Tag Archives: lacquer discs

Christmas Eve at the front

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Soldiers on Christmas Eve, WWIIWe take our worldwide communication capabilities for granted. In an age where FaceTime and Skype allow us not only to speak to those halfway across the world, but to see them at the time, it is easy to forget that only a couple generations ago such interaction was impossible.

Radio made communication between service members and their families possible. The urge to communicate with their loved ones during World War II culminated in “Christmas Eve at the Front,” a nationally broadcasted radio special “spontaneously suggested by American servicemen” serving on the front lines to show Americans back home how they were spending the season, as well as send their well-wishes and messages of encouragement. Listen to an excerpt from the program.[audio:http://info.umkc.edu/specialcollections/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/2011-12-20_ChristmasEve_Church_kmbc-151.mp3|titles=Christmas Eve at the Front]

“Christmas Eve at the Front” connected soldiers from England, China, India, and the Pacific theater to American radios. Listeners heard soldiers in England gather to sing Christmas carols. They also learned that the rations they saved for the war effort helped to give the soldiers a special holiday treat. As one soldier commented, the group used saved rations of powdered milk and eggs, combined with corn starch and cocoa, to make ice cream.

But the war was also difficult for the soldiers. They commented on working twenty-four hour watches, even on Christmas, with the enemy flying nearby over their heads. And yet, as a gunner from Pennsylvania put it, “There’s one ship in our group called “Heaven Can Wait”. It’d be like heaven to be home for Christmas this year. But Heaven not only can—but has to wait—until our job is finished.”

Christina Tomlinson, KMBC Project staff/History (MA) student

You may request access to the complete recording from the Marr Sound Archives.

Christmas mailings during wartime

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2011-12-15_ChristmasMail_Church_ViaWikimediaFor many, the holiday season is a time of family, good food, and gift-giving. During wartime, however, this time of year can be rough for families separated from loved ones serving overseas. I heard just the other day that many troops overseas get so excited to receive any word from home or even better, a care package. Thanks to technology, communication is much easier as we don’t have to rely solely on snail-mail. Could you imagine how useful Skype or instant messaging would have been back in World War II?

Inevitably, snail mail was the only option for them, but they made the most of it. According to a 1943 interview (available by request) with Kansas City postmaster, Alexander W. Graham, millions and billions of people send out Christmas cards, letters, and packages every year, including those serving in other countries. This interview served mainly to inform Kansas City listeners about cut-off dates for Christmas mailings. As an example of these deadlines, Postmaster Graham noted that the cut-off to send Christmas mail to somewhere as far as Australia was mid-September for Army and Navy personnel. Talk about doing some early Christmas shopping!

Since that time, shipping nationwide has gotten faster. I looked on the USPS 2011 mailing deadlines for nationwide shipping deadlines and found that a package can reach its domestic destination within five days. According to postmaster Graham, this deadline, which was subject to change based on how far across the country it would travel, was December 10th. Oh, how spoiled we are, that we have the luxury of Fed-Ex and UPS overnight shipping!

This interview had a specific purpose: to alleviate the shipping issues that the postal service frequently dealt with every holiday season. I think the funniest quote from the interview was the last comment on the subject. The KMBC interviewer asked Postmaster Graham if he had any other suggestions for listeners. His responded with the following: “…a postman is not allowed to loiter on his route, and if Mr. and Mrs. Average Citizen would […] indicate the zone delivery district number on the cards and packages they mail, they will do far more to relieve the postal employees of their Christmas headache than offering them a cup of hot chocolate.” Apparently, mailmen of that time were getting sick of drinking hot chocolate. So when you mail out your Christmas cards and gifts this holiday season, think of Postmaster Graham’s wise words, and don’t forget our troops overseas!

Gabby Tuttle, KMBC Project staff/Liberal Arts (BA) student

Searching for Bob Dixon

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2011-12-13_BobDixon_Goldin_MysteryManThe rumors started going around one morning at a staff party. Apparently, a recording of Bob Dixon at his Penn State University class reunion was found. With an alma mater and a date it would be a simple matter of looking him up at Penn State and moving on to other sources to verify his identity. This was surely the key to solving the mystery of Bob Dixon.

