Wendy Carlos 2

WENDY CARLOS – Story of the Month (from March 2012)
 
 
 
 
In 1965, the first commercial synthesizer was made available by 
Robert Moogmajor rock bands like the Monkees (Micky Dolenz ordered one of the very first Moog Synthesizers)the Rolling Stones and the Doors were quick to incorporate synthesizers into their music.  However, the first truly audacious use of synthesizers was probably the 1968 album by Walter Carlos called Switched-On Bach, the first classical album to sell one million copies.  For many years, using synthesizers to make music was difficult because of the time-consuming programming involved and the rather primitive mixing equipment of that period.  I saw a “live” performance by Carlos on television once, and as I remember, it was mainly shots of a static Moog Synthesizer
 
Walter Carlos continued to release synthesizer albums for many years – including the soundtrack for the Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange – though none had the impact of Switched-On Bach.  I noticed an album several years later that was by Wendy Carlos, and I wondered if that might be Walter’s daughter.  As it turned out, Carlos is a transsexual who had begun living as a woman in May 1968 and had sexual reassignment surgery in 1972; reissues of her work all have Wendy Carlos on them now.  

Wendy Carlos is not the only transsexual musician that I know of; one of the wildest of the first-wave punk rock stars of the 1970’sWayne County was going by the name Jayne County by 1980.  I have a copy of her 1993 album called Goddess of Wet Dreamsand as might be imagined by the album title, it is every bit as extreme as the 1970’s work. 
 
(October 2014)
 
Last edited: March 22, 2021