To the best of our knowledge; Elvis show

Hello I'm Jim Fleming and this is to the best of our knowledge on today's show the star who won't stay dead. American scholars take on the myth of Elvis Presley had a voice. Things were going on in his voice that were also expressed through his body the way he. Did no one else has ever matched rock n roll historian Greil Marcus charge the mind sometimes of a king after death. Also media scholar Tom Lewis tells the story of three men who changed the world by inventing radio. Wait. Till this week. Don't Miss Pressly may be the one American entertainer who will never go away. Dead or alive he's always been larger than life. And no one understands that better than a rock critic and scholar Greil Marcus Marcus has spent years

chronicling our fascination with Elvis. His book Mystery Train is widely regarded as the best thing ever written about Preston and now in his new book Dead Elvis. He's picked up the story this time focusing on Elvis impersonators and reported sightings of Elvis. Marcus believes the king of rock n roll has today become a symbol of our dreams and failures. In fact he told Steve Paulson that if anything death increased Presley's popularity there's an old slogan came off the title of one of Elvis albums Elvis for everyone. Well what Elvis for everyone means today is that everyone gets to have his or her own Elvis gets to make up his or her own Elvis Elvis as Jesus Elvis is the devil. Elvis is some sort of strange demon Elvis as a world spirit Elvis conquering Central America on and on and on all showing the countless ways in which

people since Elvis's death. We're free to finally play with the idea of Elvis Presley to fool around with it to trash it to elevate it up to heaven to bring it down to hell. Did death save him in some way. Did it rescue Elvis's image because near the end of his life he was pretty much of a joke wasn't he wasn't he this grotesque parody this overweight bloated man who had long since passed his prime. Well that's certainly true except you never know. He was 42. Had he not died had he lived not just another few months. Anything could have happened. But when Elvis died lots of people said good career move. And it definitely was. Of course then there's the question of did he really die. What do you make of all the Elvis sightings. I make a couple things of it. On the one hand it's now an

industry. There is a financial stake in it for anybody who can make a convincing or at least amusing case that Elvis is still out there. On the other hand this is a very basic and ancient. Tendency in culture that goes back thousands of years the refusal of people to let the hero die to create stories in which the hero lives on. Jesus Christ is the first example. Then there's King Arthur. Then there's Bonnie Prince Charlie. There's Amelia Earhart. There's Glen Miller There's John F. Kennedy who people some people believe is still you know kept as a vegetable in a hospital somewhere. And of course there's Jim Morrison. So this is this is an old story that Elvis has been attached to. It's not a new story for Elvis So there's something about people who die young or relatively young that somehow rescues them for history.

Well and there's also the fact that when a hero dies young and particularly a hero who was as complex as Elvis and who affected people in such complex ways as he did. It's really painful to accept that this person was not only mortal but ruined but a disaster. And one way of denying that is to say well it didn't really happen. I'm talking with Greil Marcus the author of Dead Elvis. I'm curious about why you chose to write Dead Elvis in a way that was very different from what you've written about Elvis Presley earlier particularly in Mystery Train which was I suppose you could say a more conventional narrative account of Elvis and that was written while he was still living right. Right. Well Dead Elvis is the product of of a fascination the fascination of the fact that Elvis Presley refused to go away that after he died.

All kinds of new Elvis's began to pop up all over the landscape and in particular all kinds of utterly perverse and morbid Elvis. The undead Elvis so to speak. I was interested in the way that for the first time the all the story was being retold by all kinds of people with tremendous humor with a lot of glee with a lot of vengefulness with a lot of anger and that because he was dead because he was no longer around to even silently rebuke anyone who might choose to traduce him. It was possible to make it all up again. So for the first time Elvis was being dealt with playfully in a spirit of absolute fun and I hope I joined into it. Dead Elvis is a very perverse book. It's a book that shifts back and forth between offer and respect and absolute

morbidity. Let me just follow up on one example of the absolute morbidity. You have a chapter that's basically about the Presley burger the idea that Elvis has died and somehow his flesh has been turned into meat and we're eating him. Right. That's a chapter that I worked on I suppose eight or nine years. There was a phrase that was written by a. Left wing self-consciously modern revolutionary French writer in the 60s and it created this wonderful image of a corpse in your mouth meaning to the bourgeoisie to all those who are enemies of the revolution you have a corpse in your mouth for a strong and poetic image. And I began to trace the way this image had continued to make its way into popular culture. And then I noticed right about the time that Elvis died. Just maybe a week later his producer