Bob Dixon recorded thousands of radio programs and personal home recordings, many of which were later acquired by J. David Goldin and donated as part of a larger collection of radio recordings to the Marr Sound Archives. His identity had been a mystery to us all. We heard his voice on recordings while he showed off his recording equipment to visitors and recorded various functions. However, he gave few other clues about himself. All we could determine was that he was likely in the Pittsburgh area given the large number of recordings from Pittsburgh stations such as KDKA, WJAS, and KQV. Also, he seemed to record many of the same programs repeatedly, in particular, music programs and news programs. Along the way he happened to record many important moments in history. Even J. David Goldin himself was unsure of his true identity. The recordings he explained in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, had been housed in sealed wooden crates that he purchased from a rare records dealer who in turn had purchased them from a Pittsburgh real estate agent who found the crates in the basement of a home in the Pittsburgh area. Along with those of us working on cataloging these discs, Mr. Goldin himself wished he knew more about this mysterious man. We all had similiar questions. What kind of man was he? More importantly, what possessed him to record thousands and thousands of radio programs and then leave them boxed up in a basement?

Hoping to finally get to the bottom of the mystery, I retrieved the class reunion recording and took a listen. In different parts of the recording Bob Dixon is heard introducing a good friend of his from his Penn State days and someone is heard mentioning the Class of 1922 reunion. However, a look at Penn State’s online yearbook for the class of 1922 revealed no person named Bob or Robert Dixon. How could this be? Did he not really graduate from Penn State? Or perhaps in a different year? It seemed to be a dead end. Then I remembered that my co-worker had remarked that one of the only things written on the record sleeve was “A.H.S.” “H.S.” was surely short for “high school,” and as a former Pittsburgh resident I immediately associated the “A” with “Allegheny.” If this was a reunion for the Allegheny High School Class of 1922, then it was likely that he graduated from Penn State four years later in 1926. Sure enough, a search of Penn State’s Class of 1926 yearbook turned up a picture of Robert Christian Dixon of Millvale, a suburb of Pittsburgh. After sharing the discovery with fellow team members, we set off on a flurry of searching. Each new piece of information yielded more excitement. Even an archivist from another university joined in on the searching. We discovered census records, a picture of Bob Dixon in his high school band, a listing of his amateur radio station, and a website by an old family friend containing several pictures and even recollections of Dixon’s recording equipment.

A brief biography of information we have compiled reveals that he was born Robert (Bob) Christian Dixon on September 1, 1903 to Harry H. Dixon and Nellie M. Dixon. His father was originally from Northern Ireland and worked in real estate, and later, as Director of the Poor for Allegheny County. The family resided in Millvale, Pennsylvania. Bob Dixon attened Allegheny High School where he managed the school band and later graduated from the College of Arts and Letters, Pennsylvania State University in 1926 where he was in Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. He is listed as working in a real estate office at the age of 26. He had a wife name Petie, who was originally from West Virginia. He also operated an amateur radio station with the call signals 8CIR at 141 Evergreen St. in Millvale, likely his or his parents former home. Dixon died in February, 1980 in Pittsburgh.

While finally being able to know something about the life of the amazing man who made these recordings has been exciting and somewhat satisfying, the one question that we will all be left wondering is why. That is a question that will probably never be answered. I for one enjoy a little mystery and I am quite satisfied to just enjoy these amazing recordings that he left behind and to keep on wondering.

Timothy Gieringer, Goldin Project staff

Kansas City after the Pearl Harbor attack

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Pearl Harbor attackIn commemoration of Pearl Harbor day, I thought it might be nice to share with you what glimpse the Arthur B. Church collection offers us of how Kansas Citians reacted to the attack on Pearl Harbor. As you are probably aware, on the morning of December 7, 1941, isolationist sentiment in the United States was dealt a cruel dose of reality by Japanese militarism run amok, thanks to the hypnotic qualities of political syncretism, which had become all the rage at that moment in history.

