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Dissertation Introduction Copyright by Kyle Stewart Barnett 2006 The Dissertation Committee for Kyle Stewart Barnett certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Cultural Production and Genre Formation in the U.S. Recording Industry, 1920-1935 Committee: Thomas Schatz, Supervisor James Buhler John D.H. Downing James Hay Mary Celeste Kearney S. Craig Watkins ii Cultural Production and Genre Formation in the U.S. Recording Industry, 1920-1935 by Kyle Stewart Barnett, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August, 2006 iii To Lisa Most of the recordings issued throughout the twentieth century were never simply marketed to or purchased by a huge undifferentiated ‘mass’ audience. Instead, the industry has, since its formation, sold music to the fans of particular styles, through a variety of changing labels…. In addition the recording industry has employed various legal and illegal, small-scale and team-based, marketing and promotional activities as a way of approaching consumers – practices which might well be labeled as ‘flexible.’ – Keith Negus, “Music Divisions: The Recording Industry and the Social Mediation of Cultural Production,” When the music business gets involved in promoting a style of music, it typically adopts colloquial terms that are verbs or adjectives and turns them into nouns – that is, into things, marketable objects that can be promoted, sold, and bought by a mass audience. – Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman, American Popular Music from Minstrelsy to MTV iv Acknowledgements I have relied on the help of many friends and colleagues in completing this project. I first want to thank my dissertation advisor, Tom Schatz, who remains the most generous and effective reader I have ever had. His expertise and understanding of the film industry has greatly informed my own approach to the recording industry and it was through conversations with him that I first considered this study. His guidance, interest and curiosity about this topic proved crucial. Secondly, I want to thank the members of my dissertation committee, all of whom assisted me at various stages. James Buhler’s perspectives were always greatly useful to this interdisciplinary project and he supported my interest in the recording industry early on with weekly meetings that focused on recorded music of the 1920s and 1930s. The “Illinois contingent” on my dissertation committee consisted of John Downing (now at Southern Illinois University) and James Hay (of the University of Illinois). Through his presence, John Downing brought a sense of this music’s social and political importance. My friendship with James Hay began during his visiting professorship at Texas and his compelling analysis and strong background in cultural studies was a welcome addition. Mary Kearney’s own connection to popular music studies, as well as her abiding interest in this project. Craig Watkins’s assistance on this project began in a graduate seminar and his encouragement and perspective was significant. Friends and colleagues both near and far assisted me in this study. My peers in the Department of Radio-Television-Film and across the university made this journey much more affirming, interesting, and pleasurable. Our graduate student community is v one of the most active and engaged (the plans and project seem endless) I specifically want to thank the members of my dissertation reading group – Allison Perlman, Avi Santo, Jennifer Petersen, Afsheen Nomai, and Chris Lucas who read various drafts of this document and provided both useful critiques and unflagging support. Friends around the country also helped in a variety of ways. The friendship of Rob and Heather Sloane endlessly assisted me, while conversations we had about the recording industry (as well as nearly every other topic under the sun) benefited me and continue to do so. I am also grateful for the support of my longtime Indianapolis friends, Gary Koehl, Evan Finch, and Dale Lawrence, whose intellectualism and wit remain a constant inspiration. I want to thank my family – particularly my mother, Barbara – for creating an environment of intellectual curiosity and compassion. My mother was a schoolteacher and, like her mother, she had the talent to make everyday life educational – even fascinating. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Lisa, who deserves my appreciation above all in seeing this project to completion. Her theoretical perspectives on various drafts, her editing skills and attention to detail, her intellectual spark, as well as her continued encouragement and support has made completing this task possible. vi Cultural Production and Genre Formation in the U.S. Recording Industry, 1920-1935 Publication No. ________ Kyle Stewart Barnett, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2006 Supervisor: Thomas Schatz On the eve of 1920, the U.S. recording industry had been through a number of near-fatal economic downturns since its precarious emergence in the 1890s, and yet stood on the verge of its most influential decade to date. Already in its short history, the recording industry had nearly ceased to exist in the 1890s, saved itself by transforming the phonograph from office machine to nickel-in-the-slot novelty, survived the first of many format wars to come, and reinvented itself by introducing the phonograph into American homes. During the 1920s and 1930s, the recording industry participated in creating genre categories and identifying audiences for music that had previously gone unrecorded. By concentrating on both industry giants (Victor, Columbia) and smaller labels that were key vii to industry trends (Gennett, Paramount, Okeh), this dissertation’s working hypothesis is that a new mode of production in the recording industry between the world wars – based both on previous business strategies and new market conditions – allowed a few large corporations to develop into a highly organized industry. This relationship between genre (understood as a configuration of social, cultural, ideological, and aesthetic beliefs) and mode of production (in its most concrete sense, how a given company operates) has continued to be an important one to the record industry, because with each new genre and sub-genre the industry has the potential to connect with underserved or unrecognized audiences. By combining industrial history with cultural analysis, this dissertation analyzes institutional cultures at various record companies and the contributions of musicians and various cultural intermediaries who helped shape U. S. popular music beginning in the early twentieth century. The central questions to which I continually return are: How did the consolidation of the recording industry into distinct company cultures shape the records that were made? What role did these cultures play in the shaping of genres, in terms of both creative control and technological formats? And finally, how do these various aspects interrelate in the context of the recording industry – both as an industry involved in manufacturing culture and reflecting its own participation as a cultural institution? viii Table of Contents List of Figures:.......................................................................................................... p. viii Chapter One: The Recording Industry and Popular Music ......................................... p. 1 Chapter Two: Gennett Records and the Expansion of Recorded Jazz........................p. 55 Chapter Three: Industry Expansion and the Rise of Race Records..........................p. 110 Chapter Four: Hillbilly Records................................................................................p. 178 Chapter Five: Consolidation and Depression: The Fall and Rise of the Recording Industry............................................................p. 239 Chapter Six: The Durability of the Recording Industry and the Flexibility of Genre ......................................................................................p. 303 Selected Bibliography.............................................................................................. 326 Vita............................................................................................................................331 ix List of Figures: Figure One: Advertisement listing lateral vs. vertical cut recordings .......................p. 65 Figure Two: King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band ............................................................p. 87 Figure Three: Okeh Records Advertisement for Mamie Smith recordings .............p. 125 Figure Four: Okeh Records Advertisement for Mamie Smith recordings featuring “Mr. Public Opinion.” ............................................................................. p. 126 Figure Five: Okeh Records 1926 Race Records catalog ........................................ p. 141 Figure Six: Okeh Truetone “Old Time Tunes’ catalog ............................................p. 201 Figure Seven: Jimmie Rodgers with the Carter Family ...........................................p. 228 Figure Eight: Columbia Records Advertisement Publicizing the label’s signing of Paul Whiteman ........................................................................................p. 252 x Chapter One: The Recording Industry and Popular Music In Simon Frith’s Performing Rites, his study on the social and discursive attributes of evaluating popular
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