Lauren Walker

CORRESPONDENCE ETCHED IN BLUE: AUDOGRAPH DISCS OF ERLE STANLEY GARDNER

American author and lawyer Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) had a very distinct voice. The booming baritone with a bit of grumpy grit was an avid user of audio recording media, especially for dictating his correspondence, and drafts of his detective stories. His archive at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, contains hundreds of Audograph dictation discs. Using the Gray Audograph recording device, transparent blue flexible discs could be directly recorded by simply engaging the microphone. The disc is driven by a surface-mounted wheel, so when played back on a standard record player, the pitch of the recorded audio is higher at the center and gradually decreases toward the edge of the disc.

From 1960–1966, Gardner corresponded with his publisher Thayer Hobson via airmailed Audograph discs. Gardner approached these recordings with the formality of written letters; beginning with his name, the date, his location, then a flow of content, and signing off with regards and well wishes. These dispatched dialogues are rather personal, with Gardner sharing his plans, his health, describing travels, thoughts on his creative process, relations with friends and women, and opinions of his readers and business ventures. There is a directness to his utterance, indicating his trust, respect, and friendship toward Hobson, his listener. These recordings give insight to the curation of a creative identity; they embody the narrative behind a narrator.

This presentation will share details of this format of sound carrier, such as the audio recording process, playback, digitisation, and physical aspects of the mailed object. From an archivist’s perspective, I will discuss challenges of the preservation, access, and research of these materials. I will show images and play recordings from the Gardner-Hobson correspondence to ground the presentation in listening.

Lauren Walker is an artist and archivist living in Austin, Texas. She has a BFA and MSIS with specialisation in audiovisual archiving. She has worked as a digitisation technician for analogue audio preservation, performed condition surveys of archival audio collections, led projects in archival film winding and rehousing, and led database migration projects for audio and moving image data. As the Head of Digital Projects at the
Harry Ransom Center, she currently manages audiovisual digitisation projects that require outsourcing to a vendor, projects that make archival materials accessible online, and digital preservation of digitised archival materials. She enjoys working with researchers and artists, providing reference support and access to collection materials for scholarly and creative projects. Her creative work includes drawing, printmaking, and collage, and she plays experimental improvisational music in multiple bands. Her research concerns audiovisual material history and sound studies.