Recording “Foggy Mountain Breakdown”

2019 ◽  
pp. 50-59
Author(s):  
Thomas Goldsmith
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Tape ◽  
Tape Recording ◽  
Record Industry ◽  
Magnetic Tape Recording ◽  
Instrumental Recording

Flatt and Scruggs went into Herzog Studios in Cincinnati, Ohio, on December 11, 1949, to record his recently composed tune “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” the first instrumental recording for Flatt and Scruggs. E. T. (Bud) Herzog had started the studio a few years earlier, attracting name artists such as Patti Page and Hank Williams. Producer Murray Nash used the new medium of magnetic tape recording at the sessions, almost certainly using several microphones to achieve a widely praised sound. Nash, from the Midwest, had quickly gotten up to speed on the record industry, which was growing quickly following the end of the union ban on live recording and with the postwar growth of the economy.

“We Should Have Had a Historian”: Live Television and the Accident of the Moon Landing Tapes

2020 ◽  
pp. 152747642093476
Author(s):  
Ella Klik
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Magnetic Tape ◽  
Tape Recording ◽  
The Moon ◽  
The World ◽  
Magnetic Tape Recording ◽  
Live Television ◽  
The Media ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Moon Landing

Forty years after the first moon landing in 1969, National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced that it had likely recycled the tapes containing the original footage of the landing. Although the mission was a monumental event viewed by millions of people around the world, the production and handling of the recorded materials was a matter of little concern to more than a small group of employees, historians, and space enthusiasts. This article argues that despite the fact that the erasure of these archival materials was accidental, it was not an accident per se but rather a fulfillment of a logic designed into the apparatus of magnetic tape recording from its very inception, and therefore a generative event for the media archeologist. By evoking histories and theories of broadcast and magnetic recording, I argue that erasure is a process that discloses networks of economic, cultural, material, and aesthetic discourses and interests.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document