Henry Jacobs
Encyclopedia
Henry Sandy Jacobs is an American sound artist and humorist.
Jacobs was born in Chicago, Illinois. After a tour in the Air Corps
- during which time he acquired some broadcast experience, and graduation from the University of Chicago
, he moved to Mexico City
. There, around 1950, he appeared on Mexico radio station XEW
and fledgling television station XHTV.
In 1952, Jacobs returned to Chicago and began experimenting with reel to reel
tape recorders, taking particular advantage of the ease with which they made it possible to manipulate sound directly. Ambient, everyday sound, and especially the structural variety of apparently spontaneous sounds, interested him; at one point he ventured to Haiti to make street recordings. While attending graduate courses at the University of Illinois
, he also produced a regular program on the campus radio station (WILL
) entitled Music and Folkore, which is believed by some to be one of the first presentations of "world music" to an American audience.
Jacobs often brought experts in certain ethnic musics onto the show to provide background information. When no experts were available, he would not infrequently fake it - most notably in the case of "Sholem Stein", a putative Hebrew musicologist who claimed that calypso music had deep Rabbinical meanings. These were largely improvised with humorist and colleague Woody Leafer.
Pacifica
station KPFA
in Berkeley
started receiving tapes of Music and Folklore not long after the program began, so Bay Area
audiences were already familiar with Jacobs when he moved to San Francisco in 1953 and took up the show in person. While still at berkeley, Jacobs assembled two tape recorders and re-recorded many of the percussive sounds that he had recorded on the road (and in his own studio) while varying the speed of the tape as he re-recorded them, and then spliced the unusual new percussive sounds into tape loops, recording them again into a montage of loops entitled "Sonata For Loudspeakers", which first appeared on the "Radio Program No. 1" Folkways disk, and eventually was included on the 1957 Folkways album, "Sounds of New Music" (Folkways disk no. FX 6160.) Meanwhile, he continued to pursue an interest in all aspects of sound, in the composition of musique concrete, in improvisational theatre and humor. He met poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti
, Kenneth Rexroth
, Alan Ginsberg, comedian Lenny Bruce
(whose first recording was a Jacobs project, Interviews of Our Times), and percussionist Mongo Santamaría
.
Most important among these new social contacts were the friendships he struck up with Ken Nordine
, "the father of word jazz", and Alan Watts
, a gifted raconteur and former Anglican
priest best known for popularizing and interpreting Eastern philosophy
for a Western
audience. Jacobs, upon taking the helm at his friend Bill Loughborough's record label, MEA, in 1959, set about releasing several recordings of Watts. He is currently co-curator of the Alan Watts archive.
Moe Asch, the founder of Folkways Records
, offered Jacobs the opportunity to release his first record, Radio Programme No 1 Audio Collage: Henry Jacobs’ Music and Folklore, in 1955.
In 1957, working with artist Jordan Belson
, Jacobs produced Vortex: Experiments in Sound and Light - a series of concerts featuring new music, including some of Jacobs' own, and that of Karlheinz Stockhausen
, and many others - taking place in the Morrison Planetarium in Golden Gate Park
, San Francisco. Sound designers commonly regard this as the origin of the (now standard) concept of "surround sound
." The program was popular, and Jacobs and Belson were invited to reproduce it at the 1958 World Expo
in Brussels.
His album, The Wide Weird World of Shorty Petterstein consisted largely of encounters between hipster
s and unknowing squares. One interviewer asks about art to be told, "Art? He's been with the band about six months. Blows good piano." When the interviewer protests that pianos aren't blown, but played with the hands, Shorty returns the opaque reply, "Blow is like an instrument."
Bizarre even for Jacobs is the humorous and slightly disturbing 1963 album, The Laughing String, which has all the hallmarks of a masterpiece.
With the backing of the American Cancer Society
, Jacobs, in collaboration with John Korty, put together an animated short film about quitting smoking, "Breaking the Habit", which was nominated for an Academy Award
in 1964. This brought Jacobs far enough into the limelight to get remunerative work as a sound consultant. In the late sixties he created radio advertisements for Japan Airlines
and supplied audio/visual ideas to Bank of America
's marketing division.
