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(Digital Collections) “I Like to Speak the Lingo of the Laity” – Celebrating the 70th anniversary of a Pat Neff Chapel Talk

screen-shot-2016-12-14-at-2-42-44-pmOn Monday, December 16, 1946, Baylor University president Pat M. Neff delivered a speech to the students assembled for what would be the final Chapel gathering of the year. Students were scheduled to be released for the Christmas break at 5:00 PM on Thursday the 19th, and everyone was in a festive frame of mind, including President Neff. That spirit of good cheer probably accounts for why, as the needle dropped on a turntable that would record his speech for posterity, Neff chose to open his presentation with a joke.

I do not know what we’d do if we didn’t have the weather to talk about. And do you know why we talk about the weather? It’s because one person in Texas knows just as much about the weather as any other person. Therefore, we meet on a common platform and discuss the weather.

(I didn’t say it was a good joke, just that it was, technically a joke.)

And now, 70 years to the day after it was recorded live in Waco Hall, you can hear the speech in its entirety – and read a full transcript, if you’re so inclined – as part of the Baylor University Archives Digital Collection. [http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/ref/collection/bu-archive/id/1868]

Click play on the player above to listen to the entire speech in this browser window. NOTE: Due to size restrictions for MP3 files in WordPress, the quality of this audio has been reduced from the original audio that can be found at the link to our Digital Collections site.

We wanted to take the occasion of this major anniversary to examine President Neff’s message, to dive into its sentiments, to examine what was on the president’s mind at the close of what would be his penultimate year as Baylor’s chief executive … and, most importantly, to discuss something that caught all of us here a little off-guard: Pat Neff was actually pretty funny.


“Smilin'” Pat Neff

We jokingly refer to President Neff by the nickname “Smilin'” Pat Neff, mainly because we’ve never actually seen him smile. As evidence, here are his official portraits from the Round Up, our campus yearbook, from the 1940s.

neff_at_desk_1940s

That’s as big as his smiles get, folks.

And lest you think this was just a result of being a little more seasoned by life’s hardships, so to speak, observe this retrospective collage of Neff photos from the 1943 Round Up.

1943

Some people just want to watch the world react in an even-keeled way.

With all of this evidence to the contrary, you can forgive us for not expecting Neff to have much of a sense of humor. But that’s where we turned out to be very wrong.

It actually shouldn’t have been that big of a surprise, in retrospect. After all, Neff ran a successful campaign for statewide office – governor, no less – and was a successful fundraiser and member of Baylor’s Board of Trustees before assuming the BU presidency. With some notable exceptions – *coughCalvinCoolidgecough* – it’s incredibly difficult to become such a powerful person without possessing any personality at all. But you can forgive us for being surprised to find not one but numerous occasions throughout the December 16, 1946 chapel talk recording where Neff’s speech is interrupted by audience laughter. And not just polite, “Oh, our president is so humorous, let’s give him a chuckle” kind of laughter, but actual, “By gum, that’s funny!” laughter. In fact, the transcript is interrupted more than two dozen times with the phrase [audience laughter], indicating Neff not only knew his way around a desk but around a punchline as well.


The Man Speaks

1944

President Neff: statesman, president, world champion microphone staring contest winner

When the transcription disks containing Neff’s 1946 Chapel talk were digitized earlier this year, none of our staff in the Digital Projects Group had ever heard his voice. In fact, other than recognizing his stoic visage from an item we’d digitized several years earlier, no one other than myself had had much occasion to look at or think about materials related to Baylor’s former president. But I’d always been fascinated with Neff’s life and impact on the state of Texas. (Fun fact: as a proud Texas Tech Red Raider alumnus, Neff holds a special place in my heart as the governor who signed the bill, in 1923, establishing Texas Technological College in Lubbock.) So I was particularly excited to hear Neff’s voice for the first time when I first sat down to transcribe the five album sides containing the speech.

Neff’s voice on the recordings is strong and clear, with a distinct Texas drawl and a now-familiar cadence that I recognize as being inherent to public speakers who grew up learning to speak in public at the turn of the last century. He speaks a little on the slow side and with a seasoned speaker’s ability to pace his words to his audience’s reaction. This, after all, was a man accustomed to addressing crowds of well-wishers, nay-sayers, Congressmen, rodeos, student groups and classrooms; in short, he knows what he’s doing on a speaker’s rostrum.

After opening with his “Texas weather” joke – a safe topic for anyone who’s spent more than 10 seconds in our fair state – Neff launches into the meat of his presentation: what to talk about when you head home for Christmas and you’re stuck with your parents. Neff recognizes that many of these students are going home for the first time since arriving in the summer as freshmen, and he notes that the people back home might not recognize them anymore (because the women students in particular might have on “these little lampshade things they call a hat”). In addition, he thinks they might be interested to hear more about Baylor University and the life of the campus, so his thrust for the speech is to give the student body some interesting facts with which to regale the curious during the Christmastide.

One of his biggest laugh lines – and the source of the quote in this post’s title – is when Neff encourages the students to engage with everyone they meet back home. He notes that they may be shy to speak to these strange creatures known as college students, but that the Baylor Bears are to be “calm when you go to church, or their party, or their shindig” – at which point the audience breaks into laughter. Neff, in a bit of self-effacing humor after using such an up-to-date piece of slang, notes with mock humility that he likes “to speak the lingo of the laity.” This, of course, draws additional laughter.

Neff draws another big laugh out of a riff on what a privilege it is to be at Baylor in 1946. I’ll let the transcript tell it from here:

Sure, it’s a wonderful thing to be at an institution of learning like this. Sit down and talk to your folks about it. It won’t do you any harm and it’ll do them a whole lot of good. That’s what the girl said when her mother reprimanded her for letting the boys kiss her. She says, ‘Mother, it didn’t do me any harm and it did the boys a lot of good.'” [audience laughter] I don’t see anything funny about that! [laughs, audience laughter].

The “boys kissing the girl” joke plays off smoothly and strikes me as the kind of joke Neff probably told dozens of times at dozens of events during a long career as a public figure. But that doesn’t make the students’ genuinely amused response, or Neff’s laughing retort, any less delightful.

