100 Years of 100 Things: Music on WNYC

Matt Katz: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Matt Katz, keeping the big seat warm for Brian today. Tonight Brian will host a live radio broadcast from Summer Stage in Central Park to celebrate the station's 100th birthday. He'll be joined by some of your favorite public radio voices for a lineup of conversation, trivia, and music. The event starts at 7:00 p.m. It's free, no RSVP required, so hope to see you out there. If you can't make it in person, we'll actually broadcast it live right here at 93.9 FM, AM 820, and wnyc.org. So tune in there. And in honor of tonight's event, we now continue our WNYC Centennial Series, 100 Years of 100 Things. And this week we're up to thing 19, 100 years of music on WNYC. For the past century, this station has brought all sorts of talent on the air, and joining us now to take us through WNYC's musical legacy is none other than John Schaefer, host of WNYC's New Sounds. Hey, John.

John Schaefer: Hi, Matt.

Matt Katz: Welcome back of course. Listeners, we will open the phones for you right away on this one, wondering if any of you might have a favorite music memory from the station. Anything you heard recently or decades ago that might've perked up your ears, might've-- something you might remember. Have you discovered a new genre or artist because of new sounds or anything else you've heard on this station?

Share your stories with us. You can give us a call, 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692 feel free to text us at that number if you don't want to give us a call. And so John, let's begin a long, long time ago, 1931. This, I understand, is the oldest recording that we have in our archives.

John Schaefer: It is the oldest music recording that we have, yes for an almost hilarious reason. WNYC was forced to share its frequency with WMCA for a time in the 1920s, which was not an uncommon thing back then. We were being sued essentially by WMCA because WNYC was not going off the air and playing nicely with WNYC. As part of the court filings, they made recordings of both stations, just little clips to play in court.

This 1931 recording of a singer named Virginia Philbin singing the popular song Goodnight Sweetheart comes down to us simply because of that trial.

[music - Virginia Philbin: Goodnight Sweetheart.]

John Schaefer: If you were listening to WNYC, early December 1931, you might've heard Virginia Philbin doing that live performance in the studio of the Ray Noble song, Goodnight Sweetheart.

Matt Katz: How cool. Static notwithstanding. The voice is beautiful. It's a lovely-- It sounds like [crosstalk].

John Schaefer: It sounds like 1931, doesn't it? [laughs]

Matt Katz: It certainly does. All right.

John Schaefer: And I have to thank our archivist, Andy Lancet, who has dug up all of this stuff because these were not in our archives. He got this from elsewhere.

Matt Katz: Incredible.

John Schaefer: Yes. A lot of work going into expanding our archives in the build-up to the centennial.

Matt Katz: He also dug up, we'll go a few years forward, a clip from 1940, Woody Guthrie on Leadbelly's show. Leadbelly had a show on--

John Schaefer: Leadbelly had several shows on WNYC pretty much throughout the 1940s. He would often sing and play himself and tell stories, but he also had guests and in 1940, one of his guests was a young, but already making a name for himself, folk singer named Woody Guthrie. There's a thing that folk singers did a lot back then, and they still do now, where they take a received song and add their own words to it. Woody Guthrie did this a lot.

He was a protest singer. This song we're about to hear, it's Woody Guthrie talking about very contemporary social and political things to the tune of the old folk song John Hardy.

[music: Woody Guthrie]

Matt Katz: So cool. First of all, you can hear how the recording is slightly improved.

John Schaefer: Yes.

Matt Katz: This is all live? I mean, he's just in front of them. Do you imagine how this might have gone down?

John Schaefer: Some of Leadbelly's stuff appears to have been live. This sounds like it's been pre-recorded because there is a WNYC host introducing Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie in turn. As I say, there were several Leadbelly shows in the 1940s. This one sounds like something that was done in advance and then post-produced, as they say.

Matt Katz: Got it. I believe the next clip here, Béla Bartók at the--

John Schaefer: Actually, we've done the '40s, why don't we skip to the '50s?

Matt Katz: All right, great. What do you got from the '50?

John Schaefer: Believe it or not, guest DJ Eleanor Roosevelt-

[laughter]

Matt Katz: Love it.

John Schaefer: -who not only-- I mean, I wish I could play the whole shows that I've pulled these clips from because Eleanor Roosevelt speaking in this very patrician voice is taking calls from kids and in this clip, you hear her talking to a grammar school kid from the Bronx and taking her request.

