Electric Shock

by Peter Doggett

  Five years later, the same tune reappeared on radio: this time credited to a guitarist named Les Paul. He was not just a virtuoso and, as time would tell, one of the most important innovators of the electric guitar,fn1 but also a showman. With Mary Ford, who would soon become his second wife, he dressed in a blue work shirt and hilariously multicoloured socks, the epitome of a graceless hillbilly. The couple sat down while he played and she sang, and frequently interrupted their songs like real rubes, to pass on a rib-cracking joke or wave to someone in the front row. It was calculated crowd-pleasing, and somehow it kept audiences at both jazz and country and western clubs satisfied. ‘The people you’re playing for11,’ Paul insisted, ‘they work all day, they don’t go to music schools and study harmony. They pay their dough, they come in, they listen. If they don’t understand what you’re doing, they walk out. What are you supposed to do, tie ’em with a rope while you explain you’re playing great music?’

  Those antics slandered what he was ready to sell. With ‘Brazil’, Paul discovered a way of layering one electric guitar part over another, and again, until there were no fewer than six fighting for space – a baffling array of sound effects, tonal variations, percussive clicks, hot country picking, jazz fingerings, even some primitive ancestors of the power chord; some of these performances speeded up, some slowed down, by a manipulation of time that defied the imagination. That was Les Paul the solo artist: with his wife, he concocted records that carried multiple versions of her voice issuing simultaneously from the grooves, and label credits reading: ‘Vocal trio – Mary Ford’. He was not the first to determine a way of combining separate elements on to a single recording, soon using as many as twenty-four different components, while professional studios struggled to cope with more than three; but he was the first to perfect the technique, and sell it to the public. It was the dawn of a new era, in which the gramophone record would no longer be a documentary, capturing a particular performance for posterity, but a glorious fiction, a manipulation of man and machine that extended the revolution launched by the birth of electrical recording in 1925.

  Some took offence at the blatant artificiality of the new recording techniques: overdubbing was cheating the listener, they declared. One could no longer trust that even a symphony orchestra were capable of performing in real life as they did on disc. The practice of ‘fading out’ a performance, which became prevalent in the overdubbing era, was deplored as being lazy and uncreative. The American evangelist, Bill Gothard, ‘believed that, any time12 a song faded out instead of resolving itself naturally, it promoted ongoing anarchy’. There were misgivings, often justified, that the early experiments in multi-dubbed one-man-band recording – as attempted first in America by Sidney Bechet, and later in Britain by Victor Feldman, Humphrey Lyttleton and Steve Race – failed on aesthetic grounds, not least because the addition of each extra recording ‘track’ seemed to muddy the sound.

  Always quick to condemn innovation as a threat, the American Federation of Musicians did its best to impede technological progress by instructing its members not to take part in any recording session which involved overdubbing. The AFM was especially alarmed by the process whereby an orchestra would prepare a backing track without a singer being present: producers assumed that the singer was more likely to make mistakes than the seasoned session pros, and therefore the record companies would not have to pay musicians their union scale while a budding Sinatra or Garland repeatedly flubbed their top note.fn2 Eventually the union realised that the improvement in recording quality allowed by overdubbing would be good for everyone in the business, and the ban was lifted. As Columbia producer Mitch Miller noted in 1952, ‘No science has progressed13 as far as electronics has in the last ten years. I think that anybody who doesn’t take advantage of these advances is an idiot.’

  That **** television!14 Business is pretty good in some places. But in a **** television area, we’re dead before we start. As soon as we enter a town and I see those **** antenna things, I holler murder. People go in debt to buy a **** TV set, and nobody has any dough left. So they stay home.

  Tommy Dorsey, 1951

  There will be a place for music15 in television – all kinds of music – when television producers recognise the fact that they have a completely new medium to work with and stop trying to use it to revive forms of entertainment that went out of style twenty-five years ago.

