Podcast #43: Bebe Barron

This episode presents a first: our presenter (our very own Susan Stone!) actually met the lady in question. Bebe Barron was a bohemian, composer, and electronic music pioneer. She and her husband Louis worked avant-garde art-makers like John Cage and Maya Deren, and hung out with Anais Nin, Henry Miller, Joseph Campbell, and more. The pair is credited with inventing the tape loop, and possibly the audio book. It’s certainly the case that they composed and created the first electronic music — or electro-acoustic — feature film soundtrack. Electronic music as we know it would not exist without Bebe, nor would the sounds we associate with outer space.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast. You can download the transcript, created by Rachel Pronger, here.

Notes:

Anaïs Nin, and you can find out more about their friendship in this interview.

An excerpt from Anaïs Nin’s House of Incest audiobook as produced and recorded by the Barrons. You can order a CD copy here.

The sole surviving copy of Bells of Atlantis

Kirk Douglas, Vincente Minnelli, Lana Turner, and Dore Schary, on the set of *The Bad and the Beautiful*

An excerpt from Forbidden Planet, with gloriously bleepy sound effects from the Barrons

If you try this out, let us know if it works!

Bebe and her husband Leonard Neubauer in 2005, picture by Susan Stone

And you can watch the new doc on Bebe and the other electronic pioneers, Sisters With Transistors, here.

You can still hear Susan’s NPR story on Bebe from 2005 here. Our theme music is not by Bebe, but “Little Lily Swing” by Tri-Tachyon. Thanks for listening!