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Welcome to Robert Parker's
Jazz Classics In StereoTM Radio Programs.
These programs, which will
soon be available to download from this site, were originally broadcast on over
200 PRI (Public Radio International) public radio stations nationwide during 5
seasons from 1994 through 1998.
In addition to the shows
broadcast on PRI, we will make certain other special radio shows available from
time to time in the near future.
Here is a complete list of
the PRI radio shows:
1994 SEASON OF PUBLIC RADIO
INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTS
SERIES THEME: A
HISTORY OF CLASSIC JAZZ
94-01
INTRODUCTORY SHOW - MANY STYLES, ARTISTS
94-02
NEW ORLEANS STYLE - CRADLE OF JAZZ
94-03
NEW ORLEANS IN THE 1920's
94-04
CHICAGO - THE MELTING POT
94-05
PIONEER SOLOISTS (ARMSTRONG, BIX, BECHET)
94-06
THE BLUES (BESSIE SMITH TO BILLIE HOLIDAY)
94-07
HOT TOWN - THE SPREAD OF TERRITORY BANDS
94-08
NEW YORK - THE COMMUNICATIONS CENTER
94-09
NEW YORK STYLES
94-10
COTTON CLUB STOMP (CALLOWAY, ELLINGTON)
94-11
FLETCHER HENDERSON AND DON REDMAN
94-12
BENNY GOODMAN AND THE BIG BANDS
94-13
SWING STREET - THE SMALL GROUPS
94-14
FATS WALLER
94-15
ELLINGTON IN THE 30's TO 40's
94-16
NEW ORLEANS SURVIVAL
94-17
THE 40s - BOP, BOOGIE AND MAINSTREAM
94-18
NEW ORLEANS REVIVAL
1995 SEASON OF PUBLIC RADIO
INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTS
SERIES THEME: THE
DICTIONARY OF CLASSIC JAZZ
95-01
“A” TO “B” - ALLEN, ARMSTRONG, BIX, BASIE, ETC.
95-02
“B” TO “C” - BERIGAN, BERRY, BIGARD, ETC.
95-03
“C” TO “D” - CELESTIN, CONDON, COX, ETC.
95-04
“D” TO “F” - DODDS, DORSEY, ELIZALDE, ETC.
95-05
“F” TO “H” - FREEMAN, GILLESPIE, HAMPTON, ETC.
95-06
“H” TO “J” - HINES, HOLIDAY, JOHNSON, ETC.
95-07
“K” TO “M” - KEPPARD, KRUPA, LANG, LUNCEFORD, McKINNEY’S COTTON PICKERS,
McPARTLAND, ETC.
95-08
“M” TO “N” - MILLER, MOLE, MORTON, MOTEN, ETC.
95-09
“N” TO “P” - N.O.R.K., NOONE, OLIVER, ORY, ETC.
95-10
“P” TO “S” - PARKER, MA RAINEY, REDMAN, ETC.
95-11
“S” - SHAW, SIMEON, BESSIE SMITH, SPANIER, ETC.
95-12
“S” TO “W” - TATUM, TEAGARDEN, VENUTI, WALLER
95-13
“W” TO “Z” - WHITEMAN, CLARENCE WILLIAMS, ETC.
1996 SEASON OF PUBLIC RADIO
INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTS
SERIES THEME: GREAT
RARITIES OF CLASSIC JAZZ
96-01
“RED” ALLEN, ARMSTRONG, BASIE, BIX, ETC.
96-02
CAB CALLOWAY, EDDIE CONDON, J.C. COBB, ETC.
96-03
WILD BILL DAVISON, FIREHOUSE FIVE, ETC.
96-04
BENNY GOODMAN, COLEMAN HAWKINS, ETC.
96-05
FLETCHER HENDERSON, J.C. HIGGINBOTHAM, ETC.
96-06
BUNK JOHNSON, JAMES P. JOHNSON, KENTON
96-07
EDDIE LANG, BUBBER MILEY, ETC.
