A TIMELINE OF MILESTONES IN POPULAR MUSIC/RECORDING HISTORY, 1877-1954
SOURCE: Joel Whitburn’s Pop Memories, 1890-1954
Dec. 24, 1877: Thomas Edison files a patent application for his latest invention, the phonograph. It consists of a metal cylinder with a fine spiral groove, two diaphragm-and-needle units (one for recording and one for playback), and a small horn. The cylinder is rotated by handle while one speaks into the recording horn. The sound collected by the horn causes the diaphragm to vibrate, driving the stylus to form grooves into the tinfoil wrapped around the cylinder. Reversing the process causes the playback stylus to reproduce the sounds formed by the grooves, amplified by the horn. The machine is designed at first for office dictation, but its possibilities for recording music, though still crude, soon become evident. In January 1878, the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company is formed.
Sept. 26, 1887: The next crucial step in recording technology is introduced when Emile Berliner (who ten years before invented the microphone) files a patent application for the gramophone, which utilizes zinc discs instead of cylinders.
Nov. 1887: Edison records his first solid-wax cylinders to replace the primitive tinfoil recordings, which could be played back one time only. His new cylinder phonograph operates on battery-powered electricity.
June 14, 1888: Edison founds the North American Phonograph Company, originally to produce machines for business dictation. In January 1889, the Columbia Phonograph Company is established as North American’s first Washington, D.C.-area licensee.
May 24, 1889: North American makes the first commercial musical recordings for operators of West Coast coin-operated phonographs. These “phonograph parlors,” begun in San Francisco, enable customers to sit at a desk, order a selection for a nickel by speaking into a tube, and listen through a separate tube connected to a cylinder phonograph in the room below while the selection is played. By the mid-1890s, nearly every American city has at least one phonograph parlor.
Oct. 1890: Columbia issues its first record catalogue, consisting solely of recordings by John Philip Sousa’s U.S. Marine Band. Within the next year, its selection will rapidly expand as the company emerges as a significant rival to Edison.
1890: North American begins using the first crude record duplicating process, with up to ten tubes leading from the master phonograph to blank cylinders in other phonographs. Previously, each record had to be custom-made. Soon, a more refined “pantograph” system makes possible 150 copies of each record. A popular artist such as George Washington Johnson must still record a hit like “The Laughing Song” literally thousands of times.
Jan. 1891: The Phonogram, the first publication devoted to the phonograph and recording industry, begins.
Nov. 9, 1891: The New York debut of “A Trip To Chinatown,” the first significant long-running Broadway musical. One song in the show, “After The Ball,” sells five million copies of sheet music.
April 1892: North American begins to produce cylinders for the home market as well as for the coin-slot industry, which is approaching its peak of popularity. Phonograph prices (beginning at $150) are still too high for most. Record demand is increasing beyond the capacity of North American to meet it (a maximum of 2,000 cylinders can now be made from each recording), so its regional member companies—New Jersey, Ohio and others in addition to Columbia—begin making their own recordings.
1894: Columbia introduces a new spring-motored phonograph, which sells for only $40. Before long, the phonograph will become a fixture in the American home.
Aug. 1894: To forestall legal maneuvers against his patents by the American Phonograph Company—which in 1895 will obtain control of Columbia—Edison puts North American into bankruptcy. For the next two years, Columbia and the regional companies will have the cylinder record business to themselves. By the decade’s end, Columbia will effectively drive the smaller companies out of business.
Nov. 1894: Billboard begins publication as the authoritative trade weekly of the amusement industries.
Fall 1895: The Berliner Gramophone Company is established to market the first commercial flat disc recordings. Under the Berliner system, sound cuts lateral grooves into the surfaces of wax-coated zinc discs, which are then immersed in chromic acid. An electrotyping process using metal “stampers” reproduces the zinc originals. Mass production would carry the recording industry into a new era.
Jan. 1896: Edison, once again in control of his legal patents, organizes the National Phonograph Company, which quickly moves into even competition with Columbia for the cylinder record business.
