Music’s Mad Men, Part 1
Vintage print advertising campaigns tell the story of popular culture (1900 to 1960)
The image shows seven young men, several sporting period-appropriate facial hair, sitting and standing in what looks like a jail cell. The clothing and hairstyles indicate the era is the late 60s. Placards with slogans such as “WAKE UP,” “MUSIC IS LOVE” and “GRAB HOLD!” are strewn about. A record player with three sets of headphones connected to it is set on the floor, with two of the inmates listening in. What exactly they were busted for is not apparent, nor is it clear why they are allowed the luxury of a record player in a jail cell. The headline conveys that they’re locked up, “But The Man can’t bust our music.”
The models in the photo could not have known that they were involved in a different kind of crime, at least by the standards of youth culture in 1968. The same year that the Chicago Seven (along with Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale) were charged with crossing state lines in order to start a riot, Columbia Records caused a controversy when they created a magazine advertisement that cynically courted the more radical fringes of the under-30 demographic. “The Establishment’s against adventure,” read the by-then international record company’s accompanying ad copy. “And the arousing experience that comes with today’s music. So What? Let them slam doors. And keep it out of the concert halls.”
The half-dozen avant-garde albums advertised—by Terry Riley (“The only legal trip you can take. A hypnotic sound experience.”), Walter Carlos (now Wendy), Charles Ives, Edgar Varese and Karlheinz Stockhausen—have faded into music history, but the ad lives on. It’s an example of how businesses such as the fashion and recording industries “dogged the counterculture with a fake counterculture,” according to journalist Thomas Frank in his 1997 book The Conquest of Cool. “A commercial replica that seemed to ape its every move for the titillation of the TV-watching millions and the nation’s corporate sponsors.”
The ad is also a hinge moment of sorts for music advertising. Before The Man couldn’t bust “our music,” Columbia and its peers mostly advertised in trade publications such as Billboard and Cashbox. By the late 60s, Rolling Stone and Crawdaddy! magazines were turning rock ‘n’ roll into a lifestyle. “The Man can’t bust our music” was an early attempt to reach out to a generation that was seeing itself as separate from the past, and whose musical heroes spoke for them in a way no previous generation’s had. “What kind of society do we want?” asked the late bassist Jack Bruce in 1969 documentary Rope Ladder to the Moon. “Well, we don’t want what we’ve been given by successive generation of politicians, that’s for sure. We want our own poetry, our own organizations and our own music.”
While Columbia’s ad was viewed as inauthentic by its target audience, it speaks to how awareness of radicalism had penetrated the collective consciousness of the era and how the music industry perceived the activist factions of youth culture. Columbia, at least, thought the ad would be effective, and experimental head-trips by the likes of Riley’s minimalist In C would appeal to this emerging class of consumers. The publishers of underground magazines and newspapers were happy to take money for running the ads while simultaneously holding Columbia in contempt for pandering to their readers, but from today’s perspective the Can’t Bust Our Music Seven might as well represent those readers.
Everything’s different now. Music marketing is so complex and changing so fast that it’s hard to keep up with trends and tech. Contemporary record companies see more value in attaching artists’ music, or the artists themselves, to campaigns for automobiles and alcohol. Only a few decades ago, even the perception of a band “selling out” could be the kiss of death to long-term career plans. Today no one blinks if a band makes a hybrid video/ad for a brand of bourbon, if Led Zeppelin’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll” provides the soundtrack to Cadillac commercials or if 50 Cent can’t stop name-dropping Vitaminwater. Cracking the mystery of viral marketing and SEO is imperative for a new artist, where before internet killed the magazine star there were only a few routes of promotion. If an act was successful, it was probably due in part to print advertising. Or at least, if an act was deemed worthy of a print ad, a faction within the music industry had decided it had the potential to become a success.
The history of music advertising goes much farther back than the rock and soul eras though, before radio set off a battle that’s still being fought today between streaming playlists and digital downloads. Its roots are in sheet music, which often ran in magazines as de facto advertisements for published songs. Recorded music advertising began after the invention of the phonograph in 1877, with Thomas Edison starring as his own pitchman in full-page consumer catalog ads. From RCA Victor’s Nipper listening to “His Master’s Voice” to the pastel silhouettes that made Apple’s iPod ads unforgettable, the iconography of music advertising remains reflective of past eras long after the artists being marketed have faded away. Music magazine ads provide a tangible experience, but like vinyl records they are practically an anachronism. That has as much to do with the decline of the music industry as much as the plethora of complex branding options and variations that the digital age has opened up. When all is said and done the history of popular music is reflected in the advertising of the past.
