Also: Lonnie Johnson, guitar; Jimmy Noone, clarinet; Earl Hines,
piano; et al
Comes the revolution.
It’s difficult to overstate how
important these recordings are. They mark a dividing line in the history of
jazz. In them, the emphasis moves from ensemble playing to featured soloists,
from novelty numbers and dance music to a medium that allows individual artists
to carve out landscapes, fill them with color, and create new ways of perceiving
and thinking about music.
As usual, the National Recording
Registry has an exceptional explanatory essay, found here, in place concerning
the entry. I can only add my private observations.
Listen first to the recordings that
Louis Armstrong played with his mentor King Oliver. The music is squat, tight,
busy. The ensemble puts out clusters of sound. Now put on some of the 89 Hot
Fives/Hot Sevens compositions. The difference is like night and day. The solos
and fills Armstrong provides are full of life, spontaneity. They spark similar
outbursts from the rest of the ensemble, creating a patchwork quilt of vibrant
melodic lines.
And Armstrong, if he didn’t invent scat
singing, surely made it popular with his recording of “Heebie Jeebies.”
He makes
all these innovations look easy, as if they were there all the time, just
waiting to be blown into the microphones. (The recent advance to electronic recording
made it easier to balance and shade the group’s contributions.) It’s just as
fresh today as it was then. That’s the mark of a classic. Listen and marvel.
The
National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all
the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up
next: Jelly Roll Morton’s Black Bottom Stomp.
There is something immensely comforting for me about
old-time radio. During the heyday of American narrative audio broadcasts (approximately
1930-1960), millions tuned in to a wide variety of programs, hundreds of shows
ranging from soap operas to science fiction. At present, the massive influx of
podcasts has revived interest in audial work, and even the creation of new narrative
radio series. For myself and a few fellow fanatics, the old shows are still something
we enjoy on a regular basis.
My dad got me hooked on that great first wave of radio
programs. I remember working out in the garage with him one weekend in Denver,
when I was around the age of 12. He twisted the dial of a battered old Bakelite
radio, searching for the sound of sports. Suddenly, he found something different
and turned it up. It was Jack Armstrong,
the All-American Boy. The 15-minute juvenile adventure serial was cheesy
and ludicrous — and I was hooked immediately.
The local old-time radio show was curated, produced, and
hosted locally by the affable and relaxed writer John Dunning. I would follow
him around the dial from station to station as his program evolved. Once a
week, depending on how much time the station gave him — he was usually blessed
with two- to three-hour slots, which gave him plenty of time to schedule a nice
variety of shows — he would entrance me. He played every important show (as
long as the sound quality held up), and many lesser-known gems, and filled in
the context for each show with a comprehensive exactitude that is codified in
his immense and deeply enjoyable reference work about the period, On the Air.
What’s the appeal? First and foremost is the idea of
compelling the listening audience to collaborate by implementing its
imagination. With film and television, the visual is codified and defines how
we remember and think about the performance. In radio, you are free (in fact
required) to flesh out the story in your imagination. This leeway, this necessity
to make the brain work, is exhilarating. When one prominent show came on the
air, the announcer proclaimed, “Tired of the everyday grind? Ever dream of a
life of romantic adventure? We offer you Escape!
Designed to free you from the four walls of today . . .” If you give yourself
over the process, it’s mighty mind-expanding.
Next, versatility on the cheap. A handful of sound effects,
some appropriate music, and solid performances take the listener anywhere you
want. You can go to the moon, or sail to a treasure island. You can inhabit the
mind of a murderer, or that of a precocious child. It is easier to move into
the place of characters via audio than in any other medium.
Then there’s the nostalgia factor. Growing up, I was
marinated in the mainstream culture of decades earlier, which turned me into a
person of the 1930s. There is something about traveling back in time, into
earlier (and, you might say, more primitive) modes of entertainment, which both
takes me out of myself and grounds me. Despite the Great Depression and World
War II, my parents’ childhood world was a stable one. I identify these old
shows with that feeling.
