Country Hall Renews Archival Efforts

The long-term preservation of historic recordings was a topic recently raised when the U.S. House of Representatives passed the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000 (Billboard, Aug. 5, 2000). With a varied but finite shelf life, analog master tapes in the possession of record labels and archives are experiencing a slow but steady degradation; recorded material on old tapes must periodically be transferred or be lost forever.

Now, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville is taking steps to prevent such a loss.

The Hall of Fame is in the process of building a new facility downtown, near the Ryman Auditorium, with a larger and improved studio in which to continue its preservation efforts. Currently housed on Music Row, the facility's archives include more than 200,000 recorded discs and hundreds of audiotapes. The new facility is scheduled to open in May 2001.

In addition, last month, XM Satellite Radio—which is developing up to 100 national channels and is scheduled to begin national transmission in the first half of 2001—and the Hall of Fame announced a partnership under which XM will broadcast a live, five-hour show daily from a studio under construction at the new building.

Recalling legendary radio station WSM, which has been broadcasting from Nashville for decades, this new transmission medium—satellite radio—will bring old recordings to listeners but on a much larger scale. Country music fans nationwide will be able to access rarely heard historical performances and recordings from the Hall of Fame's archives, as well as contemporary country music.

Content will include "The Country Music Hall Of Fame Hour," featuring hourlong profiles of music legends with rare, archival recordings; "Today In Country Music History," which will also take advantage of the Hall of Fame's archives; and "Backstage At The Country Music Hall Of Fame," highlighting new live performances and rebroadcasts of classic concerts.

Transferring to tape

Ironically, in the age of digital recording technology and satellite transmission, preservationists (by definition a conservative group) still consider analog tape the best choice for long-term archiving.

Though magnetic tape has a finite life span—its longevity can vary dramatically depending on a number of factors—digital formats such as DAT and CD-R are generally shunned. Between error rates and the fact that digital media have not been around long enough for long-term stability to be gauged, archivists prefer to work with a proven format.

Alan Stoker of the Country Music Foundation, which runs the Hall of Fame and Museum, has been transferring disc-source material to analog tape for 20 years. The thousands of acetate discs are both metal- and glass-based, some dating to the '30s. The Hall of Fame, Stoker explains, acquires material from various sources.

"We make a determination when they come in as to which ones need to be transferred immediately before they fall apart any further," says Stoker. "Some might be historically important that we could use in the current museum, or perhaps for reissue on our record label [Koch-distributed CMF Records] or by one of the majors who may own the rights to the artist."

A set of discs of NBC radio broadcasts from the Grand Ole Opry's "Prince Albert Show," Stoker adds, came from its sponsor, the R.J. Reynolds company. Often, the children of deceased radio engineers will call offering discs from their parents' estates.

"Engineers are like writers," says Stoker. "If they've had something to do with the creation of something, they think it's theirs, and they keep it. That's good, because generally the radio station would have just thrown them in the trash. Knowing that, the engineers kept them.

"A lot of times, you find nothing there that I would consider historically important—church recordings, things like that," he says. "Not to say that's not important but certainly not as important as a Nashville-originated network feed of something like 'Sunday Down South,' an NBC show.

"WSM here in Nashville was very important in the early days of radio," he continues. "Obviously, they had the Opry, but they had other shows. So we have a lot of discs like that. We get a lot of home-recorded discs from families that are what I call 'fiber discs.' They're cardboard discs, and performers' families have had them for years. There are a lot of regionally important performers that never recorded commercially.

"It's important that if there are any home recordings of those people that exist that they be preserved and documented," he says. "We're always glad to find those."

Stoker will continue archiving to BASF 911 ›-inch analog tape at the new facility, which was designed by Nashville-based acoustician and studio designer Michael Cronin and offers four times the physical space of the current studio.

"I generally archive 15 [inches per second]," Stoker explains, "just because it's a good archiving format, and, financially, it's hard to go any faster. I could do 30, but at 15 minutes per reel, that's rather cost-prohibitive."

getting the music out

The XM Satellite Radio/Country Hall partnership, meanwhile, is mutually beneficial, says Lee Abrams, chief programming officer at XM. Based in Washington, D.C., XM intends to build a facility in major media markets, including New York and Los Angeles, in addition to Nashville.

"Because it's a music center," says Abrams, "we wanted to have a high visibility there. We will do a daily broadcast from Nashville plus have a place to interview and record artists that are part of the Nashville community."

Kyle Young, director of the Hall of Fame, also exalts the partnership. Housing XM Satellite Radio's state-of-the-art studio within the new Hall of Fame will not only enhance the experience for museum visitors, he says, but it will heighten awareness of its existence and offerings, important to an almost entirely self-funded institution. Furthermore, Young notes, finding, preserving, and protecting historically important recordings is only part of the Hall of Fame's mission.

"The other part, which XM will really help us fulfill, is to disseminate, to let people hear it," he continues. "What we have in the collection is really remarkable. We have radio transcriptions from the border days. There were a few stations that were operating right across the Texas border in Mexico that were clear channels and really had national reach.

"From there, we have some Carter Family recordings," he says. "They were a staple of those shows, and there is some stuff that's never been heard. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are performances by seminal artists, most of which have never been heard."

Perhaps above all else, the timing of satellite radio's introduction, coinciding as it does with the new Hall of Fame, is fulfilling. With a century of sound recordings, a new band of radio is a convenient avenue for providing the enormous amount of content available.

"It's the first new band since FM," says Young. "That's a long time ago. The time is right."