Korea in Seoul and with the Early Printing Museum in Cheongju. This year's winner, the Phonogrammarchiv, is the oldest sound archive in the world, having been founded in 1899. It has made a substantial contribution to the advancement of audiovisual preservation and it plans to use the prize money to assist in preserving
a collection in a developing country.
Sep.22, 2007 German TV PHOENIX 13:15-14:00 hrs: "Radio in the Cold War"
Sep.26, 2007: Just found the latest report by INA (Institut National de l'Audiovisuel) on their effort
in saveguarding/preserving their entire media:
http://www.ina.fr/entreprise/activites/archives-sauvegarde-numerisation/index.html
Sep.27, 2007: Voice of America-Arabic Service has issued a CD with interviews from the 1970s and 80s with
Egypian icons of literature and poetry. It is available on their site as streaming audio with transcripts:
http://egypt.usembassy.gov/voa/index.htm Here are the audio items and the link to the transcripts.
Sep.29, 2007: How were records made way back in the 30s? A promotional short for Irving Mills' short-lived Master
and Variety labels not only gives a glimpse of Ellington and his band in the actual Master/Variety studios
but is one of the very few film accounts of how records were recorded, plated and pressed.
Narration is provided by pioneer radio announcer Alois Havrilla.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjKlFFp4-IE
Oct.7, 2007: German TV-station PHOENIX has opened a "Bibliothek" (Library) with video-on-demand streams
dating back to the station's first broadcast in April 1997. They can be watched and listened to at
http://bibliothek.phoenix.de/home.html
Nov.01, 2007: pre-info BBC The Archive Hour of Nov.24th will be about recordings made during World War I.
Nov.6, 2007:You can hear a telephone interview with authors David and Susan Siegel about their book "Radio and the Jews" (see Aug.18 above)
on "Book of Life" November'07 issue. Go to streaming audio and 5:20 into the stream.
http://www.jewishbooks.blogspot.com/
An interesting speech by Phil Gries at the IASA Conference of Sept.25,2001 in London on "Why Collect? the Purpose of Audiovisual Archives
and Collection" can be read here:
http://www.atvaudio.com/ata_arsc.php
Nov.23, 2007:The BBC4 Archive Hour on 15th December is called 'Accoustic Attic' and features old US recordings. Full details on BBC Press Office website.
Those who are familiar with the German language might be interested in a short "Discography of Nazi Record Industry".
Rainer Lotz provides some notes on
http://www.lotz-verlag.de/Online-Disco-NSII.html
Nov.24, 2007: Today I could acquire a unique set of foils included in a small booklet issued by the GDR celebrating their XX.birthday (1949-1969).
The 6 33rpm foils were pressed by MELODIA in the former Soviet Union and contains speeches and music of former GDR politicians (Ulbricht,
Pieck,Becher) and music, sung by Ernst Busch, the Erich Weinert Ensemble, and Gisela May. "This Special Edition is a cooperation
between the Collective of the Department Distributing Scientific Awareness and the Soviet Monthly 'KRUGOSOR`" (a sound-foil magazine).
Dec.6, 2007: BBC World Service article on "Jamming the Germans" in WWII
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/memoryshare/worldservice/A28549795
Dec.7, 2007: BBC has some soundfiles available for listening/downloading on WWII events. Although these are snippets only it's better than nothing.
Go to this URL and see for more links there:
www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/countdown-390828_mon_07.shtml
And so has the Czech Radio Archive. Yet mainly short reviews of moments in Czech Radio History, it sometimes has
excerpts in English (every Monday till Spring 2008).
http://www.radio.cz/en/article/98365 . It's always amazing to see how generously :-) archives provide sounds of 30 seconds for the
public!
Dec.9, 2007:
The Sound Directions project at Harvard University and Indiana University announces the publication of Sound
Directions: Best Practices for Audio Preservation, available as a PDF from
www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/sounddirections/ .
This 168-page publication presents the results of two years of research and development funded by the
National Endowment for the Humanities in the United States. This work was carried out by project and
permanent staff at both institutions in consultation with an advisory board of experts in audio
engineering, audio preservation, and digital libraries. -
Sound Directions: Best Practices for Audio Preservation establishes best practices in many areas where they
did not previously exist. This work also explores the testing and use of existing and emerging standards.
It includes chapters on personnel and equipment for preservation transfer, digital files, metadata, storage,
preservation packages and interchange, and audio preservation systems and workflows. Each chapter is divided
into two major parts: a preservation overview that summarizes key concepts for collection managers and
curators, followed by a section that presents recommended technical practices for audio engineers,
digital librarians, and other technical staff. This latter section includes a detailed look at the inner
workings of the audio preservation systems at both Harvard and Indiana.
This first phase of the Sound Directions project produced four key results: the publication of our
findings and best practices, the development of much needed software tools for audio preservation,
the creation or further development of audio preservation systems at each institution, and the
preservation of a large number of critically endangered and highly valuable recordings. All of these
are detailed in this publication, which provides solid grounding for institutions pursuing audio
preservation either in-house or in collaboration with an outside vendor. -
For further information on the Sound Directions project:
soundir@indiana.edu
Dec.10, 2007:
Recordings give life to infamy of Dec. 7, 1941 - Friday, December 07, 2007
By Dan Majors, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
J. David Goldin holds one of his 16-inch glass disc recordings that were made in Pittsburgh during the 1940s. His home archives include thousands of various recordings.Pittsburgh residents listening to their radios in the middle of a chilly Sunday afternoon, Dec. 7, 1941, had their choice of five programs on the AM dial. Four stations were playing music and the fifth offered poetry readings.- One person, a mystery man named Robert Dixon, had a couple of favorites. He liked Bernie Armstrong, the music director at KDKA, who played the organ from 4 to 4:30 p.m. at 1020-AM. And on WCAE 1250-AM, the Pittsburgh Symphony Concert featured Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" and Beethoven's Third Symphony. Mr. Dixon recorded them both.
"Imagine," said J. David Goldin, a rare-record collector and the founder of Radio Yesteryear. "He's sitting in his home recording these programs, and the bulletins about Pearl Harbor come in." - "Japan's game became crystal clear today. Her desire was war, war with the United States. The peace talks now appear to have been just a subterfuge, an attempt to gain time for her fleet to sail within battle range of American bases in the Philippines. The blow struck the American public with lightning-like suddenness. Entirely unsuspecting and apathetic to the brewing war clouds, the public entered another calm weekend ..." - -- news bulletin heard over Pittsburgh radio station WCAE - - Today, these rare recordings are housed at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where they are part of the Miller Nichols Library's Marr Sound Archives, used by researchers, teachers and history buffs to follow the American experience as reflected through recorded sound.- "One of the things we're known for is incorporating audio into our digital online library projects. It provides young people with primary source material, sound recordings of the day," said Chuck Haddix, director of the archives. "The 'Voices of World War II' site is our most ambitious. It is driven by the audio." - The first Web page of the project, started in 2001, was the Pearl Harbor page, with sound bites from news bulletins of the Japanese attack on the American fleet stationed in Hawaii. Other additions, including President Franklin Roosevelt's "Infamy" speech and coverage of World War II, were added over the years, along with music from the era. - "It's a very popular site," Mr. Haddix said. "There's nothing like it up on the Web that allows users to experience the war as those who lived through it did. Through radio. There's a real immediacy to radio." - There are 12 audio clips in the Web site's Pearl Harbor section. Five of those excerpts were recorded in Pittsburgh, by a man named Robert Dixon.- "The Japanese have drawn first blood. The attack was a complete surprise. At Pearl Harbor, only minimum forces of the Army and Navy were on Sunday morning duty. A pall of heavy black smoke hung over Pearl Harbor. ..." -- -- news bulletin heard over Pittsburgh radio station WCAE. - - None of the people involved in the "Voices of World War II" project knows who Robert Dixon was. But he was passionate about recording, and those recordings have provided a few clues.