Chasing Sound: Technology, Culture, and the Art of Studio Recording from Edison to the LP

2. The Studio Electrifies: Radio, Recording, and the Birth of the Small Studio Business

2 The Studio Electrifies Radio, Recording, and the Birth of the Small Studio Business F ueledbythedancecrazeofthe1910sthatintroducednewstepssuch as the turkey trot and the foxtrot, the record industry, by World War I, had entered what some historians referred to as its first “golden age.”1 By the early 1920s, the spectrum of recorded music had broadened to include more jazz, blues, gospel, and hillbilly music, and new record labels such as Gennett, Okeh, Paramount, Black Swan, Ajax, and Vocalion focused on these niche markets .Inaddition,ahugedemandforforeignmusicrecordsemergedasAmerica’s growing immigrant communities, struggling with assimilation, sought familiar music from the homeland.2 The blues craze that began with Okeh’s 1920 release “Crazy Blues” by Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds prompted Columbia to begin releasing blues records, and by 1923, the label had signed blues and jazz artists , including Bessie Smith, Fletcher Henderson, Clarence Williams, and Ethel Waters, while Victor concentrated on selling its Red Seal catalog to the African American market.3 The recorded output of the 1920s embodied what one musicologist aptly dubbed “the motley fabric of popular music” during the Jazz Age.4 Record sales reached $106 million in 1921, but as records became the most popular form of home entertainment, a competing entertainment technology, radio, introduced a new way for the listening public to hear music.5 By 1922, a radio boom had swept the country and record sales began a three-year decline. Radio has been blamed for the recording industry’s reversal of fortunes, but radio ultimately became the catalyst for sweeping changes in sound recording. The communication technologies developed during World War I to improve t h e s t u d i o e l e c t r i f i e s 33 and expand wireless transmission and later developments in early radio broadcasting ushered in a transformation of the recording studio as engineers employed microphones and amplification devices. Electrifying the studio became the most revolutionary improvement in sound recording to date and the first step in transforming recording from the art of capturing sound to the engineering of an illusion. Electricalrecordingtransformedtherecordingstudio,theworkofrecordists and musicians, and the record industry during the interwar period. First, more than any other innovation up to that time electrical recording dramatically improved the sound of records. Replacing the recording horn with microphones also eased cramped conditions in the studio. It became possible to record larger-sized ensembles more effectively and thus a broader range of music. The change from acoustical to electrical recording signified more than a simple improvement in the sound of records; it marked a radical shift with long-term consequences for recording. It transformed the recordist’s craft from cut-and-try empiricism to mathematical and scientific control and measurability. Although it did not eliminate experimentation in the studio, it changed and expanded what recordists needed to know. Electrical recording also made possible the developmentofinstantaneousrecordingmethods ,whichencouragedanewgroup of amateur enthusiasts to enter the recording field, many of whom ultimately made recording their profession. Finally, it gave rise to electrical transcriptions and syndicated radio program services—the offspring of the union of radio and recording and an arena in which many fledgling recording engineers began their careers. These developments in turn gave rise to small independent “air check” studios not affiliated with the marketing, sale, or distribution of records. From the early 1930s on, transcription and production studios mushroomed in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, as well as in cities outside these key entertainment centers, such as Cleveland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Atlanta.6 This first revolution in recording technology produced not only better-sounding records but also more of them and more individuals involved in making them. From Recording Experts to Engineers: Transforming the Craft of Recording OnJanuary1,1925,BellTelephoneLaboratoriesincorporatedasawhollyowned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph and Western Electric, thereby officially becoming the second-largest industrial research laboratory in the United States after General Electric. AT&T promoted Bell Labs as a national 34 c h a s i n g s o u n d research laboratory in which the benefits of pure research could be carried over to different scientific, technical, and economic interests.7 Among the first businesses to benefit from the work of Bell System scientists under this broad research agenda were the recording companies and film industries. The story of how Bell Labs and Western Electric, the manufacturing and...