Store owner rescues a bit of WWII broadcast history
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Cylinder recordings line the walls of the Vintage Music Company, along with radios of all shapes and styles from the Victorian era to the mid-century. Above it all, gramophone brass horns hang from the ceiling. The store is vast, but space is sparse.
“Just find a place that you’re not going to hurt yourself, if that can be done,” said Scott Holthus, the owner of the record and turntable repair shop in Minneapolis. Holthus considers his shop as orphanage for artifacts of a bygone era that either need repair or a new home.
“I'll take care of it, or hide it, until it has a better place in the world to be or completely restored,” he said. Over the years, Holthus has fiddled with, fixed and seen a number of artifacts that have entertained people throughout the 20th century. These items come with tall tales and a lineage of history. But for Holthus, he sees most of it as just other people’s stuff.
“It does not hit me in the sentimentals at all,“ he said. “I'm nostalgic and sentimental for family items but not not the stuff in here. I love the music. I love the records. Don't get me wrong. I love the machines dearly, but I don't need to take it home. I don't need to worship it.”
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But there is one exception for Holthus.
“To me, the things that are important in here — and there are things that are important — are things that are singular,” he explained.
One of those singular items is a 1944 recording tucked behind a drawer, at the bottom of a stack of cassette tapes. The audio captures an American Red Cross WWII canteen service. At these events, the organization would provide comfort items for soldiers shipping out at train stations across the country.
“[This] was recorded at St. Paul Union Depot, and they’re entertaining the troops before they get on the trains,” Holthus said. He explained that the audio was recorded and broadcast on KSTP radio in the Twin Cities. A band was performing "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone," a song published in the 1930s and performed widely by singers like Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald.
Holthus discovered this broadcast recording in a box of broken records dropped off at his store nearly two decades ago for restoration. Holthus used to volunteer his repair services with the Pavek Museum in St. Louis Park, which houses a large collection of radio and television equipment, as well as audio.
Holthus managed to repair the KSTP recording by gluing pieces of the record to a base so it could be played on a turntable and then recorded onto cassettes and, later, CDs. The process was tedious and took months to complete, but Holthus managed to save audio he deemed to have historical value.
“It's a shame we don't have more of it,” said Glenn Griffin, a media specialist and archivist for Hubbard Broadcasting. “You can't save everything, but we can sure try and sample what is still around to see what it was like 100 years ago or 80 years ago or 50 years ago.”
Griffin said performances like the one on Holthus’ cassette were common during the war, but a radio station pulling off a live recording in a remote location was an expensive technical process.
“They probably dragged a bunch of equipment down there and then they cut it on a record,” Griffin explained. “It may or may not have aired live. They may have just recorded it on a disc, then they bring the disc back to the studio and play it on a record player.”
Griffin said anyone with firsthand knowledge about the process is likely gone, and he added that the industry at that time didn’t realize the replay value of those broadcasts. Plus, some of those radio specials were recorded on glass disk records, making them fragile and unlikely to withstand the test of time.
“It's a time capsule,” Griffin said. “It's like going back in a time machine to hear people talking, breathing, living at the time.”
It’s been over 80 years since anyone has heard that recording on the radio. But it had to hit the ears of Holthus before it could ever be broadcast again. This historical recording exists today because of his belief in giving people an opportunity to listen and appreciate the past.
Do you have a “Hand-Me-Down?” An artifact of your own with a compelling origin story? Let us know at MorningEdition@mpr.org and a producer will reach out to you.
Listen to this “Hand-Me-Downs” segment by clicking the player above.