- Mr. Dixon made almost 14,000 recordings, all on 16-inch black glass discs that cost $3 apiece during the 1940s. Each grooved disc, similar to a long-playing phonograph record, could store 15 minutes of sound on each side. - "They're really one-of-a-kind," Mr. Goldin said of the recordings he donated to the project in 2001. "If they broke, they'd be lost forever. Nobody else recorded these. Not even KDKA." -The discs, sealed in more than 150 wooden crates that were labeled with dates and nailed shut, were found years ago in the basement of a Pittsburgh-area house by a real estate agent who sold them to a rare-record dealer in Maryland. That dealer later sold them to Mr. Goldin, who transported them to his Connecticut home on July 4, 1992. "Most of these crates had never been opened," said Mr. Goldin, who has spent decades collecting rare recordings. "[The discs] were recorded once and never listened to again. They're all in mint condition. And none of the discs have labels on them. He wrote notes on the paper sleeves. He'd write 'KDKA 9:30 p.m. Charley McCarthy Show. Part One' or 'Democratic National Convention, 1942, Part 17.' That kind of thing." Mr. Goldin said most of the recordings were of national network broadcasts, such as "The Jack Benny Show." Only about 15 percent were of local Pittsburgh programming, sponsored by Duquesne Beer or the Otto Milk Dairy. - Therein lie some hints as to who Robert Dixon was. Mr. Goldin, who has listened to many of the discs, said Mr. Dixon rarely interjected his own voice into the recordings. On a few occasions he mentioned his wife or spoke to guests to whom he was showing his sound equipment. Only once did he identify himself, and he never said where he lived. It was the local programming, the clarity of the signal, and the story of where the crates were found that placed him in or near Pittsburgh. - "I picture him in a private house, in the basement in all likelihood," Mr. Goldin said. "Pittsburgh is hilly, so he probably had an outside antenna, a wire rising up to the roof. "And this guy was a professional. He knew what he was doing. And if he was an amateur, he never would have used 16-inch discs. He was an audiophile way before his time." He probably was much more than a hobbyist, perhaps even an engineer, Mr. Goldin said. And this collection was more expensive than most hobbies. Not only were the discs costly, but the equipment -- much of which must have been state-of-the-art -- wasn't cheap, either. "And he took care of it," Mr. Goldin said. "This machinery was temperamental. If it hadn't been maintained, the sound would be flawed." - "They were cared for very well," Mr. Haddix said of the recordings. "They were not exposed to extreme heat or humidity variation, which would have caused them to break down. They're in good shape. - "Whoever he was, he liked big bands," Mr. Haddix said of Mr. Dixon. But big bands were all the rage, so he was not unique in that regard. The recordings, however, are unique.- "As to the watch over the Japanese community, it's interesting that we learn that on the Atlantic coast in New York and in Norfolk, special watch, police watch has been put over the Japanese, there are very few Japanese there to watch. Here on the Pacific coast, where there are more Japanese than anywhere else, so far, we have no word whatever of anything untoward having happened. I think we can take the word of the local San Francisco consulate general that the Japanese community has been totally surprised by this action and so far there is no indication here whatsoever that any sabotage has broken out or that any Japanese spies or saboteurs were warned in time to go into action. ..." - -- news bulletin heard over Pittsburgh radio station KDKA at 4:30 p.m. local time. - "People got their news through radio in those days," Mr. Haddix said. "Newspaper, as well, but radio had that immediacy. People spent World War II glued to their radio because that's how they got their news. "[Mr. Dixon] was documenting history. It's a way we remember. It brings the history to life. It's not a word on a page. It's a voice from the past." "It's strange how a piece of Pittsburgh wound up in Kansas City," Mr. Goldin said. "And whoever Robert Dixon was ... gee, I'd love to know. Who was he and why in heck did he record these things? God bless him." - To hear the reports of the bombing of Pearl Harbor the way Pittsburghers heard them 66 years ago, go to
http://library.umkc.edu/spec-col/ww2/index.htm
Dec.13, 2007: The Archive Hour on Radio 4, 8pm 5th January, is about the battles between the BBC and the commercial stations ( Normandy & Luxembourg etc ) in the 1930s. Full detailson the BBC Press Office website.
Dec.21, 2007: Still online to listen to: two programmes on BBC4 'When Hollywood Went To War'-
Humphrey Lyttelton presents the story of Hollywood's involvement in WW2. He reveals a.o.themes how
stars including James Stewart and Betty Grable assisted the war effort.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainframe.shtml?http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/hollywoodwar
Dec.22, 2007: BBC Radio 4,Monday 21January 2008, 8pm : ‘Escaping the Net’ about NS war criminals who
escaped via Holland to Argentina after the war. Full details on the site.
Dec.23, 2007: A short arcticle (in German) reviewing Czech
soundarchives can be found here:
http://www.vda.lvsachsen.archiv.net/archivtage/2001_aue/16_Kaiser.pdf
Dec.30, 2007: The first Royal Christmas TV-broadcast by Queen
Elizabeth II. of 1957 can be seen on YOUTUBE:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBRP-o6Q85s
Pittsburgh Tribune-Revue Dec 9,2007: When Lisa Spahr found a cache
of letters in a trunk in a relatives' home in York, she had no idea what she was looking at. They
were baffling to her and her family. They were all very similar, much like the following: Dear Miss
Spahr ;This is to inform you that I heard the following message from Robert M. Spahr broadcast at 9 p.m.,
EWT May 8, 1943 via short wave from Germany: 'Arrived safely in Germany as a prisoner".- The letter, one
of 70, was dated May 8, 1943. Robert M. Spahr was Lisa's grandfather. The 'Miss Spahr' in the letters
was her great-grandmother. 'When I started to look at them, I realized I didn't recognize any of the
people, any of the cities,' says Spahr, who lives in Regent Square. 'And further, I recognized they
were all saying something in common. They were saying they had heard over the radio that my
grandfather was captured and I thought, 'What is this?' ' - Spahr's book 'World War II Radio
Heroes: Letters of Compassion' (Intrigue Publishing, $15.95) solves the puzzle of the letters
she found two years ago. Spahr uncovered a network of ham radio enthusiasts who tracked
German propaganda broadcasts, then informed the families of POWs that their loved ones
were alive. - The above letter was written by Flavius Jankauskas, then a teenager from
Philadelphia. Lisa Spahr tracked down Jankauskas, who is still a ham radio enthusiast.
He told her he sent the message out of a sense of duty to the country. But the radio
operators also were going against a directive issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
that all shortwave communications were to cease because they were playing into the
hands of German propagandist. The radio operators, torn between duty to
country and a passion to inform the families, came up with a compromise.
'They just went silent and went into a listening mode,' Spahr says. 'So rather than sharing
information, they complied with the directive in a listening mode.' - Thus, the letters that
came from ham radio operators around the country. One woman in Ohio was so passionate about
the project that she organized a listening schedule, so no broadcasts would be missed. -
Spahr never met her great-grandmother, and her grandfather died when she was 12. Spahr,
33, never had the chance to ask him about the impact of the
letters. -'I have no idea what they meant to them,' she says. 'I know they kept them.'
A V-DISC RECORDING SESSION with the Andrews Sisters on YOUTUBE (see under
Chapter IX Robert G.Vincent):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YHXoeHKkbg
Jan.1, 2008: RADIO BERLIN-BRANDENBURG RBB Kulturradio
14:04-15:00hrs: Radio pioneer Alfred Braun in his own voice and sound
documents of the early German radio times
On Jan.2, 19:05-20:00hrs,
NORDWESTRADIO brings the voice of German radio legend Axel Eggebrecht. His
journalistic career began in the Weimar Times (1918-33); banned by the
Nazis, he was one of the first men to build the new post-war broadcasting in
Germany.
Feb.1, 2008: Folks interested in German language radio broadcasts of
these days should go to www.podster.de to have a look at the many podcasts
that are offered here. An interesting one is the new radio series 'From
The Archives' on DEUTSCHLANDRADIO which features recordings of the late 50s
and 1960s.
Feb.2, 2008:DEUTSCHLANDFUNK brings a 3-hour-feature on Laurel and
Hardy, hosted by my friend Christian Blees, journalist in Berlin. With
audio tracks and information. DLF 23:05-02:00 German time (GMT-1hr)
Worth listening to is a 4-part series on BBC2 'The Dust Bowl Balladeer'- .
Billy Bragg on the trail of Woody Guthrie. Go to:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainframe.shtml?http://www.bbc.co.ukradio/
aod/radio2_aod.shtml?radio2/r2_dustbowlballadeer
Feb.18,2008: From my friend Graeme Stevenson comes this info: According to the ‘Radio Times’ tonight’s edition
of ‘Night Waves’ on Radio 3 ( 2145 - 2230 UK Time ) has a bit about a
play that has been written about John Amery and his Berlin broadcasts
during the war.
Feb.23,2008: West German Radio WDR5 Cologne brings another 3-hour
special with old educational broadcasts for school children, compiled in
the 1950s-1980s. The series began on Nov.11, 1955 in Hamburg and Cologne
Broadcasting Stations. (WDR5, 22:05-01:00 CET)
March 1,2008: The Old Time Radio Researchers Group offers online
their articles of their 'Old Radio Times', articles that deal with various
USA radio series of the 1930s-1950s.
http://otrr.org/pg07b_timesarc.htm
FORTHCOMING in 2 weeks or so: an article on the 'Lautdenkmal
reichsdeutscher Mundarten', a collection of 300 discs recorded in 1936/37
and dedicated to Hitler on the occasion of his 48th birthday.
March 6,2008: Audio Tape Digitisation Guideline: This workflow is
mainly aimed to address newcomers in the world of audio tape digitisation.
