Tony Schwartz, whose audio montages became something of a benchmark for the new genre.

One of his most popular was a program called "The Voice Of New York", which was broadcast on March 2, 1956. It was an audio portrait of a city, a sonic tapestry of the sounds and voices that made up New York on the average day. It was subsequently reissued on lp and re-broadcast over the years. Tonight it's the first broadcast as it was originally aired in 1956.

New York sound a whole lot different now, maybe unrecognizable from this recording. But this was what the city sounded like almost 60 years ago as it was picked up by Tony Schwartz and his tape recorder.