There was reel to reel when reelin' and a rockin' and cassette tapes and eight tracks, and quad, and then, today, now, the i-Pod. A disease parasite that eats away at the sound quality of the final product and the poof! there goes the disappearing album cover art work. Vinyl produced a sound quality still unmatched today, but the album cover art, damn Louvre stuff if you ask me...Led Zeppelin albums, the Janis Joplin Cheap Thrills album and of course, the Holy Grail of album cover art...Sergeant Pepper! Then again, there is also the White Album...
Music was originally called "old timey" with a touch of hillbilly, bluegrass and rhythm and blues, all played live in hoe downs or juke joints, before there were juke boxes, just joints. Player piano's with rolls were the first automated music machines and eventually Mr. Edison came up with the music rolls for home listening that rolled off his assembly line in Menlo Park, New Jersey in 1887, based on an idea that a Frenchman developed in 1857! Edison took out patents on his "talking machine" and "sound writers" which eventually became the Phonograph!
In 1887 Emile Berliner, discovered a method of recording onto disc, and he more importantly, he discovered the method of mass production of these "records" and it caught on like a musical forest fire! Eventually, the records appeared as 78 rpm behemoth records and when they appeared on the scene, they were as large and as heavy as a 57 Buick. Along with records a new industry was created..the public needed something to play the records back on. The Victrola was one of many type machines, but by far the rock star of recorded playback! You had to had to hand crank it, like firing up a Model T, for enough juice to hear the recording, Enrico Caruso, Al Jolson, Uncle Dave Macon, Vernon Dahlhart and the like.
Volume control was attained by opening and closing the speaker doors, half way or full open wide open blasting of Jimmie Clanton singing Tell Me A Story in a duet with Frankie Lane. (That was one of my favorites) I'd go into my grandparents basement and play with the Victrola which may account for my 30 years in radio. Along with Story, there was a collection of Old Black Crows comedy albums, all stereotypical, not stereophonic, of black culture, of course then it was Negro culture.
Today we complain about the technological changes in our lives, new tech replacing old tech faster than tossing away a used condom. Not much as changed, as far back as 1902, the age of the cylinder was toast. The record had emerged on top as the heavy weight champion of the recorded music world. Remember MTV and the song, Video Killed the Radio Star? Well, radio itself reared it's amplitude modulated head in 1923, and now the public could hear recorded music on the box..for free! Record sales started to take a nose dive, but did re-emerge eventually. Other recording innovations surfaced in 1934 with the introduction of recordable tape, not quite replacing records yet. Glenn Miller and his band received the first gold record in 1942 for their recording of Chattanooga Choo Choo. By the 1950's 78's were tossed into the landfill of nostalgia, it was the age of the 33 1/3 and the 45 rpm.
The next phase as the music world was a fornication of sounds, rockabilly emerged, rock and roll, race music, country western, and all of sudden there was music for every taste and pocket book and there was gold in them thar gold record hills. The 45 rpm was the compact disc of it's day but you were lucky to have only one song per side, sometimes two per side as an Elvis record my uncle had. One uncle was in his twenties in the Fifties and it was Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Elvis.
My other uncle was strictly big band, the Platters, and Sinatra so my musical education was multi faceted. I never got into classical music, as to me, it was songs without words..go figure. As we aged into our teen years we bought our own 45's racing to the drugstore every week for the latest top 40 fare according to Billboard Magazine.
Rock and roll was hear to stay, along with payola and American Bandstand with Dick Clark, the worlds oldest living teenager for years. Of course today, Dick is dead, but the bandstand lip-synch legacy lives on. We got to know the dancers, the kids on the show and they had fan clubs themselves, like Mouseketeers, they rocked and rolled our world and we all wanted to be like them. Most anyway, I always wanted to be Dick Clark. We bought the hits from companies like Sun Records, Verve, Stax and of course the holy Mecca of Decca. The Philly sound, the Motown sound and the Wall of Sound emanating from the west coast studios of Phil Spector and the sounds of hot, hot, hot Ronnie Spector and Darlene Love. For the girls, there was the Righteous Brothers. You never close your eyes when I say da do ron ron only because your boyfriends back and I'm gonna be in trouble.
