ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
NOAH ADAMS, host:
And I'm Noah Adams.
SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC
ADAMS: Time again for Lost & Found Sound, our yearlong collaboration with independent producers, artists and listeners. This week a New York story.
Each Sunday on warm weekends in the city, Eric Byron walks from his Lower East Side apartment to the same bench in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. Here he sets up shop, a guest book, a battered box of 78-RPM records, a hand-painted sign and a homemade phonograph with a 4-foot horn made from a heating duct. Eric Byron is ready to take requests. A self-appointed early-century disc jockey, Byron fills his corner of the park with sound from another time and place. If the song was recorded before 1930, he probably has it, or something close. If no one's there to listen, Eric Byron cranks up his machine and listens alone.
One weekend the Kitchen Sisters, radio producers Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson, followed the faint sounds of opera drifting across the park. And today they present this Lost & Found Sound portrait of a man with a horn.
SOUNDBITE OF CRANKING NOISE
MR. ERIC BYRON: The best sound is in front of the horn.
SOUNDBITE OF CRANKING NOISE
MR. BYRON: Here we go.
SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: He made this thing himself, this huge horn, that says, `Man with a horn.'
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: And he plays all his opera and these old records like Mario Lanza...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: He has one of these old-time wagons and he built this whole thing up by himself. You tell him.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: It's really cool. You put this together yourself, right?
MR. BYRON: This is a concoction, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #5: Yeah, so it's something that's...
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: You just made this all...
MR. BYRON: I visualized it. The whole thing sits on a child's wagon from the 1940s, and the turntable sits on top of a movie canister, which sits on top of a bed of rubber, which sits on top of a metal stool, and instead of having the wagon wheels--they're miniature pneumatic tires to absorb the shock as I walk.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: Yes, what are the pins?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #2: Yeah.
CHILD #1: Why's he need pins?
MR. BYRON: Because you use one for each record, and those are the needles. The sound goes from the reproducer, through the tone arm, and then through plumbing. And when I was going in--it was a real plumbing place, and I said, `Well, I need plumbing.' So he said, `You want it for steam or do you want it for water pressure?' I said, `I want it for sound.' This horn is about 4 1/2 feet, and that's held upright by an arch, and on top of the arch is an American flag. I just felt that it had to be there.
I call it `big horn,' because a friend said, `Oh, that's a big horn.' Oh, that's good! OK, big horn would do.
Hi. How are you? I haven't seen you in ages.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #6: Oh, I've been good.
MR. BYRON: OK, which one do you want to hear first?
Caruso with Nellie Melba, from "La Boheme." This is very nice. This is Caruso, about 1904, which is the beginning. It's not in great shape. It's "Ma Paris(ph). " A young Caruso.
SOUNDBITE FROM CARUSO
MR. BYRON: This started when I was about nine. And at that point, I broke my leg. Then for the next three years, I was in and out of hospitals. I had a bunch of operations. And one day I was watching "Mr. Wizard." He had a program and he would show kids how to make things, and one day he showed how to make an early phonograph with a hat pin and a cone of paper. I liked it. I couldn't do much and I made one, and the...
(Soundbite of Caruso; from "Mr. Wizard" TV show)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Watch "Mr. Wizard." Now Mr. Wizard is not his real name but that's what all the kids in the neighborhood call him because he shows them the mystery and magic of science in everyday living. The Cereal Institute again invites you to watch "Mr. Wizard." Oh, yes, and by the way, Mr. Wizard lives in Chicago...
MR. BYRON: Anyway, what happened was that in the mid-1980s, I was working on a project, which came to a horrible end. My world had collapsed and I just closed down. And one of the ways of making myself better was making the phonograph. And I liked it and I thought, `Well, what about making one for outside, 'cause I feel so much better?' And since that point, I've been bringing it out in the summers here in Washington Square Park.
I picked this park because this is in the village, and you get Greenwich Village type of people. This was the center of Bohemia. It was like the Left Bank of Paris. And you get a response. You even get something from people who are heavily into drugs. Some sort of exchange occurs, and that's the reason why I brought it out. I mean, I didn't think it through. I needed to get out, and it's physically beautiful here. It's actually a burial ground, we're standing on top of 10,000 bodies or so, paupers. This was Potters Field. After Madison Square Garden, I think this closed off; in the 1790s, they opened this up.
That was Caruso about 1904, 1905, the beginning of mass production of recorded sound.
MAN #6: (Hebrew spoken)
MR. BYRON: You can speak Hebrew.
MAN #6: Yeah.
MR. BYRON: Yeah. You want to hear the (Hebrew spoken) or (Hebrew spoken) or anything like that?
MAN #6: Can we just listen a little bit (Hebrew spoken)?
MR. BYRON: Sure. Sure. Yeah. This is just after the Titanic went down. It says, `(Hebrew spoken) Titanic, something (Hebrew spoken).
MAN #6: (Hebrew spoken)
MR. BYRON: (Hebrew spoken)
MAN #6: (Hebrew spoken) It means, `We are drowned.'
MR. BYRON: OK, yeah, that's what it says. OK.
MAN #6: Yeah.
MR. BYRON: So this is Yossele Rosenblatt. He was born in the 1870s. He was probably the greatest--well, he's considered to be one of the greatest tenors to ever...
MAN #6: The king of...
MR. BYRON: Yeah.
MAN #6: ...cantors.
SOUNDBITE OF YOSSELE ROSENBLATT
MR. BYRON: Yeah.