Hence we try to keep it short and simple, knowing that the full spectrum of
technical knowledge and skills can only be achieved by further studies and
practical training. Therefore for each point of the workflow you will find
a list of useful literature and links. We recommend that you consult these
sites for additional information specifically related to the topic under
discussion.
http://www.jazzpoparkisto.net/audio/
March 17,2008: Austrian Radio Ö1 (web live stream) broadcasts 'A day
in Spring of 38' after the Anschluss on March 22 17:05 MEZ (GMT+1hr)
March 28,2008: Read this: a recording of a human voice nearly 2
decades before Edison's 'Little Lamb' recording!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/arts/27soun.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin
&adxnnlx=1206735883-s77CB0k67i8osxHxuKSDJQ
April 19, 2008: Archive Hour Radio 4 Saturday 3rd May is titled
'Adventures in BBC Archives' and features the earliest recordings of
b Anthony Eden. Full details on the site.
April 22, 2008: Added Chapter XXIV.
May 6,2008: For those who are interested in political/ historical
lectures the
INTERCOLLEGIATE STUDIES INSTITUTE offers 150 of them for downloading.
The earliest seems to be of 1953 and goes on to the present day. Their
Lecture Programme assists in sponsoring lectures each year at the college,
university, and preparatory school levels. ISI makes available top scholars
and nationally known speakers to lecture at campuses across the country.
These events examine both popular topics, such as affirmative action and
core curriculum controversies, as well as perennial concerns, such as the
nature of freedom and the best forms of government. ISI's lectures are
rooted in fundamental principles and the enduring Western intellectual
patrimony. http://www.isi.org/lecture.aspx
May 5,2008:: The Librarian of Congress this week named 25 additions
to the National Recording Registry. The library identifies such a list
each year, by law, to help preserve the country's aural history. Librarian
James H. Billington said in the announcement, 'Audio preservation
constitutes a critical challenge. Much has already been lost, particularly
in the field of radio.' - Top of the list is a rare, complete radio
broadcast of 1925 across the Atlantic, Fibber McGee's closet, opening
for the first time and NYC Mayor LaGuardia reading the comics.
Also included are a number of seminal musical
recordings, from Kitty Wells to Michael Jackson; the 'Sounds of Earth" disc
prepared for the Voyager spacecraft; and other notable audio. You can
nominate suggestions for next year's list at the NRPB Web site
(www.loc.gov/nrpb/).The 1925 orchestral broadcast was considered a
'technological breakthrough." According to the library, it originated in
London, traveled by land line to station 5XX in Chelmsford, crossed the
Atlantic where it was picked up by an RCA transmitter in Maine, and was
relayed to stations WJZ in New York and WRC in Washington, D.C. The
37-minute broadcast survives on discs in the collections of the University
of Maryland's Library of American Broadcasting.- ·'The First Trans-Atlantic
Broadcast (March 14, 1925) ·'Allons a Lafayette," Joseph Falcon (1928)
·'Casta Diva," from Bellini's 'Norma"; Rosa Ponselle, accompanied by the
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Giulio Setti.
(December 31, 1928 and January 30, 1929) ·'If I Could Hear My Mother Pray
Again," Thomas A. Dorsey (1934) ·'Sweet Lorraine," Art Tatum (February 22,
1940) ·Fibber's Closet Opens for the First Time, 'Fibber McGee and Molly"
radio program (March 4, 1940) ·Wings Over Jordan, Wings Over Jordan (1941)
·Fiorello LaGuardia reading the comics (1945) 'Call it Stormy Monday but
Tuesday is Just As Bad," T-Bone Walker (1947) ·Harry S. Truman speech at
the 1948 Democratic National Convention (July 15, 1948) ·'The Jazz Scene,"
various artists (1949) ·'It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," Kitty
Wells (May 30, 1952) ·'My Fair Lady," original cast recording (1956)
·Navajo Shootingway Ceremony Field Recordings, recorded by David McAllester
(1957-1958) ·''Freight Train,' and Other North Carolina Folk Songs and
Tunes," Elizabeth Cotten (1959) ·Marine Band Concert Album to Help Benefit
the National Cultural Center (1963) ·'Oh, Pretty Woman," Roy Orbison (1964)
·'Tracks of My Tears," Smokey Robinson and the Miracles (1965) ·'You'll
Sing a Song and I'll Sing a Song," Ella Jenkins (1966) ·Music from the
Morning of the World," various artists; recorded by David Lewiston (1966)
·'For the Roses," Joni Mitchell (1972) ·'Headhunters," Herbie Hancock
(1973) ·Ronald Reagan Radio Broadcasts (1976-1979) ·'The Sounds of Earth,"
disc prepared for the Voyager spacecraft (1977) ·'Thriller," Michael
Jackson (1982)
If you want to listen to an excerpt of 11mins of this 1925 broadcast, go
to:
http://www.state.me.us:80/newsletter/dec2003/radio_free_belfast_maine.htm
May 31,2008: BBC4 The Archive Hour on June 7th will bring : The Dream
Time of Jazz: Marybeth Hamilton recalls an extraordinary ten-hour interview
conducted in 1938 by 23-year-old folklorist Alan Lomax with jazz composer
Jelly Roll Morton.
An interesting link to US-Radio/Broadcasting History is:
http://www.midcoast.com/~lizmcl/links.html
June 3, 2008: On Wednesday,June 5th,at 2200hrs German radio station
MDR FIGARO (see their webradio site) broadcasts a feature of 1958 by Ernst
Schnabel, a famous one that I heard for the first time 40 years ago
'Anne Frank- Spur eines Kindes'. Anne Frank had close relatives in
my hometown Aachen and spent times here.- This feature has become known
worldwide because it was translated and issued in book form and broadcast
in foreign countries.
June 13, 2008: First public access to the Imre Nagy show-trial
recordings: The Hungarians have , for the first time ever, the possibility
to listen to 50 hours (of 72) of the show-trial vs Imre Nagy, Minster
President of the Hungarian Revolution of June 1958.
The tapes will be broadcast at times corresponding exactly to the original
trial. - Over weeks the Open Society Archive quarrelled with the Hungarian
National Archive about the release of the tape recordings. The National
Archives first did not want to present these sound documents to the public;
access should only be given to historians. - Although the Hungarian website
gives a link to these original materials it is not possible (or no more?)
to listen to them. Either the link given is not correct or the broadcasting
time has been cut.
June 22, 2008: Two interesting sites on the very first discs
(5inch Berliner Gramophone Records):
Emile Berliner in Germany and the Doll Discs (article by Michael Gunrem is in German)
http://www.archeophone.org/Berliner5inch/
Site created by Henri Chamoux:
http://www.archeophone.org/Berliner5inch/Die_allerersten_Schallplatten_der_W
elt.php
June 25, 2008: On June 26,KULTURRADIO/ Germany,(see its website
for streaming audio) brings a feature at 19:04 hrs on how post-war
newsreels in East and West Germany reported about Berlin Blockade and Air
Lift 1948/49, and MDR FIGARO (see website) at 22:00 hrs recalls Fritz
Bauer, Chief prosecutor in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial of 1964.
July 5, 2008: Transferring old VHS-recordings of 1984 I came
across a TV broadcast of 1984 with eye-witnesses of Verdun 1916. I wonder
why such important broadcasts have never been shown again on TV!
July 6, 2008: German World War II broadcasts to the Middle East. Forthcoming book by Prof. Jeffrey Herf of the University of Maryland details "Germany's propaganda outreach to the Arab world, which was designed by the German Foreign Office and broadcast over short-wave radio. 'When the Nazis broadcast propaganda in Arabic, Persian and Turkish to the Middle East, they were taking a narrative that they had developed - rooted in a paranoid fantasy of an international Jewish conspiracy - and presenting it in a different context,' Herf said. The radio broadcasts, primarily in Arabic, sought to create a connection between devout Muslims and the secular political message of Nazi Germany, and quickly outnumbered the Nazis'
broadcasts to Europe and the United States, he said."
More details can be read here:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1214726179253&pagename=JPost%2FJP
Article%2FShowFull
http://www.history.umd.edu/Bio/herf.html
August 2, 2008: THE OBSERVER reports on July 20 that 'Family
videotape treasures (are) at risk'. They write:
'A virulent infection is destroying the audio and videotapes once used to
capture important moments of family life and great historic events. The
fungal blight, or 'tape mould', has already ruined thousands of miles of
audio and video tape in Britain and, according to specialist restorers,
much more is likely to be deteriorating, unobserved, in storage. The
infection of VHS cassettes and of the audio cassettes popular in the 1980s
and 1990s is increasing at an alarming rate'.- For more go to:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jul/20/heritage.familyandrelationships
August 5,2008: Just got news from my friend Graeme that BBC4 tonight
will be about NS War Crimes (20-20:40hrs GMT)
August 26,2008: BBC 'Caught On Film'- 'Our cinematic heritage is
literally rotting away. Critic Matthew Sweet visits the Festival Il Cinema
Ritrovato in Bologna to explore the vulnerability of film and discovers why
both cinematic gems and historically unique documentary films are rapidly
disintegrating.' Listen Again facility at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk:80/radio4/factual/pip/u4yk7/
August 28,2008: I've found an interesting historical review on ALLIED
ARMED FORCES RADIO STATIONS by retired Lt Martin Swenson that reflects the
years since its beginning in 1943.
http://www.northernstar,no/afrs.htm
August 29,2008: Two old recording devices are shown on youtube,
first a German TONSCHREIBER (see entry somehere above)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_i1mmv5-Fg and an old wire-recorder
playing a Webster Chicago-wire with a recording of an A-bomb test:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ122PObscg&feature=related
Sep 15, 2008: My friend Christian Blees features 'Nostradamus and
the Nazis' on DEUTSCHLANDFUNK COLOGNE tomorrow at 19:15hrs; how the Nazis
used astrological "konwledge" for their psychological warfare etc. See DLF
website for streaming audio (in German, of course)!
