BBC Radio 4 : Turntable Tales

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BBC Radio 4 : Turntable Tales

Berliner to Gramophone (Episode 1 of 2)

In the first of two programmes telling the story of the record-playing turntable, Colleen Murphy spins through its early history and the dramatic take-up of this new technology in Edwardian society. It was an enthusiasm as spectacular as the computer's rise at the end of the same century and its impact on the music industry was profound.

Colleen talks to John Liffen of the Science Museum and Christopher Proudfoot of the British Phonograph and Gramophone Society about the earliest machines arriving from the United States by way of the German Emigre inventor Emile Berliner. She finds out why the HMV (His Master's Voice) image wasn't initially created for the Gramophone at all, and most important of all she gets to hear the sound qualities of the machines that developed in the first two decades of the 20th century.

As the Gramophone company took hold the potential for preserving singers, performers, speech makers but above all music was eagerly realised. Colleen discovers that by the outbreak of the First World War some forty percent of households had some sort of Gramophone, however primitive, and not surprisingly, travelling versions went with the troops to the bunkers behind the front lines.

That capacity to bridge the performer with the audience when the two were hundreds of miles apart was the great miracle of the early years and allowed the easy spread of musical styles from Ragtime to Jazz to the first superstars of the Turntable world - the Opera stars. And yet, as ever, it was popular culture that dominated the market and drove sales.

She also touches on the new opportunities for the Blues and Ragime musicians of African-American society to be heard beyond their geographical centres in the Southern States, and the preservation of performances which would go on to inspire British Rhythm and blues half a century later.

And Antiques Roadshow expert Paul Atterbury talks about the Gramophone as a blend of home furnishing and status symbol and why what appear to be exotic survivors of the period are actual part of a massive number of machines that were on sale from bike shops to music emporia.

Producer: Tom Alban.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072jfcr

Turntablists and Turntable Survival (Episode 2 of 2)

In the second part of her history of the Record Turntable DJ and broadcaster Colleen Murphy brings the story up to the present. After the war there was a steady improvement in the quality of Turntables and their attendant amps and speakers but the biggest step was the introduction of small, self-contained units that allowed teenagers to find and refine their musical tastes in the relative seclusion of their bedrooms.

Colleen also tracks the recent rise in Turntable sales and visits a surviving and now thriving niche producer, Nottingham Analogue, to see how they go about creating the perfect Deck.

But there's been another revolution in the Turntable story which began on a very particular day in 1975 when DJ Grand Wizzard Theodore, with the help of his mother, developed the 'scratch'. Colleen chats to Grand Wizzard about his scratching discovery and the Turntablism which developed from it. She also hears from JFB, the UK DJ who's a three times British DMC Turntablist champion and the master of a myriad of scratching techniques.
As well as their own DJ world, of which Colleen is a part, the likes of JFB have also inspired classical compositions using Turntables. Gabriel Prokofiev talks to her about his concerto that's now on a list of pieces recommended for Secondary Schools.

It was the DJ's who, back in the nineties helped sustain the production of vinyl. Now it's the audiophiles who lead the charge. Turntable sales have turned a corner and the Turntable Tale is very far from over.

In searching for the magic of what the Turntable is, can be and has been, Colleen hears again from the Antiques Roadshow's Paul Atterbury about a memorable moment during his time on the show involving an old, wind-up Gramophone.

Producer: Tom Alban.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07378ct

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