Sound Beat

You’re listening to Yves Montand with A Paris, an Odeon record from 1949…

You’re  on the sound Beat.

When you think of Paris, chances are The Eiffel Tower springs to mind. Which is precisely why early detractors, in a letter opposing the Tower’s construction, called it

“a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe,

And so on.

Bet they weren’t complaining when the tower relayed communications during the first World War,  helping the Allies win the Battle of the Marne on Paris’ doorstep.

The Tower first opened to the public in 1889. Today the Tower has almost 7 million visitors per year making it the most-visited paid monument in the world. It’s open every day of the year, but during WWII, the Nazis found it closed.

Tower workers, given word of Hitler’s advance towards the city, cut the elevator cords. German soldiers were forced to scale the roughly 1,000 feet. See video.

Why did Governor Dewitt Clinton build a giant ditch across New York state? To get to the other side.

From the time the first shovel went into the ground in 1817, critics blasted the Erie Canal project, dubbing it Clinton’s Ditch. But it would go down in history as an engineering marvel. When finished, it stretched three hundred and sixty three miles across New York, from : (lyrics “Albany to Buffalo”)

This is Low Bridge! Everybody Down, sung by Edward Meeker in a wax cylinder recording from 1913.

The Canal forever changed shipping in the Northeast, cutting transportation costs a whopping ninety percent. It also helped open a steady trade route with the Midwest, turning a seed of a downstate port town into the Big Apple.

Mules like Old Sal were the early stars of the canal system, but steam powered barges rendered them obsolete by the end of the 19th century.

The American B-24 Bomber Lady Be Good departed a Libyan Air Base on a bombing raid in April 1943.  She did so into a sandstorm, and disappeared for 15 years.

World War II raged, and then ended. Still, the whereabouts of the Lady Be Good remained unknown. It was thought the men had crashed into the Mediterranean, but in 1958 the nearly-intact bomber was found over 400 miles inland. Remains of 8 of the 9 crew members were found, some over a hundred miles north of the crash site. And, because everyone seemed to back then, they kept journals of their trek. To read excerpts, click to visit http://ladybegood.net, an excellent, and exhaustive site.

You’re listening to Marian Anderson with “Heav’n, Heav’n”, a Masterpiece 78 from 1943, and

You’re on the Sound Beat.

When Marian Anderson performed at Princeton University in 1937, she was one of the most famous singers in the world. None other than Arturo Toscanini, once told her she had a voice “heard once in a hundred years”. She was probably well-received by the crowd, but as an African American woman, she was also denied accommodation at a nearby hotel. Luckily, a gentleman in attendance offered her lodging for the night, and…probably some interesting conversation. His name: Albert Einstein.

The contralto and the physicist would remain lifelong friends. Anderson, as a matter of fact, stayed with Einstein just months before his death in 1955.

Read more here.

Photo: “Marian Anderson” by Carl Van Vechten – Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Van Vechten Collection, reproduction number LC-USZ62-42524.. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The brightness of the moon from Earth depends on where the moon is in its perpetual journey around the planet.

You’re on the Sound Beat.

It orbits Earth every 29.5 days, and during that time it’s lit from various angles by the sun. It’s at its brightest when it is 180 degrees away from the sun from our perspective (picture the sun, Earth and moon in a straight line). At that time, the full half of the moon’s surface facing the sun is illuminated and is visible from Earth. And that’s a full moon, friend. The moon absorbs much of the sun’s light, but about 7% is reflected towards the Earth. That’s why the moon appears to shine, or glow, if you will.

If you don’t know by now, you’ve been listening to the jazz standard Moon Glow. Art Tatum recorded  version, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, Ethel Waters, Billie Holliday, Bing did one…you get the idea. But before all of that Joe Venuti and his Orchestra recorded it in 1933 for Columbia.

There’s a Little Baby Up In the Moon

You’re listening to There’s a Little Baby Up in the Moon by Irving Kaufman, an Edison Blue Amberol cylinder released in 1916 and

You’re on the Sound Beat.

