THE WFAA AND WBAP SHEET MUSIC COLLECTIONS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH - PDF document

THE WFAA AND WBAP SHEET MUSIC COLLECTIONS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS MUSIC LIBRARY A presentation by Donna Arnold at the national meeting of the Music Library Association, Dallas, Texas, 2012 For anyone who lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, the call letters WFAA and WBAP are probably familiar. WFAA is now channel 8, our ABC- affiliated TV station. WBAP is now the radio station at 820 AM and 96.7 FM. Long ago, however, Fort Worth-based WBAP and Dallas-based WFAA were founded as the area’s earliest radio stations. WBAP began broadcasting on May 2, 1922, and WFAA followed on June 26, 1922. For an idea of what early radio was like, some background might be in order. Despite what some of us may have learned in school, it is inaccurate to say that one person actually invented radio. Instead, the invention was the culmination of decades of work by many brilliant scientists and brilliant hobbyists working individually and together. What was allegedly the first very limited radio broadcast took place on Christmas Eve, 1906. It was not until about 1920 that radio stations as we now know them started coming into being, but there were plenty of experimental and amateur broadcasts before then. Judging from contemporary accounts, those early days of radio were chaotic. At first the scientists and hobbyists did whatever they wanted to, such as play records for local students or invite someone in to sing a song or make a statement. They didn’t exac tly have the concept of a program. Defense concerns during World War I brought most informal or amateur activity to a halt so that the government could have uninterrupted access to the airwaves. When private broadcast resumed after the war, the government started making rules to regulate them. Most people today probably do not know that certain early government rules prohibited the broadcasting of recorded material. As of September 26, 1922, stations applying for commercial class B licenses were not allowed to use “mechanically operated instruments,” that is, phonographs. Even after the rules were relaxed, general disdain for playing records on the radio instead of

providing live music lasted for many years. That explains why virtually all of the programs on the licensed early stations were live. Initially there was considerable debate about whether the content of radio should be for educational or defense purposes, or for entertainment. Early on, both types of content gained acceptance, and music thus became a vital part of radio. Attempts to limit radio music to classical only were a dismal failure, and soon the varied world of popular music was the norm. Since the early stations were not allowed to play records, many musicians were employed to play and sing live music on the air. It is not surprising that large-market stations such as WFAA and WBAP maintained their own collections of sheet music. Over several decades, these particular stations amassed unimaginably large collections of sheet music in various genres. By large I mean well over 100,000 titles. They bought thousands of commercially available popular piano-vocal scores, and thousands of stock arrangements for various ensembles such as stage bands, orchestras, and small combos. They collected various kinds of vocal music. They also employed house arrangers who could create arrangements as needed. While main-stream popular music formed the heart of the collections, many other genres were represented, for example, Gospel, folk, country and western, and classical. We received the WFAA collection in 1961. At that time the station offered our university a choice between two gifts: either that collection or some outdated video equipment. Fortunately, the music dean told them we wanted the sheet music. The WBAP collection came to us in the early 1970s, through the efforts of well-known composer, NBC radio producer, and UNT alumnus Don Gillis, who had once been on the WBAP staff. Later he produced Arturo Toscanini’s radio programs, a nd we received his Toscanini collection, including rare tapes of Toscanini broadcasts, after his death. The stations had their own librarians, who maintained vast type-written card catalogs. Each station made up its own call numbers, most of which worked like accession numbers and did not classify the music. The WFAA collection came to us with all of its card catalogs and all of its call numbers intact. The popular-music catalogs provided title access only; the separate catalog for classical music provided composer access and genre access. The WBAP collection came to us with all of its call numbers, but with no catalogs at all.

We were able to get that collection cataloged over several years with the help of some wonderful expert volunteers and a grant-funded professional cataloger. Now both collections are in our online catalogs. As some of you may already know, we have a separate special collections catalog for part of our collections; these are the works that volunteers cataloged. The works cataloged by our grant-funded cataloger are in our main online catalog. I have been working with these collections for many years, mostly to help a variety of patrons get what they need from them. These patrons range all the way from UNT jazz band leaders to students working on jazz history assignments to members of the community and people far away, both amateur and professional, who are looking for songs they would dearly love to have. I am still amazed by the richness and variety of the music these collections contain. There is considerable overlap between the WFAA holdings and the WBAP holdings. This comes in especially handy if part of a selection is missing in one. We have virtually all of the most famous songs of the golden age of the great American songbook. We also have thousands upon thousands of songs that are mostly forgotten today. Still, those can provide a far more complete picture of the world of popular music than just the big hits. While I am on the subject of radio station collections, here is some late- breaking news. We are pleased to announce that we recently received another collection. It is from station WOR in New York City. WOR is now talk radio only, but in its early decades, music was an important part of its programming. Like the WFAA collection, it has its card catalogs with it. In addition to the radio station collections, we have a number of other sheet music collections that private collectors or sometimes their descendants have donated. Many of them include piano-vocal scores of songs far earlier than the era of the radio station music. The research possibilities from all of these materials are countless. To give you an example, an area that sometimes gets attention is sheet music covers. Eventually live music on the radio declined. The stations began to broadcast

prerecorded programs, and that soon led to the broadcast of individual records. It is not well-known that Bing Crosby was very influential in promoting the broadcasting of prerecorded programs, at first on so-called transcription discs. The first Crosby show presented via transcription disc aired on October 16, 1946. Crosby championed the use of magnetic tape soon after, even investing in it. It was not long after this that television became available to the public, the result being that radio, be it live or prerecorded, declined in popularity and importance. It was to be TV even more than the prerecorded shows that sounded the death knell for live music on the radio. Thus, the rich variety of our radio station collections declines sharply by the early 1950s. Yes, we have many, many titles from the 1950s, but nothing to compare with what we have from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. For all that we have gained in technology, it is clear that we have lost something precious as the golden age of radio came to an end. While most stations discarded their libraries of sheet music once recorded music reigned supreme, we are very grateful that WFAA and WBAP presented us with their collections; they clearly constitute a rich cultural treasure.