Jack Towers (November 15, 1914 – December 23, 2010Matt Schudel.

. ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large na ...

''. 28 December 2010. Retrieved 1 January 2011.) was in charge of radio broadcasting at the

U.S. Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of comme ...

from 1952 to 1974 and became a noted remastering

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...

of musical recordings after his retirement.

Biography

Jack Howard Towers was born in

Bradley Bradley is an English surname derived from a place name meaning "broad wood" or "broad meadow" in Old English. Like many English surnames Bradley can also be used as a given name and as such has become popular. It is also an Anglicisation of t ...

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, who comprise a large porti ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. After graduating from South Dakota State College, he became a

cooperative extension service The Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES) was an extension agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), part of the executive branch of the federal government. The 1994 Department Reorganization Act, ...

worker at the South Dakota State College extension.Martin Fredricks
The Duke was Here
". ''NDSU Magazine''. Fall 2001. p. 20–25. Retrieved 1 January 2011. He moved to Washington in 1941 to work for the

, served in the Army from 1942 to 1946, and then returned to the USDA. Towers was in charge of radio broadcasting at the USDA from 1952 to 1974, where he developed agriculture-related programs for broadcast on American radio networks. He retired from the USDA in 1974 and what had been a hobby of remastering rare recordings, primarily of jazz groups, became a second career. He used techniques such as manually scraping imperfections such as pops and hisses from

reel-to-reel tape Reel-to-reel audio tape recording, also called open-reel recording, is magnetic tape audio recording in which the recording tape is spooled between reels. To prepare for use, the ''supply reel'' (or ''feed reel'') containing the tape is plac ...

s with an

X-Acto X-Acto is a brand name for a variety of cutting tools and office products owned by Elmer's Products, Inc. Cutting tools include hobby and utility knives, saws, carving tools and many small-scale precision knives used for crafts and other applic ...

knife. He lived in

Hyattsville Hyattsville is a city in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States, and also a close, urban suburb of Washington, D.C. The population was 21,187 at the 2020 United States Census. History Before Europeans reached the area, the upper A ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

and, from 1991, in Ashton until he died at age 96 in 2010 in nearby Rockville from Parkinson's disease. He was survived by his wife of 70 years, Rhoda Sime Towers, and two daughters and was predeceased by a son.

Musical work

Towers has been called an "audio magician" for his restoring, remastering, and producing of vintage jazz recordings. His first notable work was when, as young extension service employee, he and fellow jazz aficionado Richard Burris made an amateur live recording of Duke Ellington and His Orchestra at a concert in Fargo, North Dakota in 1940. Towers saw Ellington live in

Sioux Falls, South Dakota Sioux Falls () is the most populous city in the U.S. state of South Dakota and the 130th-most populous city in the United States. It is the county seat of Minnehaha County and also extends into Lincoln County to the south, which continues up ...

, and, when Burris learned Ellington would be in Fargo in 1940, he asked the

William Morris Agency The William Morris Agency (WMA) was a Hollywood-based talent agency. It represented some of the best known 20th-century entertainers in film, television, and music. During its 109-year tenure it came to be regarded as the "first great talent ag ...

, Ellington's agent, for permission to record the session. Permission was granted to the two provided they receive permission from Ellington and the venue's manager before the show. Towers recounted to the ''

'' that, "We had a disc recorder that the extension service used for recording farm programs for agricultural colleges. It was advanced equipment — up to snuff". The recording was not officially released but circulated in bootleg form from the 1960s. In the 1970s, Towers made a reproduction of the recording from areas of the

groove Groove or Grooves may refer to: Music * Groove (music) * Groove (drumming) * The Groove (band), an Australian rock/pop band of the 1960s * The Groove (Sirius XM), a US radio station * Groove 101.7FM, a former Perth, Australia, radio station ...

that were less worn. In 1978, Towers' master of '' Duke Ellington at Fargo, 1940 Live'' was finally officially released by Book-of-the-Month Records as a

Book-of-the-Month Club Book of the Month (founded 1926) is a United States subscription-based e-commerce service that offers a selection of five to seven new hardcover books each month to its members. Books are selected and endorsed by a panel of judges, and members c ...

selection. Towers later said, "When Dick and I recorded this Fargo performance, we did it just for the excitement and pleasure of it all. We had no idea that people all over the world would be listening to it 60 years later."Jack Towers Donates Fargo Discs to Smithsonian
. ''Ellingtonia''. 17.3 (March 2009). Page 1. Retrieved 1 January 2011. In 1980, ''At Fargo'' won the

Grammy Award The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pr ...

for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band at the 22nd Grammy Awards. The original acetate disks of this recording have since been donated to the Archives Center of the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

's National Museum of American History. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Towers restored recordings such as '' The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings of Charlie Parker'', a series of Parker made by fellow saxophonist Dean Benedetti in 1947 and 1948 released on Mosaic Records.The Complete Benedetti Recordings of Charlie Parker (#129)
" at Mosaic Records website. Retrieved 15 January 2011. Towers also remastered works by

Count Basie William James "Count" Basie (; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and the ...

, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and other notable jazz performers. Following Towers' death, Patricia Willard, a former jazz consultant to the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

said, "It was amazing to watch him. What Jack achieved in sound restoration was beyond what anybody did before and, I think, since."

References

External links

Jack Towers on Restoring his Award-Winning Duke Ellington Recording, in 1980
. Audio Interview at NPR.org. (08:54) Retrieved 1 January 2011. {{DEFAULTSORT:Towers, Jack American audio engineers Record producers from South Dakota Record producers from Maryland People from Hyattsville, Maryland People from Clark County, South Dakota South Dakota State University alumni 1914 births 2010 deaths People from Montgomery County, Maryland