John Whiting

Production Director for the station worked with me during those years and wrote a consummate account of our production partnership, which is printed below. He was the dramaturge for the series, selecting many of the authors and was already experienced in producing dramatic presentations at the station before I came along. So it was a lucky collaboration for me in pursuit of my return after so many years, to a first ambition, making radio drama. John designed the opening format for the Black Mass series, adding some of my homage to early radio’s The Witches Tale, from which I was transformed into an ominous storyteller with his “circle of empathy”. For a time thereafter I was confined to the “monstrous and abhorred” world of the Necronomicon and it’s legendary Black Mass. Arguably, not all of our productions lived up to those of “the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred.”

But luckily for us, John Whiting, when he left KPFA for London many years ago, took with him the many Black Mass programs for which he did the technical production. They are safe and sound in his London archives and recently were made available to new and surprisingly appreciative listeners by way of Whiting’s web site. John wrote a short account of our work together reprinted below.

Fortunately I was able to preserve many of the original broadcasts, and all of the original stories. All Hallows was the first and it bears some of the effects of my earlier readings of literature, in which I hadn’t yet released claim to all the voices I could do. Fortunately All Hallows has only two.

To read more about Black Mass and the correspondence between Erik Bauersfeld and John Whiting, click below for Whiting’s: A Historical Footnote.

http://www.kpfahistory.info/black_mass_home.html

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