99% Invisible - 524- The Day the Music Stopped

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

On Aug. 1, 1942, the nation’s recording studios went silent. Musicians were fed up with the new technologies threatening their livelihoods, so they refused to record until they got their fair share. One Year's Evan Chung explores one of the most consequential labor actions of the 20th century, and how it coincided with an underground revolution in music led by artists like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.Subscribe to the fantastic One Year: 1942 

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. The Great Slate podcast One Year tells stories of the people and struggles that changed America, One Year at a Time. In each episode, host Josh Levine explores a story that you may have forgotten or have a skewed memory of because you never knew the full context, or maybe something you never even heard of before. They cover everything from the challenger explosion to that time someone discovered an image skewed memory of because you never knew the full context, or maybe something you never even heard of before.

They cover everything from the challenger explosion to that time someone discovered an image of Jesus in a tortilla. It's really smart and well made, and one of those shows that I'll hear an episode of, and I'll think, oh man, it would have been fun to report that story. It's done four seasons, each covering a different year, 1977, 1995, 1986, and 1942. The 1942 season is the most recent and had a lot of stories that resonated with what's going on in the world today. It's an episode from that set that I want to share. It's called The Day the Music Stopped. Hey, this is Josh Levine, the host of One Year.

This week we have a story from senior producer Evan Chung. In the final days of July 1942, as American factories were ramping up production, one industry was busier than ever. Recording studios were booked solid for days and nights too. Producers and performers were working around the clock, churning out future hit after future hit, like this wartime classic recorded on July 28th by Spike Jones and his city slickers.

When the purer says, we used to master ace, we hired, hired, riding the purer space not too long. The next day, Connie Boswell was in the studio tracking a romantic ode to rationing. Not every song made in this recording frenzy was propaganda. The week began with sessions by Judy Gar me and my gal. The week began with sessions by Judy Garland and Jean Kelly. There were recordings by Cab Callaway and Count Basie. Benny Goodman was cutting records that week too,

so we're Bing Crosby and Dynas Shore. Ella Fitzgerald got in on the act on July 31, along with Lester Young, Woody Herman, and Harry James. And then, on August 1st, nothing. Every recording studio in America went silent. They stayed silent the next day, and the next. The music didn't start up again the following week, the following month, or the following year. This wasn't because of wartime austerity. It was because the musicians of America had collectively

walked off the job. New technology was threatening their livelihoods, so they launched one of the most consequential union actions in the nation's history, a total ban on recording that cut off the country's supply of new songs. But underground, artists were developing something revolutionary, and when the ban finally ended, American music would find itself transported into a whole new era. This is one year 1942. The day the human voice. It's a man singing, captured on a device called a phonotogram in 1860.

This is a very, very, very, auspicious moment because when we think about sound, it's typically accorded with the powers of the gods in ancient societies. Tim Anderson is a media scholar at Old Dominion University, so there's something God-like about this. When humans harness the power to record sound, it upended our 40,000-year-old understanding of what music is. Music had always been a performance that dissipates the moment it hits the air. We don't usually consider that history when we play a song.

We are not thinking about how tremendously odd this is and how tremendously powerful it is. You're basically regenerating life. At the turn of the century, recorded music became an industry. That's when songs began to be pressed onto shellac discs. Records allowed musical performances to be mass reproduced, so that in 1904, more than a million people could bring the tenor and rico-coruso into their homes.

When listeners gained the magical ability to bottle up and uncork musicians on demand, what did it mean for the musicians themselves? As the recording industry continued to grow, some performers began to worry that power was being taken away from them. If you are playing live, you're playing for a specific audience. You have a connection with them, and you control the output. But the minute you put your voice for your song on record, you've already given that up. For some musicians, anxiety about recording technology would turn into outright hostility. And one person's hatred for canned music topped them all. about recording technology, return into outright hostility.

