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Arts & Life

Lost & Found Sound

Dead Media

As our Friday feature, Lost and Found Sounds continues, NPR's Dan Charles visits Dave Morton, a New Jersey man who saves technology for sound recording that came .. and went. We learn about the dictabelts, the wire recorders, the other odd devices that captured sound besides phonographs and tape. We hear Oscar Hammerstein dictating notes on a show, soldiers in the Pacific singing, and samples of eight-track tapes.

Dead Media

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Lost & Found Sound

Lost and Found Sound

Independent producers The Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, continue their story about the man who invented the phonograph. This is part of the Friday feature called "Lost and Found Sound." After Edison invented the talking machine, other people experimented and advanced his ideas, and then competed to sell machines and recordings. Edison stuck with the cylinder, while others preferred the flat disc, which became the industry standard. Edison hated the disk. He didn''t like the two-sided ones, because he felt he could have sold TWO recordings if there was only one-song per disk. The Wizard of Menlo Park suffered from his judgments and his distractions. He spent eight critical years away from work on improving the phonograph to follow up on the electric light. When he returned, musical tastes had changed. The other companies had signed big artists. Edison preferred less flashy music and was notoriously cheap with payments to artists. For all these reasons, Edison failed at the record business.

Lost and Found Sound

Only Available in Archive Formats.

Lost & Found Sound

Lost And Found Sound: Edison

PART 1 -- Independent producers The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva) continue our year-long series (which airs every Friday in 1999 on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED) with part one of a profile of the work of Thomas Alva Edison in the realm of recorded sound. We learn that the inventor of the phonograph intended his instrument to be used to capture speeches and office dictation. Only later did he record music for the public. Skeptics were in disbelief of the phonograph when it first appeared, that they suspected Edison of hiring ventriloquists to copy voices. Edison, the "Wizard of Menlo Park" (named after the site of his first New Jersey laboratory), was a huge public figure of his day. He held over a thousand patents, but considered the phonograph his most important invention. Part Two, next Friday, continues the story with how Edison faced competition in the record industry.

Lost And Found Sound: Edison

Only Available in Archive Formats.

Remembering Country Music Singer Rose Maddox

Country music's Rose Maddox, who at age 11 embarked on a decades-long singing career, has died. Maddox became a big hit after World War II, touring with her four brothers. Their band was called, Maddox Brothers and Rose. She won a Grammy in 1996 for her CD, $35 And A Dream. Maddox died yesterday of kidney failure. She was 71 years old. NPR's Linda Wertheimer has this remembrance.

Remembering Country Music Singer Rose Maddox

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Movies

The Experience of Filming 'Beloved'

NPR's Vertamae Grosvenor reflects on how experiences of the past play out in present day relationships among black women. Her observations came during the filming of Beloved. Grosvenor portrays one of 30 formerly enslaved women who live in a small Ohio town. The film, due for release later this year, stars Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey and is directed by Jonathan Demme. It's based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Toni Morrison.

The Experience of Filming 'Beloved'

Only Available in Archive Formats.

Russia's 'Sesame Street'

NPR's Andy Bowers reports on Ulitsa Sezam, the Russian Courtyard that's home to Zeliboba and his friends - Vlas and Yenick, and Aunt Dashe. If this sounds familiar, it is. The Russian version of Sesame Street premiered today, brought to you by the letter Bukva. There was concern before the show made it to Russian airwaves that it might be just another unwanted import of American culture, although it's too soon to tell what public reaction is to the show.

Russia's 'Sesame Street'

Only Available in Archive Formats.

'Drown' Depicts Lives of Dominicans, Americans

Junot Diaz is a young writer who was born in the Dominican Republic. He was raised there, but also in New Jersey, and he has just published a collection of stories about growing up on his old home island and in the U.S. The book is called Drown.

'Drown' Depicts Lives of Dominicans, Americans

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Etta Baker, Piedmont Blues Legend

Etta Baker is credited with helping to spark the folk music revival of the 1960s -- no small feat for someone who didn't become a professional musician until she was in her 60s. Now, at the age of 78, Etta Baker has released her first solo recording, and this Thursday the National Endowment for the Arts will honor Baker and other artists as living national treasures for contributions made to America's folk heritage. Dean Olsher visited Baker at her home and has this profile.