and directors appeared, with several of them featuring strong musical soundtracks, including Shaft (music by Isaac Hayes) and Super Fly (music by Curtis Mayfield). This coincided with the rise of the style called funk. A similarly remarkable flurry occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s, coinciding with increasing public attention to rap, this time including rap artists such as Ice Cube and Tupac Shakur as stars (see figure 42).
MAGAZINES, CHARTS, AND INDUSTRY AWARDS
Billboard magazine has long been the standard weekly publication for news about the music industry. In the latter half of the 1960s, magazines devoted to rock began to be published, with journalists treating the music as a serious cultural phenomenon for the first time. The monthly Rolling Stone magazine, established in 1967 with a countercultural aura about it, is the longest-lasting magazine of this type (see figure 7).
Commercial success in the music industry can be measured by sales figures and popularity charts, although this should not be confused with artistic merit, which is a matter of subjective critical debate. Record sales figures are registered with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which certifies gold (half a million) and platinum (one million) awards.13
Popularity charts are published weekly by Billboard magazine, which is the standard measure for the industry (see figure 8). When new markets opened in the 1920s, record companies advertised and distributed them to specific demographics, and so the categories of hillbilly and race records were born. In the early twentieth century the term race had some positive connotations: “She was what is termed a ‘race woman,’ and desired to work for her own people” (Lilian Wald 1915, qtd. in OED 2019c). “A ‘Race Man’ was somebody who always kept the glory and honor of his race before him…. It was a mark of shame if somebody accused: ‘Why you are not a Race Man (or woman).’ … They were champions of the race” (Zore Neale Hurston 1942, qtd. in OED 2019c).14 The category was definitively relabeled in 1949 as rhythm and blues (or R&B). Hillbilly, a pejorative term, was relabeled as country.
In the 1950s separate charts tracked record sales, radio airplay, and jukebox plays. Since the 1960s sales figures and radio airplay were combined into a single chart. Billboard published separate charts for the three primary markets: pop; rhythm and blues; and country (or country and western, C&W). In recent decades many new markets have been added, including dance, Latin, world, and Christian/gospel. Popularity charts matter for several reasons. They are the clearest measure of the exposure that a record is receiving. Reaching the Top 40 indicates a significant degree of national airplay and sales and consequently public attention. The Top 10 in any chart signifies a more elite status of getting massive national exposure.
Two significant industry awards are decided by vote of industry personnel. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) has offered Grammy (originally Gramophone) Awards in a wide assortment of categories since 1959 (see figure 9). The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation has inducted honorees since 1986, and a dedicated physical space, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, opened in 1995 in Cleveland, Ohio (home of disc jockey Alan Freed’s radio show in the early 1950s).15
A series of reference books compiled by Joel Whitburn (1990–2013b) provides quick and easy access to an artist’s or group’s various Billboard chart rankings, with one series reproducing the actual Hot 100 singles charts. AllMusic (2019) lists Grammy Awards for artists, and Wikipedia typically includes artist discographies that provide Billboard chart rankings.
TECHNOLOGY
Technological innovations have been a driving force in the music industry (e.g., recording devices and audio-storage formats) and in musical performance. New solid body electric guitars and basses, guitar amplifiers, keyboard synthesizers, drum machines, and samplers would all contribute to significant, sometimes revolutionary, musical change (see figure 10).
Commercial recording onto magnetic tape dates to 1948, when Ampex released its first model (200A), with the new medium improving audio fidelity and adding the ability to edit, erase, and reuse tape. By 1950 magnetic tape recording became the professional standard. In 1956 guitarist Les Paul began experimenting with an eight-track tape recorder, and in 1958 Atlantic Records engineer Tom Dowd was using an Ampex eight-track recorder. Multitrack recording enabled individual instruments or voices to have their own unique track of tape to be mixed with the other tracks down to two-track stereo in a separate mixing session. It also allowed some tracks to be recorded in one session and additional tracks to be added at later sessions (called overdubbing). This kind of flexibility opened up the recording studio to new creative possibilities. The industry in general did not move to eight-track recording until 1968 (Horning 2013: 174–80, 203).16
For decades the primary audio-storage format was a disc made of thick fragile shellac, ten inches in diameter, spinning at 78 rpm (revolutions per minute), and holding about three minutes of music. In 1948 Columbia introduced a ten-inch (soon to be twelve-inch) 33% rpm long play (LP) record made of lightweight unbreakable vinyl, which could hold twenty-plus minutes of music. RCA responded in 1949 with its seven-inch 45 rpm single vinyl record holding three minutes. By 1952 their patents were pooled, and jazz and classical music drifted toward LPs and 45s became the format for pop. Stereo record releases date from the mid-1950s, and by 1961 seven million of the thirty million phonographs in U.S. homes could play stereo discs (Sanjek 1996: 363). Vinyl discs remained the standard until the 1970s, when prerecorded cassette tapes (introduced in the early 1960s) started gaining popularity. In 1983 cassette sales ($237 million) passed those of vinyl ($209 million), and digitally recorded compact discs (CD) hit the U.S. market. By 1988 CDs outsold vinyl and by 1992 outsold cassettes. Emotional attachment to the format that birthed and nurtured rock and roll kept vinyl alive (barely), and it has been making a comeback since the early 2000s, hitting its highest point since 1991 again in 2017 at 8.5 percent of all album sales (physical and downloads).17
The first electric guitars hit the market in the early 1930s. Gibson Guitar Corporation’s ES (Electric Spanish) series debuted in 1936 with the ES-150, a favorite of jazz guitarist Charlie Christian. The ES series were hollow (later semihollow) body guitars, essentially acoustic jazz guitars with one or more electromagnetic pickups to amplify the strings. T-Bone Walker played an ES-250; B. B. King played a variety of ES models, eventually settling on the ES-335 (issued in 1958), the first semihollow body or thinline model; and Chuck Berry played an ES-350T and later 335.18
In the early 1950s a new type of electric guitar, with a completely solid body, came on the market, eliminating the resonance of the hollow sound box and amplifying the strings with pickups that had electromagnetic coils embedded in them (one for each string). The solid body allowed the instrument to be played at a louder volume with more even response and longer sustain. The early guitars became classics and have maintained their reputation to this day.
Leo Fender’s company issued its first solid-body guitar, with a single pickup in 1950 (the Esquire), adding a second pickup in 1951, which came to be called the Telecaster.19 In 1954 Fender released the three-pickup Stratocaster, with a different body design. The Telecaster had its proponents in country (Buck Owens), rockabilly (James Burton), and blues (Muddy Waters, Albert Collins).20 The Stratocaster was a favorite in blues and rock, played by Buddy Holly, Buddy Guy, Dick Dale, and, most famously, Jimi Hendrix. The Fender Precision bass, issued in 1951 became the standard model for most bass players. Gibson introduced its first solid-body model in 1952, the Les Paul, which became a favorite of Jimmy Page and Duane Allman. Eric Clapton played a Les Paul in the mid-1960s and switched to a Stratocaster by the early 1970s. As a result of the rise of rock and roll, surf music (Dick Dale, the Beach Boys), and the Beatles, guitar sales jumped in the first half of the 1960s to 1.5 million in 1965. Guitar Player magazine began publishing two years later.21
Fender led the pack in guitar amplifiers with its Twin model, issued in 1952, with twenty-five watts of power and two twelve-inch speakers. By 1963 it