Part of this legacy consists of some very inappropriate
racial stereotypes. One of the most popular comedies on the air, Amos ‘n’ Andy, featured white men
pretending to be black. The show is well-written, but it leans on and reinforces
popular prejudices, rendering it unlistenable today. On the sitcom Fibber McGee and Molly, their Black maid
Beulah was played by a white man, Marlin Hurt. Even on the tolerant Jack Benny
show, the clever servant Rochester (Eddie Anderson) initially referenced
attributes such as a penchant for razors, dice, and gin. There are Asian
stereotypes in many shows, most notably Terry
and the Pirates and Have Gun, Will
Travel. Even Life with Luigi trafficked
in obnoxious ethnic types. Replays of these broadcasts require warnings and
contextualization. When it came to racial equality in that era, radio was just
as behind as everything else.
Finally, the warm glow of sound issuing from the speaker
surrounds me and lifts me up. The simple comfort of the human voice, speaking
seemingly only to you, confers contentment.
So where do you begin? My list of recommendations follows,
grouped by genre. How to find them? It takes a bit of sleuthing to dig up these
shows, but the digital revolution has made it much easier. I utilize primarily
the Internet Archive’s Old Time Radio pages, as well as the excellent RadioEchoes, which carries classic British as well as American radio. YouTube is
also a valuable source.
COMEDY
Vic and Sade
The ultimate use of radio in the comedy format can be found
in this series of 15-minute freestanding sketches that took in the “the small
house halfway up in the next block” in an anonymous small Midwestern town. For
the bulk of the show, it was populated by only three characters: Victor Gook,
his wife Sade, and their son Rush. Through their incidental conversations, the
listener got to hear about the most bizarre and surreal collection of people (Fred
Stembottom, Y.Y. Flirch, et al), places (The Tiny Petite Pheasant Feather Tea
Shoppe, the Bright Kentucky Hotel) and events put out in any medium. The show
was enormously popular during its run from 1932 to 1945. From simple premises
such as “40 Pounds of Golf Clubs” and “Grandpa Snyder’s Christmas Cards” came complicated
curlicues of contorted nonsense. Most importantly, the players sounded like
regular folks, comfortable in their own skins and absorbed in the minutiae and
absurdities of everyday life.
Others: The Jack Benny
Program, The Fred Allen Show, Abbott and Costello, Baby Snooks, Bob Hope, Bob
and Ray, Burns and Allen, Duffy’s Tavern, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy,
Fibber McGee and Molly, The Great Gildersleeve, Lum and Abner, Our Miss Brooks,
Phil Harris-Alive Faye Show, The Red Skelton Show
THRILLER
Inner Sanctum
Mysteries
The home of the infamous squeaking door, Inner Sanctum (1941-1952) led its
listeners down gloomy and improbable corridors. Each week, it delivered
completely over-the-top melodrama larded down with gore, it was something you
wanted to listen to with the lights on. The creepy organ soundtrack and the
show’s sardonic, punning host only made it better. Sometimes the plots were so
absurd that you end up laughing — but it was still entertaining.
Others: LightsOut, The Whistler,
Murder at Midnight, Dark Fantasy
SOAP OPERA
One Man’s Family
I am not a fan of these daily/weekly weepies, but radio
started the soap opera genre (so named because soap companies, trying to reach
the housewife, were often sponsors of these shows), and it ran strongly on the
airwaves from beginning to end of the era. Some series even successfully
transferred to television. The gold standard for the long, involved, and
slow-moving intertwined narratives was this show (1932-1959), scripted by the
prolific and talented Carlton E. Morse, who also created the excellent serial
adventure I Love a Mystery. In Family,
four generations of the Barbour family lived, loved, laughed, and lost together
in weekly nuggets of conversation and consternation.
DETECTIVE
Richard Diamond
Private Detective
Not the first wisecracking detective but certainly one of
the best (1949-1953). Former crooner Dick Powell played Diamond (his name a nod
to Sam Spade), a cocky, bemused private eye who sometimes burst into song to
cap an episode. He good-naturedly jousted with his pal the police lieutenant
and solved crimes and other mysteries with one eyebrow cocked.
Others: Philip
Marlowe, Sam Spade, Boston Blackie, Dragnet, Gang Busters, The Saint, The
Shadow, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, Candy Matson
ADVENTURE
Escape and Suspense
You can tell from the list of other shows below that most
adventure radio was geared toward kids. Escape
(1947-1954) and Suspense (1942-1962)
were different. They were for grown-up listeners, featured top-notch production
values, and rarely proved tedious. Escape
stuck mainly to adventure and action; Suspense
trafficked in mystery and crime, often featuring big Hollywood names in the
cast. These two shows drew talented people into their making, and remain
memorable.