Because programming relating to the war within this collection is predominantly composed of coverage following the D-day invasion, we have little formal documentation of reactions to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless, recordings of normal everyday news coverage of local events following December 7 of that year offer us a different and, perhaps, even more interesting lens through which to view this bygone moment of national, but also local trepidation. From the offerings of the collection, this takes the form of words spoken at the Kansas City Man of the Year award ceremony that was held on December 10, 1941—only three days after the attack (to offer a little context, this event fell two days after the United States declared war on Japan, but still a day prior to the declarations of war against Germany and Italy). Although several of those speaking that night broached the subject of war over the course of the roughly 40-minute program, the task of engaging the issue more directly fell to retired Rear Admiral Hayne Ellis of Kansas City, who had recently been designated the city’s Director of Civilian Defense. Although his comments on the coming war were somewhat scattered because they weren’t exactly topical at the award ceremony, they have a certain aggregate coherence and offer a quite plain message, so I have attempted to condense this aspect of his speech as follows:

“Ladies and gentlemen, the bugle call has sounded. In 1942, Kansas City will be a city at war. Kansas City in 1941 was not a war-like city, but it was not a sleeping city either. … Our large steel plants are working day and night to turn out tons and tons of the stuff that we need to lick Japan, yes, and Hitler too. … An industrial future for the Midwest in postwar days has been assured. And what is more important, we of Missouri and Kansas will be able to play a part in the industrial side of winning the war. … 1941 is almost over. Now bring on 1942. 1941 has been a year of peace and progress. 1942 will be an era of death and destruction. But we of Kansas City and we of America have met challenges and responsibilities before. We will not shake from them now. I know something about the caliber of our ships and men in the Pacific. I know something about our adversary, who three days ago struck with such a ruthless, premeditated and cowardly blow. I know something about you— you Kansas City men and women who will work and worry and sacrifice from now on. And lastly I know that, come what may, whether it be weeks, in months, or in years, the ultimate victory will be ours.”

We today might be inclined to wonder how Americans living in such dark times were able to cope with the dread of impending war, but the message to be taken away from both the retired admiral’s talk and the audience’s positive reception of it seems rather clear.  The evidence offered by this artifact from the airwaves suggests that the prevailing attitude—at least among residents of Kansas City—was one of steadfastness and optimism.

Dustin Stalnaker, KMBC Project staff/History (MA) student

Chuck Haddix to speak about “Brush Creek follies” tonight on KCUR

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Tune into KCUR 89.3 FM KC Currents, tonight at 8 p.m., to hear Alex Smith speaking with our own Chuck Haddix about The Brush Creek Follies and check out this wonderful digital exhibit by the folks in special collections.

Enjoy!

Practical pointers for Thanksgiving, courtesy of the Food Scout

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2011-11-17_FoodScout_Church_NutsWith Thanksgiving quickly approaching, we are reminded of the joys of the family feast, replete with turkey, stuffing, all the sides, and the awesome post-meal nap to come. But we are also reminded of the frustrations that come with trying to crack open those assorted holiday nuts and often ending up with pinched fingers or reducing the nut kernels to pitiful crumbs. We would just as soon pay double for the de-shelled nuts, except we spent all the extra money we had on the rising cost of Thanksgiving groceries. If only we had someone out there who could teach us the way….

Look no further! KMBC’s Food Scout is here to help! If you ever wanted to discover that “information in and about a nutshell,” June Martin is your gal. Sure, the advice may have been from 1940, but there are just some nut-cracking tips out there that are timeless, am I right?

Take the hard-shelled almond. They, along with other difficult nuts, simply need to be cracked efficiently at its point of weakness with the right amount of force, according to June: “Place it on the edge with the divided side up, and then strike it lightly on the divided edge. The kernel will come out in one piece then.” Not only did she divulge the secrets of the almond, but she also provided the hints you need to tackle the hazelnut, the pecan, English walnuts, and Brazil nuts. Take a listen to our sound clip of June’s sage and practical advice for this holiday season. To be sure, if you choose to arm yourself with the Food Scout’s tips for cracking shells, no nut is safe![audio:http://info.umkc.edu/specialcollections/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/2011-11-17_FoodScout_Church_kmbc-1036.mp3|titles=Food Scout Clip]

Christina Tomlinson, KMBC Project staff/History (MA) student

You may request access to the complete recording from the Marr Sound Archives.

