- Hello and welcome. There is one song in my life that I hear more than all others, and that is, of course, the theme to NPR's All Things Considered. And if you, like me, have ever sung along or hummed along. You're doing it right now, right? To that theme, then you are part of the legacy of Don Voegeli and Wisconsin Public Broadcasting. Don Voegeli was a longtime member of the staff at WHA Radio and at the UW-Madison. He served as radio music director in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, and among the pieces of music that he composed right here was the theme to All Things Considered. So, millions of people who listen to public radio every afternoon hear music that was composed on this campus right here in Wisconsin. But that piece of music is only the beginning of Don Voegeli's story, and today we get to hear the whole story from two people who know it well. First we'll hear from Jim Voegeli, who is a Madison native and is one of Don Voegeli's sons. He is a graduate of the UW Madison with both a bachelor's and a law degree and has, for the last few years, discovered that many of his father's pieces of music have been lost or have gone missing. So he has spent the last few years putting those pieces of music back together, trying to organize them, collect them, and preserve them for a new collection at the UW-Madison Archives. And he has helped put together a new set of, a new collection of that music. He's also been practicing law for the last 30 years, 15 of the most recent years have been as in-house counsel at the 3M company in St. Paul. Today we'll also hear from David Null, who has been with the General Library system since 1994 and has been director of the UW-Madison Archives since 2002. The UW-Madison Archives are the official repository for UW-Extension. And so, therefore, they have extensive holdings of the archives of Wisconsin Public Radio and Television. So please join me now in welcoming Jim Voegeli.  (audience clapping) - Thank you. Well, it is a great pleasure to be here with you today and talk about my father and his music. At the end of our program, we're going to hear maybe about a minute of him playing piano right here in the Philo Buck studio, in 1980, the last time he would have recorded in the studio, maybe on that piano that's back there, which was part of a collection of piano pieces distributed to public broadcasting stations, TV and radio, to be film music as part of his Electrosonic Studio. He was one other time on the Michael Feldman show. Bless Michael for having him on, and he really enjoyed jamming with the group. And we have that recording as well. So he probably was in this studio one more time. But thank you-- David Null is here, and I just want to, from the top, thank him for being so welcoming when we first approached him about doing a collection. David has been a guiding light in this whole project and has been so helpful throughout it. And we're still digitizing some things. I'm doing that up in the Twin Cities. And I'll tell you just quickly a little about that in a minute. But I want to also thank Mike Crane from Wisconsin Public Radio and Jon Miskowski from Wisconsin Public Television. Did I get that wrong? Radio and Television. Both for being very welcoming and helpful as well. But I would be remiss not to mention Danny Henry at the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. And if you ever get a chance, go see this museum. It's one of just a few of them in the world. They have broadcasting equipment from all eras, radio and television. They go back to wireless. They actually have a small version of the Morse code transmitter that was on the Titanic. And wait until you see that fired up. They have everything there. And they are the place that I went to to get most of the digitization done and a lot of the work that David will talk more about that. And we really had, this is a search and rescue effort where we had to find what recordings existed and then do major post-digitization processing to try to improve the sound, get rid of pops and clicks from records and so on  And here's a photo of him, 1943. So 1942 he graduated. He was hired as the staff musician. And the next year he was promoted to music director, the position he held till 1964.  Now, he taught briefly for a few years a course called Music and Radio. And so during that period he had a joint appointment with the School of Music and the Communication Arts Department. But it's important to know he kind of had a technical career. Tom, I think you know about this. That he not only did music but he was really a good recording engineer. And Ken Ohst, who was WHA's lead attorney at the time, had my father go with him to be the engineer for UW Athletic events. And Ken, and I even remember this story but it's in Randall Davidson's book as well, used to love the story of what happened the night before a Purdue/Wisconsin game. They were having a press banquet and it was kind of dragging on. Nothing too exciting. And my father saw a piano in the corner, went over and started to play it, and soon he had a bunch of people around the piano singing with him. And this went on for hours until finally one of the Purdue coaches went up to Ken and said, "We'll trade you right now a linebacker and defensive end "for that piano player."  (audience laughing)  So he went on to be operations and facilities manager from '64 to '67. And I don't know what that really entailed except it probably had to do with making sure the station ran smoothly and that the recording, that they were trying to probably advance recording techniques, et cetera. And then, '67 to 1970, he had a special assignment to help plan the building of Vilas Hall. So he was involved with the layout that we have here today in this building and the studios, which, at that time, worked well. I hope they still are. I don't know. I haven't been here in a long time. But that was part of his role as well. Here he is in 1949 playing that pipe organ in Studio B. He had a program that was a daily show called Organ Melodies, and he'd play standard pieces and then he'd improvise something at the end. As you probably know, a rich part of the history of Wisconsin broadcasting, particularly, or actually for both radio and television, was the Wisconsin School of the Air, and then there was also the Wisconsin College of the Air. Here's a picture from 19-- I don't actually know the date of this, David, but this is Norm Clayton doing the program Let's Sing, and he did a bunch of songs for that series. That was on 15 years, from 1960 to 1974. And here's a sound clip of a song called Beautiful and Lovely, which was written for kids and we also chose for the title of our compilation CD.  (gentle instrumental music)   § Beautiful and lovely § Lovely things to see § I'm thankful God has made these things § Such lovely things for me § Skies and clouds, sunsets § Trees with birds that sing § Butterflies and babies § Flowers in the spring § Beautiful and lovely § Lovely things to see  That was in 1964. This is 1966. He did a bunch of the themes for the show, and it would change every couple of years. This is from 1966, the program's theme.  § Let's sing § Let's make the rafters ring § With songs both sad and gay § Let's sing § Let's hear the melody § Bring out the harmony to interplay § Let's sing § Let's learn a song or two § Let's sing a song that's new § Begin, let's all get in the swing § Let's sing, let's sing, let's sing  (lively instrumental music)   So you might be interested to know that was beamed into the schools, and the purpose of Wisconsin School of the Air was kind of to equalize teaching through this state for small schools that couldn't afford to have a lot of different curriculum. And, anyhow, that was beamed in at 1:30 in the afternoon on Wednesdays, and that program was as popular among adults as it was kids. So they had a big listenership when they checked into it. Here he is with Claire Kentzler, in the background, and Karl Schmidt, in the foreground, probably, again, doing a Wisconsin School of the Air production. And I remember them both very well. And Claire was really sweet. A really sweet person. And I'm so delighted that they've named one of the conference rooms Jim Collins and Claire Kentzler Room. That's great. Here's the sound, the part of the theme for a program that was Wisconsin School of the Air, very popular. It was 1956 when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered just a year or two earlier with Professor Mansour. It was a 13-part series. It was so popular it was distributed across the United States by the National... I can't remember now. Educational something. I can't remember the name. I'm sorry.  But there was a body that used to distribute some of the better series. And, in any event, this was being requested even in 1965. And this is that theme.  (gentle instrumental music)    (moves into tense instrumental music)   Most of his themes were more upbeat than that. That's more serious. So, it's the National Association of Educational Broadcasters. So it comes to mind. And that was a precursor to NPR or anything. It was one of the ways programs got distributed. Here's a picture of him in the master control room at Radio Hall with Studio C in the background. But I'm going to play. I didn't have any better graphic to show you, but because we have television here, I want you to know he did quite a few things for Wisconsin Public Television and WHA-TV. For example, on our compilation CD, we have five of the songs for the Communicators, a 1963 production with, among other singers, Linda Clauder. And then he did a theme for a Friday night weekly news magazine called Mosaic, which was 1962. Now, what I'm going to play for you were two math teaching themes. We presume that these are for Patterns in Arithmetic and Patterns in Mathematics, which both debuted in 1961. The first title was for younger kids, and the mathematics series was for older kids. In 1964, it appears they merged, and they came out with just one program, Patterns in Arithmetic, which was then for grades one through six. In any event, this was so popular that by 1972 there were 336 15-minute episodes being aired or shown in classrooms in 35 states. So this is the first of those two themes.  (playful instrumental music)   So it had to be cheerier than the last theme we played because it was trying to get kids not to freak out doing math. David and I were laughing this morning when we did a dry run, and we thought, God, it sounds like some game show on TV. So this is the second theme.  (lively instrumental music)   You know, I might have even been willing to learn my math tables. At least, I would have tried. He did other things on campus from 1941 to at least 1951. He had the Don Voegeli Orchestra. And Jim Gills here and your parents, remember your parents went and danced to them playing, Jim. I remember that. Here's a full picture of the ensemble when it was after World War II and they had 15-piece band and a singer. And we have a wonderful recording, the only recording in existence, and it's about seven songs. That is from 1949, and that's in the collection. And here is a slide showing that he did a lot of work for Haresfoot. He was a music director for quite a few seasons of Haresfoot. Now, Haresfoot was similar to Hasty Pudding Club at Harvard. All the roles were played by men. And it was an annual production. And this is for Good for the Girls. So what happened here is Bill Harley, who became a legendary person in public broadcasting, helped found PBS, NPR, a big name in public broadcasting after leaving the campus here. He and Al Beaumont wrote the book or the story the last month before the competition deadline. And my father helped them do the lyrics. So the three of them have a credit for the lyrics. And then my father had only a few weeks to write all the music. We have from acetate transcription disks, we have the music from this production. 