96-08
J.R. MORTON, RED NICHOLS, KID ORY, ETC.
96-09
PLETCHER, PRIMA, CHARLIE PARKER, ETC.
96-10
EDDIE SOUTH, STATE STREET RAMBLERS, ETC.
96-11
ETHEL WATERS, LU WATERS, WOLVERINES, ETC.
96-12
FEATURES HARLEM’S SAVOY BALLROOM STARS
1997 SEASON OF PUBLIC RADIO
INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTS
SERIES THEME:
PROFILES OF GREAT CLASSIC JAZZ MEN
97-01
JAZZ THE VIRUS: PART 1 (1920s JAZZ AGE)
97-02
JAZZ THE VIRUS: PART 2 (1930s SWING ERA)
97-03
PROFILE: HENRY “RED” ALLEN
97-04
PROFILE: COUNT BASIE
97-05
PROFILE: BUD FREEMAN
97-06
PROFILE: LIONEL HAMPTON
97-07
PROFILE: JELLY ROLL MORTON
97-08
PROFILE: JIMMY RUSHING
97-09
PROFILE: MUGGSY SPANIER
97-10
PROFILE: TORCH SONGS
97-11
PROFILE: SIDNEY BECHET
97-12
PROFILE: LOUIS ARMSTRONG
97-13
PROFILE: THE BLUES
1998 SEASON OF PUBLIC RADIO
INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTS
SERIES THEME: THE
ROOTS OF NEW ORLEANS JAZZ
THREE 2 HOUR
SPECIALS
98-01
ROOTS OF NEW ORLEANS JAZZ: PART 1 – IN SEARCH OF KING OLIVER
98-02
ROOTS OF NEW ORLEANS JAZZ: PART 2 – THE CLASSIC ERA
98-03
ROOTS OF NEW ORLEANS JAZZ: PART 3 – THE KING OLIVER HERITAGE
JAZZ CLASSICS IN STEREO RADIO
PROGRAMS · 62 HOURS OF PROGRAMMING
Who was Robert Parker?
The 1920s live! The '30s,
too! Australian audio wizard Robert
Parker has taken classic jazz
recordings--Jelly Roll Morton, King
Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Benny
Goodman, Sidney
Bechet, and more--had restored
them vibrantly to life. He does
more than just remove the
clicks, pops, ticks, and other
extraneous sounds that get in
the way of our appreciation of the
music; he restores luster to
faded recordings, digitally
remastering them in stereo
through a unique process that has
earned accolades
internationally, and won new fans for the music.
The New York Times has declared
Parker's remastered versions "a
constant voyage of
discovery--particularly for the listener who
is aware of the limitations of
the original recordings".
The London Times pronounced
Parker "the equivalent
of those Vatican
restorers. The popular music of the second
quarter of our century is his
Sistine ceiling; Louis Armstrong is
his Michelangelo, Jelly Rolly
Morton his Correggio, Bix
Beiderbecke his Titian."
London's Sunday Telegraph
declared that Parker's technique
has "finally pried out of the
antique wax groove everything which
was cut into it in the first
place".
WQEW disc-jockey (and former
radio curator of the Museum of
Television and Radio in New
York) Rich Conaty, who was among the
first to introduce Parker's
remastered versions to American
listeners, feels "the Parker
treatment is a terrific way of
reaching out to the
uninitiated. I began playing his very first
remastered recordings years ago
on WFUV. The thing that struck me
was one guy who had had
absolutely no prior interest in vintage
music called and he was just
raving about King Oliver. Parker
had made it possible for him to
get into the music".
Even purists among leading
audio engineers, such as Jack Towers,
80, who would prefer listening
to an original mono 78 than an
enhanced-for-stereo digitally
remastered version, acknowledge
that Parker's approach can
"make the music he's working
with--which includes some of
the oldest recorded
music--appetizing enough so
that some younger folks will listen
to it who otherwise wouldn't".