The music begat dances too...the Twist, the Mashed Potato, the Locomotion and we stumbled and fumbled through them at sock hops hoping to not only dance with the new girl in school but enjoying her many gifts under the bleachers after the dance!
The 33 1/3 album. More than one song, more than on hit, holy shit, 12 songs for the price. Surfing albums, the British Invasion and that mop top fab four group from Liverpool who managed hit after hit on one album at a time. They also introduced us to the "concept album" in the guise of Sergeant Pepper...the whole album a novel, a story line, interesting characters from Billy Spears to Mr. Kite, Lovely Rita the Meter Maid to Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.
Later interviews with John Lennon had him say he got the idea from a Beach Boys album that was "a unit of one" and also attributed the original Beatles sound to the producers of Annette Funicello's music, the over dubs, the simplicity. He was also a fan of Phil Spector and had him handle the controls on Hey Jude, the end result a classic and their longest running Number One in the charts. Paul hated it by the way, but what the hell, the rumor said, "Paul is Dead" anyway. The Stones followed suit with "Her Satanic Majesty's Request" as their dark and moody concept album. There we now whole sections of "live" concerts on the platter's.
The cassette tape was introduced to the music buying masses in 1963 and the first 8-track developed in 1965. The first CD was rushed off the assembly line in 1978 but not introduced to the masses until 1983, by 1988 the CD was spelling the doom of the vinyl era. By 1998..MP3 technology was introduced and today we have the i-pod. I refer to it as I-pos for Internet-Piece of Shit! They lack the clarity and punch of vinyl.
The best part was not only the quality of sound vinyl produced, but, the album cover artwork. It was everything from Robert Crumb to Picasso and the more ethereal covers of the Moody Blues and Led Zeppelin. The artwork was extraordinary in many cases. The Sergeant Pepper album in particular featured a compost pile of celebrities, present and past, from Lenny Bruce and Gandhi to Shirley Temple. Honest, it did, it does, look at it. The albums sometimes were framed as "domestic" artwork in dorms on the campus of just about every university in America. Ok, it wasn't the fine art hanging in the Guggenheim, but it was a new art form, for a new generation. Besides, university students don't eat quiche or Sirloin with crab leg chasers, it's MacDonalds and Domino's all the way. In the arena of food, they have no taste buds, but when it came to album cover art, there was a voracious appetite for it.
The albums also had "liner notes" little tidbits about the album, the art, the artists, and generally written by writers who were literary rock star themselves, such as Ralph Gleason, Ben Fong Torres and the like. Music journalists from Jazz Mags to Rolling Stone. We knew most of the groups individual members by name after the Brit Invasion from the Beatles and Stones to the Dave Clark Five and Herman’s Hermits..I defy most of you to name a Jordanaire or a Gladys Knight Pip, let alone one Cricket, besides Buddy Holly.
The sound systems were towers of power, along with turntables and amps, it was the age of the Rock and Roll Borg. You Star Trek fans will identify with the Borg, and you should agree...RCA plugs everywhere in and out of every electronic orifice. Today, vinyl is making a comeback for a whole new generation that haven't experienced the almost Houses of the Holy Wall of Sound that was played by Sergeant Pepper and The Lonely Hearts Club Band. Marantz, TEAC, all the biggies can be found refurbished in repair shops in many major cities. "Record Stores" dealing in actual "records" are everywhere, especially college towns, which to me is encouraging as a new generation discovers the art and magic of sound of "My Generation" Toss that fucking i-pod away and grab some black assed vinyl..put headphones on, crank it up...real headphones with real music, real loud, real clear, real rock and real roll!