Sep 23, 2008: WDR Migrates Sound Collection to New Audio Archive:
To pre serve its library,West German Radio -Westdeutscher
Rundfunk-WDR- has transferred its entire analog sound collection to CD. The
collection includes 270,000 CDs and is now the main component of the
broadcaster's digital audio archive for long-term preservation.- The
contract for the archive was awarded to VCS Aktiengesellschaft, which
ordered two CD-Inspector Jukebox systems from Cube-Tec International to
facilitate an automated, quality control monitored CD transfer. -To ensure
long-term data security and integrity, 125 TB of redundant tapeless storage
is located in multiple locations within the WDR premises.- During the first
year of the content migration process, over 120,000 CDs have passed through
the CD-Inspector systems, with a daily volume ranging from 200 to 800 CDs
per day. This level of throughput (about 50 TB of data to date) is made
possible by CD-Inspector's attendant-free automation. Since quality
analysis does not require an operator, the systems can also run overnight,
resulting in fast migration speed.-As of July, 85 percent of the high
demand music and 90 percent of the high demand spoken word content was
available to WDR staff directly from the mass storage system.
Sept 26, 2008: A bit late but still worth mentioning: 'Attention,
Peoples Of The World'! That's the way Webley Edwards began his eye-witness
live report from aboard the Destroyer U.S.S.Missouri at Tokyo Bay on
September 2, 1945. The historic date is the Japanese Surrender that ended
World War II,(VJ-Day). Two wire recordings were made aboard the Missouri.
One was taken to a Japanese radio station for broadcast. The other was
flown to the Island of Guam and broadcast over radio station KU5Q by the
U.S.Navy. The networks chose the Guam broadcast as it was clearer in sound.
US receiving point was RCA Shortwave Station Communication Center near San
Francisco. After the ceremony President Truman can be
heard as well as General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz.
A video excerpt
of this historic moment can be seen on google.video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2384327550463473694
Webley Edwards later became famous for his 'HAWAII CALLS' music
programmes.
Oct11, 2008: News from theOutreach Committee of the Association for
Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC).
2008 ARSC AWARDS -
The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) is pleased to announce
the winners of the 2008 ARSC Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded
Sound Research. Begun in 1991, the awards are presented to authors and
publishers of books, articles, liner notes, and monographs, to recognize
outstanding published research in the field of recorded sound. In giving
these awards, ARSC recognizes outstanding contributions, encourages high
standards, and promotes awareness of superior works. A maximum of two awards
is presented annually in each category -- one for best history and one for
best discography. Certificates of Merit are presented to runners-up for
works of exceptionally high quality. The 2008 Awards for Excellence honor
works published in 2007. Additionally, a Lifetime Achievement Award and an
Award for Distinguished Service to Historical Recordings are also presented
annually. The 2008 winners are:
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED BLUES, RHYTHM & BLUES, or SOUL MUSIC
Best Discography:The Gospel Discography: A Discography of Post-war
African-American Gospel -Records from 1943 to 1970, by Cedric Hayes
and Bob Laughton (Eyeball Productions); Best History: How Britain Got the
Blues: The Transmission and Reception of American Blues Style in the United
Kingdom, by Roberta Freund Schwartz (Ashgate)
Certificate of Merit:
Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe, edited by Neil A.
Wynn (University of Mississippi Press)
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Best Discography: Joan Tower: The Comprehensive
Bio-Bibliography, by Ellen K. Grolman (Scarecrow) Best History: Moondog:
The Viking of 6th Avenue: The Authorized Biography, by Robert Scotto
(Process)
Certificate of Merit: Sigmund Romberg, by William A. Everett
(Yale University Press)
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED COUNTRY MUSIC
Country Music Originals: The Legends and the Lost, by Tony Russell (Oxford
University Press) Certificates of Merit: Charlie Monroe: I'm Old Kentucky
Bound: His Recordings, 1938-1956, liner notes by Richard K. Spottswood
(Bear Family) Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry, by
Holly George-Warren (Oxford University Press) Whiskey River (Take My Mind):
The True Story of Texas Honky-Tonk, by Johnny Bush with Rick Mitchell
(University of Texas Press) The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country
Music Industry, by Diane Pecknold (Duke University Press)
BEST RESEARCH
in RECORDED FOLK, ETHNIC, or WORLD MUSIC Best Discography:
Hawaiian &
Hawaiian Guitar Records, 1891-1960, by T. Malcolm Rockwell (Mahina Piha
Press) Best History: Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican
Reggae, by Michael E. Veal (Wesleyan University Press)
BEST RESEARCH in
GENERAL HISTORY of RECORDED SOUND
The Complete Guide to Vintage
Children's Records: Identification & Value Guide, by Peter Muldavin
(Collector's Books)
BEST RESEARCH in RECORD LABELS
Best
Discography: Beltona: A Label Listing and History, by William Dean-Myatt
(The City of London Phonograph and Gramophone Society) Best History:
Horizons Touched: The Music of ECM, edited by Steve Lake and Paul Griffiths
(Granta)
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED JAZZ MUSIC
Lennie Tristano: His Life in Music, by Eunmi Shim (University of Michigan
Press);
Certificates of Merit:
Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans, by Charles
Hersch (University of Chicago Press);
The Original Hot Five Recordings of Louis Armstrong, by Gene H. Anderson
(Pendragon);
Ragtime: An Encyclopedia, Discography, and Sheetography, by David A. Jasen
(Routledge)
BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED POPULAR MUSIC
Best Discography:
The Complete New Zealand Music Charts, 1966-2006: Singles, Albums, DVDs,
Compilations, by Dean Scapolo (Maurienne House) ;
Best History:
Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus, by Alex Halberstadt
(Da Capo);
Certificate of Merit:
Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector, by Mick
Brown (Knopf);
2008 AWARD FOR DISTINGUISHED SERVICE TO HISTORICAL RECORDINGS: SAM
BRYLAWSKI
ARSC's Award for Distinguished Service to Historical Recordings honors a
person who has made outstanding contributions to the field, outside of
published works or discographic research.Sam Brylawski has worked in nearly every aspect of recorded sound archiving,
been involved in many significant library developments over the past thirty
years, and served as a national leader in the field.In the early 1970s, Brylawski began his career at the Library of Congress,as a transfer engineer. He became a reference librarian for recorded sound
in 1980, and was promoted to Curator of Recorded Sound in the early 1990s.
In 1996, he was chosen to head the re-formed Recorded Sound Section of the
Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division -- a position he
held until his retirement in 2004.-Under Brylawski's leadership, the Library acquired many important
collections of commercial, non-commercial, and broadcast recordings, and --
for the first time in the Recorded Sound Section -- major manuscript
collections. He devised efficient inventory and cataloging procedures, which
resulted in the online SONIC database that indexes more than 200,000
recordings, including 90,000 radio broadcast recordings of the NBC network.
Brylawski worked on the passage of the National Recording Preservation Act
of 2000 that established the National Recording Preservation Board, where he
serves as advisor to the Library. In addition, he was on the executive team
that planned the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper,
Virginia.-After retiring from the Library, Brylawski was appointed Editor and Project
Manager of the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings, by the
University of California, Santa Barbara. As editor, he has brought this
long-awaited project to fruition as a Web database. His goal for the future
is a comprehensive database of all standard-groove discs. - Brylawski has served as ARSC Program Chair and ARSC President, and is a member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He has
authored articles and liner notes, and produced CDs and websites. He
continues to work on national policy initiatives and lead the profession
through his vast experience, wisdom, and humor.
The Association for Recorded Sound Collections is a nonprofit organization
dedicated to the preservation and study of sound recordings -- in all genres
of music and speech, in all formats, and from all periods. ARSC is unique in
bringing together private individuals and institutional professionals --
everyone with a serious interest in recorded sound.
