That Circle of Wax with the hole in the middle has come a powerful long way since John McCormack blubbered the strains of Mother Machree down an acoustical horn.
Sheiks and Shebas danced the Charleston to a windup Victrola in the Roaring Twenties, but during the Depression everyone took to radio, where the music was free; a couple of brothers named Dorsey billed their new orchestra as "Radio's Next Name Band;" and about the only one listening to the phonograph was RCA Victor's dog. In the late Thirties records enjoyed a revival, swing became king, and everyone began collecting recordings of his favorite dance band; automobiles had just eliminated the crank and phonographs did the same.
During the Forties, jazz went from swing to bop, progressive and the cool school, and a fellow named Sinatra reminded folks that croon rhymes with swoon, but nothing very special happened in the record business until 1948. In 1948 something spectacular happened. In an accelerated age, when man had just broken through the sound barrier, was about to crack the four minute mile, rated his automobile by its horsepower, and tried to do everything from racing to reading and reasoning a little faster than his neighbor, Columbia Records reduced their recording speed from 78 RPM to 331/3. This permitted music lovers to read the labels on the records while they were playing; the long play microgroove recording also ushered in a new era in high fidelity recorded sound.
Full orchestras filled living rooms with full, living music; velvet toned troubadors practiced their melodic love in a manner never heard before; jazz bands blasted the plaster from apartment walls. The lover of jazz was perhaps the luckiest of all: the other major recording companies began waxing LP labels too (though they couldn't use the trade-marked initials) and the popularity of the slow-speed platters produced new, independent recording companies across the country, many of them devoted almost exclusively to jazz. In addition, the established firms began digging out old discs from their wax museums, releasing sides that had long been collector's items. Today a jazz fan can choose the best from Bix and Bessie to Billie, Brubeck and Baker, and as though in celebration over this happy state of affairs, the platter people are wrapping their wares in handsome packages unlike anything seen in pre-LP days.
Artists, photographers and designers have contributed a colorful collection of jackets that not only help sell the records inside, but, somehow, make them a bit more enjoyable after the purchase. David Stone Martin has done an impressive series of covers for Clef and Norgran, Capitol commissioned surrealist Salvador Dali to paint a jacket for a syrupy Jackie Gleason session, and a colorful Columbia cover advertised both a new Dave Brubeck record and a new brand of lipstick, but it was Pacific Jazz that carried record art to its logical extreme: they commissioned prominent West Coast artists to paint abstract impressions of the music. The exciting results, completely free of any recognizable form, were used to package equally exciting jazz by Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan.
Smart covers help boost LP sales
