NRR Project: The destruction of the Hindenburg (May 6, 1937)

NRR Project: The destruction of the Hindenburg

Reported by Herbert Morrison

May 6, 1937

It’s one of the most iconic recordings of all time, instantly recognizable, a byword for disaster. When the zeppelin Hindenburg caught fire and fell to earth, killing 36, it was the end of an era for this peculiar method of transportation. It also demonstrated the value of radio in capturing historic events as they happened.

The zeppelin was created in Germany in the late 19^th century. It is an immense rigid airship, consisting of several bags of lighter-than-air gas trapped in an aluminum shell in cigar shape, from which depend engines, propellers, and compartments for passengers and crew. It was a prestigious and unique way to travel, and many cross-Atlantic flights took place in zeppelins during the early part of the 20^th century.

The zeppelin was designed to be filled with inert helium gas, but the United States controlled the supply, so flammable hydrogen gas was used instead. On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg was scheduled to come to rest in Lakehurst, New Jersey. As the craft was preparing to land, it caught fire and plunged to the ground. The fire was spectacular; the ship was completely consumed in less than a minute.

In addition to the newsreel cameras, reporter Herbert Morrison was covering the landing live for radio. His famous eyewitness report gives us an indelible impression of destruction and dismay. Morrison was there to interview passengers arriving in America from the Hindenburg, and only happened to be recording to a disc when the airship exploded. His voice cracked with emotion, Morrison stuck to his microphone and gave us an indelible record of the incident.

Stations did not normally play recorded pieces; usually, all reporting was done live. However, this recording broke that tradition. Soon, recorded pieces from all over the world would begin to make their way onto the airwaves, enriching the listeners’ understanding.

After this incident, the impetus that drove the development and use of zeppelins ended abruptly. The footage was just too intense. Other zeppelins were retired. Would-be travelers had their fares refunded. From this point on, the history of aviation focused on the use and evolution of the fixed-wing airplane.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Nest time: Vic and Sade.

NRR Project: 'The Fall of the City' (1938)

 

NRR Project: ‘The Fall of the City’

Written by Archibald MacLeish

Directed by Irving Reis

Performed on the Columbia Workshop, CBS Radio

Premiered April 11, 1937

30 min.

Commercial radio, at its conception, was thought of as mere entertainment (although much “elevating” classical music was featured on the airways in early years). Comedies, soap operas, detective shows, horror – genre shows were the norm, and network ambitions did not stretch beyond their confines.

However, there were a few people in radio who could see its potentiality as an aesthetic medium – one the virtues of which could be exploited in a new and unique way, to enlist the listener in the creation of imaginary landscapes and situations that could only be conjured by sound alone.

Such a man was Irving Reis, a former engineer who came to CBS with the idea for a 30-minute sustaining (meaning network-sustained, commercial-free) program that experimented with radio’s possibilities, both technically and dramatically. In July 1936, the Columbia Workshop was born.

CBS was always the more adventurous network. NBC had been established earlier, was more popular, and had gathered all the stars of radio into its schedules. (Such was its dominance that there were two NBC networks, NBC Red and NBC Blue – Blue was sold off and became ABC in 1942.) So CBS had to try harder, to attempt risky material and push the boundaries of the medium. Anyone who listens extensively to old-time American radio will find that CBS productions were sharper, from the writing all the way down to the sound effects.

Columbia Workshop brought the medium to the threshold of artistic significance with this production, mounted live on April 11, 1937. The drama, the first in verse on the radio, was crafted by the Pulitzer-winning poet and dramatist Archibald MacLeish.

“The Fall of the City” was inspired by the rapid takeover of weaker territories by fascist governments in the 1930s, most notably by Italy and Germany. MacLeish was also thinking of the overthrow of the city of Tenochtitlan by Hernan Cortes in 1521. It’s the story of a great city that capitulates to fear, abasing itself eagerly before a conqueror who is not as he seems. (The parallels with today’s American dilemma are not lost on this writer.)

The show was special – the production called for the sound of great crowds, mingling with a score by the great Bernard Herrmann. To stage it, CBS took over the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York City, needing the reverberations its cavernous space could provide. A young Orson Welles, then rocketing to fame, took the part of the Narrator, working out of an isolation booth; a then-unknown Burgess Meredith held a key role as well. Two hundred extras, augmented by four taped crowd noises played at the same time, gave the impression of a huge, milling crowd in a sunbaked central city square.

The show almost didn’t come off. Tennis players wanted to use the space the day of the broadcast; so did the National Guard. Somehow the producers dissuaded these interlopers, and the show went off.

