WQXR; WQXR History; An interview with robert sherman of wqxr.
- Collection
- WQXR
- Series
- WQXR History
- Producing Organization
- WNYC (Radio station : New York, N.Y.)
- Contributing Organization
- WNYC (New York, New York)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/80-92g7b786
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- Description
- Episode Description
- An interview with robert sherman of wqxr By Jim Aylward In the business of broadcasting it's not unusual for a radio station Program Director to also work on the air. In many stations it's a necessity. It is somewhat unusual, however, when the Program Director not only is on the air, but is also a music critic for the New York Times, co-author of a Doubleday book, conductor of a New York University series of seminars, authority oil folk music, personality-host Of a national television series, pianist and one of the most successful ex-clerk-typists in the East. Robert Sherman confirms most of this. I talked with him recently in his new, spacious WQXR office on the ninth floor of the Times building. He must be doing something right because he has one of the offices in the place with a window. 'Its not a clean window, but it is a window. The station hasn't got to the outside yet, they're still working on remodeling the inside of the ninth floor. How did Bob Sherman get to be Bob Sherman and how come he knows so much about music? I reminded him that he's on the radio, that he's on television's "Vibrations," that he accompanies artist-guests at the piano, etc. He shrugs and says, "Well, I studied piano. My Mother was Nadia Reisenberg. I had music all around me all the time. I had a facility for the piano without the durance and the stamina to practice hard and so I knew that I was not going to make a career as a performer. That was never even considered. But I also knew that somehow I wanted to be involved with music. I didn't know how or which way. But gradually I got the idea that radio offered interesting possibilities. I thought of radio purely in terms of programming classical music because here was a chance to put together unusual things and balance them and communicate with people through them. So I had fully expected that I would go to e radio station in the middle West somewhere and learn what radio was all about. But when I was still in the Army I plied at 'QXR." What job did he apply for? "Anything! Whatever they had. Just so I could get here. And to my delight and astonishment there was an opening as a clerk-typist in the music department just about the time I was getting out of the Army. This was in 1956." How did he get from typing to directing and performing? "I started writing scripts. That happened primarily because I'm interested in folk music and one of the first things I did here was to convince everybody that we ought to have a folk music program. And I started what still remains as "Folk Music of the World," and I found that nobody else here knew what to do with it. So, in self defense I started writing scripts. From there I started writing folk reviews and that in time gave way to writing other types of reviews and since '64 I've been writing reviews for the Times." In the last few years Bob Sherman has enlarged his area of on-the-air hosting to include the interview. He talks with musical personalities on WQXR Radio and on his NET television series. He allows as how the art of interviewing has been, for him, a learning process. I asked him if he interviewed his guests from notes or off the top of his head. "Well, it's top of my head backed up by homework. And I think the secret, if there is a secret, is listening. In other words, not channeling my questions or my frame of programming rigidly so that I can turn it off or veer it in whatever direction the guest is taking. Jerome Hines started talking about math, for example, and that led to a whole new area of discussion which would have been the farthest thing from my mind at the time. For the whole first year or so I was fairly well scripted and it was only when I really became confident in what I was doing that I realized that this was doing more harm than good and that I would be far better off just paying attention to what the guest said and asking questions accordingly." His radio programs, "Listening Room" and "Woody's Children" are strictly his own inventions. The television program is another story. "On 'Vibrations' I am the host and also a consultant which means they ask me, sometimes, about various ideas, various personalities, and so forth. Sometimes they listen to what I've said. Sometimes they don't. There have been segments of 'Vibrations' that I don't agree with and that I don't feel are up to the standards of the others." Continued on Page 76
- Description
- Copy of article in Archives Storage 5C under "WQXR Miscellaneous Articles"
- Genres
- Interview
- Media type
- other
- Credits
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Interviewee: Sherman, Robert, 1932-
Interviewer: Aylward, Jim
Producing Organization: WNYC (Radio station : New York, N.Y.)
Publisher: FM Guide
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
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WNYC-FM
Identifier: 70075.1 (WNYC Media Archive Label)
Format: Paper
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- Citations
- Chicago: “WQXR; WQXR History; An interview with robert sherman of wqxr.,” WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed May 11, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-92g7b786.
- MLA: “WQXR; WQXR History; An interview with robert sherman of wqxr..” WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. May 11, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-92g7b786>.
- APA: WQXR; WQXR History; An interview with robert sherman of wqxr.. Boston, MA: WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-92g7b786