Eleanor Roosevelt: What would you like me to play at your request?

Listener: Would you please play Love Me?

Eleanor Roosevelt: And who do you want to have sing it?

Listener: Elvis Presley.

Eleanor Roosevelt: All right.

[music: Elvis Presley- Love Me.]

John Schaefer: Bring.

Speaker C: My faithful heart tear it on apart but love me, won't you love me?

Matt Katz: Awesome.

John Schaefer: Yes. Eleanor Roosevelt.

Matt Katz: Obviously, her husband has passed and she's living in New York and would come down to the station for these shows.

John Schaefer: Yes. Well, and it wasn't just to spin tunes. She was a very active proponent of the March of Dimes and all of the children on this particular show that she took calls from had had polio. It was all as a fundraiser for the March of Dimes and to raise awareness for polio treatment and the new vaccine and all that kind of stuff. When she came to the station in those years, it was generally to do that sort of work.

Matt Katz: We have a bunch of callers who have their John Schaefer and music memories from WNYC, and I think the next caller might help us set up the next clip. Julie from Hastings. Hi, Julie. Thanks for calling in.

Julie: Oh, thank you so much for taking the call. Thank you for this great episode segment and I'm sure John Schaefer was going to mention him, but I just wanted to underscore, give a shout-out to Oscar Brand.

John Schaefer: Yes. You're helping me set up, as Matt intimated, the next track because, in fact, Oscar Brand, who hosted the folk song festival on WNYC from the close of World War II well into this century, he was the first to sniff out all of the new trends in folk music. He knew The Weavers before they were The Weavers, and in 1961, he had a young folk singer named Bob Dylan come into the studio and remember, this is his first interview on the radio.

He's just come to New York. He's begun to make a name for himself on the club scene in Greenwich Village, but he's still largely an unknown quantity. Listen to how he is already as a young man, spinning his own mythology before he actually favors us with a song.

Oscar Brand: Bob was born in Duluth, Minnesota, but Bob, you weren't raised in Duluth, were you?

Bob Dylan: I was raised in Gallup, New Mexico.

Oscar Brand: Did you get many songs there?

Bob Dylan: Got a lot of cowboy songs there, Indian songs, carnival songs, [unintelligible 00:09:44] kind of stuff.

Oscar Brand: Where'd you get your carnival songs from?

Bob Dylan: People in the Carnival.

Oscar Brand: Did you travel with it or did you watch the Carnival?

Bob Dylan: I traveled with the Carnival when I was about 13 years old.

Oscar Brand: For how long?

Bob Dylan: For all the way up till I was 19. Every year, off and on, I joined different carnivals.

[music: Bob Dylan]

Matt Katz: And John, can we fact-check Bob Dylan there?

John Schaefer: I was just going to say, only a real spoilsport would want to bring up Wikipedia and figure out, did Bob Dylan really grow up in Gallup, New Mexico, and go out with the carnival? Robert Zimmerman maybe didn't, but Bob Dylan in his own mythology did, I guess. It may not be factual, but it feels true.

Matt Katz: It does feel--

John Schaefer: Oscar brand with the folk song festival, 1961.

Matt Katz: Julie wanted to talk about Oscar Brand a little bit. I mean, tell us about-- how long was he on the station?

John Schaefer: Oh, my God. Something like 70-odd years and he never got-- he was very proud of doing it. All that time as a volunteer and never accepted a penny. He did-- it was basically half an hour a week. He did one half-hour show. When I first came here in 1981, one of my jobs was to rack up the tape of Oscar Brand's weekly folk song festival. Oscar had been here so long that often the tapes were really old and on more than one occasion, getting ready to play the reel-to-reel tape on the air, it would break in my hands as I was threading it into the machine, and I'd have to quickly splice it together. It was a different time. What can I say?

Matt Katz: You lived through these tremendously different eras, and now we're streaming digitally all over the world.

John Schaefer: Right. And the idea of razor blades and grease pencils and splicing tape, I wouldn't trade those days for anything. I think you learn a lot about the editing process, but digital makes everything so much easier.

Matt Katz: We have a memory from about that era. Sally from the Upper West Side. Hi, Sally, you're on with John Schaefer.

