Highway Hi-Fi Podcast Turntable Tutelage: How-To Records (Episode 63)
In the middle of the century, a collective thirst for knowledge grew around the world. In these new space age times, people had neither the time nor patience for books, tutors, or apprenticeships. Instead they turned to the newest form of mass media for their learning needs...the vinyl record. The turntable allowed unlimited listens in the private and cozy confines of home making it the ideal vehicle for audio instruction.
As a result, there was a gigantic wave of how-to records, or educational records, produced. These discs were designed to help people learn how to become better. Better ventriloquists, better dancers, better pick-up artists, better mathematicians, and better duck callers. An age of self improvements, decades before YouTube. It gave people a sense of control and purpose in a world where so much was changing over which they had no influence, no power, and often no understanding. This combined with a wave of mass capitalist consumption made for the fertile conditions for the explosion of instructional discs.
Today, we discuss the wacky world of tutelage that are How-To Records.
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