said when asked how do you feel about Elvis dying he said. It's like somebody told me there aren't going to be any more cheeseburgers in this world. And somehow I shove that line into this little file I was keeping of about the corpse metaphor. And to my amazement I saw over the years the metaphor continue to grow until. Some people in England began to play with it and change it into the idea of vicious burgers vicious Elvis burgers Hitler burgers and then of course came all the stories that Elvis was alive and working in a Burger King somewhere. The story just kept telling itself and I kept following it. One final question that apparently has caused a lot of debate among various people. Do you think Elvis has gone to heaven or to hell. That's a lot of what the book is about. I realized in about 1900 one that this was a leading theme of Elvis Presley's second life his life

after death his life in the the popular imagination people argued about it. I think the balance tips to hell because in hell you can be free. You can fool around. You can still make trouble. But there are many heavenly Alyssa's in the book too. Maybe he can have more fun in hell than he ever could on earth. Yeah. On the other hand you know Elvis is such a grand figure in certain ways that he may get to commute. Looking for trouble. We came to the right place. Looking for trouble. Not running the place. Almost no. Talking. Greek. In a few minutes we'll hear more from Greil Marcus the author of Dead Albus as he chronicles the rise and fall of Presley's career.

But first we want to hear just why Elvis is still the king to his fans. So we asked three hardcore Elvis fans to share their memories. He was just really different from like no other entertainer at the time and just I can remember Elvis back from way back when Heartbreak Hotel was first out. But I just remember the radio part at first because we didn't have television. But then I heard that he was going to be on Ed Sullivan and my grandpa and grandma had a television and all the care members being best behavior so that I was allowed to go to my own programs to watch Elvis on Ed Sullivan when he was on The Ed Sullivan Show and I had a camera and had it already and I kept flashing his singin and everything. I got a whole roll back adjusts the light flashed on the TV one pitcher of them when I really became a hardcore fan was in 1971 when I went to Las Vegas to see him in person. Did you see him answered when he was in Madison. Yes I did. How did he come here to Vegas to these

two counts. There was really no comparison because in Vegas when he was lean and mean and it was really it was really something from the drum roll to him walking their curtain to show and it's just something that it's really hard to believe. I think you are the most exciting performer I have ever seen. He could do no wrong. He was the most creative when you're in the an. You're. Going to. Want one thing I really was impressed about him and I found with his hand. His skin with the beautiful. There it just wasn't a blemish on it. Do you agree with that here because if there's anything that you don't still see what I saw the biggest I mean I can just see every inch practically. We went down there for our honeymoon and stuff that officer Paulson

met. To have a. Bodyguard so his friends were standing at the gate. So we talked to them and we said we're on our honeymoon and we'd like to come down and see if they had Elvis and they said that he wasn't there. Then they had their that pink and white sheep down there at the gate and he said to us well we'll give you a ride up and we'll show you his car is God where there are a couple hours and we really had a good time but we never did see. We go through we check on the changes and there was such a controversy over the peacocks the leaded glass peacocks that are in the dining room or actually the living room. And first they'd have covered. Then they'd have uncovered and then I'd have them half covered. She controversy whether or not to have been covered. There are some rooms that are just believable. It's beautiful and then there's a couple rooms that were there when he was alive. That one room where he's got that furniture with animals or

something on the arms of the chair. It's personally the ugliest room I have ever seen and I can't believe that was his. But the rest of the house was just gorgeous. I would not like to claim that one of the rooms I like is the TV room because it's cool down there and if you go during Elvis Week it Suzee in the night and he's all you can think of is would it be nice to lay out on this couch and watch the three TVs and be cool. But I'm not real wild about the jungle room either. Well but but but it's a party almost And if he like the Jungle Room that's fine. It was an exciting time to just look forward to a common first