In between all the giggles and guffaws, however, there runs a serious streak. Neff takes the occasion of his Chapel talk to remind the assembled students that while the majority of students at Baylor were reported to be of the Baptist religious affiliation, other groups on campus were growing every year. The presence of Methodists, Lutherans, Church of Christ and Christian Church members may not be surprising on a large college campus in 1946, but the note that there were a total of 26 different denominations – including Quakers and Mormons – might be. Perhaps more surprising is Neff’s encouragement that the students “touch elbows and have comradeship and fellowship with somebody outside of your circle.” He continues, “If I were in your place, I’d make the acquaintance of these Mormons, and I’d make acquaintance of these Quakers … You might try them on and see what they have with their religion. If you can’t fortify yours and stand up with it and by it, perhaps it’ll do you good to listen to some of these others.”

That sets up one of Neff’s most effective lines in the entire speech, one that does what any good university-level speech ought to do to its audience: make them think.

I’ll tell you now, if you ever tie in to a Mormon, he can tell you why he’s a Mormon. I know why you’re a Baptist: because your parents were. He can tell you why he is. The faith that’s in him. Try one of them. See if you can.

At first, this reads as much as an insult as a joke, but after letting it sit with me for a few minutes, it struck me that what Neff was doing wasn’t an attempt to tear anyone down but to encourage members of all the various faiths present on campus to truly examine their beliefs, to do some (literal) soul searching and to know, inherently, why they identified as a particular religion, and not just for a surface reason like family tradition. He is encouraging the students to truly – to borrow a phrase – “know themselves.”

After a true master class in public speaking, Neff draws his speech to a close after twenty minutes of laughs, insight and homespun wisdom with this closing passage:

We just have to to through the world our one time, we go through just once. And when you go through these coming holiday seasons, you’ll pass through them no more. When this chapel has been adjourned, you’ll not be just as you are anymore; that’ll be in the past. The mill never grinds through the water that’s passed.

It’s an introspective, somewhat bittersweet dispensation of wisdom from a man who will pass from the Earth in a mere five years to a room full of the nation’s robust youth, fresh off the end of a devastating World War and awash in the promise of a better tomorrow, and it strikes me as pitch perfect for the occasion.

In lieu of a “benediction,” Neff closes the recording by kicking off an organ-accompanied rendition of That Good Old Baylor Line, as hundreds of youthful voices unite together to close out a semester of learning, fellowship and growth.

 


 

A Worthy Challenge

The entire 22 minute recording is well worth your listen, but if you have time for only a short excerpt, I encourage you to listen to this section of audio where Neff exhorts the students to remember the high privilege of being able to attend a university in a time when so many people in the country worked at backbreaking, manual labor and would never know the dream of an advanced education.

 


 

Bonus Audio!

On the b-side of the final disk of the Chapel talk recordings, an enterprising audiophile went into the clear cold morning of December 24, 1946 and recorded audio of the bells of Baylor campus playing two short Christmas songs: O Christmas Tree and Silent Night. We hope you enjoy these seasonally appropriate sounds of Baylor University as it was recorded live, 70 years ago this month.

(Digital Collections) Stepping on Board with The Mighty Wonders of Aquasco, Maryland

mighty_wonders_post_headerSince the early days of the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, we’ve been intrigued by a version of “Old Ship of Zion” by the Mighty Wonders of Aquasco, Maryland. Intrigued, because it’s a soulful, a cappella rendering of a song that offers a surefire way to salvation (“Step on board if you want to see Jesus”) and because we knew next to nothing about them … until now.

The Song

This particular song has been part of our public presentations for years. Prof. Robert Darden, who often serves as the public face of our project, has used it as a closing – and occasionally an opening – song for his story of how the project is an important means of preserving America’s black gospel heritage. He uses it because of its unusual format: only vocals, multi-part harmony voices in a church choir style, no musical accompaniment. The lyrics use a nautical analogy – getting on board a ship to the Promised Land – to paint a picture of the way to Salvation.

‘Tis the old ship of Zion
‘Tis the old ship of Zion
‘Tis the old ship of Zion
Step on board if you want to see Jesus
Step on board if you want to see Jesus
Just step on board and follow me

There’s nothing but love in God’s water
Nothing but love in God’s water
Nothing but love in God’s water
Step on board if you want to see Jesus
Step on board if you want to see Jesus
Just step on board and follow me

It is simple, short and poignant, with a nice blend of backing harmonies and no vocal theatrics from lead vocalist John Stewart, Jr. And every time we play it, the room comes to a dead stop, all ears tuned in to the voices of these men from Maryland, more than a thousand miles away – and a generation removed – from Waco, Texas.

But aside from what we could glean from the 45’s label (namely, that it was published by Mark Custom Records in Arlington, VA and featured soloist Stewart, Jr.), we didn’t have anything else to go on, and despite how many times Prof. Darden and the rest of our team told the story of “Old Ship,” we were stuck when it came to the Mighty Wonders’ story.

The Story in the Sun

Earlier this year, Prof. Darden did an interview with Dan Rodricks of the Baltimore Sun. Dan’s interest in the story came because Aquasco lies about 90 minutes south of Baltimore, and because he was interested in helping scare up some information on the Mighty Wonders for his readers, his listeners on WYPR-FM and friends of this project. His article, “Seeking the Mighty Wonders of Aquasco, singers of one fine gospel tune,” was posted on January 24. Five days later, we received an email at our public address (digitalcollectionsinfo@baylor.edu) from a man who said he had a way for us to get ahold of the group. A follow-up email exchange later, and we were on the phone with Tom Contee, a Mighty Wonder himself.

The Phone Call

Contee told me over the phone that he had seen the story in the Sun and had spoken to his nephew, the man who originally emailed us with the offer to help. Contee graciously spoke with me for the next half hour, sharing the story of how he joined the band, the recording of the 45 (“Old Ship of Zion” and its flip side, “How Far Am I From Canaan?”) and the names of the remaining members of the group.

Contee said he joined the group in 1970, a few years after its formation. As they gained more attention in the local area, they decided to record a 45 and sell it as a fundraiser for the band. That 45 was the “Old Ship/Canaan” pressing, recorded in 1971 or 1972. The group sold the 45 at concerts and to family members, but aside from word of mouth, they made no attempt to get radio play for the songs and relied on “love offerings” from the churches where they performed as payment for their services. Contee said one early goal was to buy matching suits – “shirts, suits, ties, the whole thing” – for all nine members of the group because they saw it as a way to increase their professional appearance and bring them closer together.