  Stan Kenton, 1951

  One of the forgotten heroes of twentieth-century music, Raymond Scott was a composer and arranger who announced himself in the late 1930s with such unconventional sides as ‘Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals’. He toyed with the rules of rhythm and harmony, juxtaposed previously unimaginable combinations of instruments, pioneered research into electronic sound, and wrote scores so packed with innovation and surprise that their only possible destinations were the hundreds of film animations (Bugs Bunny and the like) for which they eventually provided a soundtrack. Scott’s surreal innovations were only matched by the experimental compositions of Louis and Bebe Barron, created by fiddling with electronic circuits, which were heard on the soundtrack for the 1956 science-fiction movie, Forbidden Planet.

  Scott was not a man who recognised limits, and in 1949, after nearly a decade away from commercial recording, he revealed the results of his experiments with the studio, the orchestra and the technical processes whereby music was brought to the public. His new compositions – which sound today like classical–jazz amalgams waiting for cartoons to accompany them – included ‘Ectoplasm’, ‘Snake Woman’ and ‘Dedicatory Piece to the Crew and Passengers of the First Experimental Rocket Express to the Moon’. But he was unwilling to pass them to a record company, he explained, because the merest collision with commerce would rob them of their artistic merit. Instead, he proposed that he should convey his music to his listeners via thought transference. In the future, so Down Beat magazine reported, ‘perhaps the composer will sit16 on the concert stage and merely think his conception of his work. His thought waves will be picked up by mechanical equipment, and transferred to the minds of his hearers.’

  Scott was undoubtedly a visionary – he insisted on closed-circuit TVs being installed at a Detroit club in 1950, so that everyone in the place could see him – but his music was destined to remain mired in physical technology, never rising to the purely psychological realm. Yet his spirit of adventure was typical of the years after the Second World War, when the innovation that had been focused upon military needs could now fuel a consumer boom – and, almost by accident, spark vast improvements in the choice and quality of entertainment available to moderately wealthy citizens of the Western world.

  Britain’s economy, like those of the nations it had helped to defeat, was in ruins. There were numerous hiccups in its recovery, such as the fuel crisis of early 1947 which led to the BBC’s television service being discontinued, radio broadcasts being curtailed, newspapers failing to appear and cinemas closing. Yet from this denuded nation, suffering under the harshest European winter in living memory, came an innovation in sound which was widely acclaimed as the most significant development since the birth of electrical recording. This was Decca Records’ ‘ffrr’ (full frequency range recording) system, first employed for classical music, and still in use when Decca signed the Rolling Stones in 1963. The recording techniques available before the war could only handle frequencies up to 6 kHz; most gramophones could only reproduce up to 4.5 kHz; and yet the average adult could hear sounds up to 16 kHz or beyond. The range of many musical instruments also extended beyond the 6 kHz limit, with the effect that some recorded sounds had been impossible to distinguish from each other: the tenor saxophone, for example, resembled the cello, and an alto sax could be confused with a clarinet. The ‘ffrr’ system delivered, for the first time, an accurate representation of music’s sonic landscape.

  There were two drawbacks to the ‘ffrr’ revolution: it could only be appreciated if you bought a new gramophone; and it was still subject to the au
ral flaws of the 78 rpm shellac record, with its background hiss and easily scratched surface. One possible solution was a switch from disc to tape, which was already being used in many recording studios. In September 1947, the Radiolympia exhibition in London introduced the British public to the EMI Broadcast Tape Recorder and the GEC Tape Recorder – as yet only available for professional use, but with the promise that they would soon be appearing in every household. Meanwhile, America’s two largest recording companies were working simultaneously on competing formats to replace the brittle 78. ‘The talk of the record industry17 these days is Columbia Records’ revolutionary new Microgroove record,’ Melody Maker announced in July 1948, ‘which plays 27 minutes on one 10-inch double-faced record, and 45 minutes on a 12-incher. This new platter may eventually revolutionise the entire recording industry.’ By the use of Vinylite instead of shellac, surface noise would effectively be eradicated. Symphonic works could be contained on a single disc; jazz artists could extend their improvisation beyond the four-minute barrier imposed by the 78; there could be themed collections of popular songs. The US company Philco announced that for $30, listeners could purchase a device to enable their existing equipment to play the new discs at 33 rpm.

