American Popular Music and Its Business: The First Four Hundred Years Volume III: From 1900 to 1984 (American Popular Music & Its Business)

741 Pages·1988·46.04 MB·English

by  Russell Sanjek

American Popular Music
and Its Business
THE FIRST FOUR HUNDRED YEARS
III
From 1900 to 1984
RUSSELL SANJEK
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1988
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Copyright © 1988 by Elizabeth Sanjek
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sanjek, Russell.
American popular music and its business.
Bibliography: p.
Includes indexes.
Contents: v. 1. The beginning to 1790—v. 2. From
1790 to 1909—v. 3. From 1900 to 1986.
1. Popular music—United States—History and criticism.
2. Music-—United States—History and criticism. 3. Music
trade—United States—History and criticism. I. Title.
ML200.S26 1988 780'.42'0973 87-18605
ISBN 0-19-504311-1
24689753
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
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Contents
Part One 1900-1920
1. Thomas Edison's Wonderful Kinetoscope Machine, 3
2. Big Time, Small Time, and E. F. Albee, 16
3. The Victrola and the Pianola, 22
4. Inside the Popular-Music Business, 32
Part Two 1921-1930
5. Popular Songs and the Movie Business, 47
6. The Decline and Fall of the House of Albee, 57
7. The Mechanical Music Business, 62
8. A Simple Radio Music Box, 74
9. A Glut of Movie Music, 91
Part Three 1931-1940
10. The Fall and Rise of the Record Business, 117
11. Music in Motion Pictures, 147
12. Popular Music and Radio, 159
13. ASCAP versus the Broadcasters, 184
Part Four 1941-1953
14. On the Road to New Technology and an Expanded Industry, 215
15. Mass Entertainment and the Music Business, 251
16. ASCAP and BMI Face the Reality of Television, 291
vi Contents
Part Five 1954-1966
17. From Monaural to Stereophonic Sound, 333
18. Growth to a Four-Billion-Dollar Business, 367
19. ASCAP versus BMI, 396
20. Payola Problems and Rate Wars, 439
Part Six 1967-1970
21. Copyright Revision or Not?, 493
22. The Music-Licensing Wars, 498
23. Big Money Invades the Music Business, 507
24. FM and Top 40 Radio, 518
Part Seven 1971-1976
25. Continued Fighting over Licensing, 523
26. Industry Associations Play Their Part, 528
27. "The Seven Dirty Words" Case and MOR Music, 543
28. Configurations, Payola, and Soul Music, 549
29. A New Copyright Bill at Last, 563
Part Eight 1977-1980
30. The U.S. Supreme Court and Licensing, 573
31. The Copyright Royalty Tribunal, 581
32. Other Copyright Problems, 588
33. Seesawing Sales and New Ideas in the Record Business, 594
Part Nine 1981-1984
34. Television Music Licensing, 617
35. Rates and Piracy—Unsolved Problems, 624
36. Continuing Difficulties for Music Publishers, 627
37. Tight Control of a Prosperous Record Business, 634
Bibliography, 655
Index, 695
PART ONE
1900-1920
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CHAPTER 1
Thomas Edison's Wonderful
Kinetoscope Machine
Two years after Koster & Bial's luxurious Concert Hall in New York pre-
sented "living pictures" of a half-clad Diana and her court awaiting the
dawn in a program the New York Times hailed as "what they now call
'vaudeville' seen at its best", Thomas Edison's new invention, the Vita-
scope, projected moving hand-colored pictures of more than life-sized women
dancers from the theater's second balcony onto a twenty-foot stereopticon
screen. The moving-picture industry came to life on April 23, 1896, follow-
ing the end of the nation's most serious economic depression up to that
time.
During the mid-1880s, feeling that a machine that would do for the eye
what his talking machine was doing for the ear was feasible. Edison had
put a young laboratory assistant, William K. L. Dickson, to work on the
project. The "wizard with a thousand ideas'' had in mind an apparatus that
would permit viewing through a magnifying lens of continuous pictures,
mounted on a cylinder like the one used in his phonograph. Yet, once his
patent application for the Kinetoscope, or "moving views," was filed, in
late 1888, Edison abandoned the cylinder design. He had seen the work of
George Eastman's new Kodak camera, which had a roll of flexible film of
100 separate pictures, and he called on the inventor for assistance. Eastman
obliged with a fifty-foot strip of improved thin blank film, and Dickson
went to work on a new tack. In August 1891, Edison's new Apparatus for
Exhibiting Photographs of Moving Objects was ready for a patent applica-
tion. Dickson pepped up the first demonstration for Edison of his new in-
vention by appearing on screen to greet his employer with words simulta-
neously reproduced by a phonograph cylinder synchronized with the filmed
action. It was the first talking moving picture. Only the magnifying lens
remained of Edison's original concept, now mounted in a wooden cabinet
3