Tenants Run Apartment Network (Jul, 1940)
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jul, 1940
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This is so cool. I wish Les Paul would start a private radio station in my building!
Tenants Run Apartment Network
TO ENTERTAIN friends and neighbors in a New York apartment house, a group of professional radio performers operates a unique basement “broadcasting” station. Every Friday and Sunday evening, led by Les Paul and Earnie Newton, they go on the air from their homemade soundproof studio near the furnace room. Programs go to all the apartments through a two-wire ground and aerial system which had been built into the structure and previously never used. The control room is in a closet on the second floor. Frequently, “big-name” musicians drop in to lend a hand, and guest announcers whose voices are heard regularly on nation-wide hook-ups have fun taking turns at the basement microphone. Even “Static,” the apartment-house cat, occasionally goes on the air with amplified purrs and meows.
Les Paul’s private NYC apartment building radio station, 1940…
This Popular Science article from July, 1940 tells how Les Paul and his neighbors would run a little “radio station” of their live performances through their New York apartment building — as the Modern Mechanix blogger says, “I wish Les Paul would …
Trackback by Boing Boing — September 14, 2006 @ 7:42 am
[...] Here’s a fun article from the July 1940 issue of Popular Science about a pirate radio station Les Paul used to run out of his apartment in New York.-MJS (via Boing Boing) [...]
Pingback by Fretboard Journal Blog»Blog Archive » Station WLES is on the Air….. — September 14, 2006 @ 9:22 am
Les Paul’s bootleg apartment radio station / jam session from the 40s…
Modern Mechanix blog has a cool re-print of Les Paul’s very bootleg radio station / jam session he set up in his apartment building in the 40s. The pictures are great, expecially Static the cat, who you can see after…
Trackback by The Click Heard Round the World — September 14, 2006 @ 11:19 am
Earnie Newton was a well-known 40s picker too, while not quite as famous as Les Paul, he wrote several country standards.
There’s a pretty comprehensive Wikipedia article about Les Paul (This year at age 90 he won two Grammys)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Paul
Comment by Stannous — September 14, 2006 @ 7:58 pm
[...] Link [...]
Pingback by newsBreaks.net » Les Paul’s private NYC apartment building radio station, 1940 — September 16, 2006 @ 7:18 pm
Tenants run apartment network…
Apartment based radio station, from Popular Science 1940 – “TO ENTERTAIN friends and neighbors in a New York apartment house, a group of professional radio performers operates a unique basement “broadcasting” station. Every Friday and Sunday evenin…
Trackback by MAKE: Blog — September 24, 2006 @ 10:51 am