Edison was already well known to consumers by the time he put himself in ads for his phonographs. Companies such as Columbia competed with Edison, improving on his record-and-playback invention while Edison, in turn, incorporated Columbia’s “graphophone” technologies into subsequent versions of his phonograph. Emile Berliner, who founded the Victor Talking Machine Company to market his “gramophones” and His Master’s Voice to manufacture the records played on them, began producing non-recordable 7-inch records in 1893. Every product improvement needed to be promoted and marketed—and newspaper publishers were happy to facilitate (making their publications cheaper and more accessible to consumers). The Edison New Standard Phonograph, complete with an Edison trademark design, was advertised in Harper’s in 1898 for $20, down from the 1891 version’s price of $150.
By the dawn of the 20th century disc records were more popular than the wax cylinders Edison stubbornly favored. While record players still dominated music advertisements, companies began to include the artists they relied on for recordings in their marketing. Billboard was founded in 1894 as Billboard Advertising, but was decades away from publishing pop music charts and focused its early editorial on outdoor amusements (where the billboards were) and Vaudeville entertainment. Talking Machine World, the dominant trade publication of the time, featured ads that drew on well-known opera singers and Vaudeville entertainers with established branding power. African-American singers and musicians were left out in the cold by dominant companies such as Columbia and Victor due to the prevailing racial mores of the time. It wasn’t until an African-American musician/composer and impresario named Perry Bradford convinced an upstart record company called OKeh to record singer Mamie Smith in its New York City studio that that the doors swung wide open. A black, female blues vocalist not only had made a recording but had crafted a hit.
OKeh could be considered the first successful independent record company. Columbia and Victor made both records and the machines to play them. Paramount grew out of the Wisconsin Chair Company, while Brunswick’s parent entity made billiard tables and bowling alleys. OKeh, which would be acquired by Columbia in 1926, made records to play on its parent company’s phonographs but was David to the established Goliaths of Columbia and Victor.
Bradford and editorials in African-American newspaper The Chicago Defender helped convince OKeh that the black consumer market would buy records featuring black artists. In 1920, OKeh arranged recording sessions for Smith, backed by its all-white house band, producing a set of songs that included the Bradford composition “Crazy Blues.” The Defender published editorials about Smith’s recordings, but also ran ads incorporating her portrait alongside them. Smith sold 75,000 copies of “Crazy Blues,” which immediately caused OKeh to begin producing more “race records”—a term embraced by the black community at the time—and made the competition take notice. The song lyrical content had no precedent in recorded music upon its release: “I can’t sleep at night/I can’t eat a bite/’cause the man I love/He don’t treat me right.”
All of the major companies began releasing blues records, making household names of stage performers such as Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, whose star eclipsed Mamie Smith by the mid-1920s. OKeh hired Clarence Williams—grandson Clarence William III would gain fame as ultra-hip Linc in The Mod Squad—as its first director of race records, becoming an early “A&R” man. Record buyers were more likely to see photos of blues artists (along with illustrations and lyrics) via ads in the Defender than in articles, making records more associated with artists and repertoire than the devices that played them. The records were expensive for the time — 75 cents to $1—but African-Americans bought them by the thousands. White consumers started buying them as well.
Radio emerged in the 1920s, causing a dilemma that would be echoed in future technological eras: Why pay for music when you can get it for free? Record sales slumped, and the Depression caused further decline. One item that survived was a trademark rejected by Edison’s company. “Nipper” (1884–1895) was a terrier owned by the brother of British painter Francis Barraud. He inherited Nipper—variously reported as either a Jack Russell or fox terrier—as well as an Edison phonograph after his brother died, and noticed the dog’s curious reaction whenever a cylinder of his deceased master’s voice was played. Barraud painted the iconic image that would become known as “His Master’s Voice” three years after Nipper died, and presented it to Edison’s London outpost.
Edison’s representative turned it down, but by 1899 Berliner’s Gramophone Company saw the potential of using Nipper as a trademark. The Edison phonograph was painted over, the Gramophone Company became the Victor Talking Machine Company, and Nipper and Victor became inseparable to the public. Nipper stayed on when Victor was bought out by RCA in 1929 (His Master’s Voice evolved into Britain’s HMV). The importance of branding in the record business was established. Memorable trademarks and logos became all-important to competing firms. While it’s debatable whether Columbia’s eye trademark or Tommy Boy’s trio of b-boys logo were direct descendants, Nipper inarguably became the first iconic trademark of the recording industry. His image is still in limited use today.