concerts but the last one was real good Joel most felt sorry for him because it was so heavy and he just would start a song go a little way through and then just start walking around and then you know just I was just about like another concert. He looks so bloated and you could understand a heart problem because it was just like he was puffy. He was a very calm person start now with not much money and all of a sudden if he had that much money and the pressures and I felt very sorry for him that he couldn't have a private life. And I know that I couldn't stand to have somebody follow me or comment on every statement that I made and take it out of context like they did with him. And with the drug abuse I I think it was there. I'm not going to deny I didn't do it. But I think it's it's blown out of proportion. It took me a while to kind of believe it or understand it in the more I read about it the

more I think I understand it or how it all came about when I heard that Elvis died. When I heard the radio come on and say a news bulletin from Memphis Tennessee I knew in my heart what it was but yet it was still a shock when the kids told me I said yeah right. Because we had a kind of joke because last time that he was here and the kids wanted to go with him but it was pretty expensive. Just my husband I went and I said well take you next time. Well that was the next time I think I was really shocked. It was. A hard time. And my sons and my husband the whole scepter were quiet. No I did anything. I spent a lot of time crying and I think. I was right. Never in term of life is tragic. There are tragic parts but I would never

say is my pro career was tragic. I remember mainly his humility and its love and his deep creek guard Cruz family. I would say he was a wonderful person. He meant well. He had a wonderful career. A lot of beautiful songs. Are still. Home. In the US. I have an Elvis chain and an Elvis coffee mug in my newspapers in my car and I got it from Graceland. You have a lot of records. Well yeah I have some very nice albums. My what he finds were smashed by my son when he was young and played Frisbee with them which I will someday get over my husband had a lot of 45.

I've got one I really prize which doesn't work anymore it was a serial I don't all kind a cereal box so it was but it was the hound dog on the cereal and you could cut that out and it played and we played that a long time. Obviously I had a whole lot of Elvis stuff it's my hobby and I don't drink I don't smoke and I don't do a lot of other things and I budget my money for for Elvis Week and the Elvis things that I collect. And I do have an Elvis room the walls are solid totals that I have that I framed I think I still think he is a king and there will never be an entertainer like what's wrong. With you. It's to the best of our knowledge the ideas network of Wisconsin Public

Radio Elvis Presley was never just an ordinary star. He was the definitive pop hero a figure of mythic proportions. It's been written about sung about and put on canvas. In fact there's even a new anthology out titled The Elvis reader a collection of classic essays on Presley as if he were a modern day Shakespeare or Dickens in the face of all that it's kind of hard to remember that Elvis was once just a wet behind the ears kid from Memphis. So what was it that turned that kid into a king. That's what Steve Olson wanted to know. Greil Marcus of all the stars in the pantheon of rock music what makes Elvis stand out. A lot of things make him stand out. He was the first he was the first great rock n roll star. He he defined what it meant to be a rock n roll star everybody from the time of his emergence

in 55 and 56 to the president is in one way or another measured against him. And in a lot of ways measures himself or herself against him. Madonna sees herself in terms of Elvis among other things. Certainly Bruce Springsteen does anyone who wanted to make popular music knew had to in some ways bury Elvis whether he was dead or not. Go past him on the other hand there's more to it than simply defining the image of what it meant to be a rock'n'roll performer for the first time. He had a kind of talent is really not the right word he had a voice. Things were going on in his voice that were also expressed through his body the way he moved that no one else has ever matched for the sake of comparison. It would be interesting to talk about why Elvis made it so big when his

contemporary Jerry Lee Lewis didn't. In some ways Jerry Lee Lewis was even more of a rebel and he shook more he said and sang more outrageous things and yet he's never achieved nearly the same fame and celebrity as Elvis. Well that's one of the reasons why he didn't. Again I think Elvis had something going on in his voice and something going on in the way he moved that Jerry Lewis could never really touch. On the other hand he was enormously talented. He was an explosive talent. And yet Jerry Lewis had no idea how to act in the mainstream of American life in the mainstream of American entertainment. Elvis Presley did. Yes Elvis was a rebel. He was also the ultimate good boy. He was willing to take orders. Jerry Lewis even when he was willing wasn't able to. There was a deep and I think profound compromise in all of us that allowed him to become the

great all pervasive star. Let's back up for a bit and talk about the young Elvis and the talent of Elvis because there's this image that Elvis wasn't really that much of a talent that he came in he was the right guy at the right time he essentially stole the music of black people. There's that famous quote from his producer Sam Phillips. If I could find a white man who had the negro sound in the Negro feel I could make a billion dollars. Well those are complicated set of questions. If Sam Phillips said that I think he probably did. It's a great statement. He denies he said it. That means that he was a capitalist as well as a lover of Blues which he definitely was. He found in Elvis a white person who could sing blues no question about that.

