Abstract
From 1939 on, the European phonographic industry had to switch to a wartime economy. In Germany, the Ministry of Propaganda additionally made sure that the broadcasting and record repertoire would conform to the ideological desires of the regime. Telefunken and its subsidiaries nevertheless continued their recording activities despite being subjected to an exertion of political influence; yet, they had to reduce their production output, since most foreign markets were no longer available. In Great Britain, EMI-HMV cooperated with the British Council and produced new records despite the ongoing Nazi bomb attacks and the wartime economy.
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Notes
- 1.
In April 1942, the U.S. War Production Board limited the non-military use of shellac by 70% (Kuhnke et al. 1976, p. 392).
- 2.
Ryan (1985) provides a detailed account of the controversy involving ASCAP and the broadcasting companies.
- 3.
In 1940, ASCAP distributed royalties to only 1,100 lyricists and composers and 150 publishers.
- 4.
In October 1941, BMI owned the rights to 36,000 titles and 52 publishers (McCarthy 1971, p. 155).
- 5.
For ASCAP, BMI spelled "Bad Music Incorporated" (Sanjek 1972, p. 66).
- 6.
Another indirect result of the controversy was the emergence of a third U.S.-wide broadcasting network. In 1941, ASCAP accused RCA and CBS of abusing their dominant market positions, leading the FCC to initiate investigations of the two networks. The result was that in 1942 RCA had to sell its "blue" NBC network to Edward Nobel who renamed it "American Broadcasting Company" (ABC) (Sanjek and Sanjek 1991, p. 119).
- 7.
In 1942, 60% of AFM members were unemployed (Kuhnke et al. 1976, p. 393).
- 8.
The great number of names mentioned on the individual productions is misleading, however. New York studio musicians who recorded with Goodman between 1930 and 1934 used 180 pseudonyms (Connor and Hicks 1958: Preface by Benny Goodman).
- 9.
The large networks recorded these shows as so-called "electrical transcriptions" and offered them as ready-made radio shows to local stations on a subscription basis (Kuhnke et al. 1976, p. 347).
- 10.
"Let's Dance" was the signature melody of an advertising feature of the National Biscuit Company, which used it to promote its Ritz crackers (see Kuhnke et al. 1976, p. 344).
- 11.
Goodman provides anecdotes about this tour in his autobiography.
- 12.
One of the most popular radio shows was "Make Believe Ballroom," which KFWB in Los Angeles broadcast daily for 5–6 h; due to the show's great success, the RCA-station WNEW in New York began to broadcast it as well (Kuhnke et al. 1976, p. 350).
- 13.
The Radio Act (1927) calls for the founding of a radio commission that was put in charge of assigning frequencies to radio operators and controlling broadcasting in the U.S. Paragraph 26 of the Radio Act, which was incorporated verbatim into the Federal Communications Act in 1934, stipulated that the radio commission was not allowed to engage in censorship but added that "no person within the jurisdiction of the United States shall utter any obscene, indecency, or profane language by means of radio communication" (quoted in Leonard 1962, p. 99).
- 14.
In 1936, 23 of the 56 top hits named by the industry magazine "Variety" came from Hollywoodfilms (Braun 1969, p. 43).
- 15.
In contrast to the "Head Arrangements" common in an earlier era, which merely dictated a rough order of individual solos, the written arrangements of the Swing era allowed for improvisation only within the solos.
- 16.
Thus, a CBS live recording of the concert remained unreleased until 1950; only then, upon the urging of Goodman, was it released on record as the "Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert, Vol. 1 and 2."
- 17.
From 1940 on, the music impresario Norman Granz commercially exploited this concept in Los Angeles as "Jazz at the Philharmonic" (JATP). The idea was to have well-known Jazz musicians perform in jam sessions and to capture these live events on record. For this purpose, Granz founded the record label Verve. The first concert took place in the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angles in 1940. From 1947 until the late 1950s, JATP toured through the concert venues in the U.S. and Europe.
- 18.
Artie Shaw could never get used to the production conditions of the music industry during the Swing era. He repeatedly disappeared for weeks from the scene and did not honor recording appointments, which gave him the reputation of being eccentric. In 1946, he disbanded his orchestra, and from then on he performed in public infrequently (Simon 1971, pp. 422–425).
- 19.
For instance: Louis Armstrong and His Big Band, Charlie Barnet and His Orchestra, the Count Basie Orchestra, Cab Calloway and His Orchestra, Benny Carter and His Orchestra, Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra, Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Jimmie Lunceford and His Orchestra, Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, Jack Teagarden and His Orchestra, etc.
- 20.
See especially Sears (1980) for an account of the history of the V-Disc program. "V" either stands for "victory" or, according to a different interpretation, for "Vincent."
- 21.
In the German Reich, a law delineating extraordinary broadcasting measures took effect on September 1, 1939. In paragraph one, it prohibited the "listening to enemy stations"; violation of this command was punishable with prison. Those who were caught listening to the news on enemy stations could in extreme cases, according to paragraph two, be sentenced to death (see Schütte 1971, p. 178).
- 22.
This was reported by the magazine "Funk" in its March 17, 1933 issue (quoted in Pohle 1955, p. 321). However, the complete expulsion of Jazz from German broadcasting was announced only on October 12, 1935 by the director of Reich broadcasting, Hadamovsky (Pohle 1955, pp. 321–322).
- 23.
For this purpose, German radio organized in February 1936 a dance band competition in which 500 bands participated in order to close the gap resulting from the prohibition of Jazz music.
- 24.
To this end, the Ministry for the Education of the People and Propaganda financed a studio orchestra. Between 1941 and 1943, it recorded under the name "Charlie and His Orchestra" Jazz music that had actually been prohibited but that was subsequently disseminated in Great Britain and the U.S. via short wave propaganda stations. Since the German Wehrmacht had called most German studio musicians in for duty, the Germans hired musicians from Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands who worked under the supervision of Lutz Templin (Bergmeier and Lotz 1997, pp. 158, 165). Lange (1992, p. 201) estimates that about 300 Swing titles were recorded under the name "Charlie and His Orchestra."
- 25.
Eckert (1941, p. 155), too, points out the crucial role of broadcasting for the war effort: "It was different in the case of programs that first and foremost were supposed to serve soldiers and indirectly tried to establish a connection between front and Heimat (home, or homeland). The best known of them was the Wunschkonzert for the Wehrmacht… The program's effect was particularly significant during the rough winter of 1939/40… It was the cumulative result of all these programs that their listeners were not merely or primarily soldiers but also people at home who desired to remain in contact with the front."
- 26.
The house band initially consisted of Joe Guy (trumpet), Thelonious Monk (piano), Nick Fenton (bass), and Kennv Clark (drums).
- 27.
Bebop found its first home in the Jazz bars on 52nd Street, which thus became the epitome of the Bebop era.
- 28.
An important Jazz label was Blue Note, which was founded in New York in 1939 by the German-Jewish immigrants Francis Wolff and Alfred Lion. During the war, the label was inactive, and it resumed its activities only in 1945 with recordings of Bebop. We also have to mention Bob Weinstock's Prestige label (founded in 1949), Norman Granz's Verve Records (founded in 1951), and Bill Gauer and Orrin Keepnews' Riverside label (founded in 1953), which dedicated itself to the recovery of forgotten "race" recordings by Paramount and Gennett.
- 29.
For an analysis of the socio-cultural aspects of the Bebop movement, see Jones (1963).
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Tschmuck, P. (2012). The Swing Monopoly During the Years of Wartime Economy. In: Creativity and Innovation in the Music Industry. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28430-4_6
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