It’s a remarkable creation, very assured for all its being the first of its kind. The tension mounts as the Narrator describes the growing panic of the city as the conqueror approaches. A woman rises from the dead and declares “The city of masterless men/Will take a master./There will be shouting then:/Blood after!” Speakers rise up and decry the surrender of the citizens to fear, to no avail. The conqueror enters, clad in armor; the crowd falls to the ground. The conqueror raises his visor; there is nothing inside. “The people invent their oppressors,/Thet wish to believe in them./They wish to be free of their freedom/Released from their liberty/The long labor of liberty ended.”

The show was an amazing success, and proved that listeners had a hunger for more than mere entertainment. Orson Welles took note of this success, and it moved him and others to create The Mercury Theater on the Air a year later. Another young and ambitious radio writer, Norman Corwin, would take heart as well, and would soon be known as the resident bard of dramatic radio.

With the death of commercial radio in the late 1950s, the idea of producing content strictly for radio went by the by. (It continued in England, where radio drama and aesthetic innovation thrives to this day.) Still, “The Fall of the City” showed everyone what only radio could do – create, with the help of the listeners’ imaginations, fantastic and compelling new worlds.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Nest time: the crash of the Hindenburg.

NRR Project: 'Bonaparte's Retreat' (1937)

 

NRR Project: ‘Bonaparte’s Retreat’

Performed by W.H. Stepp, fiddle

Recorded 1937

Again, I must defer to essayist David S. Lynch’s fine work outlining the tune, its background, and the fascinating life of the performer who recorded it. Read it here.

“Bonaparte’s Retreat” was a titled applied to many different fiddle tunes in the early 19^th century, all of which commemorate Napoleon Bonaparte’s disastrous retreat from Russia in 1812. This tune is lively and instantly recognizable as a movement from Aaron Copland’s “Billy the Kid” Suite. The rollicking high spirits one gets from listening are infectious.

Stepp lived in eastern Kentucky, which is where folklorists Alan and Elizabeth Lomax found him in 1937. Stepp’s mastery of the instrument is amazing, as he seems to be wielding multiple fiddles at once, spinning out a rapid counterpoint. Alan Lomax called him the best fiddler he had ever heard.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Nest time: Archibald McLeish’s Fall of the City.

They want you stupid

 

The present administration is doing its darndest to turn America into a fascist autocracy. To this end, they are attacking many government departments, services, laws, and regulations in order to deliver the nation into the hands of Trump and his billionaire friends. To date, this effort has not been stymied by lawmakers or by the judiciary (although the judiciary is beginning to get its back up). It’s on us, the citizens, to stop it.

There is plenty to complain about. A laundry list of the executive branch’s malevolent actions would fill many pages. Part of their plan is to hit us all with as many encroachments as fast as possible, so that we’re overwhelmed. But what action do we take, and how?

The key piece I would like to address is the attack on education. The destruction of the Department of Education, the defunding of the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, the takeover of the Kennedy Center, and the ham-handed attempt to control the curriculum of universities all add up to one thing: they want you stupid.

We are already faced with the reality that we have a long way still to go to function as an educated and informed public. 90 million people didn’t vote; 54 percent of adults can’t read above the sixth-grade level; 21 percent of Americans are illiterate. 21 percent.

And that’s how those in power like it. Stupid people obey. Stupid people don’t think their way to solutions. Stupid people live in an environment dominated by fear and anger. They fall for a dictator’s lies without the ability to use critical intelligence to peel apart and destroy those untruths.

Mitch Albom writes: “If the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it. Create your own.” Conservatives have been working for decades to create a culture in which minorities, immigrants, the LGBTQ population, women, “unproductive” people (meaning people with disabilities, a subsection of the population that the Nazis murdered), and those who champion them don’t count. Let’s face it, if you’re not an able-bodied white straight Christian male, those in power do not have any use for you. The “official” culture they seek to impose (MMA? WWF? Square dancing?) is a recipe for regimented disaster.

So, it’s time to create a new culture. How do we do that? It begins with creating a space of self-respect, a feeling that you are a valuable and significant human and that you have something to contribute to the larger world. Then, there’s the little matter of will power. Can you make the time in your life to be a little more conscious and informed person?

This is always possible, even for us with full-time jobs and no discretionary funds to speak of. The diverse and multicultural society that America is isn’t going anywhere. It’s there, we just have to celebrate, honor, and exercise in it. The best way to do this is to KEEP LEARNING.