He also found someone who was handsome someone who was incredibly sexy someone who was young. He found a property but that wasn't necessarily what brought Elvis into his studios in the first time. For the first time before Elvis ever went into Sam Phillips Sun Studios in Memphis he was on Beale Street the center of black Memphis where the blues clubs were. He would go into the blues clubs. He would get on stage. He would sing with the real blues singers the black blues singers people and ages from their 20s to their 60s. The crowds loved him. The first crowds that Elvis Presley ever convinced were all black. When he made his first records he confused people all over the South. Nobody knew if he was black or white. He had as many black fans as he did white fans right in the beginning. He was accepted as something new as something different. So the question of Elvis stealing black music is a question that I think only northerners find particularly compelling. The interchange

between black and white in the south among musicians was a simply a simply a constant fact from the time the first records were made. Well let's talk about the very first song that he caught at least I think it's the very first song. That's all right. He and a few other people were just playing around in the studio weren't they and they they sort of had been at it for a while and they stopped and they were just jamming and this is what they came up with. Can you tell me what happened there. Well that's the story they were trying to cut a very dull ballad. I love you because and nothing was coming off it was they knew it was boring and they began to fool around and somebody said. Who's your favorite blues singer. Elvis said Arthur crowd up. They began to sing crowd ups. That's all right begin to play it. And supposedly Sam Phillips the producer listen to them play it told them to stop cued up the tape said do it again that way. And

they did. And that was that. Well if we talk for a moment about what Elvis did with that's all right in comparison to the the Arthur Crudup version what was new about the Elvis rendition. Arthur credit was a good songwriter. He was not a great blues singer. He was not a great blues guitarist. And that made him the perfect sort of artist for someone who had much more talent like Elvis Presley to take off from just like a great movie can often be made out of a poor book. Elvis Presley put life into a well written song. He put sex into it. He put movement into it instead of a stiff rather staccato pop blues song which is what Arthur crowd ups that's all right was it became a swirl it became a drift. It was like the wind. And that's just the way.

Why were the Sun Studio years Elvis's greatest years those years when he just started out before he was so big before he went on to RCA and all the rest. I don't think that's really so what what makes the sun music stand out so vividly is its coherence which is another way of saying it's limitations. Essentially it's Elvis sang blues and he sang country and he changed both. But that's as far as he went that was the those were the limits of the musical territory that he was covering at that time. When he moved on to RCA in 1956 and forever after he sang every kind of music under the sun some of it brilliantly some of it horribly. But if you compare That's all right with Jailhouse

Rock. If you compare Mystery Train with any day now a ballad he recorded in 1969. Well I can't speak for anybody else but I certainly can't put one above the other. There is a difference there is a different kind of passion there's a different kind of feeling in the music made at different times. But if I had had to say well what was Elvis's best music what was his greatest music. I'd say the music he made in 1968 for his comeback television show when he sat on a stage surrounded by a few friends and a couple of musicians and sang the songs he had originally recorded in the 50s. But with a desperation and an excitement and a thrill and a rhythmic force a hardness that had never been in his music before. We should set the stage for that moment because he already had been in decline for a while and he had made this huge splash in the mid 50s then he had gone off in the Army and he wasn't doing anything original for a few years and a lot of people were saying is Elvis washed up

now. This was back in 1968. Well. I tell you that's not so clear that he was in decline. Elvis had become an industry. After he returned from the Army he made two or three movies a year with complete soundtrack albums for almost every one of them which was pretty much all the recording that he did. But those that that factory kept churning out product year after year after year and the last of those musical comedy movies. Change of Habit was a great success so financially in terms of mainstream success which was all Elvis as manager Colonel Parker ever cared about. He was doing just fine. Elvis wasn't so happy. He hadn't looked at all he hadn't looked an audience in the face for nine years. Well describe the scene for his comeback in 1968 that TV show that he was on what happened Colonel Parker wanted a Christmas show and he wanted 27 Christmas songs.