And one person's hatred for canned music topped them all. He is the boss of the nation's musicians. Mr. James Caesar Petrillo, the president of the American Federation of Musicians. I am satisfied that if the public of America knew the fight of musicians, knew what he's up against, that the public senate would immediately change. ["The Future of the World"]

James Cesar Petrilo, there's something very big and brassy to me, he's like so Chicago. James Cesar Petrilo was born in 1892 and grew up on Chicago's west side. His father was a sewer digger from Italy, and he had a hard-scrabble childhood. According to legend, Jimmy once got into a fight with nine boys and defeated them all one after the other over the course of two hours. He quit school after the fourth grade. By then, he already found his calling.

Petrilo grew up as part of this musician's union he was a trumpeter. Just not a very good one. Here he is later in life playing a questionable duet with former President Harry S. Truman on piano. Music may not have been his forte, but musicians were his people. In 1922, he became the president of the Chicago local 10 of the American Federation of Musicians.

He quickly imposed discipline, consolidated power, and ruthlessly grew membership. Although he drew the line at the city's black musicians, he refused to let their local merge with his. Taking charge in the Capone era, Petrillo tussled with Chicago's power brokers, theater owners, and other union leaders. His intimidation tactics made him plenty of enemies. In 1924, the windows of his house got blown out by a bomb. When Petrilo took over, it was an exciting time to be a musician. The record industry was growing in popularity, especially after the emergence of much higher quality

electrical recording in 1925. But most musicians paid the bills by playing live. And in the 1920s, they had a brand new venue. WLS Chicago D. Series, Robux Station. Let's have a little song. Come on. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Coggo D, series roadbuck station, a little song, come on. Hello, hello, hello. In the early days of radio, the music on most stations came from live performers.

But it was another medium that provided the best work. The movies. With the introduction of silent pictures, musicians became even more important because they provided the soundtrack. They provided a live soundtrack. Robin DG Kelly is a professor of history at UCLA. And this is something that we often take to grant it, what it meant to go to the theater. Going to the movies was going to a concert. A cinema might hire an organist, or a four-piece combo, or a full orchestra. Quite a few of those jobs went to women, and if you were in a black neighborhood, you'd likely see black performers.

Harlan was famous for going to hear someone like Fats Waller, great piano player, you know, make up some music on the spot. His performances were sometimes more the spectacle than the film itself. [♪ Music playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing and theaters. There were about 2,000 accompanists in James Petrilo's Chicago alone, and these were coveted gigs. They're tied to a location, they keep you off the road, and if you're working in an orchestra pit making live film scores, you have a job there potentially seven

days a week. But then, in 1927, Al Jolson appeared on movie screens. He was in blackface, and in full sound. The movie that jazzed Singer with its tropes drawn From Minstrelsea is an American cultural relic, but it ushered in a new cinematic era of recorded sound tracks. Theater owners rushed to embrace the so-called talkies, and cleared out their orchestra pits. And when we see the rise of early sound cinema and we start to see the decline of these orchestras, this is shocking for many musicians.

New technology had given them their comfortable lives. And just as quickly, technology had put them on the unemployment line. That's how technology works often, you know. Technology is seen as providing more access, more opportunities, but then also you have that sort of hidden agenda. It's a labor-saving device. You know, but labor-saving device means people lose their jobs.

And overnight, some 18,000 musicians were loud. James Petrello was incensed. Here he is in 1948, testifying to Congress about the plight of working performers. So, at that time, the day, sad experience, it was a natural thing for the musicians to try and protect themselves the best we know how. He fought back and tried to force every movie theater in Chicago to employ at least one union organist. When owners refused, some theaters mysteriously went up in flames. Petrillo denied having anything to do with those fires. Ultimately, it didn't matter.

By the mid-30s, there were only 125 movie theater jobs left for musicians in Chicago. And so this was a huge loss, but it was a loss during the Great Depression, which made matters even worse. Where are you going to go? You know, where are you going to work? Well, okay, we'll go to the bars. But that only lasted so long. Once the restaurants and beer gardens of the nation all had their orchestras, but the mechanical jukeboxes drove them out of work. The jukebox was yet another disruption. During the Depression, cafe owners saw this new technology as a way to cut costs.

