Of All the Charlie Browns in the World, Mine is the Charlie Browniest

The United States Library of Congress voted to designate the Vince Guaraldi soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas a national audio treasure, including it among the twenty-five 2011 inductees to the National Recording Registry — America's sound heritage.

Trouble is, the Library did not have a copy of Charlie Brown among its holdings. So I gave them mine. Here's the story.

Since 2001, the Library of Congress has annually selected 25 sound recordings to be preserved in the Registry of "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" recodings. To give you an idea of the diversity among inductees, this year's group also included Prince's Purple Rain and a wax cylinder from an Edison Talking Doll. The press release made me curious: what exactly does the Library archive for any of the recordings and artifacts in the Registry?

In response to email, Library spokesman Cary O'Dell gave this explanation. "For each item selected for the Registry, we attempt to locate and acquire both the earliest and the best format. For example, if a work was originally issued on 78rpm, that is what we will attempt to acquire. Often as well we try to obtain a copy on CD (if one is available) for the ease of researchers." (Apparently we can count the US Government among those who believe the audio CD is a format of convenience, not significance.)

He continued. "Keep in mind that the Library of Congress already holds thousands of records and discs so many of the items named to the Registry we already have a copy of. When Purple Rain started to be discussed, I explored our holdings and found we did already have a vinyl LP. Though we have a digital copy of the Edison cylinder, the original remains in the historic archives of the Edison Labs in Menlo Park [NJ]."

Which brought us to the topic of Charlie Brown. "Another new title this year was A Charlie Brown Christmas. The [National Recording Preservation] Board has discussed it for several years with some members truly singing its praises and importance. This was the year it got enough votes. Surprisingly, we didn't have any holdings of that!" Mr O'Dell concluded, "The Concord Group has since been kind enough to donate a CD of the work to the Library and I am working to obtain an original vinyl."

This was an opportunity too good to pass up. My own vinyl copy of A Charlie Brown Christmas is in storage, having long ago been ephemeralized to 24-bit/96KHz weightless digital format for playback. So I offered to donate it to the Library for induction into the Registry. Mr. O'Dell immediately accepted; the government even paid shipping costs and sent a gracious acknowledgement letter (at right).

The work is currently undergoing a lengthy process of cataloging, curating and digital preservation before it can be counted among the Library's holdings. I'll let you know when the catalog number has been assigned so you can search for it. [Update 14-December: here's the link.]

I am proud that my humble LP is now the definitive audio copy of a beloved classic in the Library of Congress, preserved for posterity. Or, to paraphrase Linus: of all the Charlie Browns in the world, mine is the Charlie Browniest.

                Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #2 (originally described 1-January-2012)              

Title: A Charlie Brown Christmas

Artist: Vince Guaraldi Trio
Genre: Jazz/Christmas
Year: 1965

There are two CD copies of A Charlie Brown Christmas somewhere in my house. But when it came time to install this title in my weightless digital Library, I decided to dub the old LP copy rather than ripping a CD. Like the homely Christmas tree selected by Charlie Brown, all the LP needed was a little love (and a few mastering steps in software) to make it shine. For more on Vince Guaraldi's music, please visit the Impressions of Vince website.

© 2012 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.

The Voices of the Little Monsters Were Exceedingly Unpleasant

I think it is a good day in the audio restoration mines when I am able to digitally remove surface noise from an ephemeralized LP that has seen better days. But you have to stand in awe at scientists who can digitize audio from priceless relics — many of them too damaged to play — without actually playing them.

[Photo credit: edisontinfoil.com]

Among the twenty-five 2011 selections for the Library of Congress National Recording Registry of
 "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" recordings is an 1888 prototype tin sound cylinder for an Edison Talking Doll. (See above. The tiny phonograph was actually housed inside the doll.) It is a historic artifact on many fronts: the earliest-known commercial sound recording, the first children's recording, and quite possibly the first recording to be made by someone paid to perform for a sound recording (an anonymous Edison employee reciting the first two lines of  "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.")

But, until recently, it was not an audio artifact, rendered silent due to its poor condition (see photo, at right). Technology developed by the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory under funding from the Library of Congress, Department of Energy, and others enabled the deformed cylinder (3" in diameter and 5/8" wide) to be "played" without physical contact using three-dimensional scanning and digital mapping tools to capture sound.

At the risk of gross oversimplification, the process is as follows. A large number of appropriately magnified 2D or 3D sequential digital images of a grooved surface are acquired. Typical resolution is in the sub-micron (< 1/1000th mm) range. Image analysis methods can then be applied to model the local groove shape. Using these models it is possible to calculate the motion a stylus would have made when it passed along these grooves, producing a reference sound file. The reference file can then be post-processed if desired using available audio engineering software tools. A technical presentation on the methods with several restoration examples is available from LBL.

With its audio liberated and preserved by this technology, the Edison Talking Doll cylinder could take its rightful place in the National Recording Registry. Give a listen.

Among the reasons the cylinder is such a rarity is that the Edison Talking Doll was an utter failure in the marketplace. Few were sold; production ceased after only a few weeks. The toy was doomed by some combination of its high cost (two weeks' salary for the average parent; think about that in today's dollars), difficulty to operate, suceptibility to breakage, and fright factor to children. If all that weren't enough, Thomas Edison is said to have admitted, "The voices of the little monsters were exceedingly unpleasant to hear." Not exactly Tickle Me Elmo.


            Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #35            

Artist: David Bowie

Title: Scary Monsters
Genre: Rock
Year: 1980



From December 25, 1980 Rolling Stone: Where do you go when hope is gone? The artist's next album may see him questing, but on Scary Monsters, he's settling old scores. Slowly, brutally and with a savage, satisfying crunch, David Bowie eats his young.


© 2012 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.