Parker, who thinks of himself
as a record collector first--he
owns more than 17,000 vintage
78s--and an audio engineer second,
says "all of my technical work
has been aimed at giving me
greater enjoyment from the
records". The operator of a sound
studio, he initially began
experimenting with techniques of noise
suppression years ago for his
own benefit. He simply
wanted to get the best possible
sound quality when he played his
old recordings at home.
Friends who heard the often startling
clarity of sound he was able to
get from recordings dating back
to the 1920s prodded him to
take his work public.
"The Australian Broadcasting
Corporation commissioned me to do
nine half-hour programs, which
they played throughout
Australia on ABC-FM. The
response was fantastic. We soon got
hundreds of letters from all
around Australia, from people who
said how much they enjoyed
hearing the music in this way." More
radio programs followed.
CD reissues of Parker's remastered
versions were the logical next
step. Parker's "Jazz Classics in
Digital Stereo" CDs were
introduced in Australia in 1984 by ABC
Music; eventually, they found
their way to markets worldwide.
(They're distributed in North
America by DRG Records.) Now Parker
aims to reach a broader
audience through broadcasts on American
radio.
Why does Parker opt for a
stereo effect?
"I'm trying to give a better
feeling for what it would have been
like to have been present in
the studio when the recordings were
made," he says. "I put
the sound into a stereo sound field to
make it more easy for the
listener to hear the detail in the
performance--the delineation of
the instruments or sections of
instruments. If you can present
the brain a sense of stereo which
is in any way reasonably
convincing, it will then allow you to
concentrate on facets within
that sound stage in the way that you
would if you were at a live
performance, much more easily than if
you're trying to concentrate on
a single watch of sound."
Parker's stereo effects are
markedly superior to the simulated
stereo effects that were tried
and abandoned a generation ago.
"There were various engineering
flaws in early simulated stereo
systems, which didn't work
well. They'd have a phase difference
between the two speakers, which
gives an effect of spread, but
unfortunately also creates
confusion in the mind.
"I'm not trying to re-create
the sound of a vintage 78, which
was recorded in mono in a boxy
studio that was typically covered
with sound-deadening
drapes. I'm trying to re-create, as well as
is possible, the sound of an
actual performance, as you might
have heard it in a club or a
dance hall." To gain the feel of a
performance in a larger room,
Parker will also add a judicious
amount of
reverberation.
One reason Parker's reissues
have the laudable impact and
vibrant presence they do is
because, as he notes: "All of the
albums I've done are recorded
directly from disc to digital,
without going through analog
tape at all. I wanted to preserve
particularly the dynamics of
the original recordings. The sound
gets more soggy sounding if it
goes onto analog tape. Also
you're adding a little bit more
hiss to an already hissy recording."
Parker's reissues have included
some sides that have been
frequently reissued before, on
LP and/or CD, and others that have
never before been
reissued. He is particularly pleased when he
is told--as he often has
been--that his reissues are much better
than those being produced by
the major labels. He believes his
deep love for the music is a
significant factor, too. Parker,
60, has been a lifelong devotee
of early jazz. It matters to him
that Armstrong and Beiderbecke,
Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, the
great small groups and big
bands, are all presented in the best
possible way. He is
appalled by the slipshod handling of some
vintage material by the
majors.
"We're in the position now, as
recordings from the 78 era are
being transferred to CDs, where
we're getting a one-off chance at
the recording archives.
And it's being wrecked for us, quite
frankly, for future
generations. I can't listen to
the stuff being put out by many
of the companies myself. For I
know what it's capable of
sounding like."
The majors cut costs by rushing
remastering jobs, he believes.
And even if reissue programs at
the big companies use the
services of knowledgable
producers and consultants, they tend to
let a certain amount of work be
done by in-house technicians who
may not have the slightest
interest in the music being
remastered.
