As I have probably mentioned before, one of my TV addictions is music documentaries. Recently I have been watching a few about electronic music. Now when you think of the history of electronica you probably think of people like Kraftwerk and Gary Numan, but synthesizers had been about in popular music since the 1960s. Historically, of course, it can be dated back at least as far as 1928 when Léon Theremin patented his truly bizarre musical instrument. Two early pioneers of the use of synthesizers in rock and pop were Pete Townshend and Stevie Wonder. But the synth-only album was quite another thing.

My favorite synth composer from when I was a teenager was Isao Tomita (and I’m playing Snowflakes are Dancing while I write this). But he wasn’t the first on the scene. Back in 1968 Wendy Carlos had an unlikely commercial hit. She had realized that the metronomic precision of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach was perfect for synthesizers, and created an album called Switched on Bach which reached #10 on the Billboard album chart and has sold over 1 million copies.

Although she produced several other classical-themed albums, Carlos’s career quickly moved sideways into films when she was hired by Stanley Kubrick to write the score for A Clockwork Orange. She re-united with Kubrick to score The Shining, and was later hired by Disney to produce a soundtrack for Tron. That’s not a bad career for a woman composer you have probably never heard of.

If you find an early copy of Switched on Bach you may see it credited to someone else. That’s because, back in the 1960s, in addition to becoming a pioneer of electronic music and a pop sensation, Wendy was also undergoing gender transition. Trans women are awesome.

Oh, and Wendy is still with us. There’s someone I would love to meet.