“Capturing the Sounds of Sports and Race Cars: Bill Grauer and Riverside Records”

This is a revised draft of a paper I will be giving at the Popular Culture Association Annual Meeting at the end of March. Comments are welcome!

“Capturing the Sounds of Sports and Race Cars: Bill Grauer and Riverside Records”

John Heitmann

Department of History

University of Dayton

300 College Park

Dayton, OH 45469-1540

Copyright 2018.

Doing history often gets personal for me, and the story that follows is a prime example of why I chose the topics I pursue. For some time, I have been interested in the history of sports cars in the U.S., particularly during the 1950s when sports car sales and SCCA participation took off. It was the result of rising middle class expectations and ambitions, a response to the ungainly Detroit “dinosaur in the driveway,” and popular literature that included Don Sanford’s The Red Car and Tom McCahill’s Mechanix Illustrated articles. And as a teenager during the mid-1960s I got caught up in it, as I purchased a 1959 MGA after graduating from high school.

Lately as I reflect on my past I have often wondered how I got on the path of being so keenly interested in sports cars. One possible reason for my passion was the consequence of acquiring at age 12 the Riverside Records LP “Vintage Sports Car in Stereo.” On one side the record featured the sounds of a number of vintage cars I had never heard of before: a Frazer-Nash; Type 51 Bugatti; E.R.A.; P3 Alfa Romero; Alta; V16 Maserati. On the other side a vintage race was narrated by the famous David Scott-Moncrieff. I played that record over and over again, much to the anguish of my parents who thought I had gone over some sort of an adolescent cliff.  But as I have discovered from recent conversations, many others joined me in this obsession with the sounds of exotic motor cars. Today sounds are often a part of cars & coffee and weekly cruise-in events. A Saturday in October is devoted to sounds at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart. However during 1950s and 1960s (and today if you have the LPs)  thunderous but also harmonic engine sounds could be heard in your home as well as on the track and street.

The Riverside Records story is worth telling, for it links 1950s jazz sounds with the concurrent burgeoning interest in sports cars. The Riverside label began in 1952 with the partnership of two Columbia graduates, Bill Grauer, Jr. and Orrin Keepnews. Seeing an opportunity to approach major record firms with a proposal to counter what was then seen as the release of “pirate” recordings of performances dating back to the 1920s and 30s, between 1952 and 1962 Grauer and Keepnews transformed a once-obscure Riverside Records into a major jazz label. Initially Grauer convinced RCA Victor to re-issue 78s from the 1920s and 30s in LP format. However, he then shifted focus to the contemporary music of Thelonious Monk, Randy Weston, Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins and Cannonball Adderly. Additionally, the partners established themselves by writing a definitive book on the history of jazz in the U.S, published by Crown in 1956 and reissued in 1971. In the midst of this artistic and business success, Grauer, like many upper middle class men of the day, also became a sports car enthusiast.

In a 1961 interview in his New York City office that featured a large photo of Bill behind the wheel of a 1937 Mercedes-Benz, he recounted how in “1956, just for fun, we recorded sounds of sports-car races down at Sebring, Florida (I’m a racing nut, you know). We decided to release it and then the roof fell in. It began to sell like crazy.” Thus this experiment into the commercial recording of sports car sounds It began with RLP 5001 -- "Sounds of Sebring:  The 1956 Florida International Twelve-Hour Grand Prix of Endurance." Grauer  recalled "At Sebring, everybody has problems and for the most part all this worry and fuss is just for the fun of it. And because it's for the fun of it, Sebring is a terribly wonderfully exciting spectacle."

The most unusual sound recording's A side began with interviews of drivers, a prelude to  the listener experiencing "sounds at rest:" a 3 liter Maserati; 3.5; 3.5 liter Ferrari; a Lotus; and finally a Porsche Spyder. Driver interviews connected us to ghosts from the past: Stirling Moss; Jean Behra and Carlos Medniteguy; Pochirio Rubirosa; Peter Collins; Bill Spear;Juan Manuel Fangio; John Gordon Bennett; Reg Parnell; Marquis de Portago; and finally Luigi Musso. The flip side included hour-by-hour reports of the 12 hour race. Who do you think would care about all of this? But this was not a one-off exercise, for over the next seven years many other vinyl discs of racing sounds and exotic cars would follow, and amuse a generation or two of sports car enthusiasts. A label with a reputation for jazz recording certainly left a legacy for the automotive historian to explore.

