What follows is the first of four guest posts by Will Oliver. This will be the introduction and background. Each interview will be a separate post. – KW

Three Lost Interviews about Robert E. Howard:
Introduction and Transcription by Will Oliver

In the December 2021 mailing of the Robert E. Howard Universal Press Association’s (REHupa) mailing, Lee Breakiron commented in his fanzine “The Nemedian Chroniclers” that Gary Romeo, another member of REHupa, had read about some interviews regarding Robert E. Howard he had never been able to find. Romeo had earlier written, “Years ago I noticed a website saying they had these tapes of Cross Plains guys talking about REH. I tried and tried to contact these guys and always ran into a dead end. Finally gave up.”

Breakiron then included the following information Romeo had obtained from the Science Fiction Oral History Association Archives:

“WB–10 (90) Both Sides. Three men who knew Robert E. Howard in boyhood and all of his life tell in 1982 interviews of Howard’s growing up and his untimely suicide in 1936.  Leroy Butler, Jack Scott, and J. Brown Baum reminisce about the young author. Daryl Lane interviews. Invaluable material for Howard enthusiasts and scholars. There are three short (10-20 minute) individual interviews, one at the beginning of Side A (Leroy Butler) and two at the beginning of Side B. The last two subjects are not identified on tape.”

In all my research for the Robert E. Howard biography I am currently writing, I have never seen any mention of these interviews before, so I was very, very curious. And since there was a web-link to the Science Fiction Oral History Association Archives (http://sfoha.org/ ), I immediately went to work tracking it down.

I first made sure I had the right information, so I went to the website and found the entry above. I then read the background to “The Science Fiction Radio Show Collection”:

            “In the early 1980s, staff members at Odessa College, Texas, with local friends, produced a program called the Science Fiction Radio Show.  It was first aired once a week locally; later it was syndicated by the Longhorn Radio Network in Austin, Texas, and aired nationwide over National Public Radio.

“The basis for these shows were taped interviews, mostly by telephone, one to two hours long. The subject list reads like a science fiction Who’s Who with fancy additions like Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets; Eric J. Holmes, who wrote the original rules for Dungeons and Dragons (R); Fred Meyer, President of the International Wizard of Oz Fan Club; and on and on.

“The collection was shipped to Ray Beam, SFOHA Archivist, in five large cardboard boxes, and on their arrival Ray noted that they took up three times as much space as the previous entire SFOHA archives. In terms of interviews with the better-known authors, this doubled the size of our collection at one stroke, and it also included many names we had not previously succeeded in adding to our archives, some of whom were deceased or otherwise no longer available.

“SFOHA offers its thanks and the thanks of science fiction fans and scholars everywhere to those who patiently accumulated this oral history bonanza:  Daryl Lane, Professor of English at Odessa College; David Carson, Director of Media and Computer Services at Odessa College; Bill Vernon, a research chemist in Odessa at the time the tapes were made; David Crews, local TV technician; and Keith Johnson, Astronomy Instructor at Odessa College. Those actually participating in the interviews are noted in the descriptions when possible. Interviewers are not identified on most tapes; sometimes the statement in the description, “Interviewed by,” represents at best an educated guess. In the recording process used, the subject’s remarks came through clearly, but those of the interviewer tended to be distorted, and it often proved impossible to recognize voices. The interview team responsible for the majority of the interviews was Daryl Lane and David Carson.

“The tapes in the Series WB are re-engineered from the original raw tapes made for the Science Fiction Radio Show. Tapes of the actual shows as edited for broadcast will also be included in the SFOHA Archives. The tape description will indicate which is which. Actually, some SFRS tapes have been in the archives for many years–they reached SFOHA as part of the Eastern New Mexico University collection. Probably they were recorded from the air. They are catalogued as Series ENMU numbers 21-29.”

I first tried contacting the SFOHA through the e-mail provided on the website. That website, however, looked like a dead one, so I tried to think of another way to track them down. Lee mentioned that Gary had posted the information on Facebook, so I thought that might work. As I do not have a Facebook account, I asked my wife if she could see if there was a Facebook page for the group and could message them. There was, so she sent the request.

            In the meantime, I tracked the SFOHA information, which said that the radio program for which the interviews were conducted had been recorded out of Odessa College. I tried going there, but while I found some information on the people involved, all were retired, and several have since passed away. I did note, however, that the archives were eventually sent to Eastern New Mexico University, which has a good collection in the archive related to Science Fiction and Fantasy. They hold letters from Leigh Brackett, Jack Williamson, etc. I also knew that a good-sized oral history collection, so I contacted the person in charge of the oral histories.

By that Sunday, I heard from Edie, the webmaster of https://fanac.org/ Apparently, the oral histories of SFOHA had come through ENMU, but were now held by Fanac in their Fan History Project. She sensed my excitement and said she would check to see if they still had those tapes. Fingers crossed . . .  she got back to me a little while later and confirmed they did have that tape. I sent a really excited e-mail to her and, because of that, she decided to digitize it that evening. She sent it to me via Dropbox, of which I have an account, but could not figure out how to access it. I decided to wait until Monday morning at the office.

At the office, with my computer and Dropbox being in alignment with one another, it worked easily, and I had the oral history! I listened to it then hopped onto Otter AI and uploaded to have the tapes transcribed. That gave me the 80% solution, but I had to work through the tape and transcription to get it to a 99% solution. There were some words I could just not make out, so I have noted those in the transcriptions. Also, I only included filler words when there was some form of break or transition in the thoughts and words of the person.

There is one thing I could not make out, nor find hide nor hair of, and that was the weapons mail-order catalog that Lee Roy Butler mentions. It sounded to me like: “Braches, Brannamen and Sons,” but in every possible spelling, combination, or just simply looking up weapons mail-order catalogs, I could find nothing. If anyone has any knowledge of what the name of the company might be, it sure would be appreciated. It would be kind of cool to try and find one of those old catalogs on Ebay, etc. It would make a nice Robert E. Howard memorabilia piece.

All in all, I think the transcription came out fairly well, though the quality of the interviews themselves are open to interpretation. Some of the comments regarding Howard seemed overplayed and sensationalized, but it is up to the reader to make that judgement call. So, for the first time in probably forty years, what follows are the transcribed interviews of “Leroy Butler, Jack Scott, and J. Brown Baum.”

My many, many thanks to Lee, Gary, and Edie, the Fanac Webmaster!

Will Oliver, in the words of Robert E. Howard, is just “some line-faced scrivener,” who has been a fan of the greatest pulp author since discovering him in 1979. He is a member of REHupa, has published on Howard in The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard, and is currently at work on a biography of his life and times.