AMERICAN EPIC | Sessions: Alabama Shakes | PBS

Sessions: Alabama Shakes performs “Killer Diller”

Go inside one of the greatest-ever untold stories: how the ordinary people of America were given the opportunity to make records for the first time.

[TheKcstein]

@Alabama Shakes should do an entire album of blues covers recorded like this.

[henok]

Man Brittany Howard has an amazing voice. Sounds like something right out of the golden years of blues-rock.

[oneworld]

That chic is BUSTIN' with born to BE music. I hope this band enjoys a LOT of success, and they all stay nothin like this anywhere else on this planet.

[gailremp]

OMG. Jack White and Alabama Shakes doing this incredible music on the system. And 10 people didn't like it? God help them. Or as we say down south bless your heart

[praypeaceday]

There aren't words for how happy this makes me! XD

[Lambys]

They just keep getting better and better. Miss Howard's voice puts me in a comfortable, happy place.

[Anderson-sgqu]

jack white simply adopted music and now he's it's father.

[boynafriend]

She reminds me so much of Sister Rosetta Tharpe

[MRATOMIC-yzcx]

The Alabama Shakes represent Athens Alabama very well. Jack White and PBS have given us all one more piece of music GOLD! I love it.

[animalrights]

This is the I can’t begin to express how this particular era of music can bring our families and children of the future relate and understand how this venue in time shaped many of our lives. Keep the past alive so we can enjoy, respect, and appreciate what our ancestors gave us for today and forever. We learn from them so that we can make it better not worse.. Let us not forget how much we are learning today from our musical ancestry and family members. I am so grateful for this multicultural phenomenon. Please pass it along for OUR positive future.

[dclnmre]

wow! this was great. love Alabama Shakes even more

[POET]

no BS.... no posturing .... as authentic as it gets kinda reminds me of early canned heat ...wonderful

[blueblackred]

a lot of talk about the BH's voice but the guitar playing is just as convincing. I'm a fan as of today.

[juliapearson]

this is just plain awesome...such a great great wonderful sound

[pjriverdale]

Her voice, which is perfectly fine especially for the material this band does, is one in which early equipment finds hard to capture due to her timbre and range.
That said, the 1920s W/E system used here captures everything quite nicely.
The limitations of the microphone frequency range favor a different vocal range. Early microphones are not that far removed from telephone elements which even today are not high fidelity units.
Considering the other parts of the recording/ reproduction chain as exsisted 90 years ago, this would be seen as a quantum leap over acoustic based recording.
Most of the advances in electronic recording technology until 1948 were overshadowed by the problem of surface noise in the type of material used for discs. The limited range and power of early public address systems designed to be used in a 3000 seat theater plus the loudspeaker limitations of the time would dictate certain compromises at the recording point. Until the advent of the 33 1/3 and 45 rpm formats, albeit an increasingly small number of people were still listening to non electric powered phonographs that could play the 78rpm "shellac" discs of the time.
Even if one could have pushed the recording process above the 8K range threshold, technologically everything else forward to the eventual audience would have had to improve range directly in proportion to the source material range.
For whatever reason, wartime constraints nowithstanding, audio reproduction technology lagged behind what could be done in the recording process.
In just one example, stereophonic recording was demonstrated in the 1930's, yet no phonograph or audio amplifier exsisted outside of the laboratories to exploit the advance.
Disney's 1941 "Fantasia" utilised a multitrack soundtrack for which only a few first run theaters installed the equipment required to experience it's original sonic vision.
Prior to the postwar era, the "Mad Rush" of technology didn't exist.
So much of what one could experience aurially was " good enough" especially as only a few had any point of reference regarding alternatives to what had been in existence to that point.
Moreover, the average listener would have been hard pressed to discern any real difference between a disc made in 1925 and one from 1945, all things being equal as to material style and reproduction qualities.
The advent of magnetic tape, first developed in Germany during World War II, raised the dynamic range at the recording process while vinyl and the microgroove disc processes improved reproduction for the end user/ listener.
Accordingly, studio equipment technology would continue to improve in an attempt to provide the most realistic reproduction of sound.
Well recorded electronic direct- to-disc performances of the 19 30's and 1940's still sound good with none or minimal restoration assuming the masters have not been subjected to various attempts to " improve" the original material sonically.
This project shows that the W/E system got an amazing amount right on the first time.
In the show, they touch on the restoration of the amplifier stage of the equipment, but do not go into great detail as far if any compromises were made in the circuit restoration to work around obsolete components.
Only the most die hard purist would want to record using this equipment and the rooms used.
The project gives a glimpse into the pre tape and pre digital time when every take was a fully realized performance when the light came on.

[arthurtrust]

nosso amigo jack é fóda fazer uma gravina com essa aparelhagem antiga e conseguir fazer com que tudo funcione como naquela época é surreal ! perfeito sem contar com essa banda a Alabama shakes que fazem essa sonzera simplesmente best pure feeling !

[AbdulhakemAmri]

if B.B. King and Etta James had a daughter it would be Brittany Howard for sure !