An advertisement in the December 1956 Sports Cars Illustrated touted the “Sounds of Sebring” album this way:

For the first time ever: a superb high quality 12 inch long playing record of all the sounds that make up America’s greatest sports car race. Over 60 minutes of interviews with the world’s greatest drivers…Fangio, Moss, Collins, Behra, Hill, Musso, Menditeguy, Bennett, Rubirosa, Portago, Parnell. The sounds of Ferraris, Maseratis, Jags, Aston martins, Porsche, Corvettes, Lotus, etc. warming up, revving, roaring at speed, coming out of corners flat out.  The fabulous Le Mans start, pit activity, the fantastic sounds of Fangio shifting up and down as he makes the five mile circuit, and dozens of other remarkable on the-spot sounds which are so exciting to the driver and spectator alike.

            Other releases that followed the “Sounds of Sebring” included the chronicling of the Sebring races between 1958 and 1962. Additionally, drivers were featured. In 1957 titles included “The Marquis de Portago: The Story of Racing’s Most Colorful Driver – a Memorial Tribute;” “Phil Hill: Around the Racing Circuit with a Great American Driver;” “Carroll Shelby: The Career of a Great American Racing Driver;” and “Stirling Moss: A Portrait of Britain’s Great Racing Driver, Told in his Own Words.”  These recordings then serve as primary source material not only of the races and the engine sounds – distinct of brand and vintage, a sort of original language speaking to us – but also of the best drivers of the day, speaking in their own words.

But we can’t neglect the focus on sounds. From the dust jacket of Riverside Records RLP 5002 [1957?]:

The theme here, then is engine noise: exhaust, valve, camshaft.  The variation on the theme are endless. As long as men design and build engines, there'll be enthusiasts trying to make them perform better. When they blow up, they'll simply build engines that won't blow up. The automobile is unique in the history of civilization. It has provided man with effortless transportation -- freed him, as it were, from the bounds of his physical limitations. And to the men who own and run these cars, it is given, more than to most men, to create as well as to savor the magic bouquet of speed.

There is one other aspect of the Riverside Records sports car series worth mentioning. Namely the record jackets are often works of art in their own right. Often the work of Bill’s wife, Jane Grauer, the covers are at times stunning representations of cars, engines, wire wheels, race scenes and Bugatti grills.  

During more recent times ex-Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason and collaborator Mark Hales revisited the theme of sound and race cars with the 1998 publication of Into the Red, a book that included an accompanying CD. A number of the cars whose sounds were reproduced by Mason and Hales were also featured in the Riverside series.

Given the technical description of the pains taken to capture exhaust engine and track sounds in 1998, a renewed appreciation of Grauer’s pioneering efforts emerges. Musician Mason has the ear, sensitivity and prose to capture the sounds of cars on the track at Silverstone that Riverside Records had captured at Oulton Park, in Yorkshire some 40 years before.  Mason described the sounds emanating from a 1931 Alfa 8C 2300 (p.30) as

At first, the noise from this gleaming mass of metal is a disappointment. Folklore still says eight straight cylinders make a noise like ripping fabric, but not this Alfa. It’s more of a boom than a rip. Push in the ignition key to switch on the electrics and illuminate the a starter button. The electric motor whirrs the eight pistons past compression with barely a stutter and the Alfa gently comes alive, moaning and chuffing as a thousand pieces of metal bump and grind before bathing themselves in a fresh coating of lubricant. And then, as you wait to warm the oil, there’s more to be had by listening carefully, just as with any good piece of music. You can hear the boom become the bass, and now there’s a gentle wail from the supercharger, which swells as you rev up, disappears when you lift off. Just beneath that there’s another, more musical warble from the exhaust. Not the demented pigeon noise of a modern five-cylinder Audi, but a more orchestrated, subtler kind of rhythm, like a string bass shimmering in the background. If that little chrome-rimmed rev counter with its flickering needle were to fail, it would be the rhythm which would say how fast the engine was turning. Otherwise the hum of eight straight cylinders is so seamlessly subtle that you could hardly tell.

