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6 The Search for the Sound Rhythm and Blues, Rock ’n’ Roll, and the Rise of the Independents D uring the 1940s and 1950s, control men and staff producers at Columbia , RCA Victor, Decca, Mercury, and Capitol refined their recording techniques and established slick production values for the classical, popular, and swing artists signed to those labels. This same period also witnessed the rise of many small record companies established to serve a growing consumer market for boogie-woogie, rhythm and blues, country, and rock ’n’ roll—working-class music considered outside the mainstream musical culture and largely misunderstood by established record labels.1 Like many other smallbusiness enterprises in postwar America, independent labels found success by exploiting niche markets for specialty products, which, in the world of recording during the 1940s and 1950s, meant gospel, blues, rhythm and blues (still classified as “race” music until 1949), jazz, hillbilly/country, and rock ’n’ roll.2 With the black migration to northern and western cities both during and after World War II for work in the auto, steel, rubber, and defense industries, African Americans brought their taste in music as well as their musical talent, and the supply as well as the demand for black musical genres spread throughout America, not only among black listeners but among white record buyers as well. The same was true of hillbilly music, which by the late 1950s had developed into a Nashville-based country music industry with mass cultural appeal, a development that began over a decade earlier with a vibrant local recording scene.3 In addition to population migrations, other forces at work contributed to America’s changing musical landscape. In the early 1940s, two industry boy- t h e s e a r c h f o r t h e s o u n d 141 cotts, one in radio broadcasting, the other in recording, opened the door for the music of these small labels to reach a wider audience. The first of these, the 1941 radio boycott of all ASCAP-licensed songs, gave the music that had been rejectedbythatperformingrightsorganization,butsignedbyitsrivalBMI,wide distribution on national radio. Overnight, the music of America’s most popular composers such as George Gershwin and Cole Porter disappeared from the airwaves, replaced by the music of Hank Williams and Wynonie Harris.4 The second boycott, the previously mentioned musicians’ strike of 1942–44 during which no union musicians were permitted to record for commercial records or transcriptions, caused a cessation of any new recordings by the majors and opened the market for small labels willing to sign agreements with the musicians ’ union while the major labels refused.5 While seemingly tangential to the technological development of recording, these events influenced musical culture in America by giving a boost to the styles of music that had previously only been heard in regional markets, recorded almost entirely by independent recording studios, and released on small labels. Some of these independent record companies, such as King Records in Cincinnati , grew into little recording empires, vertically integrated operations that controlled under one roof every aspect of making records from recording to pressing to shipping.6 Motown Records in Detroit discovered, recorded, and developed artists and maintained a stable of session musicians that became integral to the Motown Sound.7 Most small labels, however, did not assume such ambitious proportions. Some, such as Chess Records in Chicago and Atlantic RecordsinNewYork,startedwithnothingbutanofficethatoccasionallyserved as the recording studio until the company’s success warranted building studios of their own.8 Some independent record labels in major entertainment centers rented studio space, hired engineers, and used pressing facilities owned by the major labels, who thereby cut their overhead, but in doing so, they nurtured the competition that would eventually pose a major challenge to their market supremacy.9 Outside the major entertainment centers, operations such as the Memphis Recording Service grew from owner-operator Sam Phillips’s parttime recording hobby into a commercial studio and only later evolved into the Sun Records label.10 Most of these independent labels, such as Atlantic, Dot, Modern, Gone, Elektra, Roulette, and Veejay—literally hundreds by 1959—used a growing number of independent recording studios both within and outside of the major entertainment centers.11 Unlike the rash of small labels that sparked the blues craze in the 1920s, most of which folded or consolidated during the Depression, this new crop of independent labels and recording studios spear- [3.144.233.150] Project MUSE (2024...

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