"It takes a tremendous amount
of time and patience to extract the
maximum information from the
early records. Quite a lot of the
problems that you hear in
conventional reissues, coming from the
big record companies, stem from
the fact that they are done in a
great hurry. Most
reissues do not give a true indication of the
vitality of the original
performance. To get that last N(th)
degree requires a lot of time
and patience. You can't just feed
sounds into a computer and
expect to come up with the most
convincing representation of
the original performance. You have
to listen to it and make all
sorts of fine adjustments.
"If you want to get rid of
surface noise, hiss noise, you've got
to accentuate certain
frequencies which you find by
experimentation--to compensate
for the deadening effect of the
noise reduction."
Parker does not use the
computerized noise reduction systems
which are now routinely being
used by such major labels as BMG,
Decca/GRP, and Sony. He
says flatly, "I hate with an intense
hate the leaden deadness of 78
recordings which have had all of
the surface noise removed by
computer system like NoNoise and
CEDAR. It totally
destroys the enjoyment of the performance.
"I don't use "NoNoise" or
"CEDAR". I've done long experiments with
them. I had hoped they would
work well. Both systems have problems
when you use them for automatic
click removal. Unfortunately,
both systems are also capable
of adding distortions or problems
to the sound. I've made
up a demonstration CD--before and after
examples of CEDAR and
NoNoise--which conclusively proves to my
satisfaction that both systems
are fatally flawed. And I've also
got graphs that I've made from
my computer looking at it. You
can see the distortions on the
wave form, which in the case of
NoNoise are horrendous.
This is a very important
problem. Listen to some
of the reissues that have been
made using these computer
systems; they've put in all sorts of
distortions. There's one
I've just been listening to--a
major-label American reissue of
Louis Armstrong 1920s and '30s
stuff--and what happens on the
top end is dreadful. I mean,
there's a guitar solo on one
thing in which the noise reduction
process has completely
destroyed the guitar tone. But it doesn't
do it constantly--it swishes up
and down so you get this really
awful result, like an
out-of-phase tape.
"If you're going to try and get
rid of the noise, you've got to
counteract the disadvantages
that you might get from doing that.
You've got to find means of
doing that. I take the time to do
it. It takes forever."
But artists of the stature of Armstrong,
Beiderbecke, Bechet, and Morton
deserve that kind of care,
Parker believes. And a
growing number of listeners, worldwide,
seem to agree with
him.
(Adapted from the book
Traditionalists and Revivalists in
Jazz by Chip Deffaa, published
in 1993 by Scarecrow Press.)
Here’s what TIME MAGAZINE said
about Robert Parker in 1992:
Robert Parker
obituaries:
TRIBUTE TO ROBERT
PARKER
December 30, 2004.
Robert N. Parker, noted classic
jazz record restoration expert, producer of over 100 jazz music CDs and jazz
historian, died today after a long bout with cancer. Robert turned 68
years old on Christmas Eve. After cremation, his remains will be interred
with those of his beloved wife, Elaine, in the beautiful churchyard across from
the parsonage flat in Ashburton, South Devon, England where he resided for the
past few years. He is survived by his nephew and niece, Philip and
Alexandra Parker of Sydney, Australia, and their three children. Memorial
services and interment details have not yet been finalized.
Robert’s prolific output
continued up to the end, as did his quest for ever more realistic sound
improvements to his restorations. He sought to achieve crystal-clear
fidelity from those ancient discs, combined with the spatial qualities of live
performance, to all his recordings. Rob always strove for perfection, and
he proudly demonstrated his latest techniques and complex methodology to me
during a weeklong visit with him in August of this year. At the time of
his death, he had over twenty new CD albums in various stages of completion, and
more were planned. His love of the music never wavered.
Robert’s reputation as a
restorer of jazz recordings was built on a lifelong love of jazz nurtured in his
hometown of Sydney, Australia. Sometimes forgotten is that this was
Robert’s third incarnation in business. He first built his reputation in
entertainment and broadcasting as a video and film producer for the ABC
(Australia) and for the BBC in Britain. Rob won a British Academy Award
for one of his BBC documentaries.