You can do it. Anyone who feels that they have done their due diligence in the realm of their personal education by graduating from college (another rapidly shrinking part of the populace) is mistaken. We need to STAY CURIOUS. We need to utilize our libraries to the greatest extent possible. Every book you check out, every hour you spend on the library’s internet, every class you take there increases your knowledge base, and it certifies the usefulness of the institution. Libraries are the last safe space, the place where you don’t have to buy anything to hang out there, the place where you can read and think and learn.

Every trip to a museum opens up your mind a little. Every concert, even every new type of cuisine you try, every time you try something new – music, art, film, books, plays, dance – you are increasing the I.Q. of the general populace. It doesn’t take much time or money.

I don't come from money, I come from just-barely-making-it. When I was little, I fell in love with the arts. I feasted on them growing up, and I dreamed of being a playwright, of being an actor. After an aborted college career, I decided to continue to work in the culture, to become a comedian. And I became one. (I wasn’t very good, but I do get an A for effort!) When that career ended, I decided to become a journalist. Just like that. I had no training, no certificate or diploma to legitimize my ambition. I just went for it. And I did it!

I created a position for myself where I could dig into and report on the culture extensively. I couldn’t afford to patronize opera houses, concerts, museums. Instead, to get access for free I reviewed plays, concerts, albums, and books. It worked! Soon I was writing on arts and entertainment for newspapers and magazines – while they were still in good health.

Then the bottom fell out of the journalism industry – no more work there. What to do next? I decided to write a book. And I did. Then I sold it. Then I wrote another one, and sold it. I’m working on three more books right now. I look at my efforts and I think, “Wow, how did you do that?” The learning never has to end.

I am still living life on the low end of the economic spectrum, but my days are filled with purpose and interest. You don't have to be rich to enjoy art – and in fact, a non-wealthy people’s perspective on the culture is just the kind of subversive thinking we need. By expressing yourself, you can still create new and better realities.

Keep your mind open. If I can do it, you can. YOU CAN DO IT. Try new things. Think about and discuss issues that perturb you. Culture gives us two great things needed for an ethical society to function – empathy and remorse, neither of which our opponents possess. Live and breathe the culture YOU WANT TO BRING INTO BEING, and spread it.

NRR Project: 'One O' Clock Jump' (1937)

 

NRR Project: ‘One O’ Clock Jump’

Written by Count Basie and his Orchestra

Performed by Count Basie and his Orchestra

Recorded July 7, 1937

3:02

First of all, I must recommend John Wriggle’s masterful and comprehensive essay on this piece at the National Recording Registry, which you can read here. It tells you everything you need to know!

I can only add my personal observations. William James Basie (1904-1984) came to Kansas City in 1927, and became enamored of what can be termed a Kansas City style of jazz – extended solos over improvised riffs. The scene was remarkably active for the size of the city it was in; soon the influence spread across the country, shaping swing music in its image.

Basie played with Walter Page’s Blue Devils for a couple of years, then fell in with Bennie Moten’s band. When Moten died, unexpectedly, in 1935, Basie built a new band for himself based primarily on Moten’s veterans. Several remarkable soloists were part of the ensemble – including Hot Lips Page, Buck Clayton, Jimmy Rushing, Lester Young – that a kind of ever-springing inventiveness marked their collaborations.

And they truly were collaborations. “One O’ Clock Jump” is a “head arrangement” – that is, one the band has worked out without writing down the music. This kind of facility is impressive enough in itself, but the progression of melody and countermelody in “Jump” is nothing short of amazing. It starts out with Basie on piano, backed by the rhythm section, tossing off a nimble musical thought. The thought is passed and elaborated on, contrasted, toyed with, a genuinely improvised little masterpiece.

This kind of composition is anathema to most composers, but it’s the soul of jazz.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Nest time: Bonaparte’s Retreat.

Do white people suck?

What in the hell is going on? The new administration’s hostility to Black people, gay people, women, and just about any minority you can think of is palpable. It is moving to dismantle all the diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the country – not just governmentally, but in the private sector as well. Any and every racial justice program is facing termination. I expected a lot of hateful action and petty behavior from Trump’s people, but this is ridiculous, granular in its approach to detail, going out of its way to incarcerate, humiliate, abuse, and torture individuals it doesn’t like without due process.

What in the world makes white people think that their grip on reality is threatened by the existence of people unlike them?

The achievements of these minorities are being scrubbed from government websites. Books about minority issues and contributions have been removed from military libraries. Censorship is stifling free speech at universities, in the media, at our workplaces, and it is only a matter of time before we will be warned not to express ourselves freely in public. That’s how dictators do.