You can now stock a box of records and essentially say to the duo or trio there that played on a regular basis, you're not needed. By 1938, the US had at least 200,000 jukeboxes. If you figure a single machine could replace two or three musicians, that's a lot of jobs lost. Things were changing on the radio, too. Stations realized that they could save money by playing records instead of hiring live bands. Musicians who had made recordings were now essentially competing with themselves. It's being utilized against you. You no longer have that job because you made that record. One recording could be heard by millions over and over again. It gives consumers and corporations

more control over musicians' labor. It cheapens musicians' labor in many ways. And it is traumatic to lose control over your production. And it's a threat, it's disruptive. James C. Petrilo took that threat very seriously. To protect his union members, he pressured radio stations in Chicago to destroy records after playing them just one time. His militant tactics caught the attention of anxious musicians all over the country.

And in 1940, he got elected the national leader of the American Federation of Musicians in a unanimous vote. So he's elected as president and slowly but surely assembles and moves forward with this idea that we're going to try to counter the nuisance known as canned music. Coming out of the depression, the recording industry was dominated by just three companies, RCA Victor, Columbia, and DECA. Those three labels controlled about 90% of the market.

And that's who Petrillo decided to target. We've got some power, we're going to put some pressure on it, and we want some changes. On June 8th, 1942, Petrillo spoke at the AFM's annual convention. By then, more than half of the unions 138,000 members were unemployed. He told the delegates, now is the time, that Union musicians would never again play at their own funerals. Why should we record these things

that are gonna put us out of our jobs? We're not doing this anymore. He declared that on August 1st, 1942, the musicians of America were going to stop recording, permanently. The crowd of 700 delegates responded with rapturous applause. The fight was on. And Petrillo was confident the record industry would lose.

Why does it take some time for the radio stations and the jukebox to feel the ban on recordings of the American musician, the time is going to come that they're not going to be able to get the records they want and satisfy the American public. That's the long chance we're taking. In the summer of 1942, a letter arrived at every recording studio in America. It said, your license from the American Federation of Musicians for the employment of its members in the making of musical recordings

will expire on July 31st, 1942, and will not be renewed. At the bottom was the rubber stamped signature of Jane C. Patrillo. Some thought it was a bluff. It wasn't. As first move in a campaign to share fully in the profits of every commercial use of recorded music, the American Federation of Musicians for bad its members to perform for any recording company. At Petrilo's order, the record business ground to a stop.

The band was pretty near total. From Benny Goodman down to the tavern Fiddler, the record companies were left with nobody to record, and they were not happy about it, especially since Petrillo said that he wasn't interested in negotiating. Refusing to set any terms was tactical because if he made demands that would make it sound like the musicians were on strike and after Pearl Harbor labor leaders had pledged not to do that. You have to keep the engines running in this country for the war effort and a

strike would have been anti-patriotic and you paid a price for doing so. Mark Myers is an author and music critic. He says Petrillo tried to regal out of that pledge by arguing a technicality. Well, you know, it's not really a strike. We're just not going to work in recording studios. If you want to have us on the radio, that's fine. We're just not showing up at this other place. The government didn't think much of that line of reasoning. The US is pretty much looking at this and saying, this is a real problem. The US government really wants this to end. You know, this shuts down economies. Media studies professor Tim Anderson again.

There's a real reaction. It's not pro-labor. I mean, it's very much we have to get this under control. The director of the Office of War Information declared the ban a threat to the war effort. He warned that small radio stations that relied on recorded music might shut down, and that those stations were essential for keeping the public up to date. Other government officials said the ban was unpatriotic, that it was wrong to deprive little children of music during wartime. In other words, while Americans had to ration rubber, gas, and coffee, music was a step too far.

Washington's hostility was surprising, considering how friendly the Roosevelt administration had been to the labor movement. It was FDR who had signed the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Wagner Act. By this act employers are bound to bargain collectively with an organized majority of their workers. We take that for granted today, but it codified that workers have this right to organize historian Robin D. G. Kelly. Despite the Great Depression, unions became stronger than they had been really since the 1870s. Many labor strikes, many fights for fair wages, the 40-hour work week, and it's being seen as a remedy to out of control capital.