  Meanwhile, RCA Victor had secretly staked its future on a miniature alternative to the 78: again made from Vinylite, but this time just seven inches across, and playing at 45 rpm. They announced in March 1949 that this would be ‘the first integrated program18 of records and player planning in the 70-year history of the business’, as the ‘unbreakable’ records were accompanied by a choice of two new record decks. RCA proposed seven series of releases, each colour-coded for instant identification: classical (with the old Red Seal logo, and a retail price twice that of popular recordings); semi-classical; pop; children’s; western; international; and folk. (RCA clearly did not recognise a need to distinguish between different varieties of ‘pop’, a description so broad that it stretched from Bing Crosby to bebop.) This duel between the long-playing record and what would be known, by the early 1950s, as ‘the single’ was viewed as reckless by many observers: Gramophone magazine deplored the two companies’ ‘buccaneering adventures19 which neither they nor the individual can afford’. As an American journal noted, ‘The well-equipped record collector20 of the future will have to furnish his living room with at least three machines. A single machine with various speeds will be inadequate, since the manufacturers are getting an added kick out of confusing the issue. Not only will platters be made to play at different speeds, but the centre holes also will be of varying sizes.’

  There were a few months of direct competition, with RCA Victor’s 45s by Perry Como and Vaughn Monroe pitted against Columbia’s big-band long-playing discs (or LPs) by Woody Herman and Gene Krupa. In Britain, initial reaction to the seven-inch ‘midget disc’ was disapproving, as it was felt to be too small to handle easily. Black record-buyers in the States, who were on average poorer than their white equivalents, were also slow to adapt to the new formats. RCA did their best to promote the single by issuing 45 rpm editions exclusively for several weeks, before the corresponding 78 was available. But by the start of 1950, record companies in the US had reached a tentative concord: rather than choosing between formats, they would provide material for all of them. As one industry pundit noted, however, ‘It seems unquestionable21 now that the future of the record business is two-speed: 33 for longer works, 45 for single records.’ And so it eventually proved. Although the 78 rpm record survived in Britain until 1960, and in territories such as India throughout most of the subsequent decade, it was destined for extinction as soon as the 45 grabbed a share of the market.fn3 Seeburg was the first manufacturer of jukeboxes to switch formats, and by the mid-1950s all the leading companies were offering machines which contained a hundred or more 45s – ensuring that the jukebox would become a potent symbol of teenage pleasure during the white rock ’n’ roll explosion.

  While the 45 was effectively a straight replacement for the 78, albeit with enhanced sound quality, the panoramic scope of the LP offered both opportunity and a challenge. The record companies were never averse to making money from nothing, and many early LPs were simply collections of previously released 78s, repackaged as a ‘gift’ to the artist’s fans. As the public was already acclimatised to the ten-inch record, most companies opted to use the same size for their LPs; they feared that consumers might reject a larger format, which might not fit their existing storage space. (Warehouses faced the same problem, as did retail outlets.) When they decided in the early 1950s to explore the extended landscape of the twelve-inch disc, they embarked on another round of creative marketing, by adding a handful of additional tracks to their existing ten-inch albums and presenting them as new product.

  For composers such as Duke Ellington and Alec Wilder, who were already composing on a scale more epic than the four-minute 78 would allow, the LP was an overdue opportunity to indulge their suites and song cycles. Lowering the tone a little, record companies were also quick to see a potential market amongst those who were keen to dance, at a record hop or with the rugs folded away in their own sitting rooms. Convinced (as was the entire industry, until it was too late) that a revival for the dance bands of the 1930s and 40s was only a moment away, the major labels prepared series of themed albums. Each was devoted to an individual band, under a generic title such as Design for Dancing. These records conformed to the familiar pattern of a three-minute performance and then a pause before the next song began. Columbia offered an alternative with its quartet of Your Dance Date LPs: these were programmed for non-stop dancing, ‘with four numbers tied22 together by piano, celeste and chimes interludes’, pioneering an approach that would provide a lengthy career for German bandleader James Last from the late 1960s onwards.

