45 RPM RECORDS

Background

Until June 1948, home listening to recorded music required a forgiving ear and a vivid imagination. The records were all ten or twelve inches in diameter and made of shellac. They cost about __BODY__.50 each and played for about four minutes per side at 78 revolutions per minute. They broke easily, scratched at the slightest touch, and wore quickly with repeated play. The sound quality of the recording was terrible by today's standard, and, as a result, more energy went into improving record-player cabinets than in enhancing the quality of their sound reproduction. Even so, Americans bought about 350 million records in 1947 and owned 16 million record players, all of which ran at a single speed, because only 78-RPM records were available.

More Music Per Disc

New technology reformed the industry. There were two major record manufacturers, RCA-Victor and Columbia, vying with one another for dominance. Columbia took the first step, introducing unbreakable, scratch-resistant (but far from scratch-proof) vinylite records in ten-inch and twelve-inch versions that played at 33 1/3 RPM. The twelve-inch records, called long-playing (or LPs), could hold twenty-five minutes worth of music on a side, and in time they became the industry standard. The price was about four or five dollars per record.

Too Many Sizes

On 31 March 1949 RCA-Victor countered with 6 7/8-inch discs that played at 45 RPM. They offered lower price, about seventy-nine cents, and improved quality. RCA-Victor relied on reports that 90 percent of record listeners preferred popular music, which almost always fit nicely into the three and one-half minutes of playing time that 45s, as they were called, offered. The 45s could claim better sound reproduction—though most listeners could not tell the difference on their home players—because the grooves that reproduced the music ran only a couple of inches from the outside edge of the record and thus were more uniform in their configuration. There was also a hole 1 1/2 inches in diameter in the center of 45s to accommodate the player spindle that further distinguished them from 78s and LPs, which had quarter-inch spindle holes.

CROSSOVERS

In 1950 the music industry recognized three major types of popular music: mainstream pop, country pop, and R&B (black) pop. They constituted 50 percent, 13 percent, and 6 percent, respectively, of popular-music record sales. Billboard and Cash Box magazines tracked record sales in all three fields, monitored by reports from designated retail outlets, and published them weekly. Radio play by disc jockeys was related to sales, and it was also reported.

An important precursor of rock 'n' roll was the erosion of the boundaries between markets that began in about 1950. What were called crossover hits—songs that appeared on more than one pop chart, usually by different musicians—began to appear with increasing frequency. In 1950, for example, "Goodnight Irene'" by Gordon Jenkins and the Weavers was number one on the mainstream pop chart in June 1950. The same song by Ernest Tubb and Red Foley was number one on the country chart in August 1950. As performed by Paul Gayton, "Goodnight Irene" made it to number six on the R&B chart in September, The same song was also recorded in 1950 by Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, Dennis Day, and Moon Mullican, and each of these versions made it into the top thirty in its category (all mainstream except for Mullican's version, which was country).

"Mona Lisa," as recorded by Nat King Cole, was number one on both the mainstream, (June 1951) and R&B (July 1951) charts, and "Chatanoogie Shoe Shine Boy" by Red Foley was number one on both the mainstream and country charts in January 1950. In all, there were six songs in 1950 that appeared in the top thirty of all three pop charts and twenty-five that appeared in the top thirty of two pop charts. At first it was much easier for songs to cross over than for performers to do so, Elvis changed that. In the late 1950s he had an average of nine records per year on the mainstream pop charts (which by then were predominantly rock 'n' roll) and five per year on both the country and R&B charts.

Source:

Philip H. Ennis, The Seventh Stream: The Emergence of Rocknroll in American Popular Music (Hanover & London: Wesleyan University Press, 1992).

What To Do with the Old Player

The result of the record-format wars was that sixteen million 78-RPM record players became obsolete in the last eighteen months of the 1940s. Both RCA-Victor and Columbia offered mechanical attachments to 78-RPM players that would allow them to accommodate the new records, but consumers, already angry and confused by the new technology, refused to buy them. Accordingly, record sales fell to two hundred million in 1949. At the same time, though, records became easier and cheaper to make, so as the industry bottomed out, it became easier for new companies to get into the recording business.

A Revitalized Industry

It was not until 1952 that the industry recovered, and the recovery was booming. Player sales, which had been 830,000 in 1950, jumped to nearly 1.5 million in 1952 and doubled again before the end of the decade, reaching $200 million in annual sales by 1957. The term hi-fi, short for high-fidelity sound, came into common usage as listeners insisted on quality sound reproduction, even though the cost of the player increased. In 1950 a standard portable record player cost about thirty-five dollars. By the end of the decade hi-fi sets commonly cost several hundred dollars, and discriminating listeners were acquiring new components capable of playing stereophonic sound recordings, introduced in 1958. Stereo equipment gave the illusion of live performance by transmitting slightly different tracks, captured on specially prepared LP records, to two different speakers that were ideally placed several feet from one another. New-stereo owners could be identified by their ownership of records playing train noises, street sounds, or bird calls that demonstrated the effectiveness of their systems.

The Long-lived LP

The LP won out in the long run, but the 45 was the standard medium for popular music during the decade, and it allowed the continued development of what came to be a cultural icon—the jukebox. Though jukeboxes were hardly new inventions, the 45s made them more practical and increased their use at casual food-serving establishments and a necessary piece of equipment in teen gathering places. Because of their durability, space-saving size, and popularity among teen audiences due to their low price, 45s were ideal for jukebox use. A typical jukebox held as many as 150 records—300 sides—that could be played for five cents a song or three plays for a dime.

Sources:

Lawrence C. Goldsmith, "War in Three Speeds," Nation, 168 (7 May 1949): 523-525;

Ann M. Lingg, "Record Rumpus," Readers Digest, 55 (December 9): 139-142;

William J. Temple, "Which Playback?," Senior Scholastic, 58 (4 April 1951): 26-T, 40-T.