In the early 2000s, a college student working in a library at the University of Maryland pulled on headphones and carefully slipped an acetate transcription record from its protective sleeve. Despite its designation, the record was actually made of glass with a lacquer coating; it was typical for radio station recorded programing from the 1930s through the 1940s. The student marveled again that the disc remained unbroken and relatively well preserved despite having been retrieved from a dumpster by a radio station engineer and then stored in his home until after his death in 1998.
What she heard on that disc amazed her. It was the 1938 recording of a professional female jazz band that had been played on Cincinnati radio station WLW. Imagine her surprise — the conventional wisdom was that female jazz performers weren’t really recognized until after World War II took the male musicians to fight for their country. But here was proof that a female jazz group was featured a full three years before the United States entered the war. That student, Laura Schnitker, ended up using this discovery as part of her doctoral research. She later became the curator for the mass media and culture special collection at the University of Maryland.
I thought about this story when I read Hank Price’s recent column about surviving consolidation. It’s not just people that hit the cutting block under new management. Consider what would have been lost if WLW broadcast engineer Edwin B. Dooley had not had