March 1898: The debut of the Edison Standard Phonograph, priced at $20 to compete with Columbia. The average price of the 1890s standard two-minute cylinder is 50 cents.
1899: Ragtime, a dynamic new style of music, is symbolized by composer/pianist Scott Joplin. Len Spencer, Arthur Collins and banjo player Vess Ossman are the most popular ragtime-styled recording artists.
May 1900: The new century brings a major new force into the recording industry: Eldridge Johnson’s Consolidated Talking Machine Company. Johnson’s “Improved Gram-o-phone Records” are laterally cut wax discs similar to those of his former employer, Emile Berliner, but with improved sound quality. The company’s symbol is the famous image of a dog peering into a gramophone horn and listening to “His Master’s Voice.”
June 1900: Berliner, pressured in part by legal challenges made by another disc record company, Zon-o-Phone, issues his last recordings.
Oct. 1901: Victor Talking Machine Company is formed out of Consolidated, with Johnson as 60% owner and Berliner as 40% shareholder.
Jan. 1902: Edison begins producing molded metallic wax cylinders, phasing out the old brown wax cylinders. As many as 150 cylinders can be turned out daily from a single mold, vastly increasing total production. Record prices are cut to 35 cents.
March 18, 1902: Enrico Caruso’s first recordings for Victor perhaps are the first musically satisfactory records ever made. For the first time, recordings come to be seen as an acceptable vehicle for serious music. The vast popularity of Caruso’s records—despite their intimidating price of five dollars (equal to a week’s pay for many)—launches Victor’s prestigious Red Seal label.
1902: The first African-American vocal group recordings are made, by the Dinwiddie Colored Quartet.
1903: This is the golden age of barbershop quartets. The most famous one of all, the Empire City Quartet, introduces the classic “Sweet Adeline.” Male vocal groups—particularly the Haydn, Peerless, and American Quartets—will be enormously popular on records until the early 1920s.
Nov. 1904: “Little Johnny Jones” helps make George M. Cohan the dominant force in Broadway musicals. Billy Murray becomes the nation’s most popular recording artist in large part because of his hit recordings of many Cohan classics.
Jan. 1905: Talking Machine World begins publication as the leading journal of the recording industry. In December, Variety begins as the professional show business weekly.
June 1905: Arthur Collins’ “The Preacher and the Bear” is the first generally recognized million-selling record, although Len Spencer’s 1902 hit “Arkansaw Traveler” may previously have achieved that level.
1906: Eldridge Johnson introduces the Victrola, the first record player to remove the famous tin horn from atop the phonograph and fold it into the wooden cabinet beneath.
1906: Victor cuts standard record prices to 35 cents, eliminating the competitive advantage if Edison cylinders.
Aug. 1907: Enrico Caruso’s “Vesti la Giubba” from “I Pagliacci” is the first million-selling classical record. Thanks in large part to Caruso, Victor is now established as the #1 record company in both sales and prestige.
Nov. 1907: Ada Jones and Billy Murray, the most popular male-female vocal pairing, have their first #1 record. Until now, nearly all vocal recordings have been in one of two styles: minstrel-styled comedy (such as Collins & Harlan) and European-influenced ballad singing (led by Henry Burr). Jones and Murray introduce a more casual, natural style.
Oct. 1908: Columbia advertises America’s first two-sided records. The appeal of “two songs for the price of one” proves irresistible. Within a few months, Victor quietly begins producing double-sided discs, although Red Seals will not be double-sided until 1923.
Nov. 1908: Edison begins producing four-minute wax Amberol cylinders, nearly doubling the previous maximum length.
1910: Sheet music sales achieve an all-time high of two billion, led by two six-million-sellers: “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” and “Down By The Old Mill Stream.”
1912: Columbia stops all production of cylinders, leaving Edison as the only major cylinder company. Cylinders will remain popular in rural areas into the 1920s, but the disc vs. cylinder battle is effectively over.
