Westrex Electrical Sound Recording

Today most recording is digital, just zeros and ones. But as you know, recordings began in purely an acoustic format. But in the middle of the 140 year history of recorded sound there was a great leap forward: Electrical Sound Recording. For that we can thank Bell Labs (in partnership with Western Electric). I'll get to the names in a minute but like many innovations in that shop, there is not a front man to lay the thanks on. It was a work made of a hundred small tinkering improvements, and several dozen patents. More here.

Analog phonograph recordings predate commercial radio by more than two decades. The problem with early radio was that despite all the noise, it's audio was actually superior to that of the acoustic recordings of that era. Radio was also free. Recorded sound needed a way to compete with high quality free content. Bell Telephone Laboratories was established in 1925 and set to the task.

They were not alone in trying. In the UK, Lionel Guest and Horace O. Merriman had managed to jury-rig a set of four carbon microphones to a magnetic recording head. It was a genuine electrical recording. It just sounded pretty crappy and was considered inferior to acoustic recordings of the same era. They did record at least one record on Columbia using their method in 1920. It was a recording of a service at Westminster Abbey, their gear was set up in a truck outside. But the path to a superior electrical recording, the great-granddaddy of 'em all had started years earlier. Among those advances were the condenser microphone (1922), the vacuum tube (1857),  matched impedance systems, and the recording head of course... putting it all together was no small feat. More here.

At Bell Labs Harvey C. Fletcher oversaw two teams working towards the project. Of particular interest is the matched impedance sytem developed by Joseph Maxfield and Henry Harrison. It used a complex set of electrical filters. Another engineer, Harold Arnold, made a series of improvements to the triode vacuum tube to improve it's sensitivity and linear response. These two changes alone improved audio so that it could be reliably reproduced from about 50 Hz to 6,000 Hz. Acoustic recordings of that time only eeked out a mere 250 Hz to about 2,400 Hz.

The final improvement was to improve the existing magnetic recording head technology. The existing acoustic methods relied upon the physical power of the sound wave. Here the condenser mic was used to receive that audio data, and convert it into electrical energy. The electromagnet-stylus assembly converted this back into movement. At the end the could produce a flat response from 250 Hz to about 15,000 Hz with this system. This "Western Electric electrical recording system" was branded as the "Westrex" system.

Patsy Cline's Funeral

Without getting into her life story, let's begin with Patsy Cline died over 50 years ago, but her legend lives on.  If that's your cup of tea, Ellis Nassour wrote one of the best Patsy Cline biographies out there Honky Tonk Angel. I read it, the radio detail that caught me was that of her six pallbearers, five were disc jockeys. The sixth was a Nashville area producer of little renown. Patsy's career rose in an era when personal relationships with DJs could make or break a career. She made it.

Joltin' Jim McCoy - WJEJ-AM, WHPL-AM, WEFG-FM, WINC
Jim actually had a long radio career in Virginia. His first gig on the radio was as a performer with Bud Messner and his Saddle Pals on WJEJ-AM in Hagerstown in about 1945. He developed a taste for radio and by 1946 got a 30 minute Saturday morning slot on 1400 WINC-AM in Winchester, VA —Patsy's home town. It was that year a 14-year-old Patsy Cline (the Virginia Hensley) played on his program. In 1960 he became a weekday morning show host on 610 WHPL-AM across the street. He cut some of his own country tunes and later had a late night talk show, heavenly Hot Line on gospel station 102.5 WEFG-FM, again in Winchester.  More here.

Sammy Moss - WRFL-FM, WINC-AM
Richard F. Lewis, Jr. launched WFVA-AM in Fredericksburg in 1939. Two years later, he built 92.5 WRFL-FM in Winchester, which was one of the first FM stations in the nation. WRFL later became WINC. Sammy led Sammy Moss and the Blue Ridge Mountain Boys in the late 1940s. He later had a program on WINC at the same time as Jim McCoy. WINC-AM and WRFL-FM simulcast 50% at that time so it's unclear which station he was on. In all likelihood it was both. In the book Mountaineer Jamboree, Ivan M. Tribe wrote that Patsy played his show as well.

Bill Allison - WINC-AM
Bill was a much more obscure character. He's listed as press at 1400 WINC-AM in 1965. Prior to that the only reference I find is at 690 WNNT-AM in Warsaw, VA

Dick Dovel - WFTR-AM
Apocryphal. There are no references to Mr. Dovel outside of the Nassour book. The radio station 1450 WFTR signed on prior to 1951 on 1450 AM in Front Royal, VA and continues today as a Dial Global satcaster.

