Speechification

A mini-post featuring something from Charles Wheeler’s archive: three-and-a-half minutes recorded on the fourth of April 1968, the day of Martin Luther King’s assassination (MP3).

Here’s a reminder of the richness and surprise that’s on offer all over the BBC’s radio output. Watchification contributor Jem Stone told me I ought to nip over to Radio 2’s web site and listen to Jarvis Cocker’s programme about Sheffield, which he said was excellent. But I was too late, by about half an hour. So I poked around a bit and came across this really marvelous one-hour feature—presented by one-time guest Joan Rivers—about The Ed Sullivan show, on the occasion of its Sixtieth birthday. Perfection (MP3).

I’ll admit that by the end of his 58-year Sunday morning reign I was thoroughly bored of Alistair Cooke, droning on as he had for all of my remembered years plus about another twenty. Reading his unending bloody series of bloody letters, all from bloody America (did he never go anywhere else?). Now, though, revived for one week only, four years after his death (and all that nastiness with the stolen body), I hear something quite different—and it’s a real joy. It’s his language, of course: so courtly but also relaxed, effortless. He was an extraordinary communicator.

The BBC’s North America editor, Justin Webb, has picked five letters, each from a different US election campaign, going all the way back to 1948. Here’s number two, which is about an incident in Lyndon B. Johnson’s campaign at the height of the Vietnam War. The other programmes are here. but you’ll have to get a move on: the clock is ticking and they’ll be replaced by next week’s Book of the Week… er… next week.

Misha Glenny’s new book McMafia: Crime Without Frontiers has been recieving excellent notices all over town, and the World Service have snapped him up for a four-part series charting the explosive growth of international crime following the end of the Cold War and other conflicts. He estimates that industrious crooks account for a fairly staggering 20% of the world’s GDP.

In the first programme [MP3] Glenny travels to British Columbia to meet the Canadian weed growers who use science (and Blackberries) to get their product over their border to a wealthy, heavily toking, but increasingly annoyed US. Access is key here, and as a former and much-honoured reporter in the former Yugoslavia (him, not me), I look forward to seeing who he’s cosied up to next week, reporting on cigarette smuggling in the Balkans.

Ooh, lovely. A ten-part history of the FBI from Tom Mangold - in bite-size fifteen-minute chunks. Not currently available as a podcast - which is a real pity. Wouldn’t it be nice to listen to a new episode each morning on the way to work? Terrific stuff, anyway, with lots of interesting contributors, Mangold’s authoritative tone and plenty of that terrific pre-war archive stuff about the red peril. Here’s episode one, which is about the early days, obviously. The other episodes should show up here, as they go out.

A typically classy Studio 360 programme, in their ‘American Icons’ series, about a building and a man, but a whole lot more - the Lincoln Memorial, and Abraham Lincoln, but also America itself. Highlights? A scratchy recording of Frank Lloyd Wright not exactly sparing the rod when describing the memorial, the moving recollections of Dr. King’s justly legendary speech and Marion Anderson’s less well known but almost equally significant performance, and the music includes phrases from one of my favourite pieces, Aaron Copland’s ‘Billy the Kid’.

Studio 360: American Icons: The Lincoln Memorial (mp3)

Stephen “The Office” Merchant is obviously a real telly enthusiast. Here he tells the story of edgy, 35 year-old American phenomenon HBO. Lots of excellent contributors and clips from all the top shows, especially from the last decade - and a show that handily defines Radio 2’s mission: unpretentious, grown-up factual programming with a current pop culture theme (MP3). Last year Merchant presented an equally good show about Seventies TV comedy landmark Taxi - for Radio 4 (MP3).

Sometimes good radio leaves me in awe. It’s the patience, the respect for material, the attention to process. Here’s a good example. Sarah Cuddon has visited and recorded the wives of the first generation of American astronauts and she’s come back with something quite thoughtful, sad and lovely (MP3).

In 1958 USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine - an unqualifed triumph of American ingenuity - sailed submerged from the Pacific to the Atlantic by way of the North Pole and sent the remarkable signal: “Nautilus 90 North”. The programme (another Archive Hour highlight, this one from March 2006) makes use of evocative tapes recorded on-board during the amazing voyage and the voices of surviving crew (including later-to-be-President Jimmy Carter).

And, since I’m here. Remind me someone: why doesn’t Archive Hour have a decent archive? MP3.

I’m putting this up quick because I reckon the five (five already!) Speechification contributors will be racing to do so. Since the rest of them probably have better things to do with their Saturday nights, I’m first! It’s another Archive Hour (I love the Archive Hour).

This one celebrates found and accidental and informal and amateur recordings collected by American independent media celebrities the ‘Kitchen Sisters’, Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson, for broadcast on their NPR radio show Lost and Found Sound.

If Russell’s last selection was Speechification crack, then this one must be Speechification cocoa. It’s full of breathtaking recordings from sources you won’t believe: 9/11 voicemail messages, a Buster Keaton sing-along, Tennessee Williams mucking around with his friends, a man who actually heard the Gettysburg Address… Moving and joyful stuff. (MP3).

And another thing: why don’t they just turn Saturday Live into a British Lost and Found Sound?