But during World War II, Washington saw unions as impediments to the war machine, and the public didn't support the musicians either. A Gallup poll showed a 75% disapproval rate, even though many of the people listening to music were laborers themselves. You would think that workers would stand in solidarity with the musicians, but they wanted entertainment, and the struggles and musicians didn't seem to carry the same kind of moral weight as say the struggles of steelworkers. Even today, people have a hard time thinking of

music as labor, but Petrillo argued that musicians had to be seen as workers just like pipefitters or minersors. The only difference between the minors and the musicians is that the miners didn't make the machine that might destroy that. That argument didn't really catch on with the public. It didn't help that recording companies, broadcasters, and editorial cartoonists were mounting a PR campaign against Petrilo. Oh, in a few short months, found himself the target of an unprecedented barrage of public criticism and became to many the symbol of a laborer's are unbridled and irresponsible.

No one was ever more vilified than I have in the President's country if they would spend half of the money, that they spend on cartoons, vilifying me, they would give it to the musicians, and we'd all be happy." One editorial called Petrillo an inflated little non-entity who strong-armed himself into dictatorial power. They quite simply tried to say to them, you know, he's a strong man leader like Mussolini and Hitler. His critics claimed the band wasn't really collective action, but merely an autocrat's

personal vendetta imposed on reluctant musicians. No, no, I mean, he clearly was the strong person that put it forward, but there was real foam-entined pressure at many different levels. It wasn't just his idea. You know, I think musicians in general were just really, they're really, really upset with what's happening to their labor position. The fact is though, it was easy to lump him into, say, a category like Mussolini or Hitler, because I think he's a character.

I think, you know, Petrilla really was a character. Now, Mr. Petrilo is a very entertaining gentleman. He's a little man with short stubby arms and pudgy fingers. Sometimes as he speaks in axi, he seems to be a little bit like Chico Marx or perhaps even Jimmy Duranty. A writer for Life magazine described Petrilo as resembling an elderly frog

that has just eaten a big and somewhat bitter dragonfly. The Trillo was wisecracking and pugnacious. His personality drew a lot of attention, but it could also detract from his arguments. His critics caricatured him as a luddite, foolishly trying to stand in the way of innovation. There's a real famous cartoon with him writing a dinosaur, this idea that we're going back to the past, and it paints him as somebody who's trying to hold progress back. Petrilla really did seem to hate recording technology, but he wasn't so naive to think

he could just turn back the clock. It's not about harming progress, it's about saying, hey, hold on, hold on a minute. We're progressing, but you're leaving behind all these people, all these laborers that put these records into play. Why aren't they getting paid? Because so few musicians earned a living from recording, they weren't risking much by staying out of the studio.

So they were committed to holding their ground until they got a fair shake. And the recording industry realized it needed a plan. The record labels began mounting their counteroffensive even before the ban officially started. Well, the first thing they do is they stop pile. They go, okay, well, we know that this is coming down the line. We are going to shove a lot of things in into production and see if we can wait this out. That's where you see that flurry of round the clock recording in the final weeks of July 1942.

That stockpile of songs left record companies with plenty of material to trickle out that summer and fall, and even into the holidays. Fortunately for Decker Records, Bing Crosby had recorded White Christmas shortly before the band went into effect. It topped the charts for 11 weeks in 1942 and became the biggest selling single of all time. The stockpile was working, but it wasn't unlimited. And Petrillo was not going to relent anytime soon.

The public was going to demand new songs, so the labels began looking for loopholes, ways to evade the band and make new recordings. One of the interesting things about the recording band is it did not affect vocalists. Vocalists didn't belong to the musician's union, only instrumentalist it. Writer Mark Myers again. What does that mean? Well it meant Frank Sinatra could sing, but there was nobody to play music behind them. Ever homework, ever homework.

Except the record labels realized there were some accompanists they could hire. It wasn't only singers who were left out of the union. There were a handful of musicians that were excluded too, presumably because their instruments were deemed too amateurish, things like Ocarina's, Eucalyles, and Jawharps. The classic examples that harmonica players were not organized. So one of the ways that people got around these bands was actually by recording harmonica acts. The wine in March 20, till I feel like 99. There was another more common way to circumvent the band.