Oct. 1912: Edison responds to the expanding dominance of discs by introducing the Diamond Disc Phonograph and records. Their sound quality is widely hailed, but since the phonograph will play only “hill-and-dale” grooved records, and not the laterally cut discs made by Victor and Columbia, their popular impact is limited. At the same time, Edison begins production of “unbreakable” four-minute Blue Amberol cylinders, far more durable than their predecessors.
1913: Ballroom dancing, symbolized by Vernon & Irene Castle, is at its peak. Nineteen-Thirteen also sees the introduction if the decade’s biggest dance craze, the fox-trot.
1914: ASCAP—the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers—is formed as the first organization to protect the work of songwriters. ASCAP later serves as a recognized licensing agency.
Sept. 1914: Talking Machine World prints its first monthly list of best-selling records for each major record company, information furnished by the companies themselves.
1914: W.C. Handy’s “Memphis Blues” and “St. Louis Blues” are the first blues songs to be published and achieve wide popularity. “St. Louis Blues” ultimately will become the most-recorded in American history.
Jan. 30, 1917: “Darktown Strutters’ Ball” by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band is the first commercial jazz recording. The genre that began in the 1890s as the native folk sound of New Orleans begins to transform American popular music.
1917: As the exclusive rights held by Victor, Columbia and Edison begin to expire, the record industry opens up to new companies, including Okeh, Brunswick, Vocalion and Emerson. The longtime European company Pathe also enters the U.S. market.
1918: Vaudeville is at its peak with 25,000 performers touring in some 4,000 theaters nationwide.
Jan. 1920: “Dardanella” by Ben Selvin’s Novelty Orchestra becomes the first record to sell more than three million copies.
Aug. 10, 1920: “Crazy Blues” by Mamie Smith is the first authentic blues recording and is an immediate sensation.
1921: Radio explodes from a novelty into a nationwide phenomenon with some 500 stations established by 1922 and more than 1,000 by 1925. Broadcasts of dance band performances become a mainstay of the new medium, while singers like Vaughn DeLeath and Billy Jones & Ernest Hare become stars mainly through their radio shows.
July 1922: A young Louis Armstrong relocates from New Orleans to Chicago to join King Oliver’s dance band.
Dec. 1922: “Three O’Clock in the Morning” is the three-million-selling #1 record for the decade’s dominant dance band, Paul Whiteman’s orchestra. The balance of power on the charts now has shifted decisively from vocalists to bands.
Feb. 16, 1923: Bessie Smith records “Down Hearted Blues,” which becomes a million-seller almost exclusively in the “race” market.
1923: Columbia Records, burdened by a large inventory of unsold phonographs, goes into receivership before reorganization in 1924. Sales of Bessie Smith’s records are credited in part with its recovery.
1923: The Charleston is the biggest dance craze of the decade. Its theme song hits #1 in January 1924.
1923: Fiddlin’ John Carson’s “The Little Ol’ Log Cabin in the Lane” is the first commercially released country and western recording.
Feb. 12, 1924: George Gershwin, best known as composer of the Al Jolson smash “Swanee,” stuns the music world with the New York premiere of his jazz concerto, “Rhapsody In Blue.”
1924: Victor produces its first line of radio receivers, but all the record companies are slow in responding to competition from the new medium. The result is an industry-wide slump.
1924-25: A year of experiments by engineers at Bell Laboratories results in the historic breakthrough of electrical recording. Instead of the acoustic process of singers and musicians performing directly into a recording horn, they are now able to record with a condenser microphone in a spacious studio. With the use of a vacuum tube amplifier and an electromagnetically-powered cutting stylus, the frequency range of recorded music expands by two-and-a-half octaves. Within a year, every major recording studio coverts to the new system.
May 1925: “The Prisoner’s Song” by Vernon Dalhart hits #1, on its way to selling more than seven million copies.
1925: “Adeste Fidelis” and “John Peel” by the 850-voice Associated Glee Clubs of America is the double-sided Columbia choral hit that dramatically demonstrates the vastly improved sound quality of electrical recordings.