Sally: Well, I'm so glad that you mentioned that you came there in 1981 because it puts a time frame on when this memory was. This was back in the time when volunteers took all the donations, and a friend and I came in. You were in some offices in City Hall, I think.

John Schaefer: 1 Center Street, the municipal building.

Sally: I came in and you were there and I had been to Senegal, West Africa, to visit a friend in the Peace Corps and had made some recordings. It was a tiny little village near the Mali border, and you had played a couple of nights before on a world music thing, a tape of-- it sounded exactly like it was in Pulaar, sounded exactly like the tape that I had made. I told you about it, and you said, "Well, I don't think it was the same village, but it was certainly in Senegal, near the Mali border." It was just such a wonderful coincidence.

I had obviously been listening to world music, but it certainly-- I continued on it and I've always followed your new music as well.

John Schaefer: Well, thank you so much. I mean, it's a great memory and just in 1981, the sounds of West African music, whether traditional or pop, there were relatively few people listening to that back then. You were clearly not just listening, but going there, recording it. I think about today and the sounds of Nigerian pop music have become global. I mean, people like Burna Boy are huge figures throughout the world. That has been a real sea change in the last 40 years.

Matt Katz: You would not be exposed to that otherwise, at that time. We have one other memory from this era. Let's go to Joseph calling it, apparently from the parking lot off the New York state throughway. Joseph, thanks for pulling over before you call. Hi, Joseph?

Joseph: Yes, hello. Can you hear me?

John Schaefer: Yes, sir.

Joseph: Okay. Yes, I remember in the 1970s, Andre Bernard was the host of Around New York and he used to have classical groups on-- and I think it might've been every day in the morning, but we would record the program the day before in the afternoon, and then he would replay it the next day.

John Schaefer: So were you on the program?

Joseph: Yes, I was on it, four or five times as a young clarinetist.

Matt Katz: How about that?

John Schaefer: This is another bit of WNYC history. That name, around New York recurs throughout our history for very different shows. I had a program in the 1990s called Around New York because I was also bringing in ensembles to play live on the air every afternoon, and it seemed like an extension of what Andre had done. Andre Bernard was here right up until the early '90s and and man, oh, man, if you were a young radio guy, there was no easier way to feel inadequate than to be in a room with Andre Bernard, who just had these pipes.

Matt Katz: Yes, tremendous.

John Schaefer: Yes.

Matt Katz: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. I'm WNYC reporter Matt Katz, filling in for Brian today. My guest is John Schaefer, host of WNYC's New Sounds. Been on our air since 1981 and we're talking 100 years of music on WNYC ahead of tonight's Summer Stage event in Central Park, which I hope all of you might come out to tonight. Now, since we were going a little global, let's go to the sitar master, Ravi Shankar. This is a clip from a live broadcast from the UN?

John Schaefer: From the United Nations back in 1967 and it's not just Ravi Shankar, he's performing a duet here with the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin. The two of them were friends. They collaborated on a number of occasions during their respective careers, but this one for Human Rights Day at the United Nations General Assembly, was part of a WNYC broadcast.

[music - Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin]

Matt Katz: That was for a Human Rights Day at the UN?

John Schaefer: Yes, it was Human Rights Day, 1967 at the UN General Assembly, and we were broadcasting speeches, the whole event. There were various music performances from around the world, including this performance of Raghpilu by the great Ravi Shankar, who would go on to be a guest here in our studios on many occasions over the years. And Lord Yehudi Menuhin actually he wasn't Lord Yehudi Menuhin back then. He might've been Sir at that point, but we're talking 1967.

Matt Katz: We're going to take a quick break, but we will be back in a minute as WNYC's New Sounds host, John Schaefer takes us through thing number 19 in our series, 100 Years of 100 Things, music on WNYC. Back in a minute with more music and more of your calls. Stay tuned. It's the Brian Lehrer show. I'm Matt Katz, filling in for Brian today, and we are talking about music on WNYC with New Sounds' John Schaefer.

Listeners, the phones are still open. If you have a favorite music memory from the station, anything you've heard over the years that perked up your ears, have you discovered a new genre or artist? Give us a call, 212-433-WNYC. Or text 212-433-9692. One of the guests tonight will be Laurie Anderson, and we have a clip. She's the pioneering electronic musician. A career spanned 55 years. She's going to be on stage with you tonight for the event. This is an interview? Set this up.