And the Mighty Wonders were a close-knit group, according to Contee. They had to be, because from early fall through early summer for years they were performing up to three programs every Sunday in churches around the Baltimore area. None of the members had any formal training in singing or performing. They simply took what they’d seen at their home churches and broadened it into a multi-part vocal group. They took turns singing lead, with two members – John Stewart and Alfred Johnson – doing the honors more often than the others. But, Contee said, on some occasions a member would know a song better than the others, and he would step up to take lead for that particular song or performance. All in all, it was a way for the men to sing the songs they liked in the style they liked, and it suited them well.

Over time, three members of the group passed away, and one has since retired to Florida. But Contee told me that a recent revival of the Mighty Wonders is under way: five of the original nine members have begun performing again after a special engagement at bassist Ernest Johnson, Jr.’s father’s church. The celebration for members of the congregation aged 90 and older gave the Mighty Wonders a chance to shine again, and Contee said that led to further appeals for their performing abilities, so the Wonders are back on stage, singing a capella songs in the style of “Old Ship of Zion.”

A World Premiere

Out of our conversation came this exciting bit of news: Contee had a copy of the Mighty Wonder’s second 45, and he was more than happy to send it to us for inclusion in the BGMRP, a project which he said he was excited to find out about, and that he thinks is doing a wonderful service for gospel music. (His words, not ours!) And so, we are proud to present here, for the first time online, the second 45 from The Mighty Wonders of Aquasco, Maryland: “Old Time Religion” and the b-side, “I Shall Not Be Moved.”


Learn more about this 45 and see the whole item record in the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project’s collection in the Baylor University Libraries Digital Collections here.

The Next Step?

I made a not-so-subtle suggestion to Mr. Contee that we here at Baylor would love to see the Mighty Wonders grace the stage at an event right here in Waco, and while he seemed a bit surprised to hear me say so, he certainly didn’t rule it out. Perhaps the trick of finding them was our first big challenge and the task of getting these men to honor us with a public performance is our encore.

Regardless, we say to the Mighty Wonders of Aquasco, Maryland: take a bow, gentlemen. You’ve certainly earned it.

***

Learn more about the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project at our webpage. Special tanks to Dan Rodricks, Bob Darden, Tony Tadey, Bob Marovich and most importantly Tom Contee, for making this post possible.

 

(Digital Collections) A Christmas Gift To Our Readers: The George W. Truett Megamix 1941!

A festive George W. Truett. Adapted from an original photo held by The Texas Collection, Baylor University, Waco, TX.

As our gift to you, our loyal readers, we created this mashup of some of the greatest clips from the George W. Truett Collection’s sermons from 1941, condensed for you into one 3:00 MP3. We hope you enjoy the message, and we look forward to 2014 and another year of providing you with great digital content!

[podcast]https://blogs.baylor.edu/baylorlibraries/files/2013/12/Truett_Megamix_1941-1ruzkpi.mp3[/podcast]

 

(Digital Collections) Project Update: The George W. Truett Sermons Collection Hits Milestone

Portrait of George W. Truett from the George W. Truett Theological Seminary on the campus of Baylor University.

After a year of devoted attention from myself and Audiovisual Specialist Stephen Bolech, we’re excited to provide an update on the George W. Truett Sermons Collection: all of Dr. Truett’s extant sermons from 1941 have been digitized, transcribed and added to the collection! The 36 sermons from 1941 include 31 Sunday services (or 60% of the Sunday messages delivered that year) and 5 special services – two Saturdays, two Mondays and a Tuesday.

This phase of the project represents the largest chunk of material delivered to us by colleagues at The Texas Collection in late 2011. The boxes of 16″ discs were organized, cleaned, migrated from analog to digital and transcribed by the team at the Digital Projects Group with the goal of getting all the 1941 materials online by the end of 2013. Now, we’ll begin work on the 17 remaining sermons from 1942, the penultimate full year of Truett’s life.

Highlights from 1941

The sermons of 1941 represent what I’ve taken to calling a “Farewell Tour” of Truett’s favorite topics. Looking into publications that contain his sermons from earlier in his ministry, it’s easy to spot some of the major themes – and, at times, outright verbatim copying – Truett spent a lifetime in ministry pursuing. It brings to mind the old joke about the new preacher who gave a rollicking sermon on his first Sunday in the pulpit, then proceeded to repeat it verbatim for the next six Sundays. Finally, one of his parishoners asked him, “Preacher, why do you keep repeating yourself every week?” And the preaching replied, “I’ll keep on repeating my message until you people start living it.”

It’s understandable that a man in his mid-70s would begin to look back over a storied career spent in ministry and giving his congregation at First Baptist Church of Dallas one last chance to hear his most cherished messages. And for a man in his sunset years struggling with illness and beset by worries of the then-approaching Second World War, Truett sounds remarkably powerful in these recordings. At times, his voice will crack, he will appear to lose the word he’s looking for, but it’s no more obvious than when a similar situation is encountered by a much younger speaker.

A few of the highlights from the 1941 sermons include:

  • A sermon ([“Go and Do Thou Likewise”] – September 28, 1941) wherein Truett outlines the one instance in Scripture that Jesus commands his audience to follow the example of a mortal human being.
  • A sermon on the myriad ways in which people neglect various aspects of their life ([The Tragedy of Neglect] – March 30, 1941) that opens with an announcement from the pulpit that someone in the audience – the recording, unfortunately, begins after the name has been read – must go to the church office immediately to take an important phone call. At the end of the message, Truett informs the congregation that the man had to take the call to learn the circumstances of a loved one’s death.
  • The message regarding the applicability of Jesus’ words and ministry to all people ([Jesus Is Everybody’s Preacher] – December 7, 1941) delivered on December 7, a date that would later become known as Pearl Harbor Day. Truett and his congregation had not received word of the attack when this message was being delivered, so no mention is made of it aside from general warnings about the world condition and the darkness of war that gripped much of the countries on Earth.
  • The Sunday following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Truett’s message ([“The Lord Reigneth”] – December 14, 1941) hits notes that will resonate with all who have lived through national disasters and trying circumstances, from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. It also includes Truett’s only outright political discourse on the year: an extended railing against the United States’ decision not to join the League of Nations following the First World War.

