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Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg page editor: Chris Mustazza

The Speech Lab Recordings: Performance at Columbia University, 1935

These recordings were made at Columbia University in 1935, recorded by Barnard professors George W. Hibbitt and W. Cabell Greet, lexicologists and scholars of American dialects. At the end of the recording of "When Cockle Shells Turn Silver Bells," Sandburg gives the data as both February 13, 1935 and November 13, 1935. It's unclear which is the actual date of the recordings.

For more information see Mustazza on The Contemporary Poets Series in Jacket2 and the Speech Lab Recordings series page. See also Mustazza's "Carl Sandburg & the Early Poetry Audio Archive" in Inklings & Idlings.

PennSound wishes to thank the staff at Columbia's Rare Book & Manuscript Library, especially Thai Jones, Jennifer Lee, Devon Maeve Nevola, Jane Siegel, and Karla Nielsen, for helping us to make these recordings available.

Editor's note: The recordings here were originally made on aluminum platters. They were subsequently dubbed to reel-to-reel tapes by the Library of Congress in 1978. These digitizations are made from the reels, which are stored at Columbia University. I made the decision to present the recordings in the order in which Columbia numbered the aluminum platters, except for where I reordered the sequence to keep parts of the same collection together. Sequence numbers, as well as record numbers, are available in the file names. --Chris Mustazza, University of Pennsylvania
  1. The Czar Has Eight Million Men from The People, Yes (3:31)
  2. Cold Rainy Day as it appears in Zora Neal Hurston's Mules and Men (text) (3:12)
  3. When Cockle Shells Turn Silver Bells (4:25)

These sound recordings are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. © 2015 Estate of Carl Sandburg. Distributed by PennSound.