Hey Mac,

It's wonderful to discover a kindred soul. I've been reading some many of your terrifically helpful posts over all these years but never knew anything about your background, but let's get one thing clear, I'm even older than you are smile got you beat by 5 years.

I watched your Nat King Cole youtube link and it's great. I'm pretty sure we watched those original broadcasts. That was a serious reel-to-reel tape recorder. We watched a documentary about Nat King Cole and some parts were quite infuriating and sad, but there is no limit to racist stupidity as far as I can tell. There was a lot of hostility when he bought a house too.

Both my Mom and Dad had some acquaintance with racism. When she was growing up in Hungary, kids threw rocks at her and called her a Dirty Jew. Dad told us about signs in some parks and fancy hotels in Hong Kong(?) that said No Dogs or Chinese.

Fortunately, although I experienced some racism, it was far less overt and of far less import. Certainly nothing compared to being Black in the US over those years. Things have improved but there is still way too much hatred based on factors such as race, gender, or religion.

Anyway, the Nat King Cole TV Show, was an important first step, even though it only ran a bit over a year. It was a milestone and almost certaily made other shows like I Spy with Bill Cosby, and the Cosby Show possible.

As far as sound-on-sound, my earliest accompaniment sessions did not include recording the resulting music, but we did have fun with reverb-like effects done with the delay produced by the distance between the record and playback heads. Neither of my parents played music, but my brother played piano and I had a year of piano lessons at around the age of 7 or 8, or 9? As a teen my brother would demo easy piano pieces for me to practice (Mikrokosmos and easy Bach pieces).

You're lucky to have an accomplished musician parent who got you started really early playing piano and then trumpet.

Thanks for the background stories Mac, they bring back old memories.


Last edited by Dan Tong; 01/09/14 11:14 PM.
Dan

https://soundcloud.com/dstong