There are, of course, many more reasons to check out the sermons below. For example, in the message from July 20 ([The Power of Sympathy] – July 20, 1941), Truett delivers what is the closest thing to a joke as can be found in the collection to date. To wit:

The world is wanting love. No wonder, therefore, that David prayed to God, “Enlarge my heart.” He didn’t pray, “Enlarge my head.” Our heads, often, are too big, often too large.

Jerry Seinfeld he’s not, but the brief glimmer of humor is a refreshing change from the typically straightforward – and often “fire, brimstone and damnation” – style the pervades these messages.

A surprising leitmotif that emerges is Truett’s love of poetry. This harkens back to his history as a teacher and lover of education, and whether he is reciting the numerous poems he peppers into his speeches by memory or is reading them from prepared notes is unclear. What is clear is his love of the art, as evidenced by this reading of a poem entitled The Hidden Line (The Destiny of Men) by Rev. Joseph Addison Alexander. Click the play button below to listen!

[podcast]https://blogs.baylor.edu/baylorlibraries/files/2013/12/Truett_Alexander_poem_reading-1kenppg.mp3[/podcast]

 

Just a reminder: the sermons in this collection are keyword searchable now that they have been transcribed. Just head to the collection’s landing page and use the search box to search for your topic of interest.

We hope you’ll take some time to review these priceless messages, and we look forward to adding further sermons and collection enhancements over the coming months.

The 1941 Sermons of George W. Truett

[Hidden Reinforcements] – Sermon Segment, January 19, 1941
[God’s Will Be Done] – February 9, 1941
[Heaven – The Land and Life Beyond] – February 16, 1941
[“And As Thy Days, So Shall Thy Strength Be”] – March 2, 1941
[God’s Method For Winning People] – March 8, 1941 (Saturday)
[Philip at Samaria] – March 16, 1941
[The Care of Souls] – March 23, 1941
[The Tragedy of Neglect] – March 30, 1941
[Prayer and Personal Witness for Christ] – March 31, 1941 (Monday)
[Duty] – April 6, 1941
[“Have Faith in God”] – April 7, 1941 (Monday)
[“What Think Ye of God?”] – April 8, 1941 (Tuesday)
[Encouragement] – April 27, 1941
[The Cause and Cure for Discouragement] – May 4, 1941
[The Shunammite Woman] – May 11, 1941
[“I Am Ready”] – June 1, 1941
[Trust in God] – June 15, 1941
[The Gifts of God] – June 22, 1941
[“It Is Expedient For You That I Go Away”] – June 29, 1941
[The Chief Standard of Greatness] – July 6, 1941
[The Prayer Jesus Would Not Pray] – July 13, 1941
[The Power of Sympathy] – July 20, 1941
[Paul’s Message And Method As A Worker For Christ] – September 14, 1941
[Patience] – September 21, 1941
[“Go and Do Thou Likewise”] – September 28, 1941
[Enoch’s Walk With God] – October 5, 1941
[Unreserved Dedication to Christ’s Cause] – October 11, 1941 (Saturday)
[God Asks For Our Best] – Sermon Segment, October 26, 1941
[Stewardship] – November 2, 1941
[“Despise Ye The Church Of God?”] – Sermon Segment, November 9, 1941
[Value, Cost And Sacrifice] – November 16, 1941
[Ingratitude: The Commonest Sin] – November 23, 1941
[“Go Bravely On – I Will Not Fail Thee”] – November 30, 1941
[Jesus Is Everybody’s Preacher] – December 7, 1941
[“The Lord Reigneth”] – December 14, 1941
[The Song That Heralds Jesus’ Birth] – December 21, 1941

(Digital Collections) The Power Behind the Call: Examining the Rhetorical and Presentation Styles of G.W. Truett’s Sermons

This is the second installment in a special three-part blog series on the project to digitize and present online the final sermons of George W. Truett (1867-1944), noted pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas and namesake of Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary. Read the previous installment here

The human voice is a powerful medium, surpassing the printed word in its ability to bestir, to convince, to cajole and – in the case of a pastor’s words to his congregation – to save. In a preliterate society the power of speech was the sole means of conveying an idea, rousing a people or sending along the latest gossip. And even after humans gained the skills to write down our thoughts via print and share them with others who spoke the same language, we find ourselves captivated, spellbound by someone with an ability to spin ideas from spoken syllables, to offer hope by the combination of his mind, his tongue and his vocal chords.

Perhaps that’s why there is such power in the recorded sermons of George W. Truett. It’s true that you can get the gist of his message by reading a transcript, either from our digital collection or in one of the many publications that cited his words. But nothing can replace the impact, the instinctive reaction that comes with listening to them, as clear as the day they were recorded over 70 years ago. Truett’s voice may occasionally waver, his cadence and phraseology may sound distinctly Southern and turn-of-the-19th-century, but when he infuses even a simple phrase or concept with the force of his well-honed speaking voice, it assumes an authority that can only come from a speaker who is supremely confident in what he has to say.

Building a Successful Sermon

Now that we’ve loaded approximately one-third of the sermons in the G.W. Truett Sermons Collection, a pattern has begun to emerge in the items I’ve encountered to date. While the content of each sermon is unique – covering everything from the Lord’s Prayer to Old Testament prophets and the application of contemporary world events with those experienced by the ancient Hebrews – the pattern of Truett’s delivery follows a noticeable pattern.

  • Opening/Announcement
  • Scripture reading
  • Main point one
  • Side point
  • Anecdote
  • Main point two
  • Anecdote
  • Main point three
  • Altar call
  • Dismissal/Hymn sing-out (occasionally)

It is tempting to label this approach as formulaic, but one must recall that Truett had been preaching for the better part of four decades by the time of these sermons’ delivery in 1941, so to a certain extent they must have come almost by second nature. In fact, while googling a number of passages delivered by Truett in this sermons, I came across several nearly word-for-word matches cited in books published in the early twentieth century. Why? Because they contained transcripts of sermons Truett had delivered as far back as 1917, the content of which was delivered almost verbatim in the 1940s. That makes his 1941 versions seem more like fond reminiscences of a life spent delivering God’s Word and less like rote repetition of a memorized formula.