Raymond G. Barnett on machine politics

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Boss Tom Pendergast posterNot long ago, while working through an agglomeration of municipal election coverage that citizens of Kansas City would have heard over local airwaves during the early 1940s, we came across a rather unusual political broadcast pertaining to the Kansas City mayoral election of 1942. In what initially seemed to herald yet another fifteen minutes of electioneering characterized by the formulaic repetition of cliched political phrases and the championing of hackneyed party platforms, as would have been consistent with other broadcasts we had theretofore encountered, the KMBC host introduced a Captain Raymond G. Barnett, who would speak on behalf of the Citizens’ Campaign Committee (an allegedly non-partisan, anti-corruption organization). In what followed, however, Mr. Barnett surprised us all. To call Mr. Barnett’s speech an impassioned plea to the Kansas City electorate would do it little justice. One might more appropriately label Mr. Barnett’s speech, at its climax, a vehement jeremiad of near-Shakespearean caliber, in which he condemned the corruption that had plagued Kansas City politics in recent decades and besought the local citizenry to recognize that machine politics were no mere specter of bygone years. What upon first hearing elicited amused laughter from all of us for its sheer eccentricity, however, must not be treated as an inexplicable oratorical aberration purely attributable to colorful idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Out of respect for this fragment of the past, which would likely but for the Arthur B. Church collection have been lost in the airwaves of history, we must endeavor to distill some concrete meaning from Mr. Barnett’s speech in order to discern its historical significance. To listen to an excerpt from the speech, click on the audio player below. [audio:http://info.umkc.edu/specialcollections/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/2011-11-09_RaymondBarnett_Church_kmbc-247.mp3|titles=Raymond G. Barnett Speech]

Born in 1882, Raymond G. Barnett was a western Illinois native who spent the later part of his youth in Kansas City, where he completed his high school education. He matriculated at the University of Missouri and later at Stanford University, where he earned both his Bachelor of Arts and law degrees. He later returned to Kansas City where, aside from a brief and unsuccessful candidacy for local office, he would serve as a legal professional for much of the remainder of his life. Notably, Mr. Barnett’s otherwise local lifestyle was interrupted in 1917 following his induction into the Army officer corps upon the United States’ entrance into the First World War, after which he was sent to serve in France. After the War, Captain Barnett returned to Kansas City where he would continue his professional career and remain politically active in support of the Republican Party into the late years of his life.

In view of Mr. Barnett’s personal background and the political context in which his speech aired, the visceral conviction that shone through his radio tirade becomes much more comprehensible. Having witnessed many horrors in the First World War suffered in what he certainly saw as the service of freedom, Captain Barnett must have been incensed by the corrupt political dynamics that emerged in his adopted home of Kansas City in the 1920s and 1930s. The very undemocratic nature of Tom Pendergast’s machine politics was clearly an affront to his sense of the democratic values that America represented, especially as his speech aired during the early months of American involvement in World War II. This comes through rather clearly in his insistence that Kansas City demonstrate that it was “keeping faith with the heroes and martyrs of the past who gave us freedom’s priceless heritage,” as well as his colorful, though unpleasant allusion to the human sacrifice unfolding on the battlefields at the time of his speech. A man of roughly 60 years of age at the time, Captain Barnett likely crafted both the prose and the delivery of his speech with the hope of cementing what he viewed as the true and hard-won legacy of his generation and that not yet secured by the young men then fighting overseas. Sidelined from active duty in the second Great War by the decrepitude of age, Captain Barnett likely saw himself as a soldier fighting for the cause of freedom on the home front.

Dustin Stalnaker, KMBC Project staff/History (MA) student

To access the complete recording, you may request the recording from the Marr Sound Archives.

