CBID - The Voyager Golden Record - Vinyl Edition

CBID is the Chuck Berry International Directory, a 2.200 page pile of Chuck Berry records information published in four volumes between 2008 and 2013. For details see the bibliography section of this site.

CBID is never complete as new records and CDs appear and some old rarities are discovered. This section presents interesting additions and corrections to CBID.

Today: a beautiful re-release of mankind's most important record release containing a Berry number.

USA

THE VOYAGER GOLDEN RECORD (3-LP set / 2-CD set)
Ozma Records OZMA 001 • USA, 2017

Johnny B. Goode

A very nice box in LP size containing 3 gold vinyl LPs (or 2 CDs) with a 90 page elegant booklet with the story telling the whole background and many color photos, several taken from the spacecrafts.

The project started way back in July 1972. The initial idea was a grand tour of the Solar system exploring the four mysterious outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

In 1977 the United States of America (NASA) launched two spacecrafts, Voyager I (5 September) and Voyager II (20 August). Each contained a special Gold Record which included pictures, sounds and music from planet Earth. Apart from the usual classical music of Beethoven, Bach, and musical highlights from various countries, the discs also have popular tracks like Louis Armstrong “Melancholy Blues” (1927), Blind Willie Johnson “Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground” (1927) and Chuck Berry “Johnny B. Goode” (1958).

The idea to the golden record came about in January 1977 when Carl Sagan and Frank Drake met in Hawaii, both colleagues at Cornell University.

The metal Gold record is covered with a lid with information for the aliens on how to build a record player, how to use the enclosed cartridge of stylus inside the package and how to place the pickup onto the record.

The gold record was recorded at half-speed which gave 2 hours of material. One and half hour of music, the rest being spoken greetings, natural sounds and photographs.

On the OZMA release, the sound is distributed onto three golden-color vinyl LPs which you don't have to build your own record player for. Also included in the box are a slipmat for your record player showing the spacecraft's trajectories, a gold foil print of the original record cover and a 100-page book.

Sunday 28 January 2018 this LP vinyl box set won a Grammy Award for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package. Well deserved.

The Voyager Golden Record 3xLP Vinyl Box set and 2xCD-Book edition are available from Ozma Records at: https://ozmarecords.com/pages/voyager

After over 41 years the two spacecrafts are some 19 billion kilometers from earth and have now reached what’s called "Interstellar space", beyond the planets mentioned above. And continue their journey through the Universe by some 16-17 kilometers per second (!). Both Voyagers send signals home every day taking up to 18 hours to reach earth.

In 2017 a documentary titled “The Farthest” was made by HHMI Tangled Bank Studios in association with Irish Film Board and ZDF in collaboration with Arte, BBC, RTÉ and PBS, (Crossing The Line Productions) to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the launching. Very interesting to follow what happened before, under and after. You even see a glimpse of Berry performing at the launching event back in 1977.

Here are a few comments from the documentary regarding Berry and Johnny B. :

We had a big party at the JPL [Jet Propulsion Labratory, a federal research center in Pasadena, California where the spacecrafts were built] and that was a good send off for Voyager.
The greatest moment at JPL was when Chuck Berry was on the steps of the administration building doing the Duck Walk to Johnny B. Goode.
Ed Stone [Voyager Chief Scientist] was dancing to Johnny B. Goode, it was something to see. Everybody was dancing.

Candy Hansen-Koharcheck (Imaging Science Representative):

4 billion years from now when our sun turns into a red giant, Voyager will be traveling out there through the stars, and the sounds of our time are going to be out there, Chuck Berry is still out there…

A little humor at the end. Comedian and actor Steve Martin told the viewers on Saturday Night Live 22 April 1978 that a message was soon received after Voyager had been launched which read: Send more Chuck Berry … And he was dead serious. A transcript of the joke can be found at http://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/2017/03/send-more-chuck-berry.html.

To follow up in connection with the 40th Anniversary, the Dualtone Store offered a black T-shirt saying exactly that: Send More Chuck Berry. You can actually buy it on their web-site https://www.dualtonestore.com/products/send-more-chuck-berry-t-shirt

Thanks to Ozma Records/LAD Design for providing additional information and several of the images shown.

Further links worth to follow are:
an interactive version of the Golden Record: http://goldenrecord.org/
NASA description of the Golden Record production: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/