Paredoilia is the tendency to reconcile vague shapes as something you’re familiar with, like seeing shapes in clouds and the craters of the moon: a little baby, a man…or a rabbit.

Shortly before Apollo 11’s historic landing, mission control in Houston had a little folkloric fun.

Houston: Among the large headlines concerning Apollo this morning, is one asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend says a beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-O has been living there for 4,000 years. It seems she was banished to the Moon because she stole the pill of immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot since he is always standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree. The name of the rabbit is not reported.

Michael Collins: Okay. We’ll keep a close eye out for the bunny girl

‘Chang’eNo. 3’) is an unmanned lunar exploration mission operated by the China National Space Administration. The spacecraft was named after Chang’e, the goddess of the Moon in Chinese mythology, and is a follow-up to the Chang’e 1 and Chang’e 2 lunar orbiters. The rover was named Yutu ( literally: ‘Jade Rabbit’) following an online poll, after the mythological rabbit that lives on the Moon as a pet of the Moon goddess.

Read more here.

When the Apollo 11 crew returned home they splashed down 900 miles southwest of Hawaii in the North Pacific Ocean. There was a remote possibility that they’d brought home some contaminants so they put on special Biological Isolation Garments, got any nasty space germs scrubbed off, and were hoisted aboard the USS Hornet aircraft carrier. There they were escorted to a Mobile Quarantine Facility where they would stay in quarantine for 3 weeks. NASA would employ this practice throughout the Apollo 14 mission, which proved the Moon was sterile. While in quarantine the men talked to their families, friends, even President Nixon. Believe it or not, they also had to fill out customs forms, declaring the roughly fifty pounds of moon rocks, dust and samples taken from the lunar surface.

You’ve been listening to Nani wale e ka mahina (a chant about the beauty of the moon at night) by Al Kealoha Perry and his Singing Surfriders.

Check out this amazing selection of photos of the Apollo 11 Mission from NASA. And here’s a link to that Customs form!

Brett Barry:

Mike Tirico has covered a diverse array of what the sports world offers, from Opens in both golf and tennis, soccer’s World Cup, NCAA and NBA basketball, to Monday Night Football. And he’s covered them as well as anyone, receiving National Sportscaster of the Year honors in 2010. Here the versatile broadcaster expounds on perhaps the most well-rounded athlete in Syracuse University history.

Mike Tirico:

If we didn’t have such concretely-documented proof of Jim Brown’s athletic prowess you might think it the stuff of legend. Put aside his dominant football career, one that extended into the NFL and its Hall of Fame. He also lettered in track, basketball and lacrosse, and was considered one of the greatest to ever play that sport. His statistics remain nearly-incomprehensible, such as the NCAA record 43 points he scored in a single football game…but the number he’s most known for among Syracuse fans is, of course, 44. He wasn’t the first to wear it, but he made it the mantel, carried later by such greats as Ernie Davis and Floyd Little.

You’ve been listening to the SU fight song, Down the Field, by the University Band and Robert Chenoweth, an RCA record from 1951.

Read about Brown’s sparring session with one of boxing’s greats right here.

Today we examine Arthur Murray: Dance instructor, entrepreneur extraordinaire and…wedding crasher?

Arthur Murray taught millions of Americans to dance, through the chain of studios that bear his name nation-wide, and by his mail-order lessons. You’re listening to one of those, Arthur Murray teaches the Fox-Trot.

Turns out William Jennings Bryan had something to do with Murray’s success, as he jokingly said: “You know, I have a fine idea on how you can collect your money. Just teach ’em with the left foot and don’t tell ’em what to do with the right foot until they pay up!”

From this, Murray got the idea of teaching by paper-footprints….and the rest is mail-order history.

So how’d HE get so good? The old adage…practice, practice, practice. But he did his practicing at neighborhood weddings…whether he was invited or not.