Producers tried backing their singers with more singers. What they decided to do is create a vocal choir, so that the vocal choir is creating what the instruments would have played, like on this 1942 recording by Ethel Murn. The labels tried out the acapella tactic on a bunch of artists, like Bing Crosby, Dick Haymes, and Perry Como. All the best of love to you. Not very successful.

You know, the stuff sounds sort of modland, doesn't sound as peppy and as punchy, but that's how vocalists got around it. It proved to be a short-lived fad, but there is some speculation that this was the origin of the wordless vocals you'd hear all over lounge records in the 50s and 60s. During the ban, there were a handful of exceptions, where James Petrilla would permit instrumentalists to record. This is Captain Glenn Miller speaking for the Army Air Force's training command archter, and we hope the two soldiers of the Allied forces

enjoy these V-discs that we're making just for you. V-discs were records distributed exclusively to the troops. But Trillo allowed them on the condition that the soldiers destroy them before coming home. But still, at least temporarily, the military got to hear Frank Sinatra's hit Close to You, backed by a full orchestra. On the home front, all you got was the Achapella version.

Another exception to the recording band was in Hollywood. The studio orchestras there continued to make movie soundtracks, but that led to some oddities. Take the 1942 film that would go on to win Best Picture. There's a famous scene in Casablanca where Ingrid Bergman's character Ilsa requests a song from Sam the piano player, played by Dooley Wilson. As time goes by became one of the most famous movie themes ever, and it seemed like Dooley Wilson had a guaranteed hit record on his hands, if he could just head into a studio and play it again.

Sam. You played it for her, you played for me. Except Dooley Wilson couldn't play it. Instead, the record companies dug deep into their vaults. They dusted off old recordings of his time goes by and re-release them. And when to love a fool, they still say I love you, on that you can rely. Frank Munn's vocal style on this 1931 recording already sounded ancient a decade later. But listeners craved as time goes by so

badly that this version hit number three in April 1943. Everyone knew that consumers wouldn't be content with moldy oldies forever. Music can't just stay frozen in time, it has to evolve. And the truth is, it was evolving very rapidly, even though most Americans had no idea. That's because it was all happening in the middle of the night, hidden away in smoky clubs. And when the new sound finally got out, American culture would never be the same. We'll be right back.

After six months, James C. Petrillo finally offered a proposal for how to end the recording ban. In February 1943, he told the record labels that they would have to pay a royalty directly to the union for each record sold. That money would go into a trust fund for unemployed musicians. The union would hire them to play free public concerts. This fund will not be used for any other purpose, but for the advancement of musical culture. You know, this was a modern solution. Tim Anderson again. It would turn a record into another live performance because you could actually take the residuals that went into the trust fund and then give them to somebody else to play.

To the three major labels, it was an absurd idea. RCA Victor, Columbia, and Deca rejected the proposal as socialistic. Why should they be contributing to a welfare fund for people who weren't even their employees? So, the band continued. In 1943, the pressure was mounting to record some new songs. But even as the band passed the one year mark, the three major labels stood together. Or so they thought. Their United Front was finally broken, as all but two of the biggest recording companies agreed to Petrillo's terms.

Deca was the smallest of the three companies. It didn't have the back catalog that RCA or Columbia did, and by September 1943, its stockpile of recordings was nearly depleted. Deca is running out of money. I mean, they're on the verge of bankruptcy. Writer Mark Myers again. And Deca throws in the towel and Deca signs with the union. They say, fine, we'll pay you that royalty. James Petrillo was ready to gloat. The recent contracts which we have negotiated

will bring into the federation treasury approximately $3 million per year. But the two biggest labels still refuse to budge. Columbia and RCA, they say, no, we're not going to do that. We think eventually Congress is going to force you guys back to work. Deca, though, was now free to record. And not only Deca, all of a sudden, these little companies sweep in and take full advantage of the fact that Columbia and RCA are off the market.

