I’m not sure if Edward Murrow was a household name for this generation before 2005’s Good Night and Good Luck came out. I hope so, as Edward Murrow was the greatest American broadcast journalist of all time, and arguably the greatest journalist of any medium anywhere. His elegant, almost poetic prose and his bravery – from reporting on rooftops in London during the Blitzkrieg (“this… is London”) to telling Joe McCarthy he’s a moron on live television – is unmatched, especially in our current 24-hour news paradigm.
With our current economic (and sometimes social) turmoil, it’s certainly as relevant now as ever before to listen to the sound of history as told by one of its best orators, in a time Murrow called the most exciting and dramatic thirteen years in American history. This record, I Can Hear It Now, Vol. 1, does just that – documents a sort of “greatest hits” between 1933 and 1945, what Murrow calls “a scrapbook of sound” (which is a bite I think DJ Shadow uses as a sample, but I forget the song).
Rather than simply a recount of the most famous speeches and recordings any student of U.S. history will be familiar with, I Can Hear It Now gathers every major milestone that was important at that time, without an outsider or historical perspective (it was released shortly after the war in 1948). Pearl Harbor and the 1940 Republican nomination of Wendell Willkie, the prayer of a pilot before commandeering the Enola Gay, Roosevelt and Mussolini, Neville Chamberlain and Joe Louis are all given a respectable chunk of time on this record. Of course, some of the more famous quotations make the cut, such as the Hindenburg “oh the humanity,” but also rare speeches by Stalin.
I found this at a garage sale a couple of years ago – why would someone sell this? The record is both uplifting and spooky – the sound of immeasurable fear during wartime juxtaposed against how all of us can make some lemonade of the situation(s). Pretty powerful.
I’ve transcribed the back of the record, which describes what you’re hearing in each broadcast collage, or “band,” exactly as it appears (save for the unnecessary capitalization that I assume was AP style in the ’40s). The end of band five reveals where Murrow got his trademark phrase “good night and good luck” (which is where Keith Olbermann got his phrase, if ya’lls were unaware).
Band One
- Will Rogers talks about America and the Depression, 1932
- Franklin D Roosevelt assumes the Presidency on March 4, 1933 “Nothing to Fear but Fear.”
- Senator Huey Long, the Louisiana King-Fish and his “Share the Wealth” program, just prior to his assassination on September 8, 1935
- The Duke of Windsor Abdicates for “the woman I love,” December 11, 1936
Band Two
- Fiorello H LaGuardia wages war against the “Ward Heelers”
- Alfred Landon campaigns for the Presidency, 1936
- “Rendezvous with Destiny” speech; Franklin D Roosevelt at Franklin Field, Philadelphia, June 27, 1936
- John L. Lewis castigates those who have deserted Labor (Labor Day, 1937)
- the Hindenburg Air Disaster, Lakehurst, NK, May 6, 1937; Herbert Morrison of WLS, Chicago, at the scene
Band Three
- September 30, 1938 at Munich
- Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returns from Munich and tells of his meeting with Hitler, September 27, 1938
- Adolf Hitler lashes out against Eduard Benes and the Sudetenland, September 26, 1938
- Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, Yankee Stadium, June 22, 1938 (Clem McCarthy of NBC describes the Knockout)
- Iron-Man Lou Gehrig steps down after twenty-one hundred and thirty games of baseball, July 4, 1939
Band Four
- Elmer Davis announces the Invasion of Poland by Germany, September 3, 1939
- Three Views of US Neutrality: Charles A Lindbergh, Alfred E Smith, Hugh Johnson
- Nazi Blitzkrieg on the Continent; actual march of Storm Troopers, “Seig Heils,” etc., Spring 1940
- Franklin D Roosevelt at Charlottesville, Virginia, “The Hand that Held the Dagger,” June 10, 1940
- Benito Mussolini’s Declaration of War, June 10, 1940
Band Five
- Premier Paul Reynaud pleads for US Aid as Nazis overrun France, June 10, 1940
- French surrender at Compiegne (via German Shortwave Radio) June 22, 1940