MAN #6: Rosenblatt, Rosenblatt.
SOUNDBITE OF ROSENBLATT
MR. BYRON: Oops. Oh, well. Did the needle go?
MAN #6: Why do you have to change that?
MR. BYRON: Because they wear very quickly.
MAN #6: So where do you get them?
MR. BYRON: I get them either from Brooklyn or upstate New York, and I buy them, you know, by 500 or 1,000. I really should by them by 10,000, I go through so many.
MAN #6: OK.
MR. BYRON: You, too.
I live in the old Lower East Side. It's about a mile--and and what I do is everything goes on the wagon, except for the horn, and the horn goes over my shoulder. Coming here, you don't realize, unless you're pulling a 250-pound wagon, it's all uphill.
SOUNDBITE OF ROSENBLATT
MR. BYRON: Any--you want something?
MAN #6: Can I donate a couple dollars or...
MR. BYRON: No, I don't take money.
MAN #6: No?
MR. BYRON: I don't take money.
You want to hear...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #7: Louis. I see a Louis in there.
MR. BYRON: OK, "Willie the Weeper," did you ever hear that?
MAN #7: Is that Louis?
MR. BYRON: Yeah. "Willie the Weeper," 1928. Actually, there's one that's older here. This is "Louis Armstrong and His Hot 7." But this sounds better. "Willie the Weeper," Louis Armstrong, about 1928, '29.
SOUNDBITE OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG'S "WILLIE THE WEEPER"
MAN #7: ...(Unintelligible).
MR. BYRON: You sure can. Rudy, I didn't...
When I first started, I put out a hat and I did it--actually, I needed the money, but I felt pretty awkward doing it. And then NYU and the Park Coalition gave me a stipend of about $150. Basically covered new records and needles. And that was all right, but what I found was it works best without the money component. I mean, the money poured in, but this just doesn't involve that type of exchange.
SOUNDBITE OF ARMSTRONG
MR. BYRON: Let me do that Galli-Curci. This is a mad scene from "Lucia." It came out about 1917, 1918. And what's amazing about it is what she does with her voice the last this much of the record. Here we go, the mad scene from "Lucia," about 1918. It's the end of this record, if you're not into opera, that is absolutely amazing.
SOUNDBITE OF GALLI-CURCI
MR. BYRON: Sometimes you have people here and some of them have big problems, and you have to be able to work with what's going on. The one thing I found out is the way you get rid of the drug addicts was to play sopranos. That's worked every time. I turn on Galli-Curci and they all leave. I don't ask why. I don't know.
SOUNDBITE OF GALLI-CURCI
MR. BYRON: Last year, the police came. I was playing for quite a few people, actually, that day, and they said, `You have to stop. You don't have a permit.' And everybody said, `No, no, no, no, you can't make him stop, he's been here for years.' So they said, `Unless you can produce a permit, you can't play.' The next week, I came and I put a big word, `Muzzled' on the machine. People walked by and they got angry. And by the end of the day, the same police came over and they said, `This has been a terrible mistake. There will never be another problem, you know, with you playing in the park.'
That's nice.
SOUNDBITE OF GALLI-CURCI
MR. BYRON: OK, that was the mad scene from "Lucia," about 1918, 1917.
What about, "How Are You Going to Keep Them Down on the Farm?" with animal sounds? That's from 1919.
SOUNDBITE FROM "HOW ARE YOU GOING TO KEEP THEM DOWN ON THE FARM?"
MR. BYRON: This was just before Prohibition because the other side is, "How Are You Going to Wet Your Whistle When the Whole Darn World Goes Dry?"
SOUNDBITE FROM "HOW ARE YOU GOING TO KEEP THEM DOWN ON THE FARM?"
UNIDENTIFIED SINGER: Reuben, Reuben, I been thinking ...(unintelligible).
MR. BYRON: See, initially, it was the machine, and then it was the sound. There's something--I don't know what it is--but it can just put me in another place. And it seems that people come and it does something to them, too, and people who plan to stay, you know, a few minutes, they spend a whole day. A couple, after they were married, spent--she was still in her wedding dress so they spent the whole afternoon in front of the machine.
It really is magic what happens. And maybe we don't have so much magic or maybe I don't have so much magic in my life from what I expected. When I'm with this, I don't feel like I've lost anything, I just feel good.
MAN #5: Are you coming tomorrow, or when is the end of your season?
MR. BYRON: When it gets cold.
MAN #5: OK. Well, see you.
MR. BYRON: Thanks a million.
MAN #5: Bye-bye.
MR. BYRON: You want to hear "How Are You Going to Wet Your Whistle When the Whole Darn World Goes Dry?"
"How Are You Going to Wet Your Whistle When the Whole Darn World Goes Dry?" 1919, a few months before Prohibition began.
SOUNDBITE FROM "HOW ARE YOU GOING TO KEEP THEM DOWN ON THE FARM?"
SINGER: ...(unintelligible) and farmers always fixing the hay. Father Reuben, I stopped thinking, though you may think it's strange, but wine and women plays a mischief with a boy who's ...(unintelligible) age. How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paris. How you gonna keep 'em away from Broadway, laughing along, singing the song. How you gonna keep 'em away from harm, that's a mystery. They'll never want to see a rake or plow, and who of you can parlez-vous ...(unintelligible). How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Paris.
How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paris. How you gonna keep 'em away from Broadway...
ROBERT SIEGEL (HOST): Squatters on the test ranch. That's later on NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