Portrait of George W. Truett from the narthex of Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University.

Recurring Themes, Surprising Candor

In today’s megachurch society, with its emphasis on the “gospel of prosperity” and the myriad interpretations of what it means to be a Christian, listening to G.W. Truett’s firebrand Baptist delivery can be an eye-opening experience. He makes no bones about the foundation for his entire ministry:

Let me begin my message today by saying, quite personally, that for 40-odd years it has been my sacred privilege to preach from this pulpit. And through all these long years, I have had one theme, and that theme has been Christ. No other theme in all the world would challenge the attendance and the attention of men and women and young people for long, long years, except this theme: Christ. [1]

Listen to audio of this passage

His major recurring theme, regardless the superficial theme of a particular sermon, is always the importance and urgency of bringing souls to Christ. Truett’s preaching carries a sense of impending doom for the unsaved, as one would expect from a favorite uncle or trusted neighbor who has your best interests at heart but has been unable to win you to his cause just yet. It is easy to see a major force behind his constant urging: the ongoing war in Europe, which would come to be called World War II and into which Truett would watch his country plunge in early December, 1941.

As our contemporary culture has moved further and further into a “you believe what you believe, I’ll believe what I believe and we’ll both be equally right” mindset, Truett’s candor regarding the way to salvation can strike modern listeners as shockingly exclusionary, even cliquish.

Salvation is not by a church, no matter what church. Greatly important as is the church as an institution, salvation is not by a church. All the churches in Christendom put together could not, in a million years, give the new birth to some soul wrong with God. Salvation is not by a church, nor by an ordinance, nor by a so-called sacrament, nor by some ritual – however imposing and impressive it may be – nor by some ceremony, nor by a creed, nor by a confession. Salvation, spiritual salvation for humanity, is by a person, and that person is Christ. Mark how he calls to us: “No man cometh unto the Father but by Me. I am the way, the truth and the life; I am the door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved. He that climbeth some of the way is a thief and a robber.” [2]

Listen to audio of this passage

Chances are you have heard the last half of this appeal (“I am the way, the truth and the life …”) but it is Truett’s dismissal of any other supposed road to salvation that may be hard for contemporary Christians to swallow.

The language Truett uses to describe life in the early 1940s may also surprise first-time users of the sermons. Americans today are hyper-aware of the words they use to describe people, concepts and events. For someone who has been raised to speak as neutrally and with as little opportunity to offend as possible, it may come as a shock to hear Dr. Truett refer to a boy with physical handicaps as “crippled.” Likewise, hearing him refer to someone as “dumb” or non-Christians as “heathens” may make contemporary listeners uncomfortable.

As with all of the materials in our collections, we urge our users to place these materials in their proper historical context. Truett was a man born just two years after the end of the American Civil War, educated and raised during the “Gilded Age” and matured during the rapid societal changes of the early 1900s. His language reflects his roots, his upbringing and his culture in the same way that today’s Americans are molded by the complex milieu of our societal surroundings. Users should be mindful that Truett’s language and style of delivery – including charming ways of pronouncing words like “parliament” (“pah-lee-ahh-ment”) and “Joshua” (“jaw-shoo-way”) – are reflective of the time and place when they were delivered.

Other notable features of Truett’s style include a fondness for alliteration, as evidenced in this passage from his sermon of June 22, 1941:

And what wonders can be done, sometimes with just one sentence. Many a life has been checked, challenged, changed by one sentence. You may have spoken it – you probably have.

Listen to audio of this passage

Also making an appearance in this sentence is another of Truett’s rhetorical devices, namely, the use of three descriptors or examples to drive home a point. Truett seems to value the well-established efficacy of the concept of the “magic in threes” principle. Human brains are wired to respond more positively and effectively to a series of things that is odd in number, and three seems to be the most effective of all. An example of this, from the same sermon:

Here’s a talent we can use day or night, anywhere in the world we go, at any time: the talent of prayer. [3]

Listen to audio of this passage

***

This is just a cursory look at the style and substance of Truett’s sermons, of course, and we welcome your in-depth examinations, comments and cross-postings as you get deeper into the collection. If you find a favorite passage or an insight you think is too good not to share, we’d love to see your tweets, Facebook posts or blog links. Send us a message at digitalcollectionsinfo@baylor.edu or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/baylordigitalcollections to continue the conversation!

 

Works Cited

[1] From the sermon “Philip at Samaria.” Delivered March 16, 1941. http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/ref/collection/fa-gwt/id/199

[2] From the sermon “What Think Ye of God?” Delivered April 8, 1941.
http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/ref/collection/fa-gwt/id/221

[3] From the sermon “The Gifts of God.” Delivered June 22, 1941.
http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/ref/collection/fa-gwt/id/289

(Digital Collections) How A Depression-Era Huckster’s Radio Station Brought God’s Word to Mexico – and Beyond – Via George W. Truett

This is the first installment in a special three-part blog series on the project to digitize and present online the final sermons of George W. Truett (1867-1944), noted pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas and namesake of Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary.

One of the most interesting examples of God’s ability to use anyone – or anything – to serve Him is recounted in the twenty-second chapter of the book of Numbers. It is the story of Balaam’s donkey, and if you haven’t read it, do so now, for it demonstrates God’s ability to speak through even the dumbest of beasts when it will be the most effective means of getting the message across.

Balaam’s donkey is a particularly apt comparison to the strange story of how a “border blaster” radio station founded by a convicted medical charlatan would be used to broadcast the final sermons of a powerful Baptist minister to the citizens of three North American countries.

The Strange Case of John Romulus Brinkley

Our story begins with a man named John Brinkley. His was a fascinating life filled with accusations of bigamy, failed attempts to acquire a legitimate medical license, multiple (unsuccessful) campaigns to gain public office, a rise to wealth, a stint as a pioneer in radio broadcasting, and an ignominious, penniless death.

John R. Brinkley, c. 1921. Image via Wikipedia Commons.