He essentially had this I think. Dream of putting out a double Elvis Christmas album as the soundtrack. The producer of the show got to Elvis and said I don't want to do this. I want to show about you. I don't want to be at all the show I want to show you as you know as you are now you're 33 you're handsome you're alive. But nobody knows what you can do. Everybody's forgotten. So I want skits. I want you in front of an audience. I want noise. And so the producer Steve Winter won. An Elvis was put before him for the first part of the special that was filmed was put before a small live audience and he sat on the stage as I was saying with Scotty Moore his original guitarist with D.J. Fontana. His original drummer and a couple of his friends and. They made noise and they fooled around and they laughed and they started out doing self parodies with Scotty Moore playing guitar Elvis was obviously

nervous and after about three or four songs Elvis took the guitar away from Scotty Moore and began to play himself. No one ever seen Elvis Presley played electric guitar and he played with a kind of crudeness and a kind of fervor that even today when you stick on the records is almost beyond belief. And that little show two one hour sessions in front of audiences just took off and never slowed down never stopped and he went beyond anything he'd ever done. Wasn't there some comment that he was starting to play one Christmas song and one of his band members said play it dirty. Yeah he was singing Blue Christmas and right in the middle one of his friends says play it dirty play it dirty and you can almost hear the gasp of the audience a dirty Christmas song and he did it on the guitar played it to read. You bet. Now he must have had a an awful lot to lose at that point I mean here was the ultimate mainstream

singer at that time risking it all on national television. Well he wasn't the ultimate mainstream singer he wasn't Frank Sinatra. He was a mainstream entertainer who was still to a lot of America a joke a freak white trash. Or 50s relic. No when you had to think about no one you had to care about. The comeback show was crucial because if it had been a flop. Then I think Elvis Presley would have retired at age 33 and we wouldn't have heard anything more from him. The fact that this show was an incredible success. I mean it it buried everything else in the ratings and the fact that he mediately went off made a terrific new record then began performing live again in the first year or so of live performances were shocking in their power. The fact that he used that show for momentum before essentially his life closed in around him again meant

meant that it really did far more than anyone could have hoped that it that it would have done. Now when you say his life closed in around him What do you mean. Well I spoke before of a great compromise within Elvis that allowed him to become such a great star that he understood the mainstream. He understood how to behave when he got to the top. There was always a tension in Elvis between the desire to break loose and the desire to conform to be a good boy to do what he was told and he was never willing to leave his roots behind. He was never willing to try to become sophisticated. He lived out all of his life in Memphis where the aristocracy of the town. Would by definition always look down on him. He never lived in a place where he could really rise above the degraded life. That he came from. I'm simply speaking of extreme poverty and lack of

education. And he lived an unreal life. He was a God outside his mansion. He was a God inside his mansion. Inside his own head he wasn't a god. Did I think go crazy. Did all of us go crazy and Elvis definitely went crazy. Did elvis go crazy because he couldn't handle all the success. Look I'm not a doctor I can't really analyze that. All I can say is that imagine what it would mean that from your twenty first year. Almost the whole sentients world the whole world linked up to any kind of modern communications was split down the middle in terms of what they thought about you. And half of the world thought you were the most exciting thing to come along in 100 years. And half the world thought you were garbage. And you could never escape that. You you could never

be not just an ordinary person but you could never be just an ordinary star. I think that would drive anybody crazy. Is this ultimately a tragic story. The life and death of Elvis Presley you know tragic is a word that's used a lot these days whenever anybody dies young it's a tragedy. I tend to be kind of classical in the use of that word I think of tragedy as the Greeks understood it. And it has to do with a great hero who pushes too far and thus brings on an inevitable destruction. If Elvis had resisted the compromise that was within him and it fought against it then we might have seen the stage set for a tragedy. But I think in fact he lived out a life that in its own way was small and squalid and that he lived

to death that. We can all understand. That is not beyond us or beyond the capacity of any of us to sink to. So no I don't think it was a tragedy. Greil Marcus is the author of Dead Elvis a chronicle of a cultural obsession. He spoke with Steve Bowles. I think this. To be a time where nothing is really. Country and nothing to. Do is keep saying. It's three years now. Coming up the saga of the man who created radio. Stay with us here on the ideas network of Wisconsin Public Radio.