22 different musical tracks is part of the collection from 1950. And, anyhow, they won the competition. John Dietrich, who you saw pictured earlier, was the director. And it toured in a number of states. Illinois and Wisconsin and I don't know if it ever went to Minnesota, but I know it was down in Chicago and Illinois. And it was a big deal back then. So he participated in that as well.  So between... For two years that spanned 1957 to 1959, he took a leave of absence, a sabbatical, because he had the opportunity to write commercial music. Somehow the J. Walter Thompson ad agency out of Chicago heard about him, and he was asked to submit a jingle for the 1956 Schlitz Beer national campaign. And his jingle was selected. I think they had three finalists, and his was selected. So in 1957, he did another jingle, and this was significant because Schlitz was sponsoring Playhouse of the Stars on CBS. So these jingles were heard on television once a week and on radio. This is the actual photo of the recording session of the second Schlitz Beer jingle from 1957.  (lively instrumental music) -  [Narrator]  Move up to quality, move up to Schlitz. § Here's how to get refreshing lightness, § Flavor quality, modern taste § Move up to Schlitz § Light, light Schlitz You owe it to yourself to enjoy the best. Schlitz is one of the finer things of life that everybody can afford. Move up to quality, move up to Schlitz. World's best seller at any price. § The beer that made Milwaukee famous, have a glass § You will get the kiss of the hops in every glass § Ask for the beer that's so refreshing, § Flavor quality, modern taste § Move to Schlitz § Up, up, up, move up to Schlitz- So this is recorded at Universal Recording in Chicago. This is Studio A, and a lot of big things were recorded there, but this was really where most of the jingles in that era were recorded. And Chicago was the hub to jingle recording, and that's my father conducting and Jamie Silva, who is the singer, a wonderful, very famous singer for jingles, and she was part of the J's with Jamie, which you're gonna hear next. Here's a 1959, Continental was one of the first airlines to take delivery of the brand new 707. And here's the jingle with the J's with Jamie. § Wonderful, wonderful § Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful § What a wonderful flight § When you travel as guests § On the most experienced jetline in the west § Golden Jet's the way, the way to fly § It's time to try § Continental § Continental Airlines  And he also worked with the singers Unlimited Bonnie Herman on many jingles as well. Here's Jamie again singing for Trailways. We think this is probably from 1960. § For the easiest travel on Earth § Take Trailways § Take a Trailways bus § For the easiest travel on Earth § Take an air conditioned Trailways bus That was actually for a television commercial. And Danny up at Pavek and we edited that right down to that short clip of it. I wish I could play a lot more, but we have time is fighting against us here. This is a great photo of Studio B at Universal, and I'm going to play you the jingle first. It's Heat with Oil. My father is in the left conducting the session actually from the control room. Mason Koppinger, who became a friend, is the engineer. And that's Jamie again singing this jingle.  (lively instrumental music)  § If you want to have BTUs aplenty § Then you'll choose to heat with oil § If you want to have safety in turn § With the fuel that you burn § You'll heat with oil § If you want to cleanliness § No muss, no mess, § Modern oil heat can't be beat § If you want to live modern § All the way through every winter day § You'll heat with oil § Heat with oil  § §  You can see all the string players.  § §  § If you want to live modern § All the way through every winter day § You heat with oil  So I want to take just a moment to talk about how this worked. My father actually didn't make a whole lot of money in his life on commercial side. And he did it for about eight years. He would be paid a certain amount of money, but then he'd have to go out and hire the musicians and pay the recording fee. And he put a lot into it. As you can see, look at the musicians for this one spot. By the time he was done, he often didn't make a lot. And in our history booklet, we actually talk about some of the documentation we have how little he was paid. He was paid only $100 for the Arlene Francis Show theme, the third big daily show on NBC. Now, NBC didn't pa   (playful instrumental music)   That's one well trained dog.-  [Narrator]  Now a word about one of their many fine products, Ken-L Meal.  -  [Narrator]  Does the dog in your life have a personality all his own? Does he seem to understand your moods? Is he sad when you're sad?  Happy when you're happy?  Does he come to you when he needs help? Does you appreciate what you do for him? Is he fond of you just because you're you? Do you feed him Ken-L Meal? New concentrated Ken-L Meal. When you pour on water, concentrated Ken-L Meal bursts into meaty goodness. Looks like ground beef. For meat red Ken-L Meal is real meat meal with meat aroma, meat flavor. Come and get it. Get protein and energy in every bite. The concentrated goodness of Ken-L Meal. And what about the dog in your life? Is he as healthy and happy as you can make him? Do you feed him Ken-L Meal? New concentrated Ken-L Meal?