THE DISCWASHER GROUP OF COMPANIES which produce and distribute quality audio products present HIGH FIDELITY's 100 Years of Recording--Part IV: The Microgroove Era
A series of four original acrylic paintings by Jim Jonson
This is the last in the series, which was inspired by the centennial of the phonograph and planned and commissioned by HIGH FIDELITY'S editors. It has depicted the development of recording through its leading figures in music and the recording business, its dominant means of sound reproduction, and its principal innovations in audio technology. Published earlier this year were "The Cylinder Era" (February), "The Acoustic Era" (April), and "The Electrical Era" ( July). Reproductions will be available early in 1978. The set of four, printed on eighty-pound textured stock and suitable for framing, will be shipped rolled in a card board tube. Write to Discwasher, Inc., One Hundred Years Division, 1407 N. Providence, Columbia, Mo. 65201 for information, price and date of availability.
Jim Jonson, a Connecticut resident, has produced paintings for Saturday Evening Post, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Reader's Digest, Boys' Life, and other journals and has fulfilled commissions for corporations ranging from Capitol Records to American Airlines and the Ford Motor Company. His work has been exhibited in the Denver Art Museum, Art Museum of Sport, and the Los Angeles County Art Museum, among others, and his one-man shows have been seen in many major galleries. A portfolio of Mr. Jonson's drawings and paintings was recently published by Prentice-Hall.
The Discwasher Group is proud to present the fourth and last of this distinguished artist's portrayals of "100 Years of Recording."
Part IV: The Microgroove Era
The Microgroove Era: The Beatles (for the record, that's Paul McCartney, top, then clockwise Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and John Lennon) and a high fidelity system dominate Jim Jonson's final painting in this series. The English foursome, more than any other single organization or talent, produced and still symbolizes the revolution not only of musical style but of marketing that overtook the recording industry in this era. Within only a few years music- rock music- and recordings became the core of a generation's life-style.
Dramatic technical change too was implicit in this revolution, when young people would often forgo other amenities and even necessities to acquire high-quality music-playing equipment. Multichannel component systems found a market undreamed of at the beginning of the period, when high fidelity was an esoteric pursuit and HIGH FIDELITY a struggling new magazine. Tape was intrinsic to recording throughout the era but grew immensely in complexity, from single-track mono to 16 or 24 tracks as standard and from a simple matter of repeated takes until a good one was captured to the extreme elaboration of overdub and mixdown sessions, sometimes long after the initial recording session.
Behind the stereo system appears a seminal figure of the rock revolution: Elvis Presley, whose overt sensuality and insistent beat- and commercial success- were major factors in turning an essentially ethnic music into a phenomenon pervading global culture. Bob Dylan (to the right of McCartney) brought a new synthesis of rock with the social and political consciousness of folk music that would eventually have repercussions throughout American society. Continuing clock wise, Duke Ellington, always in the forefront of jazz innovation, found in the LP the medium for the large forms in which he had long been interested and to which the three-minute sides of his 78s were totally unsuited.
Next we come to three figures who represent their respective classical fields on LP. Conductor Leonard Bernstein has been protean in both the variety and the sheer volume of music he has committed to disc; in addition, his colorful personality, many TV appearances, and importance as a Broadway composer (e.g., West Side Story) make him probably better known to a wider audience than any other contemporary master of the podium. Baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is similarly catholic in his musical coverage- from Lieder to oratorio to opera to symphony (as conductor)- and possibly has made more LP recordings than any per former, classical or popular, in history. Pianist Glenn Gould, who has forsaken live concerts, epitomizes the artist who performs exclusively for the electronic media and who takes as much care with the techniques of recording as he does with his own playing. His micro phone here, incidentally, is one of the Neumann con denser models that have dominated recording during this era.
The seminal figure behind the scenes was Dr. Peter Goldmark, shown as he appeared at the introduction of the LP on June 21, 1948, next to a tower of 78s and holding its musical equivalent on 33 1/3 discs, the result of technology developed by a team working under his direction at CBS Labs (now CBS Technology Center). How the LP came to be used is another matter.
Columbia's Goddard Lieberson conceived of it as a unique communications medium and brilliantly grasped the opportunities its time continuum offered to, in particular, the recording of musical shows and operas, of which his Porgy and Bess was an outstandingly original and creative- and influential- early example. Facing him across an elaborate studio board is fellow producer (for Decca/London) John Culshaw, whose monumental first integral recording of Wagner's Ring convinced the musically sophisticated public of the artistic potential of stereo.
The LP also brought a revolution in recorded musical repertoire, which seemed to expand geometrically each year during the Fifties. Representing this phenomenon is Hermann Scherchen, among the most prolific and daring conductors in the early years. Scherchen was both artist and technician and maintained his own laboratory in which then-arcane pursuits laid important groundwork for future developments in recordings. He and Soviet violinist David Oistrakh were among a host of musicians whose names became household words in this country solely on the basis of their recordings. (Oistrakh's were often pirated from Soviet discs before his concert and studio careers assumed global proportions.) Looming above Oistrakh and Scherchen is Maria Callas, whose immense interpretive talents made her prima donna assoluta of operatic recordings and whose performances sparked the revival of bel canto.
But though the technical upheaval that began in 1948 represented overwhelming cultural gains, they were in many respects dependent upon commercial growth, based squarely on the popular-music market. The introduction of the cheap pocket radio and the 45-rpm single were first steps in that inordinate advancement. On the performing side, the husband-and-wife team of guitarist Les Paul and singer Mary Ford (shown to the right of the 45-rpm player and the young man engrossed in his "transistor") began creating overdub technology almost as soon as the first tape recorders appeared.
The growth of the market and the immense broadening of popular taste that went with it made possible the emergence as major musical forces of performers whose backgrounds would once have limited them to purely specialist audiences. The gospel singing of Mahalia Jackson (between Ford and Lennon) became big business, though she steadfastly refused the secular repertoire and the fortune it might have brought her. Sitarist Ravi Shankar introduced untold millions to the sound of traditional music from India. Chet Atkins (upper left) was a major figure--as both star performer and RCA executive--in the country music boom that not only profoundly influenced other areas of popular music, but made Nashville a musical and recording mecca. The recordings of trumpeter Miles Davis' "cool jazz" made him probably the outstanding new jazz personality of the 1950s. From these roots sprang the present period of fruitful, if often bewildering, musical eclecticism.
-ROBERT LONG
A Letter The DISCWASHER GROUP is a nucleus of small companies dedicated to ultimate quality audio accessories and high fidelity products.
We produce exceptional products based on science, human convenience and a commitment to the Art of Listening.
During 1977, we have been privileged to present the four-part series of text and paintings by Jim Jonson, "100 Years of Recording," as they were conceived by Warren B. Syer, Publisher of High Fidelity magazine.
So it is with gratitude and pride that we pay tribute to the strong and creative individuals who have built an industry of Sound Reproduction.
Most of all, however, we salute the minds of sensitive people who use music to give meaning, value and peace to the greater Forces of our world.
Signed, Dr. Bruce R. Maier and Colleagues
The Discwasher Group of Companies
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(High Fidelity, Oct. 1977)
Also see:
100 Years: The Recording that Ended World War II
The New York Philharmonic Guide to the Symphony (book)