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WNYC is America's most listened-to public radio station and the producer of award-winning programs and podcasts like Radiolab, On the Media, and The Brian Lehrer Show.
Voices Stilled by Obsolescence Will Be Heard Again!
Check out the link for an *extensive* collection of audio content digitized from the vast vaults of WNYC. Here’s a tiny sample of what’s available:
Into the Archives: Tapes!
You never know what kinds of materials you’ll run into when you start processing a new collection. These three audio tape types were a big surprise for us when we found them. The green labeled compact cassette tape was familiar to us, as children of the 1980s, but the Scotch Brand Recording Tape 200-1/4-300-LL and the Grundig Kassette warranted a few Google searches. Check out this fantastic video examining the Elektronisches Notizbuch EN3, and this PDF of Stereo Review’s Tape Recorder Annual 1969. It is going to take some serious work to find machines that can play, much less digitize their contents.
Independent Cylinders in the Belfer Audio Archive
If you’re interested in historical audio there’s a good chance you’ve heard of the Belfer Audio Archive at Syracuse University, or its founder Walter Welch (author of From Tinfoil to Stereo). You may have even heard that its collection of cylinder records is one of the largest in the world. What you probably don’t know, unless you’ve spent a fair bit of time learning to navigate their web catalog, is that some of the Belfer’s brown wax cylinder holdings are the only extant examples of their kind and fill significant gaps in the early history of the recording industry.
The records, from the collections of L. Brevoort Odell and Duane Deakins, include the only known examples by early independent companies such as Leeds & Catlin, the American Phonograph Record Co., the Norcross Phonograph Co., Reed, Dawson & Co., and the Universal Phonograph Co. I had never even heard of the Three Star Record Co. or Pioneer Phonograph Co. but they have some of these too. They also have rare records from J.W. Myers’ Globe Phonograph Company, the Kansas City and Chicago Talking Machine Companies, the North American Phonograph Co., the Consolidated Phonograph Co., and more.
In addition to rare publishers, the archive holds rare records of obscure performers such as Charles A. Asbury, John P. Hogan, the Unique Quartette, the “Big Four” Quartette, W.C. Beckenbaugh, Ruby Brooks, Farmer & Curry, The Lyric Trio, and a bunch I’ve never heard from my favorites - Len and Harry Spencer.
Normally, one would request to hear these by visiting the research center or submitting a duplication request but the collection is currently closed because the Special Collections Research Center (now parent of the Belfer) are preparing to preserve the collection as soon as this year! I don’t know whether the audio will end up in the Belfer Cylinders Digital Collection but I certainly hope so! You can view a spreadsheet of the archive’s full brown wax holdings here - Belfer Audio Archive Brown Wax Cylinders (25kb)
Images via Cylinder Insert Collection, Belfer Books and Scores Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.
When All Things Considered launched in 1971, NPR brought a "new and different" sound to radio. This new sound featured the creative energy and electrosonic compositions of Donald Voegeli, a musician and composer at the University of Wisconsin. The university received funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to compose music for both public television and radio. At the time, audio experimentation in electronic sound was on the rise, and Don took on this project with his synthesizer. Using a Putney, Don did some composing and the first iteration of the All Things Considered theme was born.
In this 1974 interview with Don, Susan Stamberg tells him, “You are really the man who has given us our sound.”
Image: Courtesy of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives (ID S14739)
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