Music is often made by instruments – technologies not that dissimilar from machines including internal combustion engines. Those musical instruments or machines reflect the work of human beings who very creatively made artifacts of power and awe and those players or drivers that blow their stuff in unique ways.

            Another example of Mason’s genius in articulating the musical tones of a race engine comes from a 1936 ERA at idle (p.44):

The ERA makes a noise like a bass saxophone and cello in duet. The strings are the tremendous whine of the supercharger that feeds the one and a half litre six cylinder engine and the sax is the rich, reedy, deep-throated, metallic sound of the exhaust. When the engine is driving hard, the clamor gargles from deep within the engine’s chest, then vibrates down the long metal pipe that runs just below the cockpit side before blasting out like a freshly lit firework. When you lift off the accelerator, there’s a muted crackle like a thousand ball bearings cascading over a wooden floor while the underlying bassy boom dies away with the fading engine revs. The disparate layers of sound seem to come form opposite ends of the car like two speakers each at end of a room. Walk around it and you hear different amounts of each. A supercharged methanol-fueled exhaust note is deeper and richer than anything you will hear today and although the concert is nothing like as loud as the BRM’s, it is still noisier than one and a half litres has any right to be. It brings a smile to the lips.

Rarely is one consumer technology worshipped alone. Art, jazz, and sports cars, along with watches and cameras, all came together during the 1950s and 1960s. Riverside Records, still recognized for its achievements in the arts, also left a legacy in automotive history. The sounds from an automobile reflect what is under the hood, and what the owner of that car values.

Discography – Riverside Records on Sports Cars, Racing, and Miscellaneous Motor Sports

Riverside 5000 series (12 inch LP)

·       RLP 5001 - Sounds Of Sebring 1956

·       RLP 5002 - Sports Cars In Hi-Fi

·       RLP 5003 - Pit Stop

·       RLP 5004   interview - Stirling Moss

·       RLP 5005   interview - Phil Hill

·       RLP 5006   interview - Carroll Shelby

·       RLP 5007   interview - The Marquis De Portago

·       RLP 5008/5009 - Sounds Of Sebring 1957

·       RLP 5010 - Cuban Corners

·       RLP 5011  - Sounds Of Sebring 1958

·       RLP 5012  - Mercedes-Benz

·       RLP 5013  - Vintage Sports Cars In Hi-Fi

·       RLP 5014 - Sounds Of Sebring 1959

·       RLP 5015 - Sports Cars At Sebring In Hi-Fi

·       RLP 5016 - Grand Prix Of The U.S. Sebring 1959

·       RLP 5017 - Grand Prix Cars In Action At Sebring

·       RLP 5018  - Sounds Of Sebring 1960

·       RLP 5019   Paul O'Shea - Sing A Song Of Sports Cars

·       RLP 5020 - The Race Mercedes-Benz 1937-1955

·       RLP 5021 - Grand Prix Of The U.S. 1960

·       RLP 5022 - Farewell To A Formula

·       RLP 5023 - Sounds Of Sebring 1961

·       RLP 5024 - Sebring Corners

·       RLP 5025/5026  - 75 Years Of Mercedes-Benz

·       RLP 5027 - Sounds Of Sebring 1962

·       RLP 5028 - Grand Prix Cars At Watkins Glen

Riverside 5500 series (12 inch LP)

·       RLP 5501 - Bullring

·       RLP 5502 - Hot Rods And Dragsters

·       RLP 5503 - Hot Rods In Action

·       RLP 5504  - On The Drag Strip

·       RLP 5506  - Griff Borgeson Presents Bonneville 1960 - Sounds On The Salt Flats

·       RLP 5509  - Hot Rod Heaven

·       RLP 5515 - Hot Cars At Winternationals

·       RLP 5516   V.S. - Super Stocks

·       RLP 5517 - Rods 'N' Rails

·       RLP 5518 - Hot Rods, Dragsters And Super Stocks

·       RLP 5519 - Burning Slicks

·       RLP 5520 - Hot Rods And Dragsters

·       Discography from https://www.jazzdisco.org/riverside-records/catalog-5000-5500-5700-7000-box-set-series/album-index/