Music as a Universal Language

Music is everywhere in the modern world, but it was not always this way. The concept of music is universal throughout human societies and may have been one of the earliest forms of artistic expression. Surely, there has never been a time when a mother would not have comforted her child with a simple tune or delighted when the child sang back to her.

From the time that mankind became aware of the Gods and other powers greater than themselves, music has been a part of religion and worship. Once enough wealth and capital were acquired for a noble class, musicians would have been hired to entertain royal courts. However, for centuries the music most people would have experienced was created by themselves or people they were close to.

In the Twenty-first Century, music is truly everywhere. We step into our car to drive to work and our cars chimes, tweets, and even sings to us to reinforce safety habits. When we shop for groceries the atmosphere is moderated by strains of calming music played over the public address system. A workplace where music is not playing constantly is considered oppressive. The design of the Smartphone that so many of us carry everywhere is based on a society-changing device able to carry and play thousands of songs.

The closing of the Golden Age of Radio coincided with the rise of the Baby Boom generation and the so-called Counter Culture. Whenever these groups met in a gathering of more than just a few individuals occurred, music would have had a place. Someone would have a guitar to lead the group in song, but more often music would have come from a car radio or a cheap, Japanese pocket-sized transistor radio.

From Dashes and Dots to Melodies

On Thanksgiving Day 1919 the action of a Kansas vs Missouri football game was broadcast from Station 5XB in College Station, Texas. Descriptions of the action were sent via Morse Code because that technology for voice transmission was limited. Westinghouse began experimenting with music transmission in 1914, but the quality of transmission left much to be desired.

The technology of mass-produced receiver sets quickly improved, setting the stage for the launch of commercial radio in the early Twenties. Broadcast technology outpaced recording technology, enforcing a requirement for live transmissions. RCA executive David Sarnoff envisioned a "radio music box" as early as 1916. In a practical sense, this required a broadcast studio large and advanced enough to house an orchestra.

Many broadcasts followed the format of Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll's Amos 'n' Andy, two actors on opposite sides of a microphone playing off each other. The popularity of the program not only made it "necessary" for households to invest in a radio set, but Amos 'n' Andy also showed other vaudevillians a new way to make a living without the need to go on the road.

The Spice of Life

Song and Dance teams were a staple of the vaudeville circuits, but, obviously, dancing and other physical displays over the radio left much to be desired. Songs could be an extension of the jokes and other dialog. A studio would often have a good piano or, perhaps, an organ, the volume of which could be moderated so as not to drown out the singers.

Theaters on the vaudeville circuits often adopted a Variety format. Several acts of different types might be scheduled on a night, playing in an order that kept audiences engaged even though they might enter or leave the theater at different times. Radio vaudevillians modified the variety format to fit their more limited time blocks.

Microphone technology advanced to allow a live audience in the studio to watch the broadcast being made and giving the comedian host someone to play off of and react to. These same advances also allowed an orchestra to provide music for the show, and band leaders became as important as comic foils as they were for the music. However, the time for music men to shine in their own right was approaching.

It Don't Mean a Thing…

Many music scholars consider Jazz to be America's most lasting and important contribution to the worldwide culture. Many influences contributed to the development of Jazz, which can trace its roots from the celebratory marches on the streets of New Orleans to the sad but defiant Blues of the Mississippi Delta to the smoky dance and supper clubs in major industrial cities of the North like Chicago and New York.

A form of Jazz developed on the nightclub circuit that was particularly adapted to youthful dancing while becoming more acceptable to white audiences. This acceptance was largely due to white band leaders incorporating the style and rhythms into their arrangements. White orchestras were seen as being more refined and disciplined than black combos which originated the sound.

Greater acceptability meant that club owners could charge more for admission as well as attract the interest of the new radio networks that were exploring the technology of remote broadcasting. Listeners across the country got to hear what they were told was the latest sounds while driving the popularity of the venues making the broadcast. Somewhat ironically, enthusiasm for danceable Jazz grew while the nation was experimenting with Prohibition.