John Schaefer: I got here in 1981. In 1982, I started New Sounds, and it was just a record show. It was basically my record collection. At the end of December or maybe early January of 1983, I had my first guest, and it was Laurie Anderson. I know that we aired the thing in January of 1983 because it was right before she went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to unveil her mammoth music theater piece called United States. A two night, four part work.

By that point, she'd already made a name for herself with an unexpected hit song called O Superman, which got as high as number two on the pop charts in Britain. In this clip of the interview, you hear a little bit of the song, but you also hear Laurie talking about what that totally unexpected and weird experience was like.

The song went to, I think it got as far as number two in Great Britain.

Laurie Anderson: Yes, and I didn't know what the charts were in Britain, really, when it got on them so it didn't matter to me. People kept calling up and saying, you're number eight. It was totally abstract. I just thought, eight on what?

[music - Laurie Anderson: O Superman]

John Schaefer: That was January 1983. I hear the queen's accent coming through, little Johnny Shaffer going, it got as high as number two.

Matt Katz: It's very cool to hear you from 40 years ago.

John Schaefer: I don't think I could talk like that now, actually.

[laughter]

Matt Katz: We have Steve in Upper Manhattan, who has a music memory from WNYC. Hi, Steve.

Steve: Hey, thanks for having me on. Great segment. At some point early on in the pandemic, Brian Lehrer interviewed Joy Harjo, who I should have heard of as the National Poet Laureate, but I didn't know who she was. It was such a powerful interview, and her voice was so emotive that I had-- and she invoked John Coltrane, Miles Davis so I went out and listened to this album, and I listened to it basically every day for the rest of the pandemic. It helped me get through I Pray for My Enemies.

It is so complex and I've read her memoirs since then, and I've been talking about her to everyone I know and this interview really changed my life. That was a powerful segment.

John Schaefer: Yes, and Joy Harjo, actually the only-- I believe she is the only three-time poet laureate of the United States. She is native Muskogee and she is best known as a poet. She's also a very fine singer and sax player. Yes, Joy Harjo, definitely-- I mean, however you find out about her, find out about her.

Matt Katz: It's so cool to hear these memories and how music really sticks in your brain and it's just cool that WNYC had such a major role in that. Of course, you being the music guy for the station, I mean, you've had--

John Schaefer: The implied phrase there is for such a very long time. What are you really saying, Matt?

Matt Katz: I'm saying it must be quite the-- it's a privilege for all of us to hear you through the years, but it must be a privilege for you to have had this opportunity, right?

John Schaefer: Absolutely. It's been a journey of discovery for me as well. When people say, "Wow, how did you know about that?" Very often I say, I didn't. I found it by putting this show together the same way that you did listening to it so yes, it's been an amazing ride.

Matt Katz: We have a caller, another Steve. Let's go to Steven in Brooklyn, who has another specific and quite cool WNYC musical memory. Hi, Steven.

Steven: Hi. Good morning, Matt and John. WNYC was a very important classical music station in its day and in the late '50s, when I was a teenager, I gave two live piano recitals on one program called Young America Plays, and the other was Young American Artist. And I remember that very fondly. Don't know if the archives department has recordings of those, but that was common, that people would give live classic music recitals.

John Schaefer: Well, and this goes back to the Around New York thing that we were talking about earlier. That has been a part of WNYC from the beginning. We don't have tapes of the first years of the show, but we do have logs that show that live music from day one, it was actually a nighttime that we went on the air. Night number one began with music. It began with the national anthem and included lots of music.

The claim to fame for WNYC was actually the Masterwork Hour, which was radio's oldest continuous broadcast of recorded classical music. I think it was 1927, we started broadcasting records as opposed to live music, which was a completely new idea, at least for classical music back then. Actually, when I was first hired here in 1981, that was my gig. I was the host of the Masterwork Hour.

Matt Katz: It's so interesting. Music has just been in our DNA from the jump.

John Schaefer: Yes, and we have always been aware of the fact that there were people who came to us for news and people who came to us for music and that if we wanted to really serve both groups, we needed two radio stations. It took a very, very long time to make that a reality. Now we have done it. It's been over 10 years since we bought WQXR from the New York Times, and that is where our classical music service continues to this day.