What is the motivation? First, let’s remember that only 30 percent of the American electorate voted these Nazis in. 30 percent of you didn’t vote. THIRTY PERCENT. So much for civics. Of those who did vote, a slight majority favored the fascists, and put them in power.

Now this third of our nation, the part that’s vengeful and prejudiced, is in the driver’s seat. Remember, there is another third of the country that opposes what is happening, and is just now getting its head around a plan of action to ensure that people are treated decently. So there is hope.

But it’s such a LOT of hate out there. The pent-up anger and resentment of white supremacists is real. What is it based on? It’s based on pure, stark, unreasoning fear. They have a “replacement theory” which states that minorities are flooding the country in a conscious and concerted effort to outnumber the white inhabitants of the U.S. A. To which I say: so? And to what end? I was raised on the concept that America is the great melting pot – not one that pours its matter into identical molds, but one that allows us to work together while retaining our unique qualities and sharing them with others.

The knuckleheads are afraid that, if for some reason more non-white people lived here, there would be retribution. That white people would be treated in the way they’ve treated minorities down the centuries here – that they’d be killed, oppressed, locked up, and beaten in their turn. Because they can’t imagine people being different from them, of having higher moral standards than that.

President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” The Trump administration is gleefully trying to restore the separation of the races, the suppression of the other, and the forcing of ideological conformity all down the line. It’s trying to ship us back to a so-called golden age that never existed, one in which everyone but straight white males didn’t count. There is a desperate edge to all the administration’s actions, a blind lashing out that’s creating damage and havoc.

One thing we do know about white people is that, when they threatened, they get violent. They are experts at killing other people and taking their stuff. That’s the principle this country was founded on! And since we have more guns than anyone, look for the last vestiges of restraint to flake away, bringing us back to the days of the Wild West. Look for self-appointed armed militias to spring up and terrorize the populace. Look for it and keep looking – the institutions we thought would guard us from this did not do their job, and the mainstream media is in the hands of the powerful. We have to work together and keep each other informed in order to coordinate action to change the dreadful state of affairs we are in.

And, hey, what would we do if we had to lean on only white culture? Square dancing, spelling bees, quilting, country music, hymns, pie-eating contests? Will we all wear gingham? Imagine the culture as a Lawrence Welk broadcast, repeated over and over, forever. No thank you. I need the whole culture, the full spectrum. I want to hear from Black artists, women artists, gay artists, Muslim artists, Albanian-American artists, I don’t care. We need the collision of identities and ideas. That, and not conformity, obedience, and suppression, is the hallmark of America’s greatness.

So do white people suck? They do when they feel cornered.

NRR Project: Robert Johnson - The Complete Recordings (1936-1937)

 

NRR Project: The Complete Recordings

Robert Johnson

Recorded 1936 - 1937

It is arguable that this gentleman was the most influential American musician of the 20^th century. He only lived to the age of 27. He only recorded 29 songs. Yet he laid down the blues in a magisterial manner, such that everyone who came after him looked to him and his renditions of classic tunes for inspiration, and as building blocks that took them to new levels in rock and jazz.

First I must point you to the excellent essay by Ed Komara at the National Recording Registry on this topic. It outlines what little is known of Johnson’s life (1911-1937) – how he practiced determinedly, until he gained a facility with a guitar that was unmatched. (A legend rose that he sold his soul to the Devil at a crossroads to get the gift of music.) He toured, he recorded sporadically. Finally he me his death under suspicious circumstances (it is rumored he was poisoned by a jealous husband).

Johnson’s songs are an amalgamation of the usual blues topics – sex and the lack of it, traveling, drinking, salvation and the lack of it. What makes his accomplishment so great is his endless facility. His guitar work is compelling and ever-changing, with intricate fingerwork and strongly underlined chords. Listening to multiple takes of some of his songs, it is remarkable to note that he embellishes and supports the song in a completely different and original way each time. His tenor vocals are raw and heartfelt. At his most despairing, the effect on the listener is riveting and unearthly. Combined with his virtuosity, it is music that still makes a great impact.

In 1961, an LP was made of some of Johnson’s songs, and though obscure it got passed around among blues aficionados, in America and in England, which resulted in covers by bands such as the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. “Stop Breaking Down,” “Love in Vain,” “Dust My Broom,” “Sweet Home Chicago”, all these songs have resonated down the decades and still influence the music we listen to today.

When this work was collected, preserved, and presented in close to pristine condition by Sony/Columbia in 1990, it was a big deal. Everyone ran out and got copies of the work of this obscure bluesman from the 1930s, digging deeply into his music, discussing it, playing it. Just as it should be.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Nest time: One O’Clock Jump.