Bending Time with a Voice-O-Graph Machine [VIDEO]
Close your eyes. You’ll have a hard time reading this blog post. But close your eyes anyways. Keep them closed. Picture the year of 1947. The war is over, life is getting back to as normal as normal can be. The big bands are starting to make way for the jump blues which will soon become rock and roll. Elvis is still a kid. Music has grooves. Grooves that pop, hiss, sizzle with sound when you put a record on the turntable.
Most folks will never make a record. Sure, the labels are the gatekeepers, but technology is the lock. And there ain’t no key. Do you realize: most musicians were never recorded? Their talent and vision lost forever.
Things changed thanks to a fella named Alexander Lissiansky. Alex was born in 1904, he became an engineer. Not like that kind that runs a train. A regular ol’ engineer. No toot toots. Somewhere between Vienna and Paris, Alex created the Voice-o-Graph machine. This was back in 1935.
What does it do? Records normal folks. Like you and me. You can go into a booth, press record, and your voice will be forever burned into the grooves. Lissiansky discovered how to bend time, break the rules, change things forever.
Today, most of his machines are gone. There’s one down in Tennessee though. If you ever find yourself in Nashville, swing by Jack White’s highly-branded Third Man Records. You’ll see a lot of yellow, some red. But the best thing you’ll see is a Voice-o-Graph machine sitting in the corner. You can stand in the booth, press record, and your voice will be forever burned into the groovers.
Of course today, you can do the same dang ol’ thing with your iPhone, but there’d be no Steve Jobs without cats like Alexander Lissiansky. Plus, where’s the soul in the iPhone? Lost somewhere on an assembly line in Zhengzhou, China.
Here’s what happened when Kitty and I pressed record.
Thanks for watching. Subscribe to my YouTube channel? It really helps me. I’ll keep posting more videos soon… if the good Lord’s willin’, and the creek don’t rise.
Cheers!
Jack