Brinkley’s life is spelled out in agonizing detail in his well-researched Wikipedia entry, so we won’t get too in-depth with this post. Suffice to say, Brinkley was a man with a showman’s instincts and a scalawag’s morals, willing to lie, cheat and defraud to achieve his goals. But like many larger-than-life figures, he also showed bursts of genuine goodness, such as the time he used profits from his successful radio show to purchase a municipal sewer system and other much-needed amenities for the small town of Milford, Kansas.

After telling a male patient he would have no problems with infertility if he had a pair of “goat glands” in him, Brinkley hit on the idea of transplanting the reproductive glands of goats into patients – male and female – who were suffering from various ailments, primarily sexual dysfunction or infertility but also spinal tumors, dementia and even flatulence. Brinkley touted his “cure” with the claim that it would turn previously infertile men into the “ram that am with every lamb,” despite the fact that most patients merely absorbed the glands into their bodies with little or no evidence of an improvement in their underlying condition.

Not surprisingly, his actions drew the attention of the American Medical Association and the crusading physician who would eventually be his downfall. Morris Fishbein would publish a two-part series entitled “ Modern Medical Charlatans,” wherein he exposed Brinkley as a dangerous fraud. Brinkley sued Fishbein for libel, and Fishbein won the case after a jury found that Brinkley “should be considered a charlatan and a quack in the ordinary, well-understood meaning of those words.”

In addition to losing the libel case, Brinkley also faced investigations from the IRS and the U.S. Post Office late in his life. These challenges, combined with a loss of income and deteriorating health, culminated in his death in 1942, a penniless shadow of the man who once ran for governor of Kansas with the promise of providing lower taxes, old-age pensions and a lake in every county. (He managed to gain nearly 30% of the popular vote.)

A Radio Pioneer, But Old Habits Die Hard

As his goat gland “cure” began to turn significant profits in the early 1920s, Brinkley became interested in the power of the radio as a marketing medium and started a station in Kansas under the call letters KFKB. He used this new-found reach to promote his treatments, which he espoused for hours. He interspersing his sales pitches with a diverse range of programming that included, “military bands, French lessons, astrological forecasts, storytelling and exotica such as native Hawaiian songs.”

His success in radio boosted profits through the roof, but his roots as an old-school snake oil seller ran deep. Brinkley began a segment he called the “Medical Question Box,” where listeners wrote in with their various medical concerns which he addressed over the air. Inevitably, the perfect cure for whatever ailed listeners was a patent medicine available only at a pharmacy that participated in his “Brinkley Pharmaceutical Association.” It was estimated that Brinkley made more than $10 million per year (in current value) on the sale of these “medicines.”

Before the Federal Radio Commission shut it down, Brinkley’s station made him a multimillionaire. However, he saw a new opportunity to expand his empire by constructing a 50,000-watt station in Villa Acuña, Mexico, just across the U.S-Mexico border from Del Rio, Texas. Eventually, the Mexican government allowed him to up the wattage of XER to 150,000, making his station audible to citizens of Mexico, the United States and – on nights when the conditions were perfect – as far away as Canada. He resumed his patent medicine-selling ways, taking on new advertisers hocking everything from “genuine simulated” diamonds to autographed pictures of Jesus. During this period Brinkley also purchased Mexican radio station XED; he changed its name to XEAW before selling the station in 1939. XEAW’s new owner would form the link between Brinkley, the power of radio and the Word of God.

A New Owner for XEAW

Carr Collins was another Texas-sized personality when he enters our narrative in the late 1930s. Like Brinkley, Collins had made a sizable fortune selling a “cure” for a common ailment. His approach was to use the radio to sell “Crazy Crystals,” dehydrated minerals from the springs found at Mineral Wells, Texas. When they were re-hydrated and consumed, the crystals were purported to act as a laxative. Collins had also profited from his establishing the Fidelity Union Life Insurance Company, and in his last decades he would use his fortune to support numerous philanthropic causes.

In addition to his prowess as a salesman, Collins was a devout Baptist. He became involved with the leadership of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, where he came into contact with its influential and long-serving pastor, George W. Truett. At some point in the late 1930s or early 1940s, Collins’ station made the decision to broadcast a new kind of program.

Reaching the People of “Radio Land”

By 1941, Truett had entered into the final years of his life. But despite his advanced age and failing health, he continued to deliver weekly sermons and even preside over special week-long programs focusing on prayer, revival and revitalizing the faith of the people of Dallas. At some point in the early 1940s, he entered into an agreement with Collins to broadcast recorded versions of his weekly sermons over the air on XEAW. The sermons were recorded live in the pulpit at First Baptist Dallas on 16” radio transcription discs. These discs were then shipped to the port of entry at Hidalgo, Texas for shipment into Mexico via the city of Reynosa. They would eventually air on XEAW, typically a week later than the dates of their original delivery in Truett’s Dallas pulpit.

Side two of Truett’s sermon delivered on January 19, 1941. The other two sides are presumed lost.

Notes written on the existing discs’ labels indicate that an XEAW announcer would read the following script at the end of each broadcast:

“You have been listening to a message by Dr. George W. Truett, Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas. These messages will be presented over XEAW every Sunday evening at 9:30. Tell your friends and neighbors about these.”

Thanks to the joint efforts of two major Dallas citizens – the preacher and the businessman – the people of Mexico, Texas and the entire Southwest could hear the words of one of the biggest names in Southern Baptist history delivered directly to their homes.

The Discs Find New Life in Digital

At least 68 of these broadcast discs were created by the studios of Sellers, Inc. of Dallas. These discs made their way into The Texas Collection at some point after Truett’s death, where they have been preserved along with their original album sleeves. In the fall of 2012, the discs were delivered to the Digital Projects Group to take advantage of our analogue disc migration capabilities and the skills of audio/visual engineer Stephen Bolech.

After organizing the discs into chronological order, Stephen migrates them one side at a time. Because of the original setup used to record them in the 1940s – wherein an audio engineer used two turntables to record the entire sermon over the course of three album sides – Stephen will import three sides of audio and create preservation digital files for each side. Then, he stitches the audio together and enhances it to create the high-quality access versions you will find presented in our Digital Collections.

This approach is a slight departure from our standard operating procedure in that we are presenting “enhanced” audio as opposed to the un-tweaked, “raw” version you would hear in collections like the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project. We chose to present the sermons in a listener-friendly, cleaner format both to aid in comprehension and because of the simpler nature of the audio’s original format – a single voice speaking alone, as opposed to numerous musicians and vocalists layered together.