Oct. 29, 2008: ARMY-NAVY SCREEN MAGAZINE #31 of 1944 shows how the
American Fifth Army's Expeditionary (Radio) Station worked in the field
with their mobile radio station on wheels. In this excerpt not only Bob
Hope can be heard but also Marlene Dietrich giving her respects. All this
can be seen on YOUTUBE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7s_f0gZUkA
Nov.6, 2008: SAVE VOA STATION- 'The last remaining intact Voice of
America shortwave broadcast facility in Delano, California is facing
destruction unless we act now to save a vital part of our cultural
heritage. The Voice of America radio service was not only important to
deployed troops and Americans working overseas, it also provided oppressed
people around the world a window onto a free society.' You can see and
listen to Ronald Reagan on an RFE clipping asking for donations for the
'Cruisade For Freedom'
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=k_2qB2qBElE&feature=related
Dec.3, 2008:
The TELEGRAPH reports the death of Vladimir Rubinstein, 91, who was a
significant figure in the BBC's crucial wartime monitoring of foreign radio
broadcasts and in the global listening operations of the following decades.
...In the early days of the Second World War it was quickly recognised
that the regular domestic German radio broadcasts, and also those of
b Russia, France and Italy, were just as important a source of information
r as coded, military transmissions. A new monitoring operation was
therefore established, run by the BBC, using all available technology to
find and record these broadcasts, and relaying any significant contents to
the relevant government and military departments. For more see:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/3540388/Vladimir-Rubinstein.html
Dec.4, 2008:
National Geographic Magazine issued a Fexidisc with a recording of 'Winston
Churchill's funeral and excerpts of his speeches' (12mins). This can be
heard via youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQoNYxxwrtM
Dec.15, 2008: BBC News :Bob Monkhouse's Treasure of private
recordings
The entertainer was among the first people to own a video
recorder. But he had accumulated reel-to-reel tapes and 16mm film well
before VHS and Betamax were invented.The British Film Institute was asked
to examine the material and some of the "lost" gems discovered will be
shown this Sunday at its annual Missing Believed Wiped show."Many years ago
Bob came to Missing Believed Wiped and introduced one of the sessions,"
says archivist Dick Fiddy."He told us he had some items in his collection
that were officially 'missing' but which he'd managed to save."Tragically
he died before he was able to give them to us. But his daughter Abigail
contacted us and said we really had to deal with this.- To read the
complete article by Kevin Young go to:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7774828.stm
Dec.16,2008: In 2004, a century after the last religious revivals
in Wales, a recording of the voice of the most prominent leader of the
movement, Evan Roberts,was discovered.- The National Screen and Sound
Archive of Wales in Aberystwyth, says it is the only recording of Evan
Roberts. A wax cylinder that contained the recording in 1905 was brought
back to life by an expert in Los Angeles.At the beginning of celebrations
to mark the anniversary, the find is particularly poignant, say
officials.Mr Roberts, a miner and blacksmith from Loughor, near Swansea,
was one of the central figures of the revival.Although we have written
testimony of powerful oration and second hand accounts of the feelings
created by revival meetings, it's hard to imagine today the full power of
the words and the message as they were spoken, said Dafydd Pritchard of the
archive. This unique recording takes us a step nearer the excitement of the
age.It is remarkable that the recording exists at all, and another
coincidence that it has come to light a century after it was made. In 2002,
the archive received a donation of six wax cylinders from a Barrie Davies
from Tredegar.Among them was one which had a label in pencil which read:
Revival Address, By Rev E Roberts, 18 Jan 1905. But of the cylinders in the
collection the one containing the address by Mr Roberts was the only that
was damaged. The broken voice of Mr Roberts was flown to Los Angeles where
Dr Michael Khanchalian, a dentist with an interest in wax cylinders, began
the restoration process. Dr Khanchalian has developed an unique technique,
by using many of his dental skills - and tools - to do the work, added Mr
Pritchard, who took the cylinder to the US. We were full of doubts that
perhaps it would turn out to be music on the cylinder, and maybe it
wouldn't be the voice of Evan Roberts after all.After a week of painstaking
work the big moment came when we dared to play the cylinder. By placing the
needle on the cylinder the voice of Evan Roberts was heard for the first
time in decades - and in Los Angeles of all places.A digital copy was made
in a studio in Pasadena and further work carried out at the British Library
in London. The process of restoration has proved once again the importance
of safeguarding our screen and sound heritage, said Iestyn Hughes, head of
the archive. Rediscovering and restoring a voice that had such an impact on
the spirit and history of our nation is an important and timely event for
the archive and Wales. - Since then, in 2008, the cylinder had been
transfered by the most modern technique, the non-contact laser method
.
Dec.17,2008: Science News article of Sept.08 on 'The First Sound
Bites: The Presidential Campaign, 1908-style' by Ron Cowen:
http://www.sciencenews.org/pictures/bryantaft/bryan_taft.html
Dec.21,2008: A video about RCA Victor Records manufactoring process
1942 at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xwe-Mt99Dw
Dec.31, 2008 HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL WHO HAVE BEEN ON THIS SITE!
Jan.24, 2009: NORDWESTRADIO/Germany brings a 3-hour feature remembering the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. See NORDWESTRADIO webpage for 20:05h
Feb.4, 2009: Jamming, a means to make radio broadcasts inaudible, was very popular in the wars of the airwaves. Here is an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjQ5a1ffF6c&feature=related
An example of Nazi propaganda broadcasts to America and England can be heard in 2 parts here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkIVMYAewXs&feature=related
Feb.28, 2009:Third Reich and Roll- BBC 2 on Monday 16 March 09 11.30pm-12 midnight Brit.Time
Stephen Fry tells the story of how Hitler's huge financial investment in recording for propaganda
purposes would eventually give rise to exactly those personal freedoms he was trying to suppress, in this new, three-part series. This is the story of how the Third Reich
a dictatorship with an advanced appreciation of media manipulation developed magnetic tape recording,
the technology that led to the birth of rock 'n' roll. The story starts with how the Allies discovered
both German Magnetophon recording machines and the plastic magnetic tape they recorded onto. It took
two of America's biggest entertainment stars to realise the potential of this revolutionary technology.
Bing Crosby produced America's first taped network radio show, while his friend, Les Paul, created his
ground-breaking, over-dubbing techniques- the building blocks of today's record production.
Mar.1,2009: National Geographic's report on the search for two wires of June 1944 with recordings of actual combat at sea
recorded by an airborne magnetic wire recorder connected to a sonabuoy receiver and intercom system
http://www.npt.nuwc.navy.mil/PAO/Pr/sub_i52.htm
Mar.7,2009: 'The Voice of Britain', a film about street fighting in the City of Aachen; go to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsZZ0tlgdDc
I have added two other films about Aachen and neighbouring villages in the Eifel; see top of page
Mar.9, 2009: Found another 1902 speech record: The Russian Czar, Nikolaus II.
Mar.26,2009: Nazi Trial documents made public- Documents revealing the thoughts of the main
British prosecutor, David Maxwell Fyfe, at the Nuremberg Nazi war crimes trials have been opened to
the public. Tom Blackmore, Mr Maxwell Fyfe's grandson who found the letters, and Allen Packwood, from
the Churchill Archives Centre, examine what the letters tell us about the trials.
Listen to a short conversation on that at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7954000/7954740.stm
Mar.30,2009: My friend Graeme informs me that there is a BBC4 documentary on Wednesday 15th April,
14:15-15:00, called 'Listening to the Generals' about how the Allies secretly recorded the conversations
of captured German Generals held at Trent Park, North London, from 1942 - 1945.
April 2,2009: A story broadcast March 31, 2007 on Fox News on the Voices of the
Holocaust project at Illinois Institute of Technology. Dean of Libraries Christopher
Stewart and Institute of Psychology Director Dr. Ellen Mitchell are featured in the piece,
which tells the story of how Dr. David Boder's wire recordings of 70 interviews with Holocaust survivors,
conducted in 1946, were discovered in 1998. The story also contains clips from the
orginal wire recording devices and spools.(3'50)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PajJ_LyKvHs
April 4,2009: Additional information on Boder were given in a broadcast on This American Life of 26 Oct 2001,
available to listen to (go 6 mins into the streaming prog.) at
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=895
April 18,2009: A review on the political elections of 1908 in regard of W.J.Bryan's cylinder recordings
with campaign speeches:
http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/10/11/soundbite/
April 25,2009: No advert but just something of interest: Kurt Nauck currently offers a rarity in his last auction catalogue,
an Edison Blue Amberol Special cylinder Ed4BA mx3-2 (3inch Ediphone groove)for a MB $10,000. Congressional Medal Award to Mr Edison October 20, 1928. Ronald
Campbell from the British Embassy returns the original (tinfoil) phonograph back to Edison; Edison then
thanks the British government for its return. (This was one of a series of six cylinders recorded
during the award ceremony.) 5'12
April 27,2009: Added another early cylinder in the listing above: Kossuth 1890
April 29, 2009: An interesting site on Edison's Talking Doll.
http://davidbuckley.net/DB/HistoryMakers/1890EdisonTalkingDoll.htm
May 22, 2009: New Zealand Sound Archives: There are three collections of recordings made during the course of the
Second World War, known as the U Series (A catalogue Of recordings made by the NZ Broadcasting Service during the Occupation
of Japan between 1945 to 1948; 62pp), P Series (A Catalogue of Recordings made by the NZ Mobile Unit in the Pacific Theatre of War during
April 1943 to August 1944; 58pp) and J Series. These consist of direct-cut lacquer recordings made in the
field by New Zealand Broadcasting Service personnel. They feature interviews with and greetings from New Zealand service men
and women, documentary features about aspects of wartime service and actuality of events such as visits by dignitaries or concert
performances. Approximately 4000 discs have been fully catalogued and preserved. The U Series is the largest of the three, recording
New Zealand's involvement in the North African and Italian campaigns. The Catalogues can be downloaded. Main page:
http://www.soundarchives.co.nz/ resp.:
http://www.soundarchives.co.nz/collections/mobile_unit_-_wartime_recordings
May 22, 2009: The Archive Hour, BBC Radio 4, Saturday 6th June, is about the EMI Archives at Hayes in Middlesex. Details on the BBC Press Office website.