The more things change…

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Harry S TrumanIn light of the recent debt ceiling showdown within the federal government, the continuing gridlock in Congress, and the increasing popularity of the Occupy Wall Street movement, it is important to remember that America has fought this same type of ideological battle many times before. Perhaps the most relevant historical examples for our own situation are the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. In the Arthur B. Church KMBC Collection, there are many speeches available for listening from this period. I’d like to focus on one in particular, a national address given by President Truman on 13 July 1949. It’s startling to hear the connections to our own time. Here is an excerpt from the speech. [audio:http://info.umkc.edu/specialcollections/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/2011-10-24_TrumanOnEconomy_Church_truman.mp3|titles=Truman on the Economy]

Consider the scene in July 1949: still fresh from World War II, less than one year from our foray into Korea, right in the middle of the Alger Hiss saga. Unemployment is high due to the influx of veterans and young people newly arrived to the American workforce, and the growth of the economy has slowed down significantly. In the midst of this, Truman is fighting a battle over the budget, a battle that extends back to the 80th Congress, called the “Do-Nothings” in a completely non-affectionate way by the President. At issue are government spending and the national debt. What to do about it is an answer that, clearly, we still haven’t figured out.

Truman, perhaps not the most gifted orator (especially when compared to his predecessor), is nonetheless appealing because a) he’s folksy and b) he sounds furious. He is the last president without a college education and that simple fact adds to his appeal, in this writer-with-crippling-student-loans’ opinion.

The speech itself is compelling because it may as well have been given last week. Confronting what he considers backwards logic from people with “selfish interests,” Truman argues that the worst things to try and cure a slow economy are cuts in spending or cuts in taxes. Instead, the government should increase revenues and spending in an effort to stimulate growth and reduce unemployment, and focus on deficits down the line. For a guy with no college education, he sounds suspiciously like numerous economists today.

It is interesting to note here, as with many historical documents, the ideological shift of the country’s two primary political parties over the years. Truman was a Democrat in many ways that are familiar to us today: expansion of the New Deal programs, increased regulation, etc. But it is fascinating to hear him argue with great vehemence for substantial military spending, a position that sounds much more like the Republican Party of the post-9/11 universe. Did he know that there would be an upcoming engagement across the world at that time? It’s hard not to assume so; there were certainly plenty of skirmishes at the 38th Parallel in Korea at the end of Chinese Civil War and through the remainder of 1949.

Most people are familiar with George Santayana’s quote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it.”  Perhaps as many as are familiar with Carlos Santana’s quote “I don’t actually speak <insert guitar riff here>.” When it comes to matters economic, it is hard to tell if our current lawmakers remember Santayana’s exhortation about the past, or Santana’s smash hit “Smooth” featuring the dulcid tones of Matchbox 20’s Rob Thomas for that matter! It is somehow both comforting and disconcerting to know that we’ve struggled with these same issues, frankly, since the birth of our nation: comforting because America may have reached its zenith in the decades after this speech; disconcerting because we’ve come full circle–and then some–and still don’t know what to do.

Erik Klackner, guest contributor

To access the complete recording, you may request part 1 and part 2 from the Marr Sound Archives.

Labor Days of yore

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2011-09-01_LaborDay_Church The first Monday every September is Labor Day, and it has been ever since legislation was rushed through Congress in merely six days in 1894. Americans celebrate Labor Day by engaging in the most relaxing pastimes: closing public pools, preparing for football season, putting their white linen pants at the back of the closet, and partaking of a staggering array of grilled meats. The day was initially proposed to celebrate the “strength and esprit de corps of trade and labor organizations” at a time when unions were incredibly powerful. Their power has eroded in the 107 years since Labor Day was declared a national holiday, but I think I can speak for all of us when I thank the gentlemen from the Pullman Strike of 1893 for getting a Federal holiday as a token of reconciliation from President Grover Cleveland and company.

Labor Day 2011 comes at an ironic time, with unemployment at 9.1% and the economy still not recovered from the crisis of 2008, but one need only to look back 70 years to see a Labor Day on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. And thanks to the Arthur B. Church KMBC Radio Collection at UMKC, we cannot just look back, we can listen up.

On September 1, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered a radio address rife with the emotion of impending war. Less than a month earlier, Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill to draft the Atlantic Charter; within a month, the USS Greer was fired upon by a German submarine and the first Moscow Conference began. A mere three months later, Roosevelt would deliver the most famous speech of his life on “a day which will live in infamy” and war was declared on Japan.