By the end of World War Two, the technology of record players was fairly well established. Although Talking Machine World had long ceased operation, Billboard began publishing pop music charts in the 30s, and by the 40s readers were able to check in each week to find out about new releases. Jukeboxes were widespread, and Americans were full of post-war optimism. By 1948, both Victor and Columbia had begun producing 45 rpm and long-play records, which of course required advertising. The era of the recording artist and modern popular music was about to begin, led by none other than Frank Sinatra.
Sinatra’s debut studio album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, was first released by Columbia as a set of four 78 rpm records in 1946 and was an immediate hit. The eight songs were intentionally conceptualized and orchestrated with a consistent thematic mood (records by artists covering the songbooks of single composers had already been released), which extended to Columbia’s first advertisement for it. Dominated by a headshot of a handsome, youthful Sinatra floating above a pair of smiling, swinging lovers playing records while sitting on a patch of grass, the tag line reads: “if it’s terrific it’s Frank Sinatra.”
The emphasis was starting to lean towards the artist rather than the label’s repertoire, but Columbia made sure to mention other talent in its stable. “Yes—more and more and more of the records you rank tops in popularity are being made by Frank Sinatra and these other Columbia artists…” the copy boasts, before Harry James, Benny Goodman, Dinah Shore, Xavier Cugat and Gene Krupa, among others, are name-dropped. Two years later, Columbia chose The Voice as it’s first 33 1/3 10-inch LP release, the 12-inch disc format reserved for classical music at the time.
Elvis Presley’s debut for Sun Records was just around the corner, but when RCA signed him in 1955 the book on pop idolatry was rewritten. Image became king, and album covers took on a new importance. His eponymous 1956 debut album—complete with a Nipper logo in its upper-left upper corner above the caption: “A ‘NEW ORTHOPHONIC’ HIGH FIDELITY RECORDING”—was a game-changer in terms of both graphics and photography. A medium shot of the future King of Rock ‘n’ Roll filled the album, with “PRESLEY” overlapping his infamous pelvis. It looked like an ad, and became so iconic that The Clash paid homage to the design on London Calling. The precedent was set for conceiving packaging with design that could be used in posters, “flats” (12x12 copies of album covers that could be used in displays) and incorporated into eye-catching print advertisements.
Around the same time RCA signed Presley, Blue Note records hired former Esquire magazine graphic designer Reid Miles to begin conceiving album covers that would eventually number in the hundreds. Reid confessed to not being that interested in jazz, but the style he established in the 50s is practically inseparable from the music. Musicians were mostly photographed in action, with the images often monochromatically tinted, and Bauhaus-inspired typography popped from the covers, which made albums easier to distinguish when cover art was used in advertisements.
The difference in the artwork of pianist Bud Powell’s or vibraphonist Milt Jackson’s albums before and after Blue Note hired Reid is like night and day. Capturing mood was all-important, and often it’s the images from Blue Note album covers that come to mind when remembering artists from the golden age of jazz. (John Coltrane recorded one album for Blue Note, but it’s the photo from Blue Train that became arguably became his most iconic.) A jazz music consumer could glance at an ad featuring a Reid Miles’ design and know it was Blue Note without having to read the ad copy. Miles’ influence on graphic design would inform music advertising for decades, and would get it’s due from hip-hop when Guru released Guru’s Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1 in 1993 with an image that helped define the acid jazz movement of the early-to-mid ’90s.
Prestige was creating contemporary designs for Miles Davis in the 50s as well, but it wasn’t until Davis moved to Columbia that design magic happened. S. Neil Fujita’s design for Davis’ first Columbia recording, ’Round About Midnight, defines Davis in this era. Fujita, a painter, was influenced by abstract expressionism, which manifested most famously in Dave Brubeck’s Take Five and Charles Mingus’s Mingus Ah Um. “When I was going to art school I liked the work of Paul Rand, but also Tomayo, Klee, Picasso, Braque,” Fujita told the American Institute for Graphic Arts in an interview shortly before his death in 2010. He was offered his own staff to come to Columbia, spent months visiting a record factory to learn how records were made, then hired illustrators, painters and photographers such as Jay Maisel (Davis’ Kind of Blue) to create abstract looks and moody images for jazz covers that contrasted with the photographic realism used for Columbia’s classical catalog.
Fujita would go on to create graphic concepts for Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and Mario Puzo’s The Godfather that would be effective and enduring as book covers and ads, but through his work for Columbia the bar had been raised, design doors opened, and the 60s were just around the corner. Image would forever more be intrinsic to music marketing, and by extension, advertising.