June 13, 2009: National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress: Each year the Library of Congress identifies
(by direction of Congress) certain recordings that have been identified as 'cultural, artistic and historical treasures to be preserved for future generations.'
This week the Librarian of Congress put out the list. The 2008 list includes:
The radio crime drama series Gang Busters was the creation of Phillips H. Lord, producer of the successful
'Seth Parker' series. Capitalizing on the public's fascination with gangsters, Lord based his new show on true
crime stories, going so far as to obtain the cooperation of the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. 'G-men', as the
series was known initially, premiered in mid-1935, but the FBI's enthusiasm waned quickly and its cooperation
diminished. Revised as Gang Busters, the show remained on the air until the late 1950s. The program's spectacular opening,
which included sirens, police whistles, gunshots and tires screeching, inspired the slang expression, 'come on like gangbusters!'
A 1943 broadcast of The Mary Margaret McBride Program with African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston.
The show is described as 'a fine example of McBride's widely heard and highly influential afternoon
radio program at the peak of the host's fame. As a talk-show host, McBride (shown at right) pioneered the unscripted radio interview.'
No News, or What killed the Dog, by Nat M.Wills of 1908: This recording captured a gifted monologist at his best and became one
of the most popular performances on early records. The No News monologue, with roots in oral tradition, was one of vaudeville's most famous
and often-copied routines. The monologue unfolds as a piecemeal report by a servant to his master who recently returned from a trip, assuring
him that there is nothing new to report from home, except that his dog has died. Nat M. Wills displays
masterful comic timing as he slowly reveals, in a escalating hierarchy of domestic disasters, the events that led up to the dog's death.
Sinews of Peace (Iron Curtain) Speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill (March 5, 1946).
Besides those there are Jasha Heifetz, The Who, Marian Anderson and more. Go to:
http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2009/09-108.html for more details.
July 14,2009: The British Library Sound Archive are interested in any information on a mysterious recording belt:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nigelbewley/sets/72157621325859180/
Anyone who can help might contact Will Prentice- Technical Services- British Library Sound Archive- http://www.bl.uk. He writes:
Similar but I believe distinct from the IBM Executary format, it is a belt of magnetic material, spliced to form a loop and with a
single sprocket or drive hole. There are no identifying marks and from accompanying documentation, the recording on the belt dates
from 1976, which is probably late for the format. The dimensions are 76mm wide, 162mm long, giving an effective circumference of 324mm.
In imperial it is exactly 3 inches wide (suggesting either British or American origin) and 6 and 3 eighths inches
long, giving an effective circumference of 12 and 6 eighths inches.
July 31,2009: BBC Archive: The website of the BBC Russian service
launched an archive of significant historical radio programmes from the past 45 years today. Among the voices
featured in the audio archive are Alexander Kerensky, Prime Minister during the 1917 Russian Revolution; Nobel Laureates for
Literature Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky; one of Russia's great poets Anna Akhmatova; and Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva. -
It also features former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and former Beatle Paul McCartney both of whom took part in
live phone-ins with audiences in the USSR in the Eighties. - The archive brings together more than 50 hours of audio from nearly half a century.
It is divided into sections on Culture, Society, Britain, History and Music. The oldest recording in the archive is BBC Russian's coverage of
the funeral of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1965. First recorded in 1982, author Alexander Solzhenitsyn reads his seminal work
One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich. More recently, there are archive recordings of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist
who was murdered in 2006 in Moscow. There are also many recordings of the BBC Russian commentator Anatoly Goldberg who, for many
generations of listeners in the Soviet Union, was a household name.- Among the programmes, clips and speeches are old editions
of iconic programmes like Sevaoborot featuring legendary broadcaster Seva Novgorodsev Citizen Of The World, and London A-Z. -
Sarah Gibson, Head of BBC Russian, says: 'The Russian service continues to take pride in the range of topical voices it puts on air.
This archive will allow a new generation to hear some of the pivotal events and people which have appeared on the BBC in Russian, many
of whom have had a profound impact on Russian life over the last century.' - Now that the vintage programmes have been digitised, BBC
Russian plans to donate the original tapes of its historical archive to the Hoover Institution in the
United States. (Source: BBC World Service International Publicity)
Aug.12, 2009: The BBC Press Office website has an item saying that on 17th August BBC Radio
2 will start a 3 part documentary series about the American V-Discs. Grammy Award-winning singer Patti Austin tells the fascinating story
of a short period in the Forties when an alliance of recording artists, the army and the unions enabled the US Government to become the
world's most successful record company.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/radio/2009/wk33/mon.shtml#mon_radio2.
Aug.31,2009: The Telegraph /GB has an article commemorating the beginning of WWII recalling the raid on Gleiwitz:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/world-war-2/6106566/World-War-IIs-first-victim.html . '...One of the SS men, Karl Hornack, was
a Polish speaker. He grabbed the main microphone and shouted: 'Uwage! Tu Gliwice. Rozglosnia znajduje sie w rekach Polskich.'(Attention! This is
Gliwice. The broadcasting station is in Polish hands.) ...Hornack continued with a warning that Poles were invading
Germany to achieve 'our just claims.' Those final words were never heard because the transmission had already been shut down by one
of the engineers standing beside the electrical equipment. ...Almost immediately, every German radio station, in a carefully co-ordinated move, broadcast
the words used by the 'invaders'. It was claimed that bodies of Polish regular soldiers who were killed in the incident remained at the scene....'
Aug.31,2009: WDR5 radio station Cologne brings a feature on secret radio stations during WWII, at 10:05a.m.
Sep.2,2009: Leonie Cohen dies. Leonie Cohn, who has died aged 92, was a distinguished producer of radio talks, especially for the BBC's Third Programme,
and had worked as a wartime translator in the BBC German service; after the war she was seconded to Hamburg Radio.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/tv-radio-obituaries/6122770/Leonie-Cohn.html
Sep.5,2009: NUREMBERG WAR CRIMES TRIALS. In Nuremberg, Germany today, the city's history during the Nazi era is exhibited and studied in
the Documentation Centre at the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds site. Late last year, the City of Nuremberg, the Free State
of Bavaria and the Federal Republic of Germany commenced construction of a new documentation site, focused specifically on the
Nuremberg trials, in and around Courtroom 600 in the Palace of Justice. - In conjunction with the development of the permanent
Nuremberg Trials exhibit in the Palace of Justice, Nuremberg's Documentation Centre will convene a conference on October 1-3, 2009,
'That Four Great Nations': The Nuremberg Trials: Taking Stock.- Participants in the conference will include:
Dr. Jost Dülffer, University of Cologne, Dr. Christoph J.M. Safferling, Philipps-Universitaet Marburg,
Benjamin B. Ferencz, Esq., Nuremberg prosecutor, Professor David M. Crane, Syracuse University,
Dr. Hans-Ulrich Wagner, Research Centre for Broadcasting History in Northern Germany, Hamburg,
Professor Brian K. Feltman, Ohio State University, Dr. Nina Burkhardt, Museum for Communication, Berlin,
Professor John Q. Barrett, St. John's University, Dr. David Cesarani, University of London,
Dr. Annette Wieviorka, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris,
Dr. Natalja Lebedeva, Institute of Universal History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow,
Dr. Michael Salter, University of Lancashire, Sven Peitzner, Esq., Berlin, Dr. Michael Marrus, University of Toronto,
Dr. Laura Jockusch, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva,Dr. Thomas Bryant, Berlin,
Professor Christian Delage, historian and filmmaker, Paris,
Dr. Klaus Kastner, former President of the Regional Court Nuremberg-Fuerth,
Dr. Neil Boister, University of Canterbury, New Zealand, Dr. Elizabeth Borgwardt, Washington University,
Dr. James B. Sedgwick, University of Vancouver, Dr. Claus Kreß, University of Cologne;
http://www.museen.nuernberg.de/prozesse/index.html ;
http://www.museen.nuernberg.de/dokuzentrum/index.html
Sep.6,2009: Found on youtube: The first recordings in the Georgian Republic 1902-14 in some examples. They are musical pieces, not spoken word.