More than 100 small companies also signed royalty agreements with the Union. Many of them were entirely new labels, entrepreneurs sniffed an opportunity. Perhaps there was now room to muscle in on RCA and Columbia's turf. The question was, who were they going to record? The guaranteed money makers were big bands. Swing had been developed by black big bands in Kansas City more than a decade earlier. By the mid-1930s, white band leaders like Benny Goodman and Arty Shaw had picked it up, and turned it into a crossover phenomenon. For a country anxious over the Depression and a World War, it was the perfect soundtrack.

Swing was basically an elixir for society at large. Swing music is designed to cheer people up, to keep people in a good mood, to give people hope. Big Bands held the number one position on the Billboard charts virtually every week since the charts began in 1940. So, it would make sense for these startup labels to record them. Except, they couldn't. They can't record already Shaw.

They can't record Benny-Germann. All these major band leaders are signed to the two labels that are sitting there whittling away waiting for the union to cave so they can't get the big talent. Instead the new companies recorded niche genres, POCA, GOSPIL, and what was then called And you leave me alone, I'm wasting my tears on you. But some label owners knew of another option. As the recording band Trudged On, a group of jazz musicians had been developing something different, a mind-blowing style of music that no one had put on record. This new music had been born out of artistic necessity, because as great as swing was,

it could be a little stifling for individual musicians. They weren't hired to express themselves, they were there to serve their audience. The dance band was for background. If you were dancing, your primary focus was the guy or the gal you are dancing with. So while the music could be wonderful and lush and vibrant, it could also feel a little formulaic. Each dance band might have its own style, but that was entirely determined by the band leader.

That band leader's sound took precedence over anybody's individual ego or playing ability. So individuals had to suppress individualism. You had to be part of the larger sound of that band. You had to be an ingredient in the sauce. As an instrumentalist, you may not even get a chance to solo. And if you did land a solo, you played it how the band leader wanted it, or you'd be in trouble. They ran the bands like little companies, like corporations, where things had to be done

a certain way, and if you didn't like it, you got fired, and if you didn't play right, you got fired. So there were rigid rules for those big bands. So precarity for musicians was part and parcel of the job. Historian Robin D. G. Kelly, and so the glamour of waking up and being creative and coming up with something new and expanding their horizons of art, that's something that most musicians don't even have to luxury to do, even if that's what inspired them in the first place. But not every jazz musician in the early 40s could settle for a life of big band conformity. The trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie was one artist who yearned for something more. His way of thinking wasn't as rigid.

I mean, he was thinking more of himself as an individual. How can I create a new language? How can I create a new sound?" And he wasn't the only musician brimming with ideas. There was an idiosyncratic piano player named Philoneus Monk, an inventive percussionist named Kenny Clark, and a bluesy saxophoneist from Kansas City, Charlie Parker. But these musicians needed a space to try out their new ideas. That wasn't going to happen in their day job in the big band. So they had to do it off the clock. You know, when they're not playing in the bands or they have off nights, they're going

to after hours clubs, you know, you had Mittens in Harlem and you had Monroe's uptown. These are the clubs where a revolution, a slow revolution in music was taken in place, where musicians will come and jam. The jam sessions might not start until one or two in the morning. And when you walk in, you see a room full of both musicians sitting ready to play

and some hangers on who just love the music. People are talking, people are laughing, and on the bandstand you'd see Thelonius Monk, you'd see Kenny Clark, and they'd be up there calling tunes. They could play all the things you are. Nice work if you can get it. All these different songs people think they know, and then they would take them on a journey. And the music is raising the hairs on the backs of your arms. Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker might be up there,

experimenting with strange harmonies and dissonant sounds. Musicians would be either thrilled by it, excited, or confused. In those who are confused sometimes would have to sit down and they couldn't handle it. Those left standing might go on for hours, daring each other to take the music farther and farther out there. People would be cheering and rooting on their favorite saxophonist to go after the other one. Whoa, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's an environment not unlike a boxing arena. In the illegal boxing arena where two people are battling it out. The solo might go on for 10 minutes. I mean, the longer somebody could play, the more wild the audience would get. Virtuosity was a virtue. They wanted to play faster.