Eddie Matherly - WKCW-AM, WICO, WDVM
WKCW in Warrenton, VA was the "Big K" in that era. He was also on 540 WDVM-AM in the late 1950s.  He hosted a morning show Hits From The Hills, and an afternoon country show the Delmarva Jamboree.In 1959 he moved to WICO-AM in Salisbury, MD. He worked as far west as KRES-AM in Moberly, MO in 1961. He only started at 1420 WKCW-AM shortly before Patsy Cline's death in 1963. He died of a heart attack just a year after Patsy. More here.

SURVEY RESULTS!

I did a reader survey last week and much to my surprise I had actual responses. To my further surprise all of my assumptions about my readers were wrong —all of them.  So let's take it from the top.

1. My readers are not all college radio DJs, though many were in the past. But almost as many have never been behind the mic in that media.

2. My readers are all over the map.  I even have specialists into Part 15, cable FM, and AM DXing. They are audiophiles, former broadcasters, in AM and FM, TV, hams, and people into archival audio. All this time I thought I was being self-indulgent with the acetates. Who knew?

• 12% of them are College Radio DJs
• 4% are Talk Show Hosts
• 8% are in Broadcast Management
• 8% are Media Consultants
• 32% are broadcasting hobbyists
• 72% are Broadcasting history buffs
• 20% are engineers
• 48% are into archival audio

 3. They have all been in broadcasting a long time. While most have about 5 years of experience, four times that number have 10 or more years in the biz.

4. My readers for the most part got out of the biz already. More than 80% of you were in broadcasting and either retired or moved on to more gainful employment. 

5. I also left a couple sections at the end for comments. Instead of trolling me, most of you left nice notes. A couple of you recommended I try to use Twitter and Tumblr. No one complained about my typos. Not one. Thank you all. I intend to press on.

That Guy from Night Court

If you're like me you know John Larroquette only as Dan Fielding, a character on the NBC sitcom Night Court which ran from 1984 to 1992.  A Louisiana native, he grew up in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, and it was there that he went into radio.This was long before he moved to Hollywood, became a star and won a few Emmy awards.

In May of 2013, Larroquette was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of New Orleans. It's a nice gesture from the University, for a local son who never actually went to college. Instead, Larroquette went into radio career, most notably under the on-air name Judas or Brother Judas on 98.5 WWOM-FM. Of the name he said "“It was a nickname I had as a boy... As a good Catholic kid, the most [profane] thing I would ever say was, ‘Judas Priest,’ as the Holy Cross brothers did. So I got to be known as Judas. New Orleans, Catholic town, free-form radio —Judas was a good name to have.”

Different versions of the story give different dates. One source says WWOM-FM was progressive rock as early as 1966, another places the date in 1971. I find the latter date incongruous. Whenever it was, 600 WWOM-AM, and 98.5 WWOM-FM were both playing beautiful music and the two split with the AM side moving to religious programming and the FM side going Underground playing a mix of AOR and progressive rock. Other DJ names you might recognize from there include Jim Turner, Stuart McRae and Charlie Matkin. Their 58,000 watt FM station blanketed the metro. (For the record Larroquette also spent some time on air at  WNPS and WRNO.)

WWOM-AM changed called WVOG-AM, standing for Voice-Of God. WWOM remained on 98.5 as Mother Radio.The license was owned by then Lieutenant governor James Noe. Sr. He let his daughter, Gay Noe Mclennan manage the station. She was later replaced by her brother James Noe, Jr.  The station was in a death struggle with the more pop leaning AOR station 99.5 WRNO-FM. Also in the fray was WTIX-FM which played straight rock n' roll and was programmed by Todd Storz himself.

In 1972 WWOM it changed to WIXO which it held for two years as a straight ahead Top-40 station. It signed back on months later as WYLD playing Urban Contemporary. By 1974 Larroquette was already in Hollywood doing voice overs.

Transcription Mystery Disc #184

This is a  78 rpm 10-inch metal-core, transcription disc. It has 3 tracks and starts at the outer edge. It's in very nice shape and required little manipulation beyond a bit of amplification to get the mp3 in this shape. It had very low surface noise. That always helps. It's dated in pencil, 10-6-46. I have no reason to doubt it. The metal core has heft, and is not as flexible as the later metal-core discs.

Richard Matthews



This disc opens with a woman speaking a single introductory sentence "This is Richard Matthews recording from his own home." Then presumably it's Richard Matthews who tears into some jazzy clarinet lines. He opens with a bit of "St. Louis Blue", then an original "Two Grunts and a Groan" then "Beal Street Blues which is introduced by a young child. Right before the recording runs out is a man's voice says Bluest Blues ever heard, Goodnight" It sounds like a tape recording. This was either very cleverly staged or done in a small home studio with a tape deck.