Prohibition finally came to an end, but the popularity of big bands playing Jazz music that people could dance to continued to grow. In late 1934, Nabisco began sponsoring Let's Dance on NBC. The late Saturday night program broadcast over five hours to ensure that each time zone could enjoy at least three hours of music. The show was a big boost to the popularity of the Benny Goodman Orchestra before going off the air in May 1935. That summer, the Goodman outfit continued to ride Let's Dance's popularity, and when the band made it to L.A.'s Palomar Ballroom in August, dancers who had heard Goodman on the radio sold the joint out.

The dancefloor at the Palomar was supposedly big enough to hold four thousand couples, but there was no room on the night that Swing was born. The style emphasizes the weaker pulse of the off-beat, creating a rhythm that is impossible to ignore while remaining acceptable and tasteful enough to avoid the disapproval of any oldsters in the audience. Benny Goodman was considered the "King of Swing", but several others, including Duke Ellington, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Harry James, Glenn Miller, and Artie Shaw could have worn the crown.

"Both Kinds of Music"

Swing Music, although thought of as the music of its generation, is forever associated with the nightclub set. It loses importance the further we get past the city limits and into the rural regions where most Americans still lived in the middle decades of the Twentieth Century. The roots of Country and Western Music are nearly as diverse as those of Jazz, and Jazz is part of the mix as well. An important difference between Jazz and Country is the instruments. Jazzmen love the smoky and driving sounds of big band instruments like horns and piano while the "Hillbilly" sound grew from more "portable" instrumentation like guitars, harmonicas, and fiddles.

Country and Western music has been called 'the folk music of the working class'. As the industrial might of the Nation grew, especially in the period before, during, and after the Second World War, the factories in the big Northern cities needed a source of cheap, semi-skilled labor. Much of this labor demand was met by the Great Migration of Negroes excepting the racial injustice of the post-Civil War South, but if white factory bosses could hire white workers, they would.

Several waves of emigrants from the British Isles who could not find a place in the cities of the Atlantic Shoresettled in the hills of the Appalachian and Ozark Mountains. It was possible to eke out a living in these hilly regions for a hard-working farmer, but conditions made it difficult to make a fortune. When these hard-working hill-billies heard the call of the industrial North, they migrated in droves, bringing with them a musical tradition that reached back to English folk tunes.

Much of what is termed "Hill-Billy Music" embraces a strong Protestant Revivalist tradition. However, once these formerly poor folks had some money, their musical tastes expanded to include the Honky-Tonk sound. In some ways, Honky-Tonk music was a rowdy antithesis to the more spiritually driven Bluegrass form of Country Music. In comparison to the swank nightclubs that brought forth Swing Jazz, Honky Tonks were places for hard-working and hard-drinking men who could blow an entire paycheck for a few hours of fun.

What traditions there are in Honky-Tonks probably arose in the Cow Towns of the Old West, where, after weeks following a herd of cows to market a group of cowboys needed to blow off some steam. The myth of the noble Cowboy is largely just that; a myth. However, it is a good myth that many Americans can identify with.

Western Music is separate but related to Country or Hill-Billy Music. There is a bit of Latin influence to Western Music that adds spice to the sound. Western Music is as much a Hollywood phenomenon as a musical trend thanks, at least in part, to the rise of the Singing Cowboy.

And the Beat Goes On

Although there were several shows, both live and syndicated broadcasts dedicated to Music during the Golden Age of Radio, once the Networks abandoned radio for TV, radio became synonymous with Music. The business of Radio disk jockeys had more to do with selling songs than selling products. This would eventually lead to the infamous "Payola Scandal", but the music industry was about selling records, and DJ Format radio sold a lot of records.

In many markets, any form of talk radio was discouraged because talk interrupted the music. However, as streaming services and automobile sound systems support better quality recorded audio play, broadcast music has given way to talk again.

Of course, fans of Old Time Radio enjoy the benefits of technology with the ability to enjoy their chosen content on the latest systems.

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