68 – Tony Schwartz: 30,000 Recordings Later

The Kitchen Sisters Present

The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia

Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2017

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cab drivers, children’s jump rope rhymes, folk songs, dialects, controversial TV ads, interviews with blacklisted artists and writers during the McCarthy Era — Tony Schwartz was one of the great sound recordists and collectors of the 20th Century. An audio portrait of a man who spent his life exploring and influencing the world through recorded sound.

It was 1947 when Tony first stepped out of his apartment in midtown Manhattan with his microphone to capture the sound of his neighborhood. He was a pioneer recordist, experimenting with microphones and jury-rigging tape recorders to make them portable (some of these recordings were first published by Folkways Records). His work creating advertising and political TV and radio commercials is legendary.

The Kitchen Sisters visited Tony in his midtown basement studio in 1999. He had just finished teaching a media class at Harvard by telephone — Tony was agoraphobic and hardly ever ventured beyond his postal zone. He was there in his studio surrounded by reel to reel tape recorders, mixing consoles, framed photographs and awards — and row upon row of audio tapes in carefully labeled boxes.

Tony passed away in 2008. His collection now resides in the Library of congress — 90.5 linear feet, 230 boxes, 76,345 items — some 30,000 folk songs, poems, conversations, stories and dialects from his surrounding neighborhood and 46 countries around the world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Radio Topia, welcome to the Kitchen Sisters Presently.
0:04.2	We're the Kitran Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nicki Silva.
0:09.2	Hi there, thank you so much to everyone who has already donated to support
0:16.1	Radiotopia and this show during our fall fundraiser. I love reading the
0:20.5	comments listeners leave when you donate like this one from a
0:23.1	listener who says all my favorite podcasts are Radiotopia Podcasts. Thanks for the
0:28.4	work you do. That's from Kristen D. Thank you Kristen. Our fundraiser is coming to a close later this month. If we reach our goal of 1,000 donors, after the holidays we'll share a digital zine with everyone who donated to help us get there. But we're still a little short.
0:43.0	As of this recording, we still need 160 more listeners to donate.
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0:58.3	fund our show, it's also a vote of confidence, a statement that shows like this should exist. Thank you so much for
1:05.5	listening and supporting our work. You can head to radiotopia. FM slash
1:10.7	donate to make your gift today.
1:13.0	Thank you very much.
1:15.0	It was February 3rd, 1956 when Tony Schwartz appeared at the information desk of the animal shelter to ask for a dog.
1:24.0	The attendant will take you into the adoption ward and ward, eh?
1:27.0	Look the dogs over and if there's anything you select, you tell them that's the dog you want.
1:32.0	These are obedience-trained dogs working toward degrees,
1:37.0	which of course that's like receiving a college diploma.
1:40.0	I did a radio program on sound once a week on WNYC for over 35 years. I would do it on any
1:48.2	subject that came up to me during the week. That's Tony Schwartz, one of the great sound collectors,
	...

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