Others: Green Hornet,
Superman, Buck Rogers, Challenge of the Yukon, Terry and the Pirates, Chandu
the Magician, I Love a Mystery, Voyage of the Scarlet Queen
WESTERNS
The Lone Ranger
The Masked Rider of the Plains was created specifically for
radio, and remains its most iconic figure. He was a Texas Ranger who was left
for dead by outlaws, but who survived and disguised his identity so that he
could wreak havoc against badmen everywhere in the Old West. From 1933 to 1956,
he fought for justice with his faithful Indian companion, Tonto. This was kid
stuff, but later Western series adopted a much more mature approach, especially
Gunsmoke. It’s difficult to realize
now that, at least until the 1960s, the Western genre was the nation’s most
popular.
Others: The Cisco Kid,
Fort Laramie, Frontier Gentleman, Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch, Gunsmoke, Have Gun
Will Travel, Hopalong Cassidy, The Roy Rogers Show
QUIZ SHOW
Information Please
Most quiz shows were dopey giveaways, but Information Please (1938-1948) was
different. In it, listeners sent in questions in an effort to stump four brainy
panelists, a team usually anchored by columnist Franklin P. Adams, sportswriter
John Kieran, and pianist Oscar Levant. It was a funny, freewheeling show and
for a time was wildly popular. It is still fun to listen in and play along.
(Its mirror opposite It Pays to Be
Ignorant lined up three comics who gloriously biffed on questions such as
“Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?”, getting confused, going off on tangents, and
generally abusing the show’s long-suffering host Tom Howard. Of course, in You Bet Your Life, the format was given
another twist as host Groucho Marx teased the contestants unmercifully.
Others: Doctor I.Q.,
It Pays to Be Ignorant, You Bet Your Life
SCI-FI
Dimension X
Science fiction was a late comer to radio, and again was
thought of primarily as kid stuff. However, many interesting ideas and sardonic
observations were unfolded through the genre, and Dimension X (1950-1951) was a strong contender. It was reborn (and
scripts were reused) as X Minus One (1955-1958).
Both shows took some of the best work of the most skilled sci-fi writers of the
day.
Others: X Minus One
DRAMA
Mercury Theatre on the
Air
“Straight” drama was a surprisingly weak genre on radio. The
need for family-friendly content meant that many topics were off-limits. The
first show to demonstrate the amazing power of radio was the infamous Mercury show of Oct. 30, 1938 —
Mercury’s adaptation of “The War of the Worlds.” The production was so
realistic that the entire nation panicked. The series was the brainchild of
Orson Welles and John Houseman, who first made a splash on the air with an epic
three-and-a-half hour adaptation of Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables.” The Mercury
had confidence in the listener’s ability to absorb complex material, and its mature
and intelligent approach made it the most engaging of dramatic offerings on the
air.
Others: Columbia
Workshop, Columbia Presents Corwin, Lux Radio Theatre, NBC University Theatre
Howdy! There’s lots of weird stuff in Colorado history, if
you only root around in the corners for it. This is an extension of a series I
began for Westword, which you can find here, here, here, and here.
The recent unpleasantness has given me a lot of time to go
through my files, and I happened upon my old story notes. There are still many,
many little-known tidbits from the past still out there, both in plain sight
and lost in obscurity. Here are ten more:
Road of Remembrance
Gateway
Highway 287 and
Arapahoe Rd., Lafayette
Two stone-and-brick pylons bracket Arapahoe Road on the west
side of this junction, known as Nine-Mile Corner due to its being nine miles
east of Boulder and nine miles south of Longmont. To understand what they’re
there for, you have to pull over, get out, and peer around to find a plaque
that explains: “In honor of those who served in the World War — Erected by the
Lions Club of Boulder 1928.” Natalie Munio reports that the upcoming redevelopment
plans for the intersection include preserving and restoring the twin cenotaphs.
Doc Holliday’s Grave
Glenwood Springs
Wait a minute. The final resting place of the Old West
gunfighter is a confusing site to see. After a steep but short hike, you find a
memorial to John Henry Holliday (1851-1887). And a headstone (evidently the
third one, the first two being demolished by vandals/keepsake grabbers) that
comments, “He died in bed.” And a disclaimer: “This memorial dedicated to Doc
Holliday who is buried someplace in this cemetery.” It seems they lost track of
just where they planted him, so be aware that your graveside obsequies might be
directed at nothing in particular.
