EPISODE 3: The Sound and the Song

SHOW NOTES

​​

How revolutions in recording technology remade the sound of the popular song.

​

Studio technology has evolved from Edison's massive and unwieldy acoustic horn to an infinite array of possibilities that fit on the smartphone in your hand. In Episode 3 of Rearranged, we explore the revolutions in the sound of the popular song that accompanied revolutions in how we record sound.

​

Guests:

• Brandon Shaw McKnight (Charles P. Harris) is a Baltimore-based actor, singer, and director.

• Charles Cronin is a lawyer, musician, and historical musicologist in Los Angeles. He has taught at Claremont Graduate University and George Washington University, and he helped build GWU's extremely handy Music Copyright Infringement Resource.

• Susan Schmidt Horning is an associate professor of history at St. John's College in Queens, New York.  

• John Morrison is a writer, producer, and DJ in Philadelphia.  

Thanks to:

• Brandon Shaw McKnight

• Charles Cronin

• Susan Schmidt Horning

• John Morrison

​

The theme music and other scoring music for Rearranged was written and recorded by Lawrence Lanahan.

Music discussed:

• “After the Ball,” Charles P. Harris, 1892.

• King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band, Classics Records, 1992.

• Bessie Smith: Downhearted Blues, Original 1923-1924 recordings, Naxos, 2003.  

• “Every Breath I Take,” Gene Pitney, Musicor, 1962.  

• It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Public Enemy, Def Jam, 1988.  

• SWP: Southwest Psychedelphia, John Morrison, 2020.  

​

Research notes: 

• The introduction to this episode draws on Charles P. Harris's autobiography: After the Ball: Forty Years of Melody, New York, Frank-Maurice, inc., 1926.,  

• Much of this episode is drawn from Susan Schmidt Horning’s Chasing Sound: Technology, Culture, and the Art of Studio Recording from Edison to the LP, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015.     

• "First song to sell 1 million copies": Jacob Kelley, "America’s First Pop Hit Came from Milwaukee," Shepherd Express, May 24, 2022. Available: https://shepherdexpress.com/culture/milwaukee-history/americas-first-pop-hit-came-from-milwaukee/.

• "Pianos filled up American homes": Nate Wooley, The History of Tin Pan Alley, Sounds American. Available: https://soundamerican.org/issues/big-band/history-tin-pan-alley.

• "Song pluggers": Sarah Moses, "55 West 28th Street Building, Tin Pan Alley," Designation Report, NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, 2019. Available: https://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/2630.pdf. 

• "Started recording music...wax cylinder after wax cylinder": Horning, p. 13; Recorded Incunabula 1891-1898, UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive, University of California Santa Barbara Library. Available: https://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/incunabula.php

• "Some instruments, like drums, were dangerous for the machinery. Others were just difficult to hear.": Charles L. Granata, Sessions with Sinatra: Frank Sinatra and the Art of Recording, Chicago Review Press, 2003, p. 19.

• "On 'Chimes Blues,' the drummer played only woodblocks, and the bass player switched to banjo": Kevin Whitehead, "100 years ago today, Louis Armstrong wrapped his first recording session," Fresh Air, WHYY/NPR, April 6, 2023. Available: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/06/1168351440/100-years-ago-today-louis-armstrong-wrapped-his-first-recording-session

• "Bessie Smith’s first Columbia recording was in a horn": Liner notes, Bessie Smith: Downhearted Blues, Original 1923-1924 recordings, Naxos, 2003. Available: https://www.naxos.com/MainSite/BlurbsReviews/?itemcode=8.120660&catnum=120660&filetype=AboutThisRecording&language=English.

• "...singing ballads with what one music historian called quote 'languid, caressing vocals'": Horning, p. 45; Hughson F. Mooney, "Songs, Singers and Society, 1890-1954," American Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 3, Autumn, 1954, p. 229.

• "...the crooners could achieve what another scholar called “new possibilities for intimacy between singers and their audience.”: Allison McCracken, "'God's Gift to Us Girls': Crooning, Gender, and the Re-Creation of American Popular Song, 1928-1933." American Music, Winter, 1999, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 365-366. 

• "Billboard calls it 'the most successful song in music history'—it eventually sold 50 million copies": Rob LaDonne, "‘White Christmas’ at 75: A Snapshot of the Most Successful Song In Music History," Billboard, December 20, 2017. Available: https://www.billboard.com/culture/lifestyle/white-christmas-bing-crosby-history-8071111/.

• "The Germans had invented a reel-to-reel recorder that used magnetic tape": John Leslie, address to the Audio Engineering Society's Historical Committee, November 13, 2012. Available: https://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/ampex200a/leslie_celebration-of-miller-restoration.html. Also, Horning, pp. 100-118.

• "Lorber's big break": Michael Limnios, "Q&A with producer/composer Alan Lorber," Music Network,  Available: https://blues.gr/m/blogpost?id=1982923:BlogPost:259314. 

• "One night, he tried something new": "Kool Herc" Merry Go Round Technique, YouTube. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qwml-F7zKQ.

• "Kinks guitarist Dave Davies helped introduce distorted guitar to rock and roll by slicing his amp speaker with a razor": Dave Davies, Twitter, available: https://x.com/davedavieskinks/status/1347564656970366978; Dave Simpson, "How we made You Really Got Me," The Guardian, January 10, 2013, available: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/jun/10/how-we-made-you-really-got-me.

• "The early samplers only had room to capture a second or two from an LP": DMasc, "Hank Shocklee on Beat," Medium, November 3, 2014. Available: https://medium.com/@dmasc/1c3f81f937f1.

• "Marley Marl tried to sample a riff and caught a snare drum hit at the end": Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Frannie Kelley, "Marley Marl On The Bridge Wars, LL Cool J And Discovering Sampling," NPR, September 12, 2013. Available: https://www.npr.org/sections/microphonecheck/2013/09/11/221440934/marley-marl-on-the-bridge-wars-ll-cool-j-and-discovering-sampling.