Programs for Posterity

Abstract

This essay explores the diverse field of audio records manufactured as tie-ins to popular American radio programs of the postwar period. Little has been written on such products as meaningful artifacts of consumption during any phase in broadcasting history. Yet radio records proved especially meaningful to customers in the 1940s and 1950s, as they offered a highly convenient way to upend rigid transmission schedules and program ephemerality. Here, I focus on spoken word radio albums that promised listeners important broadcast knowledge stored for ‘posterity’ on disk. Phonograph companies like Columbia banked on consumer interest in replay of these programs to sell radio records as technologies of permanence and documents with unparalleled historical and cultural value. I analyze program-to-record case studies like You Are There (1949) and The Quick and the Dead (1951) to illustrate how producers lay claim to historical authenticity via capturing, recording, or releasing transient moments on records.

KEYWORDS:

• radio
• storage
• ephemerality
• consumerism
• spoken word

Notes

1. RCA Victor Press Release, “The Quick and the Dead,” 40.

2. RCA Victor Press Release, “RCA Victor to Release ‘The Quick and the Dead,’” n.p.

3. Hunt Ryan, “New Records,” Baltimore Sun, A24.

4. Howard Taubman, “Story of A- and H-Bombs Dramatized In ‘The Quick and the Dead,’” New York Times, 104.

5. Frederic Jacobi, “About ‘The Quick and the Dead,’” New York Times, X7.

6. Andre Millard, America on Record, 201–202.

7. See Raymond Williams, Television; John Ellis, Visible Fictions; and Elihu Katz and Daniel Dayan, Media Events, for a brief sampling of these scholarly works on liveness and broadcasting.

8. Derek Kompare, Rerun Nation, 19–38; Susan J. Douglas, “Music in Every Room: Radio and Recorded Music,” 131–170; and Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter.

9. As W. T. Lhamon, Jr. explains, “Style and decision quickened in American life during the 1950s. Citizens put the Second World War behind them by tuning their daily practices to fit the jumped pulse of information, manufacture, and Cold War competition. Government, business, and education likewise strove to match the excitements of electronic speed, face down nuclear anxiety, and incorporate newly aggressive demands and examples from black and youth cultures. Singly and collectively, people converted their crises to opportunities.” Lhamon, Jr., Deliberate Speed, xxxv.

10. Douglas, “Music in Every Room,” 132, 137.

11. Millard, America on Record, 185.

12. Kompare, Rerun Nation, 20.

13. NBC Corporate Report, “NBC Electrical Transcription Service,” n.p.

14. Millard, America on Record, 186.

15. William Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America, 90.

16. George H. Douglas, Early Days of Radio Broadcasting, 52.

17. Bruce Lenthall, Radio’s America, 4.

18. Matthew Ehrlich, Radio Utopia, 20–21.

19. Jacob Smith, Spoken Word, 2, 49–78.

20. Douglas Bell and Norman Corwin, Years of the Electric Ear, 54; R. Leroy Bannerman, Norman Corwin and Radio, 144.

21. Robert J. Elisburg, “On a Note of Triumph,” Huffington Post.

22. “Editorial: Corwin For Everyone,” Billboard, 4.

23. Columbia Records Press Release, “Columbia Record News: Announcing… A Great and Historic Recording, ‘On a Note of Triumph,’” n.p.

24. Bannerman, Norman Corwin and Radio, 157–159.

25. “Don’t Sell Subsidy Rights Short,” Variety, 43.

26. See Ehrlich, “A Pathfinding Radio Documentary Series,” 35–59, as well as Ehrlich’s longer chapter on the subject in his book Radio Utopia, “One World,” 24–45.

27. Volume I of the series chronicled the years 1932–1945, volume II explored the first three years of the atomic age, and volume III narrated the “glamorous era” of 1919–1932. Edward R. Murrow et al., I Can Hear It Now, volumes I–III.

28. Columbia Records Press Release, “Edward R. Murrow’s ‘I Can Hear it Now’ Is First Audible History,” n.p.

29. Columbia Records Press Release, “Columbia Releases Third Volume of Best-Selling ‘I Can Hear It Now’ Series,” n.p.

30. Columbia Records Press Release, “Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt Lauds Columbia’s ‘I Can Hear It Now’ Album,” n.p.

31. Matthew Ehrlich, “Radio Prototype,” 440.

32. Frederic Jacobi, “About ‘The Quick and the Dead,’” New York Times, X7.

33. RCA Victor Newsletter, “‘The Quick and the Dead’ on RCA Victor Red Seal Records; NBC Documentary Drama of Atom and Hydrogen Bombs to Hit Market in Mid-April,” n.p.

34. RCA Victor Press Release, “Authentic Recording of Pope’s Voice in Holy Year Ceremony Released as Red Seal National Special,” n.p.

35. RCA Victor Press Release, “RCA Victor to Release Album of Stevenson Speeches,” n.p.

36. Dunphy et al. The Greatest Moments in Sports, album liner notes; Capitol Records Brochure, “Hark! The Years!” advertisement, n.p.; Schafer, Pardon My Blooper!, album liner notes.

37. During its first season, the program was named CBS is There, and this appellation was used in announcing the program title during episodes. The name was changed in May 1948 in order to lure sponsors to the program who did not wish to share sponsorship credit with CBS. Ehrlich, “‘All Things Are As They Were Then’,” 24.

38. Columbia Records Press Release, “‘You Are There’ to Be Issued by Columbia Records on LP and Shellac,” n.p.

39. Shayon, You Are There, album liner notes.

40. Shayon, You Are There, album liner notes.

41. Ehrlich, Radio Utopia, 8.

42. Sidney Lohman, “One Thing and Another,” New York Times, 89.

43. Ehrlich, “‘All Things Are As They Were Then’,” 24–25.

44. Millard, America on Record, 202.

45. See Mark Williams, “Considering Monty Margetts’s Cook’s Corner: Oral History and Television History,” 36–55; Wolfgang Ernst, “Between Real Time and Memory on Demand: Reflections on/of Television,” 625–637; Eric Hoyt, Lantern, digital database of media periodicals; and David Pierce and Eric Hoyt, Media History Digital Library, digital database of classic media periodicals.

The underlying research materials for this article can be accessed at the Library of Congress from the NBC History Files and the Record Industry Publicity Collection, both of which are a part of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.