Home of the
cheeseburger
2776 N. Speer Blvd.,
Denver
The Humpty Dumpty Barrel drive-in restaurant (Colorado’s
first) was where Louis Ballast made culinary history when he topped a hamburger
with a slice of American cheese. Oh sure, others have claimed priority — but
Louis copyrighted it. A stone marker sits modestly at the original location.
The empty grave of
Robert Ford
Creede
Robert Ford was not known for his wise choices. As a child,
he aspired to be an outlaw and idolized the infamous outlaw Jesse James. He
joined up with James when he reached the age of 20 (older brother Charles was
already in the gang). Soon the two brothers decided to betray James for the
substantial reward offered for him, dead or alive. On April 3, 1882, while
Jesse was turned away from him, Bob Ford shot Jesse in the back of the head.
The Ford brothers then went to the authorities, and found
themselves charged with first-degree murder. They were tried, found guilty,
sentenced to death — then pardoned two hours later. When the reward money ran
out, Bob made money posing for photos, and starring in a stage show in which he
had to reenact the murder, time and again.
Finally, Ford starting opening and operating dance halls and
saloons. He set up in Creede on May 29, 1892. Six days later, the whole town
burned down. Undeterred, Ford reopened in a tent. Three days later, Edward
O’Kelley, armed with a shotgun, entered the place, called out to Ford, and gave
him both barrels.
Last but not least, Ford’s body was buried in Creede but
later exhumed and moved to Richmond, Missouri. His empty grave is still marked,
and visited by tourists.
Tribute to a cartoon
character
Idaho Springs
Do you remember Steve Canyon? The great cartoonist Milt
Caniff created him after ending his popular adventure comic strip, Terry and the Pirates. Canyon was a
smart, tough, independent air-transport ace and veteran who rejoined the Air
Force during the Korean War. He fought creeping Communist forces and ideas for
40 years.
Hoping for a publicity-induced business boost, the town of
Idaho Springs decided to rename Squirrel Gulch, dubbing it Steve Canyon. They
even got the federal government to shell out $12,000 to build a nine-foot-tall limestone
statue of the new character. The statue’s plaque reads, “This statue is
dedicated to all airmen who wore the uniform of the Armed Forces of the United
States in time of conflict, and who stand ready in the Air Force Reserve and
Air National Guard to fly in defense of their country, should the need arise”
and “The United States Treasury salutes Steve Canyon and, through him, all the
American Cartoon Characters who served the nation as salesmen in the
Independence Savings Bonds Drive May – July 1950.”
Now Steve Canyon is forgotten by all save the last of the
Baby Boomers, but he still stands defiantly, Cold Warrior, hands on hips,
facing downhill.
The mysterious
headstone of Jane Kirkham
Leadville
A solitary headstone lies along the path of the old stage
road from Leadville to Buena Vista, near the present-day intersection of
highways 82 and 24. “My wife — Jane Kirkham — Died March 7, 1879 — Aged 38
years, 3 months, 7 days.” Legend has it that the stage was stopped by a robber,
who was shot and killed during the holdup. The robber was purportedly revealed
to be a woman, the wife of the sheriff or one of his deputies. Supposedly, it
was too embarrassing to bury her back in town.
The ski troopers
Vail and Breckenridge
During World War II, the U.S. Army trained soldiers to fight
in high altitudes and frozen conditions. Camp Hale near Leadville housed 15,000
men, all trained to ski, climb, and survive and fight in winter. The
recruitment and gathering of like-minded soldiers inadvertently led to the
explosion of the ski industry directly after the war. Ski-trooper vet Pete
Siebert founded Vail, and others followed suit, creating the Colorado ski
industry. The statue in Vail is more imposing — 13 feet tall and solemn; in
comparison to Breck’s life-size, more dynamic piece.
Solid Muldoon buried
here
Beulah
This spot marks the last resting place of a masterful prank.
