The Vanishing of Harry Pace: Episode 1
Radiolab
WNYC Studios
4.6 • 43.5K Ratings
🗓️ 18 June 2021
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Rise and Fall of Black Swan: Episode One from The Vanishing of Harry Pace, a six-part series created by Jad Abumrad and Shima Oliaee.
Harry Pace founded Black Swan Records exactly 100 years ago. Pace launched the career of Ethel Waters, inadvertently invented the term rock n roll, played an important role in W.C. Handy becoming "Father of the Blues," inspired Ebony and Jet magazines, and helped desegregate the South Side of Chicago in an epic Supreme Court battle. Then, he disappeared. The Vanishing of Harry Pace is a series about the phenomenal but forgotten man who changed the American music scene. It's a story about betrayal, family, hidden identities, and a time like no other.
This series was produced in collaboration with author Kiese Laymon, scholar Imani Perry, screenwriter Cord Jefferson, and WQXR’s Terrance McKnight. Jami Floyd is our consulting producer; our fact checker is Natalie Meade. Peter Pace lent his voice for our readings. Based on the book Black Swan Blues: the Hard Rise and Brutal Fall of America’s First Black Owned Record Label by Paul Slade. The series features interviews with Pace's descendants and over forty musicians, historians, writers, and musicologists, all of whom grapple with Pace’s enduring legacy.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before we start today's show, just want to let you know this episode contains a few moments of content and language that might be |
| 0:07.4 | Setting for sensitive listeners or young kids |
| 0:10.3 | Wait, you're listening |
| 0:17.1 | Listening to radio lab radio from W and Y |
| 0:22.1 | Hey, this is radio lab. I'm chat I'm Rod really excited to |
| 0:33.7 | To bring you a project I've been working on with |
| 0:36.8 | Seemoli eye you me. Yeah, a co-creator of Dalai parents America with jumped in too quick |
| 0:41.8 | I jumped in too quick perfect timing no this project runs for about a month and |
| 0:46.9 | Yes, really excited. Let's do it. Yes, start us off. Okay, so |
| 0:51.1 | Every family has a secret |
| 0:54.6 | But some family secrets are bigger than others. We'll start with Eric pace the great grandson my sister had got me a job at this YMCA camp |
| 1:06.7 | This 2006 and we got a message from my dad |
| 1:10.2 | Saying we have a mandatory family meeting you guys need to leave work to come and talk to us. Did you tell you what was up? |
| 1:17.6 | He didn't give us any other information. He said no, you got to you got to come to the family meeting and I'll tell you everything |
| 1:25.0 | We thought like okay, this has got to be divorced |
| 1:27.8 | We told everybody at the job and they're like there's like good luck with the meeting, you know |
| 1:31.8 | This just sounds really heavy really serious |
| 1:34.6 | So he and his sister hop in the car cut him just like trying to hurry up and get there so we could see what this is all about |
| 1:40.0 | Three hours later they walk into their childhood home in Reading, California and the whole family is there like eight of them my dad |
| 1:48.3 | Tells us to go sit in the living room and we're we're not a very formal kind of family and so that was that was strange |
| 1:54.1 | We're like okay, this is getting weirder and weir and then he holds up a picture |
| 1:59.0 | That had been on our wall our whole lives. It was a really old picture. It's kind of the sepia tone |
... |
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