In addition to the audio files, I am creating transcriptions of the sermons to add to the digital item. This will allow them to be keyword searchable and makes for a helpful aid for researchers interested in diving into the heart of Truett’s message.

All told, this means that each digital item includes a scanned image of all three sides of the discs, the enhanced audio of the sermon and a fully searchable transcript. In short, it is as complete a record as you will find online of any early 20th century preacher’s live, from-the-pulpit sermons.

What’s Next for the Collection?

We are working to complete phase one of the project by the end of the summer. This will mean putting all of Truett’s sermons from 1941 online by the end of August, with the sermons from 1942 and 1943 to follow shortly thereafter. The process for creating these records is a painstaking one, and we are committed to providing the highest quality resources for our users; hence, the staggered release. The first 17 sermons from the project are available now from the Truett Sermons Collection.

(Note: There are an additional 26 albums’ worth of Truett sermons available in this collection as well. These sermons were released by Word Records in the mid-1960s. We plan to create transcripts for these sermons in the future.)

Please take a few moments at your earliest convenience and head over to the collection to take a listen for yourselves. The sound of Truett’s voice, the focus of his message and the immediacy of its content cannot fail to strike a chord, and we encourage your feedback as you discover the items in this collection.

Next week’s blog post will focus on the content of the sermons themselves, from the types of subjects tackled to a brief examination of Truett’s inimitable style. Then, we’ll complete our Truett trifecta with a big announcement about another way you can engage with the collection that will combine 20th century preaching with 21st century technology. Stay tuned!

Sources Consulted:

Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford, “BORDER RADIO,” Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ebb01), accessed July 19, 2013. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.

“John R. Brinkley.” Wikipedia. Retrieved on July 22, 2013 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Brinkley

George N. Green, “COLLINS, CARR P.,” Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fco90), accessed July 19, 2013. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.

Joan Jenkins Perez, “TRUETT, GEORGE WASHINGTON,” Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ftr16), accessed July 22, 2013. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.

(Digital Collections) Announcing A Trifecta of Upcoming Truett Posts

On most Thursdays, you expect to see a piping hot post from this blog delivered to your inbox or RSS reader. But this week, we’re going to do a brief tease for an upcoming three-part blog series centered around one of our most interesting, exciting and potentially soul-saving collections yet!

George W. Truett’s name is familiar to the Baylor family, the Baptist church, the city of Dallas and the world at large, and we’re excited to announce a major expansion of an existing digital collection featuring Truett’s sermons, delivered by the man himself, just a few short months before his death in 1944. The blog series will contain these installments:

I. How A Depression-Era Huckster’s Radio Station Brought God’s Word to Mexico – and Beyond – Via George W. Truett

II. The Power Behind the Call: Examining the Rhetorical and Presentation Styles of G.W. Truett’s Sermons

III. Announcing a Feature That Just Might Save Your Soul

Intrigued? We sure hope so! Stay tuned to this space for the first of our installments, scheduled for July 25th. And to whet your whistle for these upcoming posts, click below for a brief taste of Truett’s dulcet tones, recorded live in the pulpit on April 27, 1941!

Mañana – The Devil’s Subtle Trick
[podcast]https://bearspace.baylor.edu/Group_DigitalProjectsUnit/Outreach/Sound%20in%20Collections%20podcast/Truett_preview.mp3[/podcast]

(Digital Collections) Scott Joplin’s “Great Crush Collision March” and the Memorialization of a Marketing Spectacle

For most people, the name Scott Joplin brings up a common range of responses: ragtime music, the Maple Leaf Rag, and his opera Treemonisha. But you’d be hard pressed to find someone whose first reaction to hearing Joplin’s name would be, “Oh, he’s the guy who wrote the song about the staged train crash near Waco!” Strangely enough, that person would be just as correct as the rest of us.

While conducting contextual background research for the Frances G. Spencer Collection of American Popular Sheet Music, I came across a reference to the collection having been cited in the preface of a book entitled The Collected Works of Scott Joplin. I retrieved a copy from the Crouch Fine Arts Library holdings and began reading the preface, looking for a mention of the collection. In a section on Joplin’s early years, I read the following paragraphs:

In 1896 the Quartette toured Louisiana and Texas. In Temple, Texas, Joplin secured his first piano publications: Combination March and Harmony Club Waltz, both with the local imprint of Robert Smith; and The (Great) Crush Collision March, published by John R. Fuller.

The first two pieces are uneventful period pieces. Crush Collision March, however, is a period piece of a special sort. As much program music as a march, it is, strangely, ‘Dedicated to the M.K.&T. Ry.,” this being the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway, which runs through Temple and there crosses the tracks of another line. The march describes a train wreck that, quite possibly, had recently occurred (otherwise, why the dedication?). Could there have been a wreck at the crossing in Temple? And could Joplin have added sound-effects and descriptive narrative to a piece already written but unpublished? Or had he quickly composed a work to fit the situation?

It was quite a surprise to me to discover that Joplin, a Texas-born composer and son of an emancipated slave, had written a song commemorating a marketing gimmick concocted to sell tickets on a regional railroad with deep ties to Central Texas. Though the editors’ guesses were incorrect, the actual story behind the piece is something so brazen, so unique that it bears much closer examination.

Detail from “The Crash at Crush” by artist Robert Roswell Abernathy (1911-1981).

The Origins of the Crash

Beginning with the so-called Panic of 1893, the economy of the United States began a decade-long slide, with high unemployment, devalued currency, and the collapse of several major railroads epitomizing the dire situation. It was this last situation that indirectly led to the staging of the “Monster Crash” outside Waco.

As confidence in America’s railroad system eroded with the faltering economy, railroads began looking for ways to both boost their sagging bottom lines and provide some positive attention in an era when the over-extended growth of railroads was seen as a major cause of great personal financial insecurity. At the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad (known to many by its nickname, the Katy), a passenger agent named William George Crush had an idea: use a head-on collision between two locomotives to generate income (and newspaper headlines). Officials at the MK&T agreed, and planning was underway.

