Pioneers of the Concept Album

Fancy Meeting You Here: Pioneers of the Concept Album Todd Decker Abstract: The introduction of the long-playing record in 1948 was the most aesthetically signi½cant tech- nological change in the century of the recorded music disc. The new format challenged record producers and recording artists of the 1950s to group sets of songs into marketable wholes and led to a ½rst generation of concept albums that predate more celebrated examples by rock bands from the 1960s. Two strategies used to unify concept albums in the 1950s stand out. The ½rst brought together performers unlikely to col- laborate in the world of live music making. The second strategy featured well-known singers in song- writer- or performer-centered albums of songs from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s recorded in contemporary musical styles. Recording artists discussed include Fred Astaire, Ella Fitzgerald, and Rosemary Clooney, among others. After setting the speed dial to 33 1/3, many Amer- icans christened their multiple-speed phonographs with the original cast album of Rodgers and Hammer - stein’s South Paci½c (1949) in the new long-playing record (lp) format. The South Paci½c cast album begins in dramatic fashion with the jagged leaps of the show tune “Bali Hai” arranged for the show’s large pit orchestra: suitable fanfare for the revolu- tion in popular music that followed the wide public adoption of the lp. Reportedly selling more than one million copies, the South Paci½c lp helped launch Columbia Records’ innovative new recorded music format, which, along with its longer playing TODD DECKER is an Associate time, also delivered better sound quality than the Professor of Musicology at Wash- 78s that had been the industry standard for the pre- ington University in St. Louis. His ceding half-century. publications include Show Boat: Arriving at the midpoint of the twentieth century, Performing Race in an American Mu - the lp initiated a long-format era in American pop- sical (2013) and Music Makes Me: ular music that lasted just over a half-century. The Fred Astaire and Jazz (2011), as well cd as articles in such journals as introduction of the compact disc ( ) in the early Music, Sound, and the Moving Image 1980s, with its even longer playing time (seventy- and the Journal of Musicology. four minutes or more), advanced the postwar bias © 2013 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00233 98 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00233 by guest on 27 September 2021 toward long formats; for while the lp landscapes: about forty-½ve minutes at its Todd and single 45s (introduced by rca Victor longest, divided about equally onto two Decker in 1949) had previously shared the mar- sides. Broadway shows in the 1950s usually ket, the cd’s appearance caused short- contained roughly that much music (if format recorded music products to disap- the dance music and minor songs were pear entirely. If pop music fans in the omitted), and the ½xed track order of the 1990s wanted to own one song (say, lp kept the songs in show order. The Celine Dion’s recording of “My Heart original cast lp promised unlimited access Will Go On”), then they had to buy an to the sounds of Broadway; from a com- entire cd (in this case, the original fortable seat at home, albeit with a totally soundtrack recording for the ½lm Titanic). obstructed view, the listener could focus The material conditions of buying and on what really counted: the music, the listening to popular music during the lyrics, the pit orchestra, and the voices of long-format era encouraged (or forced) Broadway’s star performers. listeners to buy popular music in bulk. Within a decade of the lp’s introduc- These conditions faded rather quickly at tion, the cart began pulling the horse. the turn of the twenty-½rst century, when Columbia Records ½nanced the show My ubiquitous high-speed Internet connec- Fair Lady (1956) and reaped huge pro½ts: tions enabled the purchase and sharing the show’s cast lp on Columbia (featuring (or theft) of digital music ½les online. Julie Andrews) topped Billboard’s album This development rendered the cd, the chart for ½fteen weeks. One hundred ½nal evolutionary stage in recorded eighty-four original cast albums appeared music’s physical form, an endangered on Billboard’s pop album chart between species. 1955 and 2009.2 Twenty-two of these The twentieth century, unlike the pres- reached the top ten; all but one of those ent, was a time when the recorded music appeared between 1955 and 1964. (The marketplace turned on the production outlier was the cast album for Hair, and purchase of thin, flat, round objects. released in 1968.) This period–after the The arrival of the lp was, arguably, the lp had made its way into American most aesthetically signi½cant technologi- homes; before the Beatles led a rapid cal change in the century of the recorded transformation of the format to a youth- music disc. The introduction and early oriented vessel of rock artistry–saw the years of the lp, and the question of how major record labels exploring new ways to ½ll the format’s expanded time frame, to deliver popular music to adult audi- is the focus of this article. ences, the primary buyers of the lp for the format’s ½rst ½fteen or so years. For an anxious music industry, which While the Broadway cast album was a had to create customers for both long- fairly obvious way to ½ll forty-½ve minutes form popular music and the equipment of music in a set order, other organiza- necessary to play it, the original Broadway tional principles for the popular music lp cast album seemed the perfect answer to were needed.3 the aesthetic and marketing challenges lps work best when the delicate needle presented by the newly arrived lp. The 78 at the end of the lightweight tone arm is format held only three minutes of music allowed to ride the groove from the edge per side; for ½fty years, recorded popular to the center of the disc without interrup- music had been an art of the miniature.1 tion. Dropping or picking up the needle The lp promised more expansive audio in the middle of a side is always tricky: 142 (4) Fall 2013 99 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00233 by guest on 27 September 2021 Fancy serious phonograph users, concerned for covers being, in essence, advertisements Meeting the health of both the needle and the disc’s for the sonic contents inside.) Several You Here: Pioneers of groove, invariably frown on the practice. strategies or concepts for grouping tracks the Concept Satisfying lps sustain the listener’s inter- into an lp during the pre–rock and roll Album est, each succeeding track making sense history of the format stand out. These in the larger whole, the larger whole pro- approaches to large-scale lp form shaped viding a uni½ed experience that warrants the careers of individual performers, the repeat listening or, at least, playing. Except choices on offer to popular music listeners, in certain cases, like the Broadway cast and the landscape of America’s musical lp, the order of tracks on early lps history. proved less important than the creation One organizational strategy for the lp of an overall tone or mood. Thus, the lp treated the format as a sonic meeting developed not as a linear or narrative place where songwriters, singers, and large-scale form so much as a block of musicians might enjoy sustained interac- time within which similar recordings tion unlikely to occur in live performance. were grouped together. Repeated listen- These musical encounters, relationships ing to lps can have the effect of making lived out in the recording studio, had to the order of tracks feel inevitable: listen- be sturdy enough to yield an lp’s worth ers learn to anticipate the next track of tracks. Many studio collaborations on because the order of songs is set. (Listeners lps proved revelatory, bringing together raised on lps know how the brain comes performers who might otherwise never to anticipate the next song in the silence have met. (In one case, detailed below, between tracks.) Awareness of whether performers sharing an lp met only by side A or side B was playing also shaped way of multitrack recording methods lp listening. (The cd, with its one very made possible by the introduction of long side, and the cd player, with its magnetic tape, another postwar innova- anarchic skip and shuffle buttons and its tion that reshaped popular music.) Some portability, changed the experience of of these collaborations introduced a his- long-form listening appreciably.)4 torical angle to popular music, with the The utility of a unifying theme or con- lp serving as a means of looking back at cept for a successful lp was recognized the pop music past while making music by the record industry from the start. that tapped into the present. The roomy Producers did not imagine that listeners lp, a format designed for domestic use, wanted to sit through a twenty-minute widened the terrain of popular music, pop song. Rather, meaningful arrange- opening new spaces where artists could ments of recordings that generally con- express themselves in more expansive formed to the three-minute length of the ways than was allowed for by the three- 78 became the norm, yielding a standard minute single, and where listeners could of ½ve to six songs, or tracks, per side.

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