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The Beatles and Adolf Hitler: I Wanna’ Hold Your Microphone

April 22nd, 2008 by Scott Marks

The Fab Five
The Fab Five

What do Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett, The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, George, Paul, George, Ringo and Adolf have in common?

No, not a desire to eliminate the weak through music, but the legendary Neumann U47 microphone.

NPR’s All Things Considered ran a fascinating piece about Mary and John Peluso, a couple from southwest Virginia who specialize in boutique microphone-making. The mike was “designed in 1928 by Georg Neumann, and considered a technological breakthrough. Neumann took the old carbon-grain broadcast microphone, which uses bits of carbon sandwiched between two plates, and turned it into a mass-produced “condenser” microphone, which has one fixed plate and another that forms a diaphragm moved by sound waves.”

This technological breakthrough allowed the human voice to sound clearer and more authoritative. No wonder it was Hitler’s mike of choice for his opening speech at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett and the Beatles all used the U47, and according to Peluso, “it’s hard to find an album recorded in the 1950s or ’60s that didn’t have a U47 on it.”

Listen to the 13 minute interview here.

 

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