American labor in September 1941 was engaged largely in the task of producing weapons of war despite the United States’ neutrality at the time. Roosevelt speaks to this dichotomy by declaring that “We have never sought glory as a Nation of warriors. We are not interested in aggression. We are not interested—as the dictators are—in looting. We do not covet one square inch of the territory of any other Nation. Our vast effort, and the unity of purpose that inspires that effort, are due solely to our recognition of the fact that our fundamental rights-including the rights of labor—are threatened by Hitler’s violent attempt to rule the world.”

It is endlessly fascinating to view this speech through the lens of the history that we know occurred after it was given. Two things particularly leap to mind. First, Adolf Hitler was an actual living person, a world leader in the middle of an intensely terrifying quest for world dominance. Over the course of time, that fact has been obscured by the invocation of Hitler and Nazism as code words for anything we find disagreeable, but there was a time when Hitler was “current events,” and hearing Roosevelt speak about the need to support the Allies in their efforts against the Nazi regime reminds us of that. Second, it is startling to hear the evolution of the United States as an international power. It took less than twenty years for us to go from Roosevelt’s powerful message of weaponry production as a defense for our fundamental rights to perhaps the greatest presidential farewell address of all-time, Dwight Eisenhower’s profound warning about the ever-expanding military-industrial complex.

You can read this speech online, as you can with lots of great speeches, but it’s really amazing to hear the words spoken.[audio:http://info.umkc.edu/specialcollections/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2011-09-01_LaborDay_Church.mp3|titles=FDR Labor Day address]Roosevelt was an incredibly gifted speaker, filled with extreme intensity, and the Labor Day 1941 speech is a perfect example of his skills.

Of all the ways to document history, audio is the most captivating. This is an obvious thing when you’re talking about a speech, perhaps, but it holds true for anything. Watch video of the Hindenburg disaster with no sound and it is certainly eye-opening. But it really becomes heartbreaking when you hear Herb Morrison fight back tears and try and put into words what happened. Ditto the Kirk Gibson home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, perhaps the most famous play in baseball history. The story is great, the video is great, but it becomes a transcendent moment when you hear Ernie Harwell’s call of “I don’t believe what I just saw!”

There are a lot of great historical audio recordings to be found in the KMBC collection at UMKC, including a great deal more from President Roosevelt. History comes alive when you hear it, and when I listened to the Labor Day speech I felt connected to a time and a place that I have no real comprehension of. I could practically taste the doctor-recommended Chesterfield brand cigarettes! Roosevelt’s Labor Day speech, and many of the others available, give us an opportunity to be in the moments that our parents and their parents lived.

Happy Labor Day, America!

Erik Klackner, guest contributor

Welcome to UMKC Special Collections

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Welcome to the UMKC Special Collections blog! We are the rare books and manuscripts department of Miller Nichols Library, and our department also includes the Marr Sound Archives, a collection of over 330,000 sound recordings!  The rare book collection centers centers on Western Americana, with an emphasis on Kansas and Missouri; the strength of the manuscript collection is music (particularly Kansas City jazz) as well as the recently formed Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid-America; and the Marr Sound Archives seeks to preserve the American experience as reflected in recorded sound. We serve the students, faculty, and staff of the University of Missouri–Kansas City as well as community researchers locally, nationally, and globally.

We hope to use this blog to keep you updated on interesting content from our collections, programming and other activities we sponsor, and special projects we are working on. One such project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, focuses on cataloging and preserving the transcription and lacquer discs from Kansas City radio station KMBC. These recordings form part of the Arthur B. Church KMBC Radio Collection along with promotional materials, a station timeline, business correspondence, ledgers, and contracts. The audio discs, containing local and national entertainment, news, special events, and speeches, reveal the history of Kansas City and the world from the 1930s through 1950s. Much of the national coverage originates from the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and follows war-time events and the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. The project to catalog and preserve the contents of the audio recordings started in May and has already unlocked programming from over 350 discs! As we delve further into the KMBC collection and other collections in LaBudde Special Collections, we look forward to sharing our discoveries!

Stuart Hinds, Director of Special Collections, UMKC Libraries