This is 99% Invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

There is one word us radio producers can never seem to let go of.

Tape.

Our job used to be all about tape.

My first Moran's recorder captured sound on cassette tapes.

If you're a little bit older than me, you even produced your stories on tape.

You'd sit in front of a reel to reel and cut apart someone's voice with a razor blade

and then splice the magnetic tape back together with clear adhesive tape.

These days we use digital recorders and computers, but we still use the word tape.

If Sam or Katie or Avery goes out and does an interview, the first question I'll ask

is, did you get good tape?

The raw material that we work with is tape.

It just is.

There is no alternative.

The story we're presenting today is about one artist who is also inextricably linked

to tape.

The cassette tapes in this case had it not been for obsessive fans collecting and copying

and passing along his songs in the era of tapes we might never have come to know his music.

Then again, had he lived in a different era.

Perhaps he would have gotten the recognition he deserved within his own lifetime.

From radio producer Charles Mayans, this is three records from Sundown.

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