Jack Towers
| Jack Towers | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 15, 1940 Bradley, South Dakota |
| Died | December 23, 2010 |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Radio Broadcaster |
Jack Towers (November 15, 1914 – December 23, 2010) was in charge of radio broadcasting at the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1952 to 1974 and became a noted remastering engineer of musical recordings after his retirement.
Jack Howard Towers was born in Bradley, South Dakota in the United States.
After graduating from South Dakota State College, he became a cooperative extension service worker at the South Dakota State College extension. He moved to Washington in 1941 to work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 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 tapes with an X-Acto knife.
He lived in Hyattsville, Maryland 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.
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, and, when Burris learned Ellington would be in Fargo in 1940, he asked the William Morris Agency, 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 Washington Post 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".
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