“NAN WAS A SOLID GAS”…….. David Basse

nan hill2David Basse is one of Kansas City’s best-known contemporary jazz artists. During his tenure broadcasting at Kansas Public Radio in Lawrence, he met Nan Hill, a devout listener and dynamo with unfettered knowledge of the Blues and Jazz Scene. She would come to write the radio host often. She composed her letters as she listened to Basse’s show on the radio and critique his programs as she felt she needed to. This Jazz Aficionada took her job as Mr. Basse’s appointed co-pilot quite seriously. Never could this radio host have imagined, while spreading inspiration with the power of music throughout the airwaves, that he in turn would be galvanized by the passion of this dear soul reaching back to him. Following is a moving tribute by David honoring Nan after her passing.

1 June 2012
Nan Hill
I programmed a jazz tribute to Nan Hill on Kansas Public Radio last night. The evening sounded a lot like other jazz programming on KPR, yet she would have known the difference: Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Kurt Elling, Ahmad Alaadeen… music that Nan might have labeled “Nothing but class, and three solid hours of it – a symphony,” she used to say in her weekly handwritten letters to me at the station. I have every one of Nan’s letters saved meticulously – in the order she sent them. Most have been archived in my section of the LaBudde Special Collections at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Nan knew her jazz. She loved to listen to the radio while lying down, in order to REALLY LISTEN. Living in Lawrence, Kansas, her favorite shows were hosted by Bob McWilliams, Bob Parlocha, and me. Nan was a lifelong listener of jazz radio, and over the years, she named her all-time favorite hosts to me in her extensive letters. She listened to programming on KPR, sleeping and awake – something that I began doing as a teenager, to get jazz by osmosis, get it into my soul. Nan was the only other person I have ever met who could relate to that: listening to jazz while sleeping. We discovered many such similarities over the past few years.

Nan Hill was my co-pilot. I called her that on air when I needed to let her know that the next song, or preceding song, was played in answer to a request or comment that she had made in her weekly letter. That’s just how Nan and I rolled. If I took a new turn, and played some blues, she responded. If I played two ballads in a row – Dexter Gordon, or whatever, she knew, and she knew that I had programmed that with her in mind. Often times after programming a show, in the comfort of the air studio, I would have the time to savor Nan’s weekly letter, and would be surprised to read that she had requested the very same songs that I had programmed. We were completely in tune. If you are a close friend of Nan’s, or a family member, I may even know when you called her on a Saturday afternoon. Nan always gave me a complete rundown of what I had played and when, until someone who “wasn’t hip to jazz” happened to call and take her away from her “work,” which was listening to and commenting on my show. There was no messing around going on in this relationship. It was a jazz union. I tried, back in 2004, to get her to email me so I could respond in real time, but, Nan wrote letters, on yellow legal paper, stuffed into number 10 envelopes. The letters were “old school,” like the music she loved. I responded with a few letters a year to attempt to balance out the volumes that she put out in my honor. If she felt bad, which she often did, she would send a simple card with Billie Holiday or Charlie Parker on it, and a short note: “Stay hip,” or “Great show, you
are the hippest” ~Nan.

I miss Nan Hill more than anyone will know. She was my co-pilot; she was Ms. C.P. – in David-Bassereference to the John Coltrane composition Mr. P.C. The song was written for Paul Chambers, Trane’s long-time bassist, and I realized last night how much Chambers is the star of that piece, driving everyone in the band to perform fabulous solos without being featured himself. That’s a jazz thing. That is exactly what Nan did each week with her solid devotion to me and my colleagues: she pushed the music along, influencing us without getting in the way. Nan fell by the station for a visit once when her granddaughter was in town from California. Nan was dressed like Norma Desmond, with black sunglasses and a brocade wrap around her head. I know she was training her granddaughter to listen to jazz by insisting on the outing. The two of them sat quietly in the studio and watched me program the entire afternoon. From then on, the weekly letters not only included stories from Nan’s active memory and tales of her daily activities, Nan also kept me apprised of the goings on of her beloved granddaughter. It was the hippest. After several years of letters, I decided to call her. I invited her to attend a few jazz shows, the very special ones I offered to drive to Lawrence to pick her up and return her when she was too tired to hang. Once, she actually took me up on the offer, for a holiday jazz event that KPR sponsored at Liberty Hall. Nan reserved a room across the street at the Eldridge Hotel to be close to a bed if she needed to lie down. We talked and wrote back and forth several times while making plans. When the big day came, a serious blizzard hit Lawrence right at the end of my 4pm shift. Nan couldn’t make the scene. She had to hear the gig on the radio, listening and commenting on every nuance of the party – both times it aired!

Nan Hill heard Monk live in a nightclub. She went to shows back in the day at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge in Detroit. She heard Trane, Duke, and Cab Calloway in movie theaters. Her knowledge of jazz was immense, her commentary on my programming, uncanny. When she first started writing me, I asked her in a letter to be totally honest, to tell me when the show was sub-par, or when I was off my game. She took the “job” very seriously; she listened intently. I played Lou Donaldson’s “Whiskey Drinkin’ Woman” in her honor to make her laugh, which brought on stories from the old days of drinking with her friends, of being in Detroit and attending jazz shows with her mother. Detroit is where Donaldson hails from, and Nan wrote of going out night clubbing when the greats of jazz actually went from town to town, club to club, playing their music.