The prankster, George Hull, was a tobacconist from New York. He had experience
at fooling people. He had dreamed up the infamous “Cardiff Giant” of 1869, the
faked discovery of a carved simulacrum of a petrified prehistoric man. Hull’s
trick gulled a lot of folks; P.T. Barnum then made his own Cardiff Giant and
declared it to be the real deal, not Hull’s.
Hull wanted to try his trick again. This time, he made a
plaster-of-Paris mold instead of a sculpture, bought a real skeleton, and
imbedded it, covering it with his creation. The fake was seven feet, six inches
tall and featured a small tail, grafted on in attempt to tout it as a missing
link. This time Barnum was in on it, fronting Hull $2,000 for 75 percent of the
take. Choosing a random Colorado hill, Hull and his cohorts buried the object
and a few months later, on September 16, 1877, a shill “discovered” it.
Unfortunately, the once-burned public didn’t take to the new hoax, and the Solid
Muldoon (dubbed in honor of a contemporary song lyric) soon vanished from
sight.
In 1976, commemorants created a replica of the Muldoon and
displayed it for a few years. On July 22, 1984, the replica was buried beside
the road, near the hill in which the original was interred.
The Manassa Mauler
Manassa
If you’ve ever heard of Manassa, Colorado, it’s because Jack
Dempsey was born there (or you’re into covering the yearly migration of
sandhill cranes). The champion heavyweight boxer held the title from 1919 to 1926,
and was one of the iconic athletes of the era. He started out at the bottom,
choosing fights in barrooms and winning them. His boyhood cabin now serves a
museum dedicated to his memory; only it and a dynamic statue commemorate this
pugilistically talented Coloradan.
Cockeyed Liz’s grave
Buena Vista
Elizabeth Spurgeon (1857-1929) was forced into a life of
prostitution at the age of 13 (her nicknamed stemmed from her appearance after
a childhood accident). Sixteen years later, she bought a property in Buena
Vista, the Palace Manor, and turned it into a whorehouse. In 1897, she married
the town plumber and gave up her profession. Their graves were originally
bordered by plumber’s pipes.
For
one of the few times so far in this survey, I find myself stymied. Fortunately,
no one could write a better explanatory essay on this entry than Cary O’Dell’s,which you can find here. The recording in question is not readily available,
and most of it is of abysmal sound quality.
As
O’Dell states, this was not the first transatlantic communication, but it was the
first airing of a transatlantic broadcast intended for the public. It was a
signal that was passed through a variety of long- and short-wave conduits on
its way to home receivers, and that signal deteriorated with every step of the
process. It’s not surprising that the end result was not much to brag about.
It
was a necessary first stage, however. There was not much of a push from
commercial interests to import foreign broadcasts. However the transmission of
information, specifically news, from Europe would grow in importance as the
Second World War loomed. This provided important perspective to millions of
listeners from the first generation of broadcast journalists such as William L.
Shirer, Edward R. Murrow, and Eric Sevareid.
Two
years later, Lindbergh would be the first to fly across the Atlantic. The world
was shrinking.
The National Recording Registry
Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the
National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: Louis Armstrong’s
Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings.
Rawlins goes on to outline the advantages of the “Diamond Disc” recording approach utilized by the Edison Company. The technological advance allowed for better sound quality, as well as a longer recording time — four and one half minutes on a side as opposed to the standard three.
But what made the Charleston such a hit? If ever we think back to that era, we see that herky-jerky solo dance, usually executed by a flapper in a beaded, short-hemmed dress and headband. What WAS the Charleston, anyway?
It’s said to have evolved from competitive dancing among the dockworkers of Charleston, South Carolina. Physically, it’s simple. A step forward, tap, step back, tap, arms akimbo. Anyone could do it without the practice or the partner that was needed for ballroom dancing. It’s best remembered now as a solo dance, although a partnered version soon developed. Compared to the smooth, graceful, floating kind of dance done before, this was sharp, frantic, and emphatic. It also left plenty of room for individual variation.
It captured the energy of the day, the high-flying optimism of America in the afterglow of World War I. Hedonistic and heedless, wild. It meshed well with the hot jazz of the day, spread to night clubs and dancehalls across the country. Though its heyday lasted only from 1925 to 1930, it remained a vivid memory. Now its sits on the shelf of collective thinking about the Roaring Twenties, alongside Prohibition, jazz, radio, and gangsters.
The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: the first transatlantic radio broadcast.