Nov. 1925: Brunswick’s “Panatrope” and Victor’s “Electrola” are introduced as the first electrical phonographs.
Nov. 1925: The first Nashville radio broadcast of the “Grand Ole Opry.”
Nov. 15, 1926: NBC Radio goes on the air; CBS follows on Sept. 18, 1927.
1927: Total record sales reach a peak of 140 million. At year’s end, Gene Austin’s “My Blue Heaven” begins its run toward sales of five million.
Oct. 6, 1927: The Jazz Singer, starring Broadway’s greatest star of the last decade, Al Jolson, is the first motion picture with singing; its premiere creates an immediate sensation. (Don Juan a year earlier was the first sound film.) Within two years, movies will become the predominant source of popular song hits.
Dec. 1927: Duke Ellington begins a five-year run with his orchestra at Harlem’s famous Cotton Club.
Dec. 27, 1927: After more than 40 years of Broadway musicals that were basically spectacle with little story line and substance, “Show Boat” by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II ushers the American musical into a new age.
1928: Country music has its first all-time great recording stars in Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family.
Feb. 1929: Broadway Melody is the first “all talking, all singing, all dancing” motion picture.
Oct. 1929: The stock market collapses, ushering in the Great Depression. Also, this month is the final Edison recording session as he leaves the business to concentrate on radio production.
Nov. 1929: Variety prints its first monthly best-selling record chart, consisting (like the previous Talking Machine World survey) of lists of information supplied by the major record companies.
Feb. 1931: Heaving served his apprenticeship with Paul Whiteman, Bing Crosby steps out to become the nation’s most popular singer, a distinction the crooner will retain for most of the next 20 years.
1931: Victor makes a first abortive attempt at long-playing records to go beyond the three- to four-minute limit on 78 RPM records. The idea is right, but the timing and the economy are not.
1932: “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?” is the classic hit symbolizing the Great Depression. It also is being sung by the record industry, which has undergone an almost complete collapse, with only six million records sold for the year. Beyond the obvious impact of the desolate economy, the opportunity to hear popular songs on the radio for nothing, and the general disenchantment with “canned music,” are other factors in the slump.
Early 1933: “42nd Street” dramatically revitalizes the Hollywood musical.
Late 1933: Flying Down To Rio introduces the motion picture dance team that will captivate America: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
Dec. 1933: The repeal of Prohibition stimulates the opening of thousands of bars and cocktail lounges throughout the country. Many are equipped with jukeboxes, which—like the phonograph parlors of the 1890s—create a significant new market for records.
June 1934: Billboard prints its first weekly survey of the most-played songs on network radio.
Sept. 1934: Decca Records, a European company newly expanded into the United States, launches an energetic promotional campaign built around its stable of top stars (led by Bing Crosby) and its 35-cent record prices. For the first time in nearly five years, the record industry begins to see daylight.
Nov. 1934: Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” is the decade’s most acclaimed Broadway musical.
April 20, 1935: The first radio broadcast of “Your Hit Parade,” which ranks the week’s most popular songs according to sheet music sales and radio airplay. The show quickly achieves wide influence.
Sept. 25-Oct. 1, 1935: The sensational success of Benny Goodman and his band at the Los Angeles Palomar ballroom marks the beginning of the “swing era” in popular music, and a new national musical vitality.
Oct. 11, 1935: George Gershwin’s masterwork, the folk opera “Porgy and Bess,” premieres on Broadway.
Nov. 1935: Billboard begins weekly coverage of the major record companies’ best-seller charts.
1936: The jukebox becomes a nationwide phenomenon, present wherever people gather to listen to music or dance, with some 225,000 in operation by 1939. Wurlitzer and Rock-ola set the industry standards. The jukebox will be at the heart of the record business’ recovery through World War II.
1937: “Jitterbugging” is the swing-era dance craze.
Jan. 16, 1938: Jazz comes of age with the historic Carnegie Hall concert of Benny Goodman and his band.
Feb. 1938: The original soundtrack recordings from the first full-length animated movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, sweep the country.