The event was staged on September 15, 1896 in a valley north of Waco. Crush and his crew of MK&T laborers built a temporary depot, bandstand, viewing stands, and a temporary length of track measuring 4 miles long. Two locomotives were placed at either end; one was painted bright green, the other bright red. Both had been toured around the state in the months leading up to the crash in order to generate publicity. Crush dubbed the location of the spectacle “Crush, Texas.”

Admission was free, and round-trip tickets to “Crush” cost only $2 per person. As a result, 40,000 people showed up for the event, making “Crush, Texas” the second-largest city in the state (if only for a day).  At 5:00 PM, the two trains were released under a full head of steam, speeding down the track at approximately 45 mph. The resulting collision caused both locomotives’ boilers to explode, sending shrapnel into the crowd that killed at least three people and wounded dozens of others.

The aftermath of the spectacle is almost unthinkable in modern times. Crush was immediately fired by the MK&T, but with officials seeing no widespread outrage in the media, was rehired the next day. The railroad paid settlements to the victims’ families of cash and lifetime rail passes, and the debris was cleaned up by MK&T crews and souvenir hunters. By the end of the day, “Crush, Texas” had ceased to exist. And within a few decades, the whole event would pass from the collective memory with the exception of railroad fans and Texas history buffs.

Click the image above to access a PDF of the complete score.

Joplin Immortalizes the “Crash” in Song

Fresh off a stint performing with his first band at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Scott Joplin was touring Texas in the late 1890s where he saw three of his compositions published in Temple. There was one waltz (Harmony Club Waltz) and two marches, the Combination March and the Great Crush Collision March. The latter of the two marches was dedicated to the “M.K.&T. Ry.,” which is of course the very railroad that had just staged the Crash at Crush. In fact, the work was copyrighted a mere 30 days after the spectacle, leading biographers to believe that Joplin had either witnessed the crash himself or heard about it from one of his acquaintances who worked as a porter on the Katy line.

While the particulars of how Joplin learned of the crash are unclear, what is known is his reaction as recorded in song. Joplin created something more than a standard march: he added instructions for creating “sound effects” for the last third of the piece that would depict the crash through music. Joplin’s notes on the piece include the following written below the staff:

The noise of the trains while running at the rate of sixty miles per hour
Whistling for the crossing
Noise of the trains
Whistle before the collision
The collision*

This approach brings to mind the kind of scoring that would become standard for Hollywood pictures in the decades following the Great Crush Collision March’s publication. It was an attempt to insert narrative flair into what was otherwise a fairly straightforward composition and was a foreshadowing of Joplin’s later work with dramatic compositions that would find their culmination in Treemonisha.

“The Great Crush Collision” Revisited

My work on this blog post brought about an exciting opportunity to bring this piece back to life. Working with our sound engineer, Stephen Bolech, we arranged for graduate student in performance studies Eunhye Shin to perform the piece at First Baptist Church, where Stephen also serves as a sound engineer. The piece is included below, performed for the first time in more than a century, mere miles away from the site of the marketing spectacle it was created to commemorate.

[podcast]http://files.campus.edublogs.org/blogs.baylor.edu/dist/2/1416/files/2012/04/joplin_crush_collision-1krelpm.mp3[/podcast]

*Note: The sound effects described above begin at the 2:04 mark with “The noise of the trains …” and end with the sustained note at 2:17 representing “the collision.”

 

Works Consulted

“The Crash at Crush” (artwork) by Robert Roswell Abernathy (ca. 1937). Original on display at the Texas Collection

King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era by Edward A. Berlin (1994)

The Life and Works of Scott Joplin by Addison Walker Reed (1973)

Dancing to a Black Man’s Tune: A Life of Scott Joplin by Susan Curtis (1994)

The Collected Works of Scott Joplin edited by Vera Brodsky Lawrence (1971)

Scott Joplin on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Joplin)

The Crash at Crush on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_at_Crush)

The Crash at Crush from the Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/llc01)

Visit the Texas Collection online at http://www.baylor.edu/lib/texas for more priceless Texana.

(Digital Collections) A New Dimension for our Collections: Introducing the Digital Collections Podcast

Imagine a world without sound. Your favorite music – gone. No more conversations with loved ones, oral tradition is extinct, beloved stories lose their impact. A world without sound would be a world without texture, without emphasis.

This is the world of document-based archival collections. The printed word is great for many things – conveying information, documenting events, preserving history. But it can lack the urgency, the emotional connection of information delivered in someone’s voice, through the power of sound. It’s the difference between reading a piece of piano sheet music and actually hearing it performed the way an audience in 1906 would have experienced it: played by a musician on a jazz joint upright or in a grand concert hall on a Steinway grand.

Here at the Digitization Projects Group, we wanted to give our users a new way to experience our collections, an aural avenue for connecting with the materials we digitize and put online every day. In short, we wanted to add a new, audible dimension to our materials, and that’s why we created the Sound in Collections podcast, the first episode of which is available to stream at the end of this post.

The name Sound in Collections is a play on the phrase “found in collections,” a phrase collections managers use to describe objects they come across in their collections that they weren’t expecting to find there. In museums, that can mean an item in a box that wasn’t listed on the deed of gift, or something tucked in a corner with no accompanying paperwork whatsoever. Those items are marked “FIC” and added to a list of things for a curator or collections manager to investigate for future disposition.

For us, we liked the idea of highlighting items from our collections that you may not expect to experience in a sound-based format. We plan to offer things like dramatic readings from our Civil War letters collection, readings (in Russian and English) of items from the Keston Digital Archive, and performances of musical pieces from our Spencer Collection of American Popular Sheet Music, plus interviews and in-depth analysis of materials in our collections.

If you have an idea for something you’d like to see in upcoming podcasts, email us at digitalcollectionsinfo@baylor.edu or comment on this blog post. We’ll incorporate your requests and suggestions into upcoming episodes. Once we get a few episodes under our belt, we plan to add them to Baylor’s selection of materials available in iTunesU.

So enjoy our first foray into audio excellence; we hope you’ll agree that this new feature from the Digitization Projects Group will be music to your ears.

Click below to listen to episode one of Sound in Collections.

[podcast]https://bearspace.baylor.edu/Group_DigitalProjectsUnit/Outreach/Sound%20in%20Collections%20podcast/Sound%20In%20Collections%20Episode%2001.mp3[/podcast]