Archive on 4: The First A&R Man
Kicking off our double bill tonight on Good Radio Club is the ever excellent Archive on 4
This Radio 4 special at 8pm tonight was described in this morning’s Guardian Guide it like this
Fred Gaisberg recorded the early classical superstars Nellie Melba and Caruso, set up the UK’s first ever studio and travelled through Russia, India, Japan, China and Singapore in search of musicians to record for EMI’s Hayes Archive. This is Paul Gambaccini’s tribute to this pioneering collector of sonic artefacts.
I’ve been rooting around looking for background material. The best news is that a lot of the tracks being played tonight are on a new LP and there’s a good selection on Spotify.
- Rough Trade have just released Sprigs of Time - The Hayes Archive . A double LP containing 30 tracks from the 150,000 78’s in the vaults.
- You can visit the EMI Archive in Middlesex
- On spotify: Sprigs of Time | Caruso | Nellie Melba
- EMI’s huge multi-disc, multi-decade, Record of Singing covers the 78 period (1899-1952).
Ok I’m off to do the washing up. Some quick reminders of how to join in.
- Steve has put together a good round up of what to do here.
- Tweet your thoughts using the hashtag #goodradioclub
- Follow @jemstone and @bowbrick
- Don’t worry if you can’t take part tonight. Its Saturday night for gods sake! Go to the pub. We’ll see you next time…