Sep.17,2009:'Nieuwe grammofoonplaten persen van oude (1943)', a Dutch film on the recycling of grammophone discs on YOUTUBE. Enter the given headline to look for it.
Sep.26,2009: A recording of William Jennings Bryan from 1923 discussing/preaching the proof of the Virgin Birth: 'The Virgin Birth- An Essay'. This was a few years before the
former Secretary of State and 3-time presidential candidate was the spokesman for the prosecution of the Scopes trial in Tennessee (Gennett 5216B;mtx.11530).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALaR2RzppSk&feature=sdig&et=1253949433.01
Hitler and Himmler speeches, audio recordings: An incomplete listing of what can be found in the archives of NARA and the LoC, go to:
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/Sound%20Recordings.htm
Sep.30,2009: Internet video website Youtube has opened an Anne Frank Channel with footage of the young Holocaust victim. The film
shows the only existing moving pictures of the Jewish girl, who hid with her family in the secret annex
in a house in Amsterdam to escape persecution by the Nazis during the Second World War. The film was made on the wedding day of Anne's next door neighbour.
Oct.3,2009: DEUTSCHLANDRADIO KULTUR/Germany brings Shellac discs with German dialect recordings : see their website and audiostream, 18:05-19:00 hrs
NORDWESTRADIO/Germany brings sound recordings on the occasion of '60 Years Federal Republic of Germany' at 22:05-24:00hrs; go to their website
Oct.11,2009:A catalogue of writers who spoke on German Radio between 1924 und 1932 was made available by the DRA online at:
http://www.dra.de/rundfunkgeschichte/schriftsteller/autoren.php?buchst=A&aname=Hans Karl Abel
Oct.13,2009: A note from Professor John Q. Barrett, St. John's University School of Law, Jamestown:
It is to report the death last Friday night of Richard W. Sonnenfeldt, age 86.- Richard was born in Germany
in 1923, a Jew and, at various points, a refugee from Nazism, a young student in England, an 'enemy alien' interned in the United Kingdom, a refugee
in Australia and India, an immigrant to the United States, an engineering student, a U.S. citizen, an American soldier fighting in Italy and Germany,
an Office of Strategic Services interpreter, the chief interpreter, a key interrogator and a very central player on the U.S. prosecution staff at Nuremberg
during the 1945-46 international trial of the principal Nazi war criminals, a top graduate of John's Hopkins University, an accomplished engineer, businessman
and inventor, a husband, a father and a grandfather.
Oct.14,2009: Retired recording engineer Jim Pattison discovered a set of remarkable 78s dating back to the early 20th century on a
visit to Brodsworth Hall, Doncaster.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/audio/2009/jul/22/brodsworth-hall-caruso-recording
Oct.14,2009: Today on WDR/Germany: A review on the life of racing car driver Bernd Rosemeyer, the most popular driver in the
1930s next to Carraciola. He was the first who drove
with more than 400 km/h on a normal Autobahn. He was married to Elly Beinhorn who became a flying hero in the 30s. Go to WDR3 or WDR5's or NDR INFO's website.
Oct.15,2009: Re the info of Oct.14: My good friend Prof.William Shaman, Bemidji University (musicologist, discographer and more) gave me this information on the disc:
As there was only one take of that BOHEME Quartet recorded on 10 March 1908, this newly-found excerpt was not an alternate,
unpublished complete performance. It was probably a short test--a warm-up for balance and levels. Victor recorded ensembles using separate horns built
around a kiosk-like assembly. The company did these tests, usually as fragments, for most of the celebrity ensembles (or so it would seem).
In fact, one of them (unmarked except for a special white and gold Victor label signed by Caruso himself), done preceding the recording of the
famous Caruso-Sembich RIGOLETTO Quartet of 1908, survived as a ten-inch shellac test and has been reissued. That must be what the BOHEME Quartet fragment is.
Oct.16,2009: A new, and as it seems interesting book is on the market. I haven't got hold of a copy but here is a review of Radio New Zealand:
-
Judith Keene from the University of Sydney recently released an excellent book about three Allied broadcasters on Axis Radio during World War II.
We strongly recommend this book for everyone interested in understanding how AFRS radio developed in the Pacific as a counterpoint to the successful
propaganda broadcasts coming from Radio Tokyo. - Judith takes us on a well researched journey inside Radio Tokyo during World War II as she explores
the emergence of 'Tokyo Rose' and how the popular 2GB Sydney announcer Charles Cousens, then a Japanese POW, took command of the English language broadcasts.-
She also carefully reviews the entire broadcasting scene in Asia and the Pacific after 1941, putting the broadcasts, and the broadcasters themselves,
in full context of the situation being faced at the time. - This is the key to understanding why the American and Australian authorities embarked on bitter
and long drawn out treason charge campaigns against Iva Toguri [later pardoned] and Cousens [the case against him collapsed] after the end of the war. -
On the other hand, John Amery, the British broadcaster from various occupied European capitals and Berlin was quickly found guilty of and hung for treason.
His high profile family connections failed to save his life. - In each case, Judith lays out the facts, the circumstances of the treason charges and trials,
examines the personalities and character flaws of the three broadcasters, the honesty of the prosecutors, and comes to a chilling conclusion that serves as
a warning even today. - Hundreds of Allied POWs and those caught on the wrong side of a border during World War II also broadcast for the Axis. There was
no one Tokyo Rose. - This book asks why these three people were singled out for retribution whilst hundreds of others who did no less were often decorated
or allowed to fade into obscurity and rebuild their lives. The answer is disturbing.
Another interesting book is 'History of International Broadcasting, Vol.1', published by The Institute of Electrical Engineers, 1992, New Zealand. Here a short excerpt of the chapter 'Japanese War Time Broadcasting':
'As is the case with most government-funded broadcasting services, Nippon Hoso Kyokai, the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation, in 1941 had a
national and an international broadcasting service. At that time, before Pearl Harbor, the overseas broadcasting bureau was transmitting
international programs to the world over a network of SW transmitters - some beamed towards Western Europe, Scandinavia and the Soviet Union,
others to Canada and the USA. The programs were produced in English, French, Italian, German and Russian. At the time, ordinary people accepted
that the Japanese attack on the American naval base of Pearl Harbor was one of surprise. However, the attack had been preceded by a fairly lengthy
period of strained relations between the two countries, and there is considerable evidence suggesting that President Roosevelt knew the attack was
coming; one theory is that it was part of his strategy to get America committed to the war. However, the severity of the raid and its overwhelming
success, were a fearsome shock to American self-confidence. Pearl Harbor was merely the first of a long series of victories by Japanese Imperial forces.
It was soon followed by surprise air attacks on widely separated parts of SE Asia, stretching from Burma to the Dutch East Indies. After the speedy conquest
of Malaya, the British fortress of Singapore, once though unassailable, fell to the Japanese, when the British garrison of 65,000 regulars surrendered
to 15,000 Japanese troops on February 10, 1942.One month later, Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies, fell to Japanese forces. In May, the Japanese
took the Philippines, and with them the American base at Corregidor. A few months later, Hong Kong, the second jewel in the crown of the British Empire,
fell without a shot being fired. The sun had set over Britain's Far Eastern colonies. Within a few months, Japan had acquired an empire which extended
from Burma through to Java, Sumatra, Bali, the Solomon Islands and New Guinea, and stretched a quarter of the span of the globe, from Burma to the Midway
Islands.The sheer speed of the Japanese onslaught meant that many vital strategic installations were seized intact. These included radio installations for
both broadcasting and SW communications. In Hong Kong, the vital wireless installations on Stonecutter's Island were taken in working order; some
were put to military use, while others were used to extend the voice of NHK Overseas Broadcasting Bureau. Following its string of victories, Japan
had acquired a radio broadcasting network of unequalled proportions. By the skilful use of SW pick-ups from NHK studios in Japan, NHK could beam
its broadcasts with even greater power than before.Very soon the voices of Japanese operators dominated the airwaves of South and East Asia. But
the evidence is that in the beginning, Japan did not use these facilities to their full extent. NHK established some broadcasting studios in Batavia,
Manila, Singapore and Hong Kong, but there is little evidence of these being used for propaganda purposes in the first year of the war with America
(although broadcasts were beamed to the west coast of America, which had a large percentage of Japanese-Americans). Equally, the Japanese high command
showed little initiative or enthusiasm for becoming involved with propaganda broadcasting; it was beneath the dignity of the Imperial Army to engage in
such unethical practices, and probably contrary to the spirit of bushido. The Japanese could afford to adopt such an attitude: they were victorious in
battle, had acquired an empire for the emperor and the army had proved itself in battle against American, British and Australian troops.'