  Capitol went further, commissioning Paul Weston to craft his own sequence: Music for Easy Listening being followed by Music for Dreaming, Music for Memories, Music for the Fireside and Music for Reflection. Not to be outdone, bandleader Skip Martin added to the series with Music for Tap Dancing (full instructions included). Weston responded with Moods for Candlelight and Moods for Starlight … and almost accidentally, an entirely new musical genre – mood music – had been born. From Columbia came a series of Quiet Music LPs, providing ‘easy listening for your relaxation’; from Coral, a collection of songs for all weathers from Les Brown’s orchestra; from RCA Victor, the Moods in Music (for Dining, Daydreaming, Relaxation, even ultimately Music for Faith and Inner Calm, which anticipated the New Age phenomenon of the 1980s). As British producer and mood-music composer Norrie Paramor explained, ‘it’s meant to entertain23 without being obtrusive, to put you in an easy frame of mind. In other words, perhaps it is music to be heard but not necessarily to be listened to.’ After decades of music that demanded the listener’s attention, or even (like bop) risked alienating it, here was something genuinely different: music that did not offer anything, but which took away the distractions and dilemmas of everyday life. In the successful middle-class home of what author William H. Whyte (in 1956) called The Organization Man, the well-oiled cog in a smoothly functioning society, mood music kept the machine running in optimum order.

  At its most grandiose, this (absence of) style could be promoted as Music for Gracious Living, as in a series of LPs by Peter Barclay’s orchestra; at its most self-effacing, it could be quite unashamedly reduced to Background Music, a four-album series from Capitol in 1953. You could take your pick from Light and Lively; Show Tunes; Bright and Bouncy (but presumably not so bouncy that it might be noticed); and Songs We Remember (but do not necessarily want to be aware of hearing). Western society had not yet become addicted to chemical sedatives: while companies such as Hoffmann-La Roche were perfecting their pills, mood music attempted to provide the same service.

  Before Librium and Valium, America and (more slowly) Britain fell under the sway of another form of tranquilliser: television. Its domination of the American home was sudden and rapid: only 2% of US h
ouseholds had a set in 1948, but by 1956 the figure was above 70%. More than any other factor, television shifted the location of entertainment from the dance hall or the cinema to the family home. Receipts for live music events, with or without dancing, fell rapidly during that period, the only exception being those aimed at teenagers. Their heroes were rarely seen on TV (especially during the rock ’n’ roll era) and the increased access to cars amongst US teens in the 1950s enabled them to make both a cultural and a physical escape from the benign tyranny of their parents.

  Like mood music, television provided a backdrop to the dramas of family life. Some shows demanded attention; others, to misquote Norrie Paramor, were there to be seen but not noticed. In either case, the ubiquitous set provided a form of competition to the record player that was different from the radio, which did at least depend on raw material from Tin Pan Alley and the record companies. Television’s attitude to music was very different. Until the show American Bandstand became a national attraction in the late 1950s, there was no room in the US TV schedule for records to be played.fn4 This was a medium which demanded live (or at least the pretence of live) performance. The strongest cards in its pack were variety shows, in effect an updated version of the old vaudeville and music-hall traditions, featuring comedy, singing, dancing and maybe dogs leaping through hoops of fire or jugglers sending crockery spiralling into the air. Only the least abrasive musicians could fit into such a format: no space there for a bop jam session, or even a Duke Ellington suite. Families wanted shows that were safe, predictable and acceptable to all, and TV gathered up anyone with a recognisable name who might fit the bill. The most captivating and least grating performers were awarded networked shows. The likes of Perry Como, Dinah Shore and Mario Lanza became familiar names in America far beyond the audience for their records. In Britain, their role was occupied by the George Mitchell Minstrels, ‘blacking up’ every week in The Black and White Minstrel Show.fn5 To ensure that they would not alienate adults by presenting material which was too obscure or too oriented towards teenagers, these stars were encouraged to deliver songs which had already proven their mettle – especially if they came from long-running Broadway shows or hit Hollywood musicals. The result was an American songbook of what were soon known as ‘standards’, sometimes selected for their quality (and nobody could question the aesthetic value of Cole Porter or Rodgers and Hart), but more often for their familiarity alone. The same selection of songs was handed from one performer to the next, revived on television and (increasingly) on album, year after year, and thereby consolidated its permanent status in the national memory. To this day, television keeps many of these songs alive, as theme tunes or advertising jingles.