- I don't know where that was shot. I'm presuming Hollywood. That dog was one heck of a well trained dog. And very nicely put together, I thought. But he did at least the music for five CENCO educational films. These were films from CENCO Scientific Company of Chicago. So they made microscopes and laboratory equipment for high schools, colleges, and laboratories. A big name. And anyhow, they sponsored educational films on science matters. And this is from 1962, part of his film score for a film called Outer Space.  (gentle instrumental music)   And it goes on. That's actually one of my favorite pieces of music of his. I just love that. So back at WHA, 1970, the National Center for Audio Experimentation was founded. Here's a picture with Karl Schmidt, on the left, doing the directing of a production being taped in a station wagon. And my father, on the right, with the tape machine recording it. And Jay Fitz, the actress. And I don't know the name, you can see it in the little-- I don't know the gentleman, but an actor reading the script. So in between them is Herman. That was the name they had for their microphone mount that my father was involved helping to design. Now, the Germans actually developed binaural stereo, and a lot of the rigs just had a Styrofoam head with the microphone sticking out. So this was a little bit of an adaptation. But the purpose here was to record it as if it was how you were hearing it, if you were in that setting, and then you'd play back and listen on headphones. And it's very realistic. In fact, I'm kind of surprised with all the earbuds and things that today there isn't more binaural stereo done. Of course, radio production, we don't really have plays anymore and things like this. Maybe that's part of the reason. But it's very realistic stereo and a wonderful thing.  And here's a picture of him with John Tiedeman from the BBC and Karl Schmidt in control room A at Radio Hall doing an NCAE production.  We asked Karl about one year ago, Karl Schmidt wrote this for our project, and unfortunately I talked with him last Christmas and said, "Karl, let us send you the part "that we're duplicating, a draft CD." And he said, "Jim, don't worry, "I plan to be around for some time to come." And unfortunately he died this April. But he wrote this for our project. "Best friend, admired artist. "We have been together professionally and personally "for more than 50 years, but more than that, "we have been in sync too long to split now. "You are still in my vicinity playing softly on the keyboard. "We were together when your first child died, "together when my first child died, when our kids were born, "when we helped found NPR. "We lived our lives together then and now." So what I want to tell you about is just, again, come back to the theme of how close people were who worked at WHA. It was like a small family. And my father had friendships with many of the people here, including Karl, a lifelong friend. In reference to losing the kids, I'll just tell you my father did have a rough life. My parents lost their first two children. Donna from leukemia at the age of 2.5 and Bobby at the age of five while he was having a hernia repair surgery at UW Hospital. Somehow the anesthesia took him. And then my mother, Jean, died when I was 10 and she was 44. She had been very ill for the four years preceding that, and so from the age of her being 40 my father had to really take on both parental roles and had to do a lot of extra duties at home. And then, later, a second, another wife, Anne, died from cancer. And in addition, he suffered from ankylosing spondylitis from when he was in his 20s. Now, the onset of that is quite painful, but you've seen people who are hunched over and their spine has fused. And that's ultimately what took his life when he fell, and he died in 2009 from his back shattering. So this is a reference that Karl made to that. This is back to 1970. The BBC, Desmond Briscoe had come to do a seminar at WHA that people from any public station were invited to attend on sound effects. And he brought this little Putney synthesizer. There's actually two stories. He either brought it or the university bought it for that purpose. But what I always heard was he brought it. Didn't want to spend the money to ship it back because he was traveling through the US. And, anyhow, the university got this little Putney synthesizer. My father then went out and bought the keyboard and started to do some music for NCAE productions. And some of our collection we have a couple of those pieces that we attribute to NCAE productions. In 1971, newly formed National Public Radio came to him and asked him to do a theme, and he used this little synthesizer and an 8-track tape machine to come up with the first theme. Now, mind you, both this and the Moog synthesizer, which I'll show you a little later, they were monophonic instruments. You could play a chord on the keyboard, but you'd only get the lowest note. So you had to layer note by note with a multitrack tape machine. The tape machine did almost all that work. You had to play one note at a time and then build a chord, you'd have three passes with the tape machine. So, very labor-intensive effort. And I'll tell you more about the second theme in a minute and how long that took.  (lively synthesizer music)   So that theme was actually used for five years until 1976. He did a whole music package. So lots of buttons and bridges, and we have those. National Public Radio has gotten rid of almost all that but luckily we found another source and we have some of that. And this is just a nice message from Linda Wertheimer thanking him and telling him that, this is a teletype. This is how you communicated back then, for all of us email and texting junkies. But anyhow, this was the little theme for All Things Considered for consumer. And I've recommended that Kevin McKinley for On Your Money use this, but it hasn't gone anywhere so far.  (lively synthesizer music)   So that was done with that little Putney.  