Whatever you may think of all of us if you think back it's almost certain that you first heard him on the radio without radio and later television. Neither Elvis nor anyone else could have had the impact on American society that they achieved. For those of us in the business this history of radio is serious business. Wisconsin Public Radio began 75 years ago doing a little of this a little of that and engaging the interest of the serious amateur of radio scattered around the Midwest. But where did all of this come from. It's not just a matter of interest to us. PBS has broadcast one of the first documentary histories of Radio produced by Ken Burns of The Civil War fame and inspired by historian Tom Lewis whose book Empire of the air the man who made radio is just hitting the stands. Tell me though what are your feelings about the radio. I don't hold with that displeases you know I don't hold with her that you're the joke.

Getting ready for a new Tom Lewis. It's been a subject of debate that has been hotly contested over the years but you seem in your book Empire of the year to have made a decision about it where where in your mind did radio begin. Well I think most people believe that Marconi invented the radio and he's often referred to as the father of radio and Marconi's invention however great was really the invention of wireless telegraphy Marconi was not interested in transmitting voices or music through the air. He had no concept of broadcasting his invention of the

transmission of dots and dashes through the air was of course a very important invention and inventors really stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before. And in this case the people who created the radio stood on the shoulders of Marconi and the first one. Yes. Leader Forrest who created what is the radio to the grandfather of you of course know as the transistor today and deforest created the tube but did not understand exactly how it works. In fact he really didn't understand how it worked at all it took another younger man named Edwin Howard Armstrong in 1913 to create the circuits that put the radio tube to work and they made it possible to receive radio signals and also to transmit radio signals and that circuit

the oscillating regenerative circuit to use the technical term is actually enabling me to speak with you right now. But then it was David Sarnoff who saw the possibilities of both the forest and Sarnoff circuitry to create what he called the Radio Music Box. And that's of course the box that changed the way we listen whose three men lead to forest. Edwin Armstrong and David Sarnoff are on your mind. Each of them in some ways has a claim to being a parent of radio and television as we know it today. Yes. First thing to make something very clear is that so far as to really was the first to first devise to manipulate electrons and it really forms the basis of the entire electronics industry. Therefore it's extremely important invention

Armstrong's inventions. First of the regeneration circuit which I spoke of just a moment ago then of the radio tuner what we call the super heterodyne and you find it in every television and radio set around the country as well as in. By the way radar detectors the super heterodyne made it possible to tune radio effectively and to pull in a variety of stations at very hot much higher frequencies than ever had been pulled in before. And then he also invented FM Af-Am of course made it possible for stereophonic sound. And Armstrong made that invention as well. Like roofie he showed the general the way. Took into radio. And taught it. And what is not. That's what a gentleman is.

Let's take back for a moment. Where does he enter the picture. How did he get involved in. The radio business. Well that's a that's a wonderful story David Sarnoff arrived in this country a Russian emigre from the worst of poverty in Minsk the province of Minsk in Russia. And he arrived with no money his and two brothers and a mother and joined his father who was already in in the United States in New York. He was impoverished he learned to read by picking newspapers out of trash cans. And he wanted always to be a reporter. So one day after he had gotten enough money by selling Yiddish newspapers and then selling English language newspapers he went to the offices of The Herald in New York. But he walked into the wrong door and entered a cable company. It wasn't

long after that that he had a job with the cable company and then with the Marconi company and he was always busy working as hard as he could to promote himself for the Marconi company he was the office boy and Able to him to read all the correspondence as he filed it and he got to know the company very well and when Marconi came to the United States and visited the office David Sarnoff popped up and introduced himself as the Marconi company's newest employee Marconi took a liking to him right away. He was a self-starter he taught himself the engineering principles behind radio and to lead graffiti. He taught himself the code and for the rest of his life always use the radio music boxes the thing of course that today is almost everywhere. It's hard to imagine a time when it wasn't their absolute way. Absolutely and I think that's him important to think about just for a moment because really

