"Because ignorance of your culture is considered uncool"
For the week ending this day in 1956, all attention seemed to be on an interview, conducted by Life Magazine, with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. The gist of the interview was Dulles’ alarming tone with regard to the Indo-China (Vietnam) situation. Dulles proclaimed, in no uncertain terms, that...
Recovering from a bad case of the Flu, President Roosevelt delivered the 1944 State of The Union address from the Oval Office, rather than in a Joint Session of Congress. The war had been going on for 3 years and the tide was turning in the Allies favor. It was...
Back to some basic, no-frills American Rock n’ Roll this weekend. In 1977, Mushroom Records ran a full-page advertisement showing the bare-shouldered Wilson sisters (as on the Dreamboat Annie album cover) with the suggestive caption, “It was only our first time!” In an interview that appeared in the July 28,...
Over to Austria this week for a concert by the legendary Drummer/Percussionist Max Roach, recorded live at the Vienna JazzFest on July 8, 1994. In the early 1980s, Roach began presenting solo concerts, demonstrating that multiple percussion instruments performed by one player could fulfill the demands of solo performance and...
A day a lot happened. This November 23rd in 1970 heard reports of an unsuccessful attempt to free American prisoners in a North Vietnamese detention camp. The raid itself was successful, but the purported prison camp had been evacuated several weeks earlier. The Defense Department Press conference left more questions...
Another historic concert this weekend. This one featuring The Max Roach Quintet, joined by the legendary Sonny Rollins. All recorded on November 10, 1966 in Stockholm by Sveriges Radio. Along with Rollins and Roach are Freddie Hubbard (Trumpet), James Spaulding, (Alto), Ronnie Mathews (Piano) and Jymie Merritt (Bass). Max Roach...
November 2nd in 1936 was the last day before the Presidential election that year. As a “final word”, President Roosevelt, along with Postmaster General James Farley and New York Senator Robert Wagner, addressed the nation via that relatively recent mass-media device; radio. The end of a hard fought campaign, FDR...
News for this day in 1962 was decidedly ominous, and if you had grown up on a diet of Cold War paranoia, it was the worst case scenario come to life. Ever since the revolution in Cuba in 1959, and the overthrow of the Battista government for the one set...
Part 1 Part 2 Over to Prague from 1979 this week for a concert by the BBC Symphony, conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky and featuring Viktoria Postnikova, piano. The concert was recorded during the legendary Prague Spring Festival and features works by Prokofiev, Janacek, Britten and Elgar. Here’s what’s on the...
On this day in 1944, a promise made by General MacArthur as he was leaving the besieged islands of The Philippines that he would return, became fact. On October 20, 1944 an allied invasion force reported to be an entire army stormed ashore, effectively cutting the island in two. Reports...
Gordon Skene, two-time Grammy Nominee and archivist runs The Gordon Skene Sound Archive and this website, which is dedicated to preserving and encouraging an interest in history and historic news, events, and cultural aspects of our society. Past Daily is the only place on the Internet where you can hear a Nixon speech, listen to an interview with John Cassavettes or play a broadcast of Charles Munch rehearsing the Boston Symphony in 1950, all in the same place. It's living history and it's timeless.
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