The Sounds of Studs

Studs remembrances continue to pour forth from various media. I don't mean to slight the man's wonderful and voluminous writings, but I've most enjoyed listening to his voice during these last three days. Studs turned having a conversation (or a monologue) into fine art. A couple of suggestions for hungry ears: -Here he is at 93, in a short excerpt from an incredible long-form radio piece (by the BBC's Alan Ball) re-broadcast by Chicago Public Radio this past Saturday. Really wish the whole thing was available online, but no luck finding it yet. --Chicago Public Radio's Eight Forty-Eight ran an extended Studs show this morning, and it featured selections from various interviews recorded this decade. The end includes very moving recordings from the subjects of Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, Studs' 2001 meditation on death. --And here he is in 2002, accepting the Third Coast International Audio Festival's Audio Luminary Award. --On the print side, the Chicago Reader has this piece, much of it an interview with Studs, on the art of transcribing interviews: Here’s the analogy: I’m a gold prospector. That’s what I am… The gold prospector puts a stake in the ground, that’s gonna be his piece, and he starts digging and digging, out comes tons of ore. I start the interview and of course it goes on for an hour or two hours, and it turns out to be about 40 pages of transcription. Well, it’s full of repetition and everything. Now comes the editing—what the prospector calls filtering. And out of the tons of ore is a handful of gold dust.