Very, very fast, too fast to dance to. And they are, you know, shooting out ideas that are like lightning bolts. Max Roacher, Kenny Clark, might drop in a couple of bombs on the snare and then hit the symbol once, and then come back and hit the symbol twice. And, you know, there's a rhythm there, but it's fracturing. It's almost like looking at a cubist painting. All this created a certain kind of sense of freedom during these moments of joy. You know, they're not necessarily conscious attempts to make new music.

They're just conscious attempts to be free. Parker, Gillespie, Monk and the other innovators, they didn't have a special name for this radical new sound they developed. But years later, it would come to be called Bebop. This music's being played, audiences going nuts, but as soon as they go home, they need to come back to the club to hear it again. That's because there were no records made of all that wild experimentation in 1942 or 1943. For many jazz fans, Petrillo's recording band represents a dark age where the evolution of our greatest artists

is erased from history. That is a lost period of time when it comes to bebop. But to view the recording band purely as a tragedy for jazz is way too simplistic. The truth is, bebop probably wouldn't have been recorded even without the band. The Big Three record companies weren't in the business of recording unproven talents like Charlie Parker, who played at five in the morning at Harlan Clubs. But thanks to the recording band, the big three labels now had a whole lot of competition. Once Deca agreed to the union's terms, all these independent companies came out the wood works.

Labels like Apollo, Guild, Musicraft, Commodore Label, Dial, Signature, Blue Note, Savoy, Deluxe, Commodore label, dial, signature, blue note, Savoy, Deluxe, many were brand new, others were reinvigorated. That was a real new development that shaped the future of jazz. Those small labels became the jazz labels. These labels couldn't record the established band leaders like Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. So they took a chance on the guys playing a wild, labels couldn't record the established band leaders like Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman.

So they took a chance on the guys playing a wild, sophisticated new music in after-hours clubs. And that's when the revolution kicks into high gear. On February 16th, 1944, Apollo Records held its very first recording session in New York City. In the studio that day, Bridezi Gillespie, Max Roach, saxophone, and Coleman Hawkins and others. And what they came up with would be the first commercial recording of Bebop.

They're basically turning jam session and all the experimental music into these records and selling them. But that was only the beginning. One very famous recording is Coco, which is Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie. It is kind of a clinic in bebot music in terms of virtuosity and harmonies. In Coco, Charlie Parker takes the chord changes to another song,

a standard called Cherokee, and he invents a completely new melody on top of it. That's a revolutionary thing. It's like taking the same house, but changing all the furniture. Now you hear the drums completely changed, Max Roach. He's playing it three times as fast as it should be played. He's playing it three times as fast as it should be played Wow Coco is so fast and so complex that it even stymied Miles Davis

He was supposed to play on the session, but he just couldn't keep up I mean the intricacy and the density. I mean keep in mind other than that melodic line that sets up the song. All the rest of it's made up, almost spot, right there. I mean it's inconceivable. So many years later, that's still fresh, it's still exciting, it's still dynamic, and it's still a wonderment. Until this point, Bebop had felt like a secret language that only a handful of artists knew. Even other jazz musicians who had seen Parker and Gillespie play hadn't been able to figure

out what they were actually doing, but now, they could take a record like Coco home with them and put it on their phonographs and slow it down and start to write down what they were actually doing. But now, they could take a record like Coco home with them and put it on their phone graphs and slow it down and start to write down what they were hearing. Ah, that's what Dizzy Gillespie's doing there. Ah, I see. That's what Charlie Parker's doing with that court. So they could sort of unravel the recipe to Bebop once these records were made. And with that, this new sound became emulated all over. And the trajectory of jazz was transformed. Bebop opened up space for new harmonization. You get more dissonance and more abstraction.

The rhythm change dramatically, pretty much forever. That becomes a standard. It doesn't go back to the old way. The old style of a rigid big band under the control of a single leader was giving way to a new era. All of a sudden it's not about one person, it's about everybody, and it's about what they're bringing to it. Everybody gets a turn. Everybody gets a solo. The whole game was to sound as individual as possible and to create your own musical identity. But even as bebop started to spread, the recording band was still going against the two

biggest companies. In October 1944, President Roosevelt personally asked James C. Petrilo to end it. Petrilo rebuffed even him. With Deca and the new small labels gaining ground, RCA and Colombia realized they could no longer wait it out. So, on November 11, 1944, they surrendered. The labels signed an agreement accepting the union's terms for three years. After more than 27 months, the recording band was finally over. James Caesar Petrillo had won. Temporarily. I think he'd temporarily win, but they eventually lose the war over records.

