r.i.p. Jane Barbe

[Kurt Albershardt]

Think you don't know her? Most of us will recall her voice quite
clearly while reading this
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/obits/0703/22barbe.html

[Mike Caffrey]

That's David Barbe's mother.


In article >, Kurt Albershardt
> wrote:

> Think you don't know her? Most of us will recall her voice quite
> clearly while reading this
> http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/obits/0703/22barbe.html



www.monsterisland.com

[Roger W. Norman]

Esoteric information, but quite amazing really. Heard by more people every
day in the world than almost any other voice.

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio

301-585-4681




"Kurt Albershardt" > wrote in message
...
> Think you don't know her? Most of us will recall her voice quite
> clearly while reading this
> http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/obits/0703/22barbe.html
>
>
>
>
>

[Kurt Albershardt]

Roger W. Norman wrote:

"Kurt Albershardt" > wrote in message
...

>> Think you don't know her? Most of us will recall her voice quite
>> clearly while reading this
>> http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/obits/0703/22barbe.html
>
>
> Esoteric information, but quite amazing really. Heard by more people every
> day in the world than almost any other voice.


Reminds us that "pro" encompasses a wide range of fields ;>

[Kurt Albershardt]

Roger W. Norman wrote:
> Esoteric information, but quite amazing really. Heard by more people every
> day in the world than almost any other voice.

40 million times a day according to the LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-barbe27jul27,1,7965795.story


OBITUARIES
Jane Barbe, 74; Queen of Phone Recordings Was Heard 40 Million Times a
Day in 1980s


By Elaine Woo, Times Staff Writer

Jane Barbe, whose voice was familiar to millions of telephone users
across the country who ever dialed a wrong number or had to "Please
listen to the following options" in a voicemail system, died July 18 in
Roswell, Ga., of complications from cancer. She was 74.

Barbe was the queen of telephone recordings, whose friendly but
authoritative voice was heard an estimated 40 million times a day in the
1980s and early 1990s in everything from automated time and weather
messages to hotel wake-up calls.

During her unusual 40-year career, she articulated such immortal lines
as "At the tone, the time will be 7:22 and 40 seconds," "I'm sorry, the
number you have dialed is no longer in service," and "Please press 1 for
more options."

Her voice seemed to be everywhere, but especially, as Ted Koppel once
noted on a segment of "Nightline" devoted to the topic, in "voicemail jail."

She was not the only person who recorded voicemail and other automated
phone messages, but she perhaps did so longer than anyone else.

"I think she was probably one of the first," said Pat Fleet, who has
been in the telephone voice recording business for 25 years and is known
as the AT&T Lady for her work for the telecommunications giant.

Barbe did most of her recordings for Atlanta-based Electronic
Telecommunications Inc., which at one time produced as many as 2,000
voice messaging systems for businesses and government agencies, and for
Octel Communications, which is now a part of Bell Labs/Lucent.

In the 1980s and '90s, Barbe was the voice on 1,000 of Electronic
Telecommunications' systems, according to recording services manager
Michael Miller.

She was heard on 90% of "intercept messages" — the recording played when
something is wrong with a phone number — and 60% of automated time and
temperature calling programs.

"You hear my voice in more than 1,000 cities in the United States, Saudi
Arabia, Hong Kong, South America, Canada Vocally, I get around," she
told the Chicago Sun-Times some years ago.

She was often flabbergasted at her fame — or notoriety. People wrote her
letters, some saying they called a certain number to hear her voice when
they were lonely. When she appeared at business conventions, sometimes
hundreds of people would line up for her autograph.

A Florida native who grew up in Atlanta, Barbe studied drama at the
University of Georgia. There she learned how to remove the Southern
inflections from her voice. "You haven't lived until you've heard
'Antigone' in a Southern accent," she once quipped.

That training proved invaluable in 1963 when she began working for
Audichron, the unit of Electronic Telecommunications that pioneered the
time-weather telephone message industry. She had to deliver her lines in
clear, measured tones, without any regional accent.

But over the years, her services were requested with accents, such as
the time an Australian phone company asked her to put on an Australian
accent to record time and temperature messages.

"They looked all over downtown Sydney and couldn't find anyone to do it.
So they hired my wife," said Barbe's husband, John, a musician and
composer of advertising jingles.

Barbe is also survived by a daughter, Susan Stubin of Passaic, N.J.; a
son, David, of Athens, Ga.; and seven grandchildren.

The Barbes met when she was hired as a vocalist for the Buddy Morrow
Orchestra; John was the band's music arranger. After they married and
moved to Atlanta, she worked in advertising, first as a copywriter and
later as an actress. She did voice work for Fortune 500 companies such
as Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines and acted in television commercials for
Shake 'n Bake and Crisco oil.

Her most enduring, and challenging, work was in telephone recordings,
however. Not only did it require a voice that was clear and easy to
listen to, but an ability to tailor her speech by mere tenths of a second.

The work could be tedious. She sometimes recorded 1,000 sound bites at a
time. Those bites might break down a sentence like "Your message was
sent on May 7 at 11:22 a.m." into seven parts, and she had to learn to
say a number like "seven" as quickly as she said "two" in order to
complete the message in the predetermined time.

"She could handle that very well, and you could still understand what
she said," Miller said. Her talent, he added, was that "she came across
as so personable — it was like she was talking to you."

Knowing that many people think all telephone message systems use
computer-generated voices, she tried hard to sound, well, human.

"When I'm recording," she told a Canadian journalist several years ago,
"I really try to think of one person that I'm talking to, because I
would like it to sound one on one. I don't want to come across like a
machine, if I can possibly help it."

She got her own voice on the line on occasion, an experience she
recalled as "really weird."

One time she overheard her mother dialing a number and getting her on a
recorded message.

"She said, 'Oh, shut up, Jane!' " before slamming down the receiver in
exasperation.