what radio provided was the first instantaneous method of communication before that time we had in this country more newspapers. But they were all regional newspapers they weren't. They did not go beyond the boundaries of a city or a county or perhaps a state line. But what happened with radio was it knew no geographical boundaries it was instantaneous and it brought us into communication with each other in ways that I don't think anybody ever envisioned. The word broadcasting is interesting to ponder just for a moment. It me it is of course the metaphor of the farmer spreading seeds across the land and what broadcasting does for Radio is it spreads the seeds of culture of opera of music of poetry of political of politics and yes of course even

of hatred across the land. And it helps too. It helped to bring us together nationally. I can give you just one example in 1927 when Lindbergh returned from his flight to Paris very few Americans really knew who this boy was. They'd followed his flight but they came to obsess on what the man was and. Lindbergh stepped off the gangplank of the US Memphis dock to the Potomac River in Washington and Graham McNamee was there to watch him come down the gangplank. And he said There he is. He's a darn nice boy. And those words went to 30 million people who were connected to who were listening in to radio sets that were hearing 50 different stations of the NBC

network broadcasting Lindbergh's arrival. I find the way you describe that event fascinating in a couple of ways because you talk about what was Sarnoff a vision for a means of transmitting culture around the country. And then this other thing which brings people together but not necessarily in the best possible way. In the late early or late 30s there was William S. Paley of CBS kind of sign offs antithesis in a way who saw a whole different way to use broadcasting Sarnoff I gather was never. Never really understood what Paley's vision was and never liked it oh no. I think that's very well put. David Sarnoff as I said at the beginning knew the engineering of radio he was at home with the engineers he revered engineers for what they had created.

He always thought of himself as the Plumber the person who put the information out but he relied upon Engineers and he came to understand their talents in ways that few broadcasters do. What Paley did was he saw radio as a means of selling his father's cigars not a very significant technological advance. And he says he came in 1929 and did exactly that. The CBS network really rolled over and be seeing in many ways it raided Paley raided NBC for stars but really Sarnoff really couldn't care very much about that try though he would It always annoyed him that radio star would be receiving more money than the engineers who had made it possible for that star to transmit

his or her voice through the air. And I think Hart Armstrong and deforest might have gone along with him although deforest from the way he written about in sounds like he might have appreciated Paley. But all three of these men that you've written about Forrest Armstrong and signed off were visionaries. Do you think any of them though if asked could have foreseen what radio and television broadcasting would become in our day. No I don't think they saw foresaw what it became in their day either. Let me give you just one example. In 19 2010 Oh Mr. Blackwell stepped up to the microphone of the IAF which was a station owned by AT&T by the way and broadcast the first commercial for Hawthorn gardens which was an apartment complex in Queens New York. That changed radio from being a service provided

by radio manufacturers to commercial broadcasting Sarnoff had not foreseen that and was disturbed by it and yet realize that the enormous potential of commercial broadcasting and reluctantly as he fashioned the NBC network realized that it would have to be a commercial network so that he really didn't foresee any that very significant advance though he was quick to take advantage of it. I don't know that Armstrong sawn off in the Far East would have cared for what goes out over the airwaves today. For example Sarnoff did not like the popular radio shows he didn't listen to them though his wife did. Armstrong was always too busy in his laboratory spending 18 hour days creating Af-Am to care much about it. Commercial broadcasting and

deforest couldn't abide by the commercials and used to say what have you done with my child to go to the National Association of Broadcasters. Among others he used to make this speech echoed by the way Sarnoff statement which was what have you done with my baby. Thank you very much for talking with us today. Thank you very much I've enjoyed it. Tom Lewis teaches English it's good Moore College and is the author of empire of the year the man who made radio and for today that's to the best of our knowledge. And Jim finally. To the best of our knowledge is produced by Steve Paulson. Molly Bentley Rick 400 Judy Strasser and Ralph Johnson are executive producers and strange fans and we had engineering help today from Buzz Kemper special thanks to our Elvis fans Lucy Cooke jam VONDEREN And Margaret Koch our program airs Monday through Friday at 3:00 and again at 10:00 and

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