 So here is an orchestral version. He then had others do arrangements. And this is his own last arrangement of the All Things Considered theme, and I'll play a little bit more of it. He's playing electric piano, and you'll hear the bridge that he liked so much.  (lively instrumental music)   Here's the bridge in the middle, right here.  And he did a lot of production music, so he had the Electrosonic Studio for eight years. They came out with 26 records, 17 were of his own music, and then he had nine done by other musicians, which was sent out to public radio and television stations. This was back when copyright laws made it very expensive to use commercial music for public broadcasters. So this is part of the way to help stations do productions. And this music is still valid. We only have half of the electronic music, the tapes in existence. So a lot of it's been lost, but we have enough and it's part of our new collection and it's still available to any public broadcaster that wants to use it. He did a signature for Minnesota Public Radio, he did a signature for American Public Media, and he did two that Voice of America used as top of the hour signatures. And if you tuned in in 1974, this is what you might hear at the top of the hour to signal that it's the Voice of America.  ("Yankee Doodle")   Their theme is obviously Yankee Doodle. So you know that. And today you'll still hear them using that. This is the version from 1977.   ("Yankee Doodle")   And 96% to 97% of all public radio and television stations used his production music during these years. But this was kind of a special treat that the VOA wanted to use it as well. Well, here he is probably in one of his happier moments jamming with friends. To the left, just over my father, is Ralph Hanson, a dear friend of his who is an attorney in town. Ken Ohst is playing drums and looks smiling, as is Ralph. And then that's Bob Homme playing clarinet. And Bob has a lot of history with Wisconsin Public Television. He created The Friendly Giant in 1958, took it to the CBC in Canada where it aired for over two decades. He was given the highest civilian award shortly before his death, the Order of Canada Award. So he is known by every Canadian above the age, I'm going to guess, 40, 35 maybe even. That was rebroadcast for many years. In fact, it used to be, when I went to a conference in Toronto, across the road was the CBC new studios, and I went in their museum. The very first thing you used to see was the set for The Friendly Giant. So they're very proud of it. Here he is in retirement with one of his favorite friends, Kermit the Frog. And he never, you know, despite his considerable talents, I think one of the things that I appreciate most about him is it never went to his head. He didn't come home and talk about his music. I loved it, but I just had that interest. But, Julie, I think you'll agree, he was pretty much silent when he came home. It was his job. He had had so much adversity in his life that he didn't take it too seriously, but he liked doing it. The other thing that amazes me is how upbeat most of his music is despite the kinds of tragedies that he went through. I mean, he could have-- If it had been me, I don't know, I might have shut down and become not very pleasant to be around if I had had all those bad things happen to me. He was humble. I was recently asked in a podcast, "Tell me about him," and I would say this: he was humble. David Brooks has a new book out, The Road to Character, and he talks about how today, unfortunately, we're so much the me first society. But back then, humility was a key thing that people sought to be. And he was that. He was very humble, down to earth. He was kind to people. I remember hearing many times from people how kind he was to people of all walks of life. He really believed in equality. The Southern Poverty Law Center was one of the organizations he gave money to. He loved humor, though. And this is another thing that maybe saved him from the brink with all of the tragedies. And he valued family and friends, and he had many lifelong friends. Here's a picture of him painted by Madison artist Dorothy Bausch at UW Hospital and Clinics playing the piano that I mentioned earlier. He did that in his volunteer years. So I'm going to close with one last song clip. This is him in 1978 in the Electrosonic Studio. And what I'm playing for you is something we found and confirmed from broadcast airchecks. In 1975, on New Year's Eve, All Things Considered closed its program playing this piece of music to wish people a Happy New Year.  (lively instrumental music)   So, thank you.  (audience clapping) - Hi, I'm David Null from the UW-Madison Archives. I just want to say a couple of things about the archival collection that we have on Don Voegeli. I first met Jim about 3.5 years ago when he got in touch with the University Archives and the Mills Music Library and the radio station here, other people, to see what we might have about his father and what we might have that he could digitize, that we could preserve. And so he came down to Madison, we got together, we started looking at things. We had quite a bit of material, photographs of his father, and also some media from our collections on WHA. Jim also had a lot of other things. So you can see from this slide material that he and the family donated to the University Archives that include albums, cassette tapes, other types of material, paper materials. We're continuing to add to this collection. Jim bro