Performed by the
Associated Glee Clubs of America and audience
Recorded March 31,
1925
2:33
This
is perhaps the most significant development encountered thus far in my National
Recording Registry project, but it’s also the most difficult to explain. Well,
that’s never stopped me before.
On
March 31, 1925, fifteen “glee clubs” (amateur male singing societies) gathered
on the stage of the original Metropolitan Opera House at 1411 Broadway in
Manhattan. Columbia Records was there as well. It recorded all the participants (850) singing the Christmas hymn “Adeste Fideles” — “O Come All Ye
Faithful," joined in the last chorus by the 4,000-member audience.
What
makes the recording so significant is that it was made electrically. Engineers
had been working on this development for years; it was made feasible by Western
Electric’s H.C. Harrison and Joseph P. Maxfield in 1924.
Before
this, you recorded by making sound into a large horn, which funneled the sound
down to a sensitive stylus that copied the vibrations into a matrix material,
like wax or shellac. Once you had a good “take,” the master disc or cylinder
could be replicated numerous times.
The
process was crude and limited. Performers had to jam themselves around the
recording horn, quiet or sibilant noises got lost, and the masters were
notoriously dodgy, easily wearing away and losing their fidelity to the
original sound.
Electrical
recording changed all that. A microphone, or even multiple microphones,
captured the sound, translating it into infinitely more detailed electrical
impulses on the receiving disc. I can best explain it through analogy. Acoustic
recording was like writing with a broom handle in a bank of snow. Electrical recording
was like fine etching on glass.
The
difference in quality is easy to distinguish. Listen to “Adeste Fideles” again.
There are hundreds, then thousands, of voices singing, and on an acoustic recording this mass of
sound would have “blown out” the receiver and come across as just so much
noise. The electrical process allows the reception of a wider bandwidth of
volume — and of tone as well. The range of frequencies captured widened
considerably. The vocal parts are clearly delineated in the recording, despite
the size of the chorus.
The
result is a new richness and subtlety in recorded music, one that change how
music was made. Those who could exploit its new-found intimacy and range would
become its new stars.
The National Recording Registry
Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the
National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: the Charleston.
SOURCES
Repeated
Takes: A Short History of Recording and Its Effects on Music
Michael
Chanan
Verso
London
1995
The
History of Music Production
Richard
James Burgess
Oxford
University Press
2014
The
Art of Sound: A Visual History for Audiophiles
On January 26, Bob Shane, the last surviving member of the
original Kingston Trio folk-singing group, passed away. The event prompted me
to pull out my battered and scratched copy of their debut 1958 album, which
I’ve hung onto down the years.
Of course, I never have to play it again. I have it
memorized. Every song, both sides of the record, in order. I even sing the
skips. “Three Jolly Coachmen,” then “Bay of Mexico,” then “Banua” . . . We
played it over and over, all three of us kids growing up. We sang along to it, we
acted it out. We still discuss it, and surprise each other with snatches from
it, sometimes.
Being the oldest, I was the first one to find it in my
parents’ sparse record collection. I was always rooting around in everything,
and I read, watched, or listened to everything I could get my hands on. I was
the first one to be allowed to Use the Record Player.
This was a huge, heavy stereo console, a real piece of
furniture that stood in the living room and held not only a recessed turntable
that could play 33 1/3, 45, and 78 rpm records but an AM/FM radio as well!— the
multimedia platform of my childhood. I was tested as to my mechanical competence
before being allowed to use it. I placed the record on its stacking spindle
(you could play as many as four sides in a row), drew the overarm into place,
and ratcheted the start control. Magically, the turntable spun, the record
clattered onto it, and the tonearm pivoted into place and dropped. Away we
went!
There was a warm, thin smell, now lost, of vacuum tubes
heating, of thick wires carrying current, a dash of machine oil. The Kingston
Trio’s record company, Capitol, had a fun feature incorporated into their LPs (LP
stood for “long-playing”) at the time. The labels of the period had the
spectrum printed around their edges — a circle that shaded first red, then yellow,
green, blue, purple, red again. As the record spun, the label band formed a
rainbow. If you stood directly over the record, you could hypnotize yourself as
the colors morphed endlessly, around and around. I’m sure that the sight of
4-year-old me staring fixedly into the stereo while singing loudly and lustily
along with Bob Shane, Dave Guard, and Nick Reynolds must have been one of the
first, but certainly not one of the last, times that my mother must have
worried about me.