His approach to sound manipulation greatly interested George Lucas, and he was tapped to provide some improvised soundtrack material and background dialogue for his film THX 1138
.
In 1972, Jacobs collaborated with Bob McClay and Chris Koch on a series of half-hour television programs for San Francisco public television station KQED. "The Fine Art of Goofing Off" was a sort of philosophical Sesame Street
; each program would develop an open-ended theme, like "time" or "work" in an unpredictable collage of brief episodes in a variety of different styles of animation. Alan Watts, improv troop The Committee
, artist Victor Moscoso, musicians Mark Unobsky and Pete Sears
, Woody Leafer, and Jordan Belson all contributed to the series.
Jacobs currently resides to the north of San Francisco, where he can avoid "electricity and cars." He has three children, practices Aikido
, and is a fervent appreciator of Afro-Cuban music.
Some of Jacobs' work is back in print through Locust Music
and Important Records. The bulk of his master tapes were destroyed by fire in 1995, though 63 reel-to-reel tapes were rediscovered by Jack Dangers
who released a portion of the material in collaboration with Jacobs in 2005.
Jacobs was born in Chicago, Illinois. After a tour in the Air Corps
United States Army Air Corps
The United States Army Air Corps was a forerunner of the United States Air Force. Renamed from the Air Service on 2 July 1926, it was part of the United States Army and the predecessor of the United States Army Air Forces , established in 1941...
- during which time he acquired some broadcast experience, and graduation from the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, he moved to Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
. There, around 1950, he appeared on Mexico radio station XEW
XEW
XEW is the callsign of the following broadcast stations in Mexico City, Mexico:*television station XEW-TV, channel 2*radio station XEW-AM, 900 kHz*radio station XEW-FM, 96.9 MHz...
and fledgling television station XHTV.
In 1952, Jacobs returned to Chicago and began experimenting with reel to reel
Reel to Reel
* For the audio technology, see "Reel-to-reel audio tape recording"Reel to Reel is the debut album by Grand Puba. It was Puba's first solo venture, following group projects with the likes of the short lived group Masters of Ceremony and Brand Nubian. Both of the group’s albums were critically...
tape recorders, taking particular advantage of the ease with which they made it possible to manipulate sound directly. Ambient, everyday sound, and especially the structural variety of apparently spontaneous sounds, interested him; at one point he ventured to Haiti to make street recordings. While attending graduate courses at the University of Illinois
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
, he also produced a regular program on the campus radio station (WILL
WILL
WILL is the callsign of the three public broadcasting stations owned by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and directly operated by its Division of Broadcasting...
) entitled Music and Folkore, which is believed by some to be one of the first presentations of "world music" to an American audience.
Jacobs often brought experts in certain ethnic musics onto the show to provide background information. When no experts were available, he would not infrequently fake it - most notably in the case of "Sholem Stein", a putative Hebrew musicologist who claimed that calypso music had deep Rabbinical meanings. These were largely improvised with humorist and colleague Woody Leafer.
Pacifica
Pacifica Radio
Pacifica Radio is the oldest public radio network in the United States. It is a group of five independently operated, non-commercial, listener-supported radio stations that is known for its progressive/liberal political orientation. It is also a program service supplying over 100 affiliated...
station KPFA
KPFA
KPFA is a listener-funded progressive talk radio and music radio station located in Berkeley, California, broadcasting to the San Francisco Bay Area. KPFA airs public news, public affairs, talk, and music programming. The station signed on-the-air April 15 1949, as the first Pacifica Station...
in Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
started receiving tapes of Music and Folklore not long after the program began, so Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
audiences were already familiar with Jacobs when he moved to San Francisco in 1953 and took up the show in person. While still at berkeley, Jacobs assembled two tape recorders and re-recorded many of the percussive sounds that he had recorded on the road (and in his own studio) while varying the speed of the tape as he re-recorded them, and then spliced the unusual new percussive sounds into tape loops, recording them again into a montage of loops entitled "Sonata For Loudspeakers", which first appeared on the "Radio Program No. 1" Folkways disk, and eventually was included on the 1957 Folkways album, "Sounds of New Music" (Folkways disk no. FX 6160.) Meanwhile, he continued to pursue an interest in all aspects of sound, in the composition of musique concrete, in improvisational theatre and humor. He met poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...
, Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Rexroth was an American poet, translator and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement...
, Alan Ginsberg, comedian Lenny Bruce
Lenny Bruce
Leonard Alfred Schneider , better known by the stage name Lenny Bruce, was a Jewish-American comedian, social critic and satirist...
(whose first recording was a Jacobs project, Interviews of Our Times), and percussionist Mongo Santamaría
Mongo Santamaría
Ramón "Mongo" Santamaría Rodríguez was an Afro-Cuban Latin jazz percussionist. He is most famous for being the composer of the jazz standard "Afro Blue," recorded by John Coltrane among others. In 1950 he moved to New York where he played with Perez Prado, Tito Puente, Cal Tjader, Fania All...
.
Most important among these new social contacts were the friendships he struck up with Ken Nordine
Ken Nordine
Ken Nordine is an American voiceover and recording artist best known for his series of Word Jazz albums. His deep, resonant voice has also been featured in many commercial advertisements and movie trailers. One critic wrote that "you may not know Ken Nordine by name or face, but you'll almost...
, "the father of word jazz", and Alan Watts
Alan Watts
Alan Wilson Watts was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York...
, a gifted raconteur and former Anglican
Anglican Communion
The Anglican Communion is an international association of national and regional Anglican churches in full communion with the Church of England and specifically with its principal primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury...
priest best known for popularizing and interpreting Eastern philosophy
Eastern philosophy
Eastern philosophy includes the various philosophies of Asia, including Chinese philosophy, Iranian philosophy, Japanese philosophy, Indian philosophy and Korean philosophy...
for a Western
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
audience. Jacobs, upon taking the helm at his friend Bill Loughborough's record label, MEA, in 1959, set about releasing several recordings of Watts. He is currently co-curator of the Alan Watts archive.
Moe Asch, the founder of Folkways Records
Folkways Records
Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.-History:...
, offered Jacobs the opportunity to release his first record, Radio Programme No 1 Audio Collage: Henry Jacobs’ Music and Folklore, in 1955.
In 1957, working with artist Jordan Belson
Jordan Belson
Jordan Belson was an American artist and filmmaker who created nonobjective, often spiritually oriented, abstract films spanning six decades.-Biography:Belson was born in Chicago, Illinois....
, Jacobs produced Vortex: Experiments in Sound and Light - a series of concerts featuring new music, including some of Jacobs' own, and that of Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
, and many others - taking place in the Morrison Planetarium in Golden Gate Park
Golden Gate Park
Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, is a large urban park consisting of of public grounds. Configured as a rectangle, it is similar in shape but 20% larger than Central Park in New York, to which it is often compared. It is over three miles long east to west, and about half a...
, San Francisco. Sound designers commonly regard this as the origin of the (now standard) concept of "surround sound
Surround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
." The program was popular, and Jacobs and Belson were invited to reproduce it at the 1958 World Expo
Expo '58
Expo 58, also known as the Brussels World’s Fair, Brusselse Wereldtentoonstelling or Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles, was held from 17 April to 19 October 1958...
in Brussels.
His album, The Wide Weird World of Shorty Petterstein consisted largely of encounters between hipster
Hipster (1940s subculture)
Hipster, as used in the 1940s, referred to aficionados of jazz, in particular bebop, which became popular in the early 1940s. The hipster adopted the lifestyle of the jazz musician, including some or all of the following: dress, slang, use of cannabis and other drugs, relaxed attitude, sarcastic...
s and unknowing squares. One interviewer asks about art to be told, "Art? He's been with the band about six months. Blows good piano." When the interviewer protests that pianos aren't blown, but played with the hands, Shorty returns the opaque reply, "Blow is like an instrument."
Bizarre even for Jacobs is the humorous and slightly disturbing 1963 album, The Laughing String, which has all the hallmarks of a masterpiece.
With the backing of the American Cancer Society
American Cancer Society
The American Cancer Society is the "nationwide community-based voluntary health organization" dedicated, in their own words, "to eliminating cancer as a major health problem by preventing cancer, saving lives, and diminishing suffering from cancer, through research, education, advocacy, and...