Nan was a solid gas. Nan was no square. Nan was hip and sharp until the day she left the planet. She hurt. She was in constant pain, but she did her job each week as if her life depended on it. She was a teacher and an incredible help to me, teaching me the ways of jazz, same as Alaadeen, Bobby Watson, Mike Melvoin, Phil Woods, and others have done. You see, jazz is passed on by mentoring. It can be a word, a nod, a slight mention that changes it all, just the way one note changes a composition. Nan will live on through the letters she wrote me and my colleagues. Nan and I will continue to produce jazz programming for many years to come. I have garnered her sensibilities and captured them for future use on my shows. I may no longer exclaim weekly, “This is for Ms. C.P., my constant companion,” or if I do, you and I may remember how I feel about Nan Hill.

The David Basse Collection is located in the LaBudde Special Collections, Miller Nichols Library, UMKC. Thanks to Mr. Basse’s love and diligence those many years, Nan Hill is with us still. To read her letters is to feel her soul. Her personality was infectious and it radiates in her every word.

Teresa Wilson Gipson – Libraries Information Specialist II, LaBudde Special Collections

Evolution and Extinction: Webster-Chicago 45 RPM Adapters

"The Webster"Throughout 2012 and 2013, one of Marr’s ongoing projects consisted of combing through our 45 RPM record collection and preparing them for long-term Roobot Storage. The procedure called for sleeve replacement, deletion of triplicate copies, some basic data entry, the exceedingly rewarding process of making and printing labels for storage boxes, as well as mass removal of 45 RPM adapters.

As an employee of a sound archive, I, of course, love to perform these menial chores and often feel empty inside when I am not completing such rewarding tasks. Our staff and student assistants would agree! However, if there was one thing that could send me into a full-on emotional tailspin, it would be the anxiety that comes with removing Webster-Chicago Corporation brand 45 adapters and their insidious presence from our 45 RPM holdings.

If I wasn’t shredding my fingers to pop these bad boys out, I might be warping the 45 or even snapping it in half. Once in a blue moon, I wake up to a cold sweat at 4 am, obsessing over “Websters” in my nightmares.  No joke.  More often than not, I would break down and run to my supervisor, Charlie Stout, who would remove them for me, seemingly without any detriment to his person or psyche. Go figure…

The Webster-Chicago Corporation, later known as Webcor, manufactured high quality amplification and phonograph equipment, tape recorders, intercom and public address systems as well as wire recorders commonly used for dictation, field recordings, and military applications.

Model-80 Wire Recorder

The Model-80 Wire Recorder was manufactured by the Webster-Chicago Corporation in 1948 and marketed for home use. Documentation for Webster-Chicago products can be found on their website

The company first unleashed its 45 RPM adapter on the buying public in 1950, right in the middle of the Columbia/RCA speed wars of the 1940s and 50s. Columbia introduced the 12” 33 RPM LP to consumers whereas RCA opted for their own patent: the 7” 45 RPM Record. Each format its own respective turntable that was, of course, incompatible with the other; hence, the advent of the 45 RPM adapter trend.

The Webster-Chicago adapters seem like holdovers from the machine era. They consisted of a tin disc with four teeth that allowed it to snap into the center hole of the 45 where it would stay put, possibly for decades. Soon thereafter, the market for 45 adapters was flooded by an increasingly disposable array of plastic adapters sold by individual record companies; the most iconic of which being the Recoton adapters, peddled, once again, by the RCA Corporation.

The major problem with the Webster is its tendency to warp records over time, greatly lowering their resale value. They were too costly to produce and often too heavy to be compatible with certain RCA turntables. Their plastic counterparts were less expensive to manufacture, often brightly colored, and were less than likely to wreak havoc on a 45’s playability.

While the Websters seem to have been built to outlast the apocalypse, it is ironic that they were once considered a permanent solution to a temporary and constantly evolving problem. The new wave of plastic adapters squashed the Webster adapter shortly after its initial patent and once most turntables were standardized to play all disc formats, the Webster-Chicago adapter no longer served its intended purpose.  Funny enough, the 1½ inch hole in the center of your favorite 45 RPM record no longer serves its original purpose either. The aesthetic and historical value, however, remain mostly intact.

Recoton2

For a more in-depth history of the 45 RPM Adapter, consult Chuck Miller’s Times Union Blog article from 2012, entitled 45 Adapters: Stick it in the Center Hole.

Norman Corwin, radio legend dies at age 101

Norman CorwinOn October 18, Norman Corwin, radio’s “poet laureate,” died at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 101. Corwin was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1993 for his work as a writer, director and producer of radio plays for CBS. The Los Angeles Times has a wonderful obituary which highlights his long career and there’s a nice video tribute worth watching on YouTube (below).

In May of this year, I had the pleasure of attending a live performance (complete with sound effects) of his radio play, “The undecided molecule” in which Corwin himself was in attendance! It was truly an amazing experience. If you haven’t listened to the works of this gifted writer, you can request do so in the Marr Sound Archives. Click here for a list of Norman Corwin radio plays and other works held in Miller Nichols Library.

Sandy Rodriguez, Special Projects Catalog Librarian