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Sousa had very decided views on music and the music industry. He disliked jazz, and said, "Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains"-but he shocked audiences by including ragtime in his concert selections. He refused to perform on radio until 1929 because he felt it lacked true contact with the audience. In fact, he regarded the emerging recording industry as a gang of pirates, and in 1906 stated in a submission to a congressional hearing: "These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy. in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape." Sousa's marches are among the most widely recorded music in the world.