In 1946, Congress passed a bill called the LIA Act. It was designed explicitly to weaken the American Federation of Musicians and was more commonly known as the Anti-Patrillo Act. Hey, look, we don't want this to ever happen again and we're gonna defame the GFM and they effectively defame them. The next year came the Taft Heartly Act, which diminished the power of all unions.

Washington was in the midst of a full anti-labor backlash. Meanwhile, new technological advances were coming that filled the union with anxiety. What would television and FM radio mean for musicians? Would they lead to more opportunities or more displacement? These questions were still unanswered when the Union's agreement with the record labels expired at the end of 1947. That's when Petrilo called for another band. He asked when I'd record again.

I said Petrilo's the boss. I've got the record band blues. This is Dina Washington's song record band blues. Yes, I've got those record band blues. This is Dina Washington's song, Record Band Blues. The record companies were better prepared in 1948. The band didn't last nearly as long this time. The AFM won some of its demands, but even Petrilo could see where things were headed. You basically says in 48 industry is taken over.

They've taken the reins. I'm not going to lie to you guys. We're no longer in the leading position. The solutions that James C. Patrillo fought for were innovative, but ultimately inadequate. Using royalties to pay for some free concerts wouldn't save musicians jobs. The issues that he raised in 1942 never really got settled.

Decades later, they popped up again with the rise of Napster and streaming services like Spotify. In the same questions or ask, how are you going to compensate the content providers? We still have a long ways to go to talk about fair and just compensation. We need to think about what the norms of progress are, anytime that we disrupt a so-called industry through tech, and displace a bunch of people and a bunch of workers, we were not thinking about the issues of ethics. We're thinking about how can we do this more efficiently and at less cost, you know, then we'll grow our profit margins. The victories of the recording band may have been temporary and insufficient, you know, then we'll grow our profit margins.

The victories of the recording band may have been temporary and insufficient, but the impact of bebop was permanent and profound, and not only within the world of jazz. As the recording spread after the war, bebop began what Ralph Ellison called a revolution in culture. It spilled into art and literature. It altered how people spoke and dressed, and it became a soundtrack to the struggle for civil rights. Duke Gellington called this music the Marcus Garvey Extension.

This is a music with politics, a music that caused for feet of all black people that celebrates blackness. This wasn't at all what James C. Petrilo had in mind. He'd fought to keep black musicians out of his local in Chicago, but it may be his recording band's greatest legacy. If it wasn't for the band and these small record labels, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clark, Philonea Monk, might never have been

known. Because if there was no band, RCA, Columbia, and Deca would have continued to control the market, they wouldn't have allowed this music to surface. Never would have become a thing. And modern jazz might not have existed at all. The episode of One Year was written and produced by Evan Chong. It was edited by me, Josh Levine, and Derek Chong, Slate's senior supervising producer of narrative podcasts. Additional production came from Sophie Summergrad and Sam Ken.

Our senior technical director is Mary Jacob. Holly Allen created the artwork for this season. The audio of the fanatogram came from first sounds. Tim Anderson's book is called Making Easy Listening. Mark Myers is the author of Why Jazz Happened. And Robin D. G. Kelly's biography of Thelonius Muck is called Thelonius Muck, the life and times of an American original.

You can send us feedback and ideas and memories from 1942 at 1yearatslate.com and you can call us on the 1 year hotline at 203-343-0777. We'd love to hear from you. Special thanks to Christina Cauterucci, Madeline Ducharm, Susan Matthews, Soul Worthen, Bill Kerry, Katie Rayford, Ben Richmond, Caitlin Schneider, Cleo Levin, Seth Brown, Rachel Strom, and Alicia Montgomery, Slates VP of Audio. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week with more from 1942.