An actual story in sound of “A Dog’s Life” as broadcast on CBS Radio Workshop. Conceived and recorded by Tony Schwartz. Folkways Records. 1958.

I had the rare priviledge of meeting and getting to know Tony Schwartz. Once again, my search for records led me to an experience I’ll never forget. Tony responded to an ad of mine that said I buy records. I didn’t know who he was at first, but based on his description of his collection over the phone, I made a date to visit his home on the upper west side of Manhattan.

Entering his three-story brownstone was like going into a vault that had been filled over the past fifty years with a lifetime of recordings, recording equipment, books, magazines, artwork, awards and more. File cabinets and rows of boxes packed in tall metal shelving units turned the main floor into a recording studio and home office. Scrolls of audio tape hung from clothes lines criss-crossing the room. A world of sound bites hanging like flypaper strips.

Because he has suffered from agoraphobia his entire adult life, Tony has rarely strayed far from his home and this home production office. Due to this fear of leaving home, he began to trade audio tapes with pen pals and like-minded amateurs recording sounds from their daily lives — girls skipping rope and singing schoolyard songs, taxi drivers’ ranting, slave songs, South American frogs croaking, street performers (I think Tony was one of the first to record Moondog), and more from countries around the world.

Tony’s record collection was on the third floor and it was legendary! It included many fifties Folkways records, incredible sound effect and sound library records, spoken word records – from Eldridge Cleaver to Alan Ginsburg to Tony’s friend and co-writer Marshall McLuhan. Tony’s collection also included lots of international and world music records and, strangely perhaps, many sixties rock and psych records by groups such as The Mothers, The Fugs and The Chocolate Watchband. I spent many hours and days absorbing this collection and discovering recordings I never new existed.

Even after buying Tony’s collection, I returned to visit with Tony, his wife and son and to just listen to the amazing stories that Tony told about a life dedicated to education and to bringing integrity and art to radio and TV advertising for the past fifty years. I urge you to read about Tony and his amazing life and career. He has done as much as anyone to use media to affect positive change in the world. He has created some of the most effective public service advertising ever. Around this time, Tony invited me to a tribute to him at the Museum of Broadcasting.

I’ve added a category for Tony Schwartz’s records on the site will continue to post his records in the future.

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