, Jacobs, in collaboration with John Korty, put together an animated short film about quitting smoking, "Breaking the Habit", which was nominated for an Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
in 1964. This brought Jacobs far enough into the limelight to get remunerative work as a sound consultant. In the late sixties he created radio advertisements for Japan Airlines
Japan Airlines
is an airline headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo, Japan. It is the flag carrier of Japan and its main hubs are Tokyo's Narita International Airport and Tokyo International Airport , as well as Nagoya's Chūbu Centrair International Airport and Osaka's Kansai International Airport...
and supplied audio/visual ideas to Bank of America
Bank of America
Bank of America Corporation, an American multinational banking and financial services corporation, is the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets, and the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by market capitalization. The bank is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina...
's marketing division.
His approach to sound manipulation greatly interested George Lucas, and he was tapped to provide some improvised soundtrack material and background dialogue for his film THX 1138
THX 1138
THX 1138 is a 1971 science fiction film directed by George Lucas in his directorial debut. The film is based on a screenplay by Lucas and Walter Murch...
.
In 1972, Jacobs collaborated with Bob McClay and Chris Koch on a series of half-hour television programs for San Francisco public television station KQED. "The Fine Art of Goofing Off" was a sort of philosophical Sesame Street
Sesame Street
Sesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...
; each program would develop an open-ended theme, like "time" or "work" in an unpredictable collage of brief episodes in a variety of different styles of animation. Alan Watts, improv troop The Committee
The Committee (improv group)
The Committee is a San Francisco based improvisational comedy group founded by Alan Myerson and Jessica Myerson . The Myersons were both alums of The Second City in Chicago. The Committee opened April 10, 1963 at 622 Broadway in a 300 seat Cabaret theater that used to be an indoor bocce ball court...
, artist Victor Moscoso, musicians Mark Unobsky and Pete Sears
Pete Sears
Peter 'Pete' Sears is an English rock musician. In a career spanning more than four decades he has been a member of many bands and has moved through a variety of musical genres, from early R&B, psychedelic improvisational rock of the 1960s, folk, country music, arena rock in the 1970s, and blues...
, Woody Leafer, and Jordan Belson all contributed to the series.
Jacobs currently resides to the north of San Francisco, where he can avoid "electricity and cars." He has three children, practices Aikido
Aikido
is a Japanese martial art developed by Morihei Ueshiba as a synthesis of his martial studies, philosophy, and religious beliefs. Aikido is often translated as "the Way of unifying life energy" or as "the Way of harmonious spirit." Ueshiba's goal was to create an art that practitioners could use to...
, and is a fervent appreciator of Afro-Cuban music.
Some of Jacobs' work is back in print through Locust Music
Locust Music
Locust Music is a Chicago-based independent record label founded in 2001....
and Important Records. The bulk of his master tapes were destroyed by fire in 1995, though 63 reel-to-reel tapes were rediscovered by Jack Dangers
Jack Dangers
Jack Dangers is an electronic musician, DJ, producer, and remixer best known for his work as the primary member of Meat Beat Manifesto. He lives in San Francisco.-Career:...
who released a portion of the material in collaboration with Jacobs in 2005.
Discography
The following is a partial discography:- Radio Programme No 1 Audio Collage: Henry Jacobs’ Music and Folklore (Folkways, 1955)
- Two Interviews (Fantasy, 1955)
- Interviews of Our Times (Fantasy, 1955)
- "Sonata For Loudspeakers (Tape Loops Demo)" (1953-4). On album: "Sounds of New Music" (Folkways, 1957)
- The Weird Wide World of Shorty Petterstein (World Pacific, 1957)
- Highlights of Vortex (Folkways, 1959)
- Sounds of New Music (Folkways, 1962)
- The Laughing String (MEA, 1963)
- The Wide Weird World of Henry Jacobs/The Fine Art of Goofing Off (Important Records, 2005)
External links
- The Wide Weird World of Henry Jacobs Official web site
- Henry Jacob's 'Wide Weird World' npr.org interview