Matt Katz: We have a caller who I believe sets up the next clip that we want to play.

John Schaefer: So fun.

Matt Katz: Estelle in Brooklyn. Hi, Estelle.

Estelle: Hi. I remember fondly Steve Post and Morning Music and his news reports, which turned the news on its head, was one of the really wonderful things about WNYC. Estelle, I couldn't agree more. When I first got here and I heard what we were doing on this program called Morning Music, I was like, like, who is this guy? Does he even know the music? I mean, it's just, he was amazing to listen to.

He would just tell these stories and crack these jokes. He was a genuine New York character. I grew to be immensely fond of him. Totally irascible. The guy you heard on the radio was the guy you met on the street. There was no artifice there and he never made any pretense of being an expert in classical music. He knew what he liked, but he adhered to zero rules. Listen to how he, I'll use the word very loosely here, introduces George Gershwins Prelude no. 1.

Steve Post: My father's favorite expression. Oh, if there are kiddies listening, you may not want them to hear this, but my father, when he drove, he was a very good driver. He'd been an ambulance driver during World War II, but whenever he was driving and was annoyed by the way somebody else was driving, he'd roll down the window and he'd yell, "Mister, you drive like my ass." And it took me years before I realized, what does this mean? You drive like my ass. I still haven't figured it out. Maybe somebody out there can help.

[music: George Gershwin: Prelude no. 1]

John Schaefer: I don't know about you, Matt, but would you rather wake up in the morning and hear someone say, "And now here's George Gershwin's prelude number one." Or would you rather hear that Steve Post doing Steve Post stuff?

Matt Katz: Incredible. And that would've been--

John Schaefer: That was not just Steve Post in 1994, that was Steve Post during a very important fundraising drive in 1994. That's when all the handbrakes came off. Not that they were ever on with him, but yes, that's Steve Post in full-on fundraising mode.

Matt Katz: Now we know our listeners remember him. This is the kind of thing that people remember and that connects people to the station. Incredible. I want to play a clip from Adele. Adele on soundtrack back in 2011. You want to set this up first?

John Schaefer: Well, her big hit song Rolling in the Deep. You know the song, it's big, almost orchestral, kind of pop. She came in with just a pianist. For me, the mark of a good song has always been that you can strip it down and just examine the bones of the song and it's still a good song. Adele, she brought it.

[music - Adele: Rolling in the Deep]

John Schaefer: That is Adele performing live in our studio on Soundcheck, which is twice a weekly podcast of live performances and interviews that I still host today. That was 2011. Adele singing Rolling in the Deep.

Matt Katz: So awesome. John, tell us about tonight. You'll be joined by Brian Lehrer, Eric Glass. It's all at Summer Stage in Central Park. What should we expect from WNYC's centennial celebration tonight?

John Schaefer: Lots of music, lots of trivia, comedy, performance. Performers include mxmtoon, very gifted young indie pop singer-songwriter, our old friend Laurie Anderson, who has been a true friend of this station for over 40 years. At Freestyle Love Supreme, which is the group that was founded by Lin Manuel Miranda. It's just going be a lot of fun. It's a beautiful day, it should be a beautiful evening and come out to Central Park Summer stage.

Matt Katz: Folks might want to see John Schaefer in person, see the face behind the voice.

John Schaefer: Face made for radio, as the saying goes.

Matt Katz: As they say. Well, John, thank you for doing this. Thank you for introducing myself personally and New York to all of this amazing music through the years. It's such a service to the city, it's a service to the station, and it's so cool that you brought all these amazing clips. Appreciate you doing this.

John Schaefer: Thank you, Matt.

Matt Katz: I would love to go out today on the national anthem. This is from, I believe this is--

John Schaefer: This is the recreation of that first night that we went on the air when the national anthem was performed by the police department band. We got Arturo O'Farrill, the Grammy-winning Latin jazz pianist, and his sextet to accompany the fine opera singer J'Nai Bridges.

Matt Katz: That is so cool. Well, you've been listening to the Brian Lehrer Show. I'm Matt Katz, filling in for Brian Lehrer. We hope to see you tonight at Summer Stage at 7:00 p.m. Thanks for listening, everybody. Stay tuned for All of It and let's listen to the national anthem on the way out.

[music - national anthem: J'Nai Bridges]

 

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