Oct.27,2009: My friend and writer Christian Blees (Berlin) has produced a new feature with original sound documents 'Das Stasi-Wachregiment Feliks E.Dzierzynski'.
The Regiment was the military arm of the STASI-State Security Police in the former GDR. Its task was to protect the homes, offices of Polit-and Party Leaders
and act as security guards at Party Rallies. As the possession of privat radio receivers was strictly prohibited in the Regiment's barracks, a special broadcasting
studio was built up to entertain these men, accompanied with political indoctrination. Christian uses some of these newly found recordings along with eye-witness accounts. To be heard on Oct 28th on
SWR2 radio at 22:05 and on Oct.31st on Bayern2 at 13:04 GMT. Go to their websites for streaming audio.
addendum: I have just seen that a pre-CD-issue of this feature prog. is available via AMAZON. This is a longer version than the broadcasting one.
Oct.29,2009: BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Service), I have known from my teens, has now launched its station in Afghanistan. Although it is absolutely different from the days gone by,
it's a piece of radio history. 'BFBS Radio Afghanistan went live on air at 0630 local Afghan time this morning, Monday 26th October, broadcasting from Camp Bastion
to British Forces across Afghanistan and the Middle East, and to their family and friends back in the UK on DAB Digital Radio.' You can listen to it live via this link:
http://www.bfbs-radio.com/pages/extranet/live-from-afghanistan-i-1401.php
Nov.2,2009: I was deeply touched to see an American WWII-newsreel clipping from the battle in Aachen, showing US tanks fighting in one of the streets where I once lived back in the 1950s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve0ENIIlRJA
Dec01,2009: From today on German radio station MDR-FIGARO brings readings by the great late actor Mathias Wieman, recorded in 1964 (Tales of 1001 Nights) (at 15:10hrs)
On Sunday, Dec.6th, German radio stations WDR+NDR recall the beginning of broadcasting of the US propaganda radio statio '1212' (aka RADIO ANNIE). For more details
and streaming audio see their websides.
Dec.5,2009: A site with sound clips (film and radio) on Scottish history in the 20th century can be found at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/history/scotlandonfilm/media_clips/index_topic.shtml?topic=home_front&subtopic=homeguard
Dec.11,2009:German radio station NDR KULTUR broadcasts from today on and on 13 following days a reading by the author Peter Bamm 'Fruehe Staetten der Christenheit' of 1957,
about his journeys in 1952-53 to the Near East. See their website for streaming audio.
Dec.19,2009: The Sound and the Story begins with a lesson in early recording technology
including the master tape machine, 'recording' console (long before anyone had heard of Trident or
Neve, much less Solid State Logic); practices such as multiple takes
and terms such as 'dynamic range' are used, though with minimal explanation. The Sound and the Story clearly was aimed at the general audience.
A nice accompiment to 'In Living Stereo' where it told of how 78's are made, 'The Sound And The Story' teaches us how vinyl records are made. This is
done by going step by step, by first showing us a recording being done of 'Romeo And Juliet' by the Boston Symphony, to the taping of it, a master being made,
to dupes of the master, a mold, and then finally, the dupes of the mold. All of this is explained in a suprisingly easy and interesting way, since I've never
been told how records are made. Another interesting point
about this, is how many women they had working at the RCA shop, not just typists or what have you, but you had women working the stamping machine! Film is available at Prelinger Archives.
Dec.31, 2009 HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL WHO HAVE BEEN ON THIS SITE!
Jan.11,2010: I was having a big PC problem, so there were no new entries over the last weeks!
Jan.12,2010: On Jan 14th radio MDR FIGARO broadcasts Albert Schweitzer who reports about his childhood and his teens (in German 'Aus meiner
Kindheit und Jugendzeit'). Her recorded this document (25mins) between Feb 7th and Dec 27th, 1955.
Jan 13,2010: Recording of Nazi officers who found Hitler's body released -
A tape recording of Nazi officers describing the moment they found Adolf Hitler's body in his Berlin bunker has been discovered.
The recording was made on October 25 1956 in a courtroom in Berchtesgaden, site of the Fuehrer's mountaintop home in Bavaria. The court
was convened to officially declare the former leader of Nazi Germany dead so that his fortune and rights to his book 'Mein Kampf' could be
seized by the state government. Among those giving evidence that day were Otto Guensche, an SS officer, and Heinz Linge, a valet, who first
discovered the corpses of Hitler and his new bride Eva Braun. On the recording, discovered by researchers for the German Spiegel TV channel,
the men speak under oath of entering the Fuehrer's study after hearing shots ring out on April 30 1945. 'When I entered to my left I saw Hitler
on the sofa,' said Linge, who died in 1980. 'Hitler had his head bent forward somewhat and I could see a bullethole approximately the size of
a penny on the right side of the temple.' Guensche, who went to his death in 1983 refusing to give details about the dictator's end,
said: 'Hitler sat on the arm of the sofa with his head hanging down on the right shoulder which was itself hanging limp over the back
of the sofa. On the right side was the bullethole.' Martin Bormann, Hitler's secretary, was with them when they first entered Hitler's
study, the pair testified. They arrived at 3.30pm and participated in removing the bodies, carrying them upstairs to the devastated garden
of the Reich Chancellery and assisting in their cremation. Both men were captured by the Soviets after the fall of Berlin and shipped off
to Moscow for over a decade. It fuelled the myth which Russian leader Josef Stalin wanted to perpetuate that Hitler might somehow have
escaped and was on the run. They came back to Germany in 1955. The testimony of Guensche and Linge lay hidden in the Munich public records
office. Spiegel has restored the recordings to allow them to be heard by scholars and historians. (Telegraph, 12 Jan 2010)
Those who are familiar with the German language can go to:
http://einestages.spiegel.de/static/topicalbumbackground/5903/stimmen_aus_dem_fuehrerbunker.html
Jan.16,2010: Tonight German radio stations DLF and DEUTSCHLANDRADIO KULTUR broadcast a 'Long Night' (3 hrs) onWinston Churchill and Somerset Maugham.
The broadcast is about their parallel lives (both born in 1874), their literary and political traces, in texts and original voices. - 23:05h DLF, DLRK 00:05h.
Go to their websites for streaming audio.
Jan.18,2010: German KULTURRADIO brings a feature on the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv, UNESCO World Heritage Site, at 19:05 hrs.
The Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv has been
on the UNESCO 'Memory of the World' for 10 years now. It was started at the end of the 19th century by Carl Stumpf , who began collecting sounds from all around the world
on Edison wax cylinders.Today one can listen to voices of long extinct cultures, preserved at the Ethnologisches Museum of Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz on some ten-thousandn of cylinders of
which 16,000 wax cylinders are originals, the rest being the matrices that had been manufactured soon after the recordings had been made. (The matrices can still be used for reproduction purposes.) The broadcast is a.o. on the preservation of this heritage for future generations. The first 20
cylinders were recorded in Berlin Zoo in September 1900, a Siamese Theatre Group. Von Hornbostel became his assistant, and he travelled extensively, even to the Pawnee Indians (Winter 1906).
Jan.19,2010: An excerpt (ID) of an old BBC German Language Prog of Nov.4, 1949 'Art and Entertainment' on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecv5P26rk1Q&feature=related
and a German Radio Drama 'Schliemann, der Narr' of 1938 (beginning), pressed for radio broadcasting by Polydor on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjgiRIMB3Ak&feature=related
Jan.27,2010: A good companion to all American radio programmes can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._radio_programs
Jan.30,2010: German radio station BR-KLASSIK (Bavaria) brings the first part of a feature on John and Alan Lomax under the title 'The treasure hunters with the Phonograph', 23:05h-24:00; go to their website for streaming audio.
Feb.4,2010: A catalogue of Voices of the Postwar Era 1945-54 in the National Archives is available here:
http://www.archives.gov/research/voices-of-postwar.html
and a catalogue of TV Interviews 1951-1955 by Longines Chronoscope in the NA :
http://www.archives.gov/research/formats/tv-interviews-1951-to-1955.html
****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
In case you are wondering where the strange URL comes from, well,it has been slightly changed from the IT folks:
http://www.suicidal.de/index1024_dhtml.htm
About the 'roots' of my collecting see the article in the IASA INFORMATION
BULLETIN #56 of July 2006 (now available on the Net at-click down there-
http://www.iasa-web.org/prev_bulletin/Bull56.asp).
If you want to get in contact with me either for comment or exchange
of sounds or information, do not hesitate to go to:
b_wichert@gmx.de
I would be glad to get in touch with you!
Bernhard Wichert
Member of the International Association of Sound Archives -IASA
http://www.iasa-web.org:80/
Member of "Rundfunk und Geschichte" (Radio Broadcasting and History) http://www.rundfunkundgeschichte
.de/
School-teacher for History and Social Studies
last but not least: a collector |
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
updated: 4 February, 2010
(c) B.Wichert 2004-2010 - please do not reproduce articles or notes without permission.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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