A longtime resident of Uxbridge, Ted Barris has written professionally for 40 years - for radio, television, magazines and newspapers. The "Barris Beat" column began in the 1950s when his father Alex wrote for the Globe and Mail. Ted continues the tradition of offering a positive view of his community. He has written 16 non-fiction books of Canadian history and teaches journalism at Centennial College in Toronto.
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Setting records at the library
It was late last Wednesday night. The weekly Oilies Hockey Club intra-squad match had just ended. We had retired to the dressing rooms to share lies about the night's scrimmage. One of my hockey buddies laughed out loud. He'd just remembered something his wife had told him. He said she'd recently come across a piece of my family history quite by accident. I looked back at him in puzzlement.
“It was in the resale bin at the library,” he said, “one of your old vinyl record albums.”
“She's the second person to rummage through my former vinyl collection,” I said. “Last spring, another library patron picked up one of my former rock 'n' roll LPs. She said she was enjoying the nostalgia.”
About this time last year, I conducted a massive purge in my office. I culled a large part of my personal library of reference books and even my sizable vinyl album collection. I packed all the culled items into 15 or 20 boxes and hauled them over to the Uxbridge Public Library. I knew the Friends of the Library were about to stage their annual “Good Used Book Sale.” I figured if I wasn't making as much use of the books or vinyl, somebody else might as well. Clearly, at least two friends in town had decided to give my old vinyl new life.
By coincidence, this month, I've been delivering my semi-annual lectures to students at Centennial College about the history of broadcasting and recorded music. I've been pointing out to them that Thomas Edison invented the first phonograph in 1877, Emile Berliner the first gramophone and zinc disc in 1888, and Radio Corporation of America (RCA) the first vinyl recordings in the 1930s.
I hasten to add, however, that it was a Canadian - Reginald Fessenden - who first conceived and demonstrated the use of recorded music in a wireless radio program in 1906. On Christmas Eve, that year, ships' telegraphy operators on their wireless sets in the far-off Caribbean heard Fessenden read a passage from the Bible, play O Holy Night on his violin and then play a cylinder recording of Handel's Largo from the opera Xerxes over the air. And in so doing, Fessenden became the first announcer, the first broadcast musician and the first DJ in history. Yes, that's right, a Canadian was the father of radio!
Following that breakthrough, the sound recording industry never appeared to look back. According to Roland Gelatt, author of The Fabulous Phonograph, first came the 78 revolutions-per-minute (RPM) shellac (wax) disc during the Second World War. Then, Columbia unveiled the 33 1/3 RPM microgroove record in 1948, followed by RCA's seven-inch 45 RPM discs. Vinyl was king, for a time. Then, the burnable CD, the Internet, downloading MP3s and today's portable audio miracle, the iPod, seemed to slay and bury vinyl in a nanosecond.
Not so fast, said a Time article last year. The U.S. news magazine reported in January 2008 that young listeners have been rifling through their parents' old album collections and discovering “that they liked the warmer sound quality of records, the more elaborate album covers … and the experience of putting one on and sharing it with friends, as opposed to plugging in some earbuds and listening alone.” And that, believe it or not, has translated into a remarkable (and marketable) comeback for the LP. In 2007, for example, nearly a million vinyl albums were sold (up from 858,000 the year before).
“Most things sound better on vinyl,” one young record collector told Time, “even with the crackles and pops and hisses.”
At any rate, it appears that my donation to the library's annual book and record sale, a year ago, has either been a wonderful coincidence or an inspired trend-setter. No matter. What's important - especially with Library Week coming Oct. 18 to 24 - is to take a second look at those valued collections of yours, recount how often you actually read the books or listen to the recordings, and consider donating them to this year's sale on Saturday, Oct. 24 and Sunday, Oct. 25 from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Funds raised, the Friends of the Library tell me, can offset thousands of dollars the library would otherwise have to raise (through grants and other funding) for the purchase of new books for its shelves.
Besides, think of all the fun you might have slow dancing to one of my Bobby Vinton 45s or rockin' into the wee hours with a David Clayton Thomas and Blood Sweat and Tears LP. It's only been played a couple of thousand times on my old Pioneer turntable. Barely broken in.
