I suspect it's because I saw the period drama The History of Sound right around what would've been my dad's birthday that I registered that it was partly set in 1919, the year of his birth.
The movie is about two music conservatory students — David, played by Josh O'Connor and Lionel, played by Paul Mescal — who meet in a New England bar arguing over who can come up with the most obscure folk song. David's knowledge seems encyclopedic, but Lionel finally stumps him with "Silver Dagger," and to prove it's real, starts singing, "Don't sing love songs, you'll wake my mother. She's sleepin' here right by my side…"
By the time he finishes, David has stars in his eyes. They fall for each other, and after quite a bit of plot goes by, they head into the backwoods of Maine to record people singing folk songs on what was state-of-the-art recording equipment in 1919: wax cylinders, a metal cone, and a diamond-tipped stylus.
The folks they encounter are uniformly astonished at the very idea of preserving sound, which had only ever evaporated into the ether at that point. And that made me think a bit about what a big deal it was: a Gilded Age miracle, really. I've worked all my adult life with sound — my job, after all, involves mixing movie audio with my own voice — but I'd given little thought to how sound first came to be recorded.
It was France's Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville who first managed to capture sound with what he called a phonautograph, which recorded waves as lines etched onto sheets of soot-covered paper in the 1850s. He used these etchings to study sound, the way scientists study earthquakes when they record vibrations on a seismograph. You don't use a seismograph to play the earthquake back, so he didn't either. We can do it now with digital technology. As the First Sounds research team found in 2008, in at least one 1860 "phonautogram," Scott de Martinville had recorded someone singing "Au Clair de la Lune," a French folk tune.
It wasn't until 1877 that Edison came up with a potentially commercial application — etching his voice into a strip of tin foil which allowed it to be played back — a miracle that would give eternal life to an accent, an inflection, the specifics that make voices individual and unique. His first recorded words: the children's rhyme "Mary had a little lamb; its fleece was white as snow."
Ever the visionary, Edison predicted his new invention would someday be used to reproduce music, preserve family memories, maybe combine with another then-new invention, the telephone.
By 1919, Edison's company had graduated from recording on tin foil, to recording on wax cylinders. That was the year fictional movie characters Lionel and David took their song-preserving trip to Maine. And also the year my dad was born.
And as far as audio recordings, I thought that was where Dad's story ended. Because although I have spent my entire adult life recording myself and other people, I never recorded him.
I feel stupid about that now, but it wasn't really something people did before smartphones, and the iPhone had only just been introduced a few months before dad died in 2007. So the only audio I had of him was a message he'd left on my work phone (Edison turned out to be right). It was his 87-year-old voice diminished by Parkinson's, cracked and barely audible saying just five words, "Bobby, this is your father…" before I picked up and the system stopped recording.
I used to play it back after he died, so I could hear his voice again. Then NPR moved to a new building and changed phone systems. And it was gone forever.
So, a scene late in The History of Sound caught me up short — and forgive me, but to fully explain why, I'll have to talk about the end of the film.
Spoiler: The History of Sound's student researchers part unhappily at the end of their summer in Maine, and Lionel later learns that David has died. In his grief at losing the love of his life, he tries to locate the wax cylinders they recorded, but he can't. Decades pass, and when he's in his eighties, having spent his whole life as a musicologist chasing other people's voices, the wax cylinders finally turn up, and he discovers that on one of them, 23-year-old David recorded his own voice. What he says on it proves wrenching, but it seems a gift, especially when David sings "Silver Dagger," the song Lionel first sang to him.
As I was choking up, I couldn't help wishing that my dad's story had had a coda like that. Dad was a top government lawyer for much of his career, so I searched news archives and libraries, thinking there must be tape of him somewhere, but never found any.
Recently, I mentioned my search to a friend whose father was also a lawyer. She remembered that my dad had once presented a case at the Supreme Court, where they'd started recording oral arguments in the 1950s. A couple of hours later, she'd found the recording. It began with the voice of Chief Justice Earl Warren saying, "Number 65: Weyerhaeuser Steamship Company, petitioner, versus United States."
The file was dated February 18, 1963, a few weeks before my 14th birthday. And suddenly, memories of that morning — specifically of Dad getting dressed for court — came flooding back. He'd rented what he called a "monkey suit," by which he usually meant a tux. But this was what's known as "morning dress," required of government lawyers in the Supreme Court: a black cutaway coat with a long rounded tail, dark grey striped trousers, grey waistcoat, shirt with high starched collar. I remember thinking he looked like he was going to the Ascot Races in My Fair Lady.
Anyway, now I had a picture in my head, but I hadn't heard his voice in more than a decade, and that had been his 87-year-old voice. This would be his 43-year-old voice – the one he'd used to help me struggle through algebra homework and cheer me on at swim meets — a voice I hadn't heard in a full half-century.
The plaintiff's lawyer addressed the court first, laying out the case for damages after a steamship collision. Then, 54 minutes in, there was a rustle of papers, and Chief Justice Warren said. "Mr. Mondello?"
And there he was.
"Chief Justice, may it please the court, the issue in this case.…"
My eyes widened. Dad sounded so young and assured, with a touch of the Bronx that I didn't remember from his later years, but that instantly sounded right. He must have been nervous, and he was clearly reading from notes, but he talked for 49 minutes almost non-stop.
At one point, Justice Hugo Black interjected, "Mr. Mondello, I think you've made a good argument, although I'm inclined to say that you have a number of difficulties in your way."
This compliment, it turns out, was sort of a consolation prize. Dad was promoting a losing case. Two months later, the unanimous, 9-0 decision would go against the government, though I don't recall hearing about that at home. And if dad knew he was losing at the time, I don't hear it in his voice.
But in fairness, this was the voice he used when he could still answer — to my 13-year-old satisfaction at least — any question put to him: Why is the sky blue? How many angels fit on the head of a pin?
I had missed that voice more than I knew. Being able to hear him again — young him, even if he wasn't talking to me, or talking about anything I much cared about, felt to me, as it had to Lionel in the movie, a gift.
A gift from Edison and from Scott de Martinville, and from all the folks after them who perfected the recording process that has allowed me to talk to radio listeners for the last four decades. I could not be more grateful.
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