- Neville Chamberlain resigns as Prime Minister, May 10, 1940
- Winston Churchill forms a Coalition Government; Excerpts from several of his early speeches, May and June 1940
- Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose speak to evacuated British children
Band Six
- Joseph W Martin, Willkie Notification Ceremony, Elwood, Indiana, August 17, 1940
- Wendell Willkie accepts Republican Nomination, Elwood, August 17, 1940
- Franklin D Roosevelt campaigns for third term: “Martin, Baron and Fish” speech, October 30, 1940
- Winston Churchill reads “Ship of State” message delivered to him from President Roosevelt by Wendell Willkie
- “Arsenal of Democracy,” Franklin D Roosevelt, March 15, 1941
- New York Philharmonic broadcast interrupted for Pearl Harbor announcement, December 7, 1941
Band Seven
- US Declaration of War; Speaker Sam Rayburn introduces President, who asks Congress to declare a State of War, December 8, 1941
- D-Day, June 6, 1944′ Messages on the Invasion by General Dwight D Eisenhower, Charles de Gaulle, King Haakon of Norway, and others
Band Eight
- Broadcast from Invasion Flagship Ancon on D-Day by George Hicks of the American Broadcasting Company, June 6, 1944
- Marshall Joseph Stalin on the 24th anniversary of the October Revolution, November 7, 1941
- Franklin D Roosevelt makes his fourth race for the Presidency (“Fala Speech”), September 7, 1944
- Franklin D Roosevelt addresses Joint Session of Congress after his return from Yalta, March 1, 1945
Band Nine
- Announcement of President Roosevelt’s death, April 12, 1945
- Description Roosevelt Funeral Procession, Washington, April 14, 1945 (Arthur Godrey)
- Harry S Truman makes his first appearance as president before a Joint Session of Congress, introduced by Speaker Sam Rayburn, April 16, 1945
- President Truman announces German surrender, May 8, 1945
- Secretary of State Edward Stettinius opens San Francisco Conference of the United Nations, April 25, 1945
Band Ten
- Chaplain William Downey, US Army Air Forces, says a prayer at Tinian, before take-off of the Enola Gay, which carried first atomic bomb used in warfare, August 6, 1945
- President Truman tells of our race for atomic energy and our plans for it, August 9, 1945
- First bulletin of Japanese surrender (Robert Trout), August 14, 1945
- General Douglas McArthur accepts Japanese surrender aboard Battleship Missouri, September 2, 1945
- Epilogue: The thirteen years
In the note included on the back, Murrow and Friendly describe, indirectly, why they released this record: “It has been said that Colonial troops one hundred feet away from Washington at Yorktown missed Cornwallis’ surrender because the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. Yet GIs on KP at Camp Edwards, Massachusetts, heard MacArthur accept the Japanese surrender faster and clearer than sailors on the superstructure of the battleship Missouri.” His program on CBS was called “Hear It Now” after the title of this record. However, the name of the record, I believe, is the acknowledgment on Murrow and Friendly’s behalf of the power they wield, and the responsibility they carry during strange and transitional times.
This jam rules, and I sincerely hope you enjoy it. I Can Hear It Now is a gem in my record collection.
MP3 :::
Edward Murrow – Band One
Edward Murrow – Band Two
Edward Murrow – Band Three
Edward Murrow – Band Four
Edward Murrow – Band Five
Edward Murrow – Band Six
Edward Murrow – Band Seven
Edward Murrow – Band Eight
Edward Murrow – Band Nine
Edward Murrow – Band Ten
The Lime Spiders crawled up out of the Sydney scene during the era but had the punk edge of Radio Birdman or The Scientists rather than the poppy frat-friendly lilt of the Go-Betweens. Steeped in psychedelic influences, the band started out doing covers of hits by groups like The Litter, Cream, The Haunted and The Liberty Bell. After years of touring, 1987 finally brought the debut full-length release of The Cave Comes Alive. Behind the strength of singles like “My Favourite Room” the album ran up the college charts in the US and prompted typical rock critic categorizations like, “the Sex Pistols on acid.”