Later he and lifelong friend,
Stefan Sargent, partnered to found Molinaire Sound in London, the first
independent UK studio of its kind, which was wildly successful. It was
only after he and Stefan sold the studio years later that Robert returned to his
first love, jazz. Robert began to perfect ever-better methods of restoring
the vibrant music buried in his collection of over 20,000 scratchy old 78s from
the first fifty years of the twentieth century. One of his pals from the
BBC one day happened to hear the results—which Robert had intended only for his
personal enjoyment—and the rest is history!
The BBC broadcast dozens of his
jazz radio programs, and they manufactured and sold his recordings under the BBC
Records label. Later Robert would produce over five years of ROBERT
PARKER’S JAZZ CLASSICS IN STEREO programs for the American market, broadcast on
public radio.
Will Allen III, friend and
business partner
ROBERT PARKER
OBITUARY
The Australian broadcaster and
sound engineer Robert Parker has died shortly after his 68th birthday. He was
receiving treatment for prostate cancer at a clinic in Bavaria, but died of
heart failure on 30th December 2004.
Robert Noel Parker was born in
Sydney, Australia on Christmas Eve 1936, the younger son of Philip and Dorothy
Parker. His interest in recording started while he was at Cranbrook School, when
he organised visits to local radio stations and the EMI record factory. Leaving
school in 1953 he first worked for a transformer company and then in an
advertising agency, before joining the 2UE radio station as a grams operator. He
next worked for the Commonwealth Film Unit (now Film Australia), where he met
his future wife Elaine. In his spare time Parker built a recording studio
in a garage and compiled his own radio programmes. In 1959, assisted by
his childhood friend Stefan Sargent, he made a professional recording of the
Cootamundra Jazz Festival, which was released on EMI Records.
In 1964 Parker decided to seek
his fortune in England. He joined Associated Rediffusion television in
London’s Kingsway. One of his duties was to edit feature films to fit the
transmission slot with commercial breaks. He used to talk gleefully of removing
key scenes or even sub-plots in the process! Parker went on to join the
Rank Short Films Unit, where his documentary Learning Chemistry won a British
Academy award. After the Rank unit was disbanded Parker, in conjunction
with Stefan Sargent, set up a facilities company called Molinare with offices in
Soho. The company grew to about 100 employees but Parker was eased out
after thirteen years and returned to Australia. He was commissioned to
write and produce The A-Z of Jazz on ABC radio. Parker had become
interested in restoring 78rpm discs of classic jazz featuring such greats as Bix
Beiderbecke, Fletcher Henderson and Jelly Roll Morton. He discovered that
the copyright in sound recordings expired after fifty years, when the records
entered the public domain. Parker’s method of adding reverberation and enhanced
stereo effects to vintage mono recordings, using an analogue machine called the
Packman Audio Noise Suppressor, remained controversial, but his series Jazz
Classics In Digital Stereo won awards in Australia and was rebroadcast on BBC
Radio 2, Parker himself settling back in England. The tracks were subsequently
issued on BBC Records, initially on LP and later on cassette and compact
disc.
After his wife Elaine died
Parker rented a warehouse near Ashburton in Devon and devoted himself, now with
Cedar digital equipment, to compiling further CDs of a very wide range,
including remastered recordings of artistes such as Richard Tauber, Vera Lynn
and Fred Astaire. He sold most of his records by mail order and was always
willing to remaster individual tracks for BBC producers and other outlets.
Robert’s brother John died in 2002 and there were no children from his
marriage.
Copyright Anthony Wills
2005
Golden Sounds Productions, 14a
Elizabeth Mews, London NW3 4TL
For more information, please
contact Will Allen at waallen3@earthlink.net, or phone
919-349-6566.
This site was last revised Monday, November 25st. 2008.