A word about the musical archeology of my family. On my
father’s side, it was conservatism and solid upper-middle-class values,
reflected in a love of Bach, Vivaldi, operetta, Gilbert and Sullivan, the slick
syrupy sounds of Mantovani, Hugo Winterhalter, Percy Faith et al, and selected
musicals, centered on a titanic affection for Rodgers and Hammerstein. Mom’s
heritage was more complex. She grew up on gospel and country and western music,
which gave her a solid base in Americana.
But she was a closet subversive. She hankered for the simple
folk tunes peddled by the likes of Burl Ives, and the politically charged
acoustic music of Pete Seeger, the Weavers, and Woody Guthrie. She was a
naturally bred fan for the mid-century folk revival, and she and we sang about
Darlin’ Corey, and the House of the Rising Sun, that old freight train’s
whistle, hard times. Poverty and struggle were romanticized. We were on the
side of the have-nots. Our house rang to the sounds of Paul Robeson, Odetta,
Peter Paul and Mary, Harry Belafonte . . . and of course the Kingston Trio.
Now this is not to say that we were receiving the pure,
authentic, and unvarnished folk gospel. This was cultural colonialism, not just
appropriation but pretty much a strip-mining of folk culture. These were not
escapees from a prison farm, nor representatives of the underclass. The
Kingston Trio and its competitors of the period referred to by Martin Mull as
the Great Folk Music Scare — the Limelighters, the Chad Mitchell Trio, the
Highwaymen, the New Christy Minstrels, the Highwaymen, the Rooftop Singers, and
the Serendipity Singers — were white. Incredibly white. There was a veneer of
Caucasian cheesiness that inevitably bleached out the product.
At this time, nightclubs still thrived in profusion, and
this was folk arranged, tooled, and produced for middle-class nightclub
audiences. It was a fad. For purists, it was revolting. There is casual racism
and stereotyping in some of the songs of the Trio and of others. It was a club
act. The Trio’s first five albums (we had them all) included show tunes (“They
Call the Wind Mariah”) and jazzy ballads (the classic “Scotch and Soda” could
easily be a Sinatra song). The nervous and earnest patter between songs that
can be heard on their early live albums is obviously the inspiration for the
Smothers Brothers’ initial burst of cripplingly funny folk-satire. (Christopher
Guest’s 2003 parodic film A Mighty Wind also
covers this territory without mercy.)
The whitewashing of vernacular music was common from early
days. Minstrel shows were distorted appropriations of black culture. The first
jazz ensemble to record, the Original Dixieland Jass Band, was all-white. R
& B and early rock hits were Caucasian-ized by the likes of Pat Boone. And
thus with the folk songbook. Whereas bards and balladeers such as Guthrie and
Seeger made music out of a desire to educate and galvanize, this was merely an
impulse to divert, to entertain. The record industry snapped up the folk
impulse and homogenized it.
But the music of the Kingston Trio was a gateway drug. It
led me on to the real deal — Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Bob Dylan, and from thence
on to the rest of the musical universe. It taught us that music was participatory and open to everyone. You didn't need a concert hall, or professional musicians even. All you had to do was sing.
It also taught me to work my way back
through musical history, to find those overlooked original creators of these
real and powerful sounds and give them their due, get them on my magical
turntable as well. Then, to understand their contexts you begin to read more
history, go deeper, and on it goes, keeping the mind humming with music, music
all day long. In this way, I think, the commercial folk groups of the era paid
penance for their sins of appropriation. I was a white kid stuck in a white town in the very middle of white
continent, but this music reached all the way in through and found me and led me
out.
And, whether deliberately or not, this inundation
radicalized us. In the midst of the Missile Crisis and the Civil Rights
movement, most of the songs we grew up hearing (until the British Invasion at
least) were either true folk songs, or protest songs, and often both. They were
stirring, and their energy swept us up in a wave of optimism. We could sing,
and march, and change things for the better, in that magic time before the
killings of Kennedys and Kings.
So I slap the records on my turntable again, and sing along
with “Tom Dooley” and “Wreck of the ‘John B’” and “South Coast.” Hypnotized again,
but this time by the beauty of those voices tumbling over each other, that
cascade of beautiful song. And I sing louder.