April 1938: Billboard initiates the “Record Buying Guide,” a weekly survey of the most popular records in jukeboxes around the country.
1938: Ella Fitzgerald’s “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” Will Glahe’s “Beer Barrel Polka,” and Artie Shaw’s “Begin The Beguine” are the first records in nearly ten years to sell more than 300,000 copies. All eventually hit the million mark.
Feb. 1940: As “In The Mood” hits #1 for 12 weeks, Glenn Miller is confirmed as the most popular bandleader of the big band era.
1940: Walt Disney’s classic Fantasia is the first significant effort at motion picture stereo sound.
July 1940: Billboard begins its “Best Selling Retail Records” weekly chart, the first published independent national record survey.
Nov. 1941: Glenn Miller’s “Chattanooga Choo Choo” hits #1 and will be honored with the first gold record, officially certifying it as a million-seller.
Aug. 1, 1942: The American Federation of Musicians precipitates a ban on recording by all bands following a dispute over musicians’ royalties. As singers may continue to record, they step into the vacuum and alter popular tastes with acappella vocal records. On Sept. 18, 1943, the union reaches agreement with all the record companies except Victor and Columbia, who finally come to terms on Nov. 11, 1944.
Oct. 1942: Bing Crosby’s recording of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” goes to #1 and will become the biggest-selling record in popular music history, with total sales through the years of more than 30 million copies.
Oct. 1942: Billboard premieres its “Harlem Hit Parade” chart, which ranks the top-selling records in the nation’s African-American communities.
Nov. 1942: The Mosque Theater in Newark,NJ is the scene of the first public demonstration of “Sinatramania” as Frank Sinatra—having gone solo after three years with Tommy Dorsey’s band—electrifies female fans like no one before him.
March 31, 1943: “Oklahoma!,” the first collaboration by Richard Rodgers (after nearly 20 years of writing hits with Lorenz Hart) and Oscar Hammerstein II, premieres and is the greatest breakthrough in Broadway musical history. Honored with the Pulitzer Prize, the show has an unprecedented unity of story, music and choreography, and its original cast album makes recording history.
1944: Louis Jordan is the first true rhythm and blues performer to achieve great crossover chart success.
1944: Billboard premieres its country and western music chart.
1946: The success of The Jolson Story, and the even greater success of its soundtrack album, enables Al Jolson to achieve the most remarkable comeback in popular music history.
1946: RCA Victor issues its one billionth record: John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”
Dec. 1946: In the space of just a few weeks, eight of the country’s most popular bands—including those of Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman—break up. Although most later re-form, it effectively marks the end of the big band era.
June 21, 1948: The Columbia Broadcasting System demonstrates the long-playing microgroove recording, playing like the 1931 Victor experiment at 33-1/3 revolutions per minute. The albums of old, consisting of several 10- or 12-inch 78 RPMs, can now be replaced with a single record. In short, order Victor comes out with its own innovation, the seven-inch 45 RPM record. After two years of confusion and competition, 45s become the standard for single releases. 78 RPMs are phased out by 1960.
Fall 1948: Regular network television programming begins.
April 7, 1949: “South Pacific” by Rodgers & Hammerstein debuts on Broadway. It ultimately will run even longer than “Oklahoma!,” and its original cast album will spend 69 weeks at #1.
1949: Hank Williams emerges as the first country and western superstar.
Aug. 1950: “Goodnight Irene” is the two-million-selling #1 record that launches the Weavers, who bring American folk music to its widest audience ever.
June 1951: The Dominoes’ smash rhythm and blues hit, “Sixty Minute Man,” crosses over to the pop charts and is a major precursor to rock ‘n’ roll.
1951-52: Gene Kelly’s An American In Paris and Singin’ in the Rain are the most acclaimed and popular movie musicals since the initial heyday of Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers.
1954: The motion picture From Here To Eternity and the record “Young At Heart” re-establish Frank Sinatra as America’s pre-eminent popular singer.
Aug. 1954: “That’s All Right” is the first Sun Records release by the 19-year-old Elvis Presley.
