Archive for July, 2007

FTV 064 Freedom Now! Part Two

Posted in Update on July 27th, 2007

This week’s special episode is comprised of powerful audio from the documentary, Freedom Now!, first featured on this show several months ago… due to From the Vault’s time format, however, we couldn’t share all of the historic sound we hoped to the first time ’round. So, we’re making up for it now!

As the United States entered the 1960’s, perhaps no other city in America was as segregated as Birmingham, Alabama, and this basic condition expected the likely conclusion of a civil rights flash point. In early 1963, events came to a head, and Pacifica Radio reporters were there to capture it all on magnetic audio tape — producing recordings that have been the charge of Pacifica Radio Archives ever since, and represent the very best of Pacifica’s mission and creativity.

Once again on From the Vault, we jump back to 1963, to the volatile and unforgiving streets of Birmingham, and experience the sounds of an era unvarnished, within earshot of history unpurified, through the brilliant documentary Freedom Now! produced by Chris Koch, Dale Minor, and Robert Kramer in 1963. Freedom Now! documents the struggle for for racial equality that tore this troubled city apart, and the demonstrations that led to an agreement between citizens of all colors. Includes actuality of of the rally, riots, and the voices of Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and Birmingham’s Mayor and Sheriff.

This recording was preserved through a generous grant from the Ford Foundation in 2006.

ORIGINAL SOURCE RECORDING:

BB0385a-b Freedom Now! MORE INFO

Click here to purchase a copy of this program or learn more about and purchase copies of the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.

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FTV 063 Taking a Risk for Justice

Posted in Update on July 20th, 2007

This week, From the Vault invites a very special group of young people, their parents, and their teachers into studio in celebration of their recent music production entitled Taking a Risk for Justice, a new collection of justice-inspired music paying homage to heroes and sheroes like Anne Frank, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, His High Holiness the Dalai Lama, Cesar Chavez, and Rosa Parks, among others. Mixed with cuts from Taking a Risk for Justice, we’ll hear historical clips of these great figures (drawn exclusively from the Pacifica Radio Archives), and hear comments from the discussion participants… some have never heard their hero or shero speaking in their own voice!

Created by Kelvin Haynes, a Los Angeles-based musician, the 626 Freedom Rappers (a group of sixth grade students), and Scott Sayre, an educator, the Taking a Risk for Justice project brings youth perspectives of the great heroes and sheroes to lyrics and rap, and we’re proud to tell their story on Pacifica Radio.

Special thanks to Amanda Sortino, Dean Trevino, Lordes Conteras, Scott Sayre, and Kelvin Haynes.

Special thanks to Jennifer Kiser, KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles.

Click here to purchase a copy of this program or learn more about and purchase copies of the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.

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FTV 062 Woody Guthrie: Better World A’Comin’

Posted in Update on July 18th, 2007

Up in the piney woods they were makin’ moonshine.. dodging the government revenuers who hunted them between the trees like wild game. Each dawn the hollers echoed with the news they had survived another night. These cries were set to music. Blue ridge and blue grass. The voice of the people.

Then they headed for the mines. The coal beneath their homes wasn’t going to walk into the daylight by itself. It had to be dynamited loose, hacked out, shoveled out Load by load, man and boy it had to be dragged to the surface.

Down South, meanwhile, it was King Cotton and the chain gang. The songs dripped with sweat this time, and heavy to match the delta heat and boggy fug. At night they plucked the banjo and slapped away the strings of another backbreaking day spent sharecropping another man’s land.

Out in Oklahoma, meanwhile, the folks simply fled. Their land stripped to bare dust, they took to the road, to the rails, to the wind. Like yesterday’s news, they blew along the byways to the four corners of the nation. Always lookin’ for a hand up, sometimes reduced to a hand-out, seeking a melody to match their flat-iron twang, a voice for their homeless lyrics.

Most headed west. One was named Guthrie. Woodrow Wilson Guthrie.

Uprooted from the heartland, Woody would take the pulse of the nation, and set it to the rhythm of the rails. Migrant and restless, hard traveling would tune his senses to the plight of his country and its people. On the anvil of the land he traveled, he would pound the ringing hammer of cold truth and give voice to the very wind that blew them from their homes. From California to New York they were the songs of freedom, and justice… and they would redound from shore to shore.

In this week’s episode, From the Vault delves into the Pacifica Radio Archives collection to find interviews with Woody’s wife Marjorie, longtime friend Will Geer, best friend Beth Lomax Hawes, along with classic music and interviews with Woody himself.

ORIGINAL SOURCE RECORDINGS:

BC0770 Hard Travelling: Woody Guthrie Remembered / Marjoire Guthrie MORE INFO

BC1953a-b Here’s to You: Birthday Tribute to Woody Guthrie MORE INFO

BC0486a-b A Tribute to Woody Guthrie MORE INFO

Click here to purchase a copy of this program or learn more about and purchase copies of the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.

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FTV 061 The Lively Air

Posted in Update on July 3rd, 2007

Very recently here at the Pacifica Radio Archives, we happened across an amazing re-discovery — a truly special program that was previously unknown to any catalog, database, or staffer.

The story goes like this….longtime KPKF programmer, Henry Slucki of Access Unlimited, the Los Angeles radio series concerning the disabled community, came to visit the Archives and brought with him a vinyl record. (Remember vinyl?!) This album he presented is entitled The Lively Air, with highlights from three Pacifica stations, from some point back in community radio history — in fact, the precise year of the recording is unknown, and we were unable to find any corresponding master recordings in our archives of the various sound elements that appear on the album, even though they are all clearly Pacifica fodder. We do, however, suspect the recordings are from about 1962-1966, and we know the album was created as a premium gift for the Pacifica fund drives happening in the mid- to late Sixties… but it’s the content that really got us excited.

What you are about to hear has not been broadcast or heard in any form for at least 40 years. Get ready for an amazing sampling of Genuine Pacifica Sound, so rare, so special, that’s its only known copy is a brittle vinyl disc now housed deep within the safety of our refrigerated vault. You’ll be the first in an entire generation to hear this unique historic audio of Carl Sandburg, The Reverend Abernathy, Herschel Bernardi, Bruno Walter, Buddy Collette, Celeste Holm, Peter Ustinov and Hermoine Gingold, among others. It really is SO exquisitely rare…

By the way, the liner notes for this album are a work of art by themselves, so be sure to check them out!! We’ve been sure to include them on the Information Page for this episode.

Click here to purchase a copy of this program or learn more about and purchase copies of the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.

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