The Wrecking Crew Read Online Free Page B

snobbery here. To a man, the owners implicitly understood the fundamental tenet that this was always the music business. The goal was to give the public what they wanted, no matter how pedestrian, no questions asked.
    Unlike their smaller counterparts, however, some of the major record labels—corporate behemoths like Columbia, Mercury, and others—were slow to recognize the revenue potential that this new “kids” music had to offer. Generally looking down their noses at what they assumed to be a passing fad, the big-label men often opted to stick with more traditional pop offerings by the likes of the New Christy Minstrels, Johnny Mathis, and Tennessee Ernie Ford. Those you knew would sell. They had cachet, a legacy.
    It wouldn’t be until years later, for example, that Columbia Records finally, grudgingly, signed their first bona fide rock-and-roll act (Paul Revere & the Raiders). Even then, the label showed remarkable hesitancy regarding the band and, for that matter, the style of music itself: the first Raiders LP didn’t hit stores until a full year after the Beatles had already conquered American record charts during the initial wave of the British Invasion. But, the Columbia producer Mitch Miller (host of television’s terminally bland Sing Along with Mitch ) was also the head of Artists and Repertoire—the department that picks new releases—and he simply hated rock and roll.
    â€œIt’s not music,” Miller scornfully proclaimed. “It’s a disease.”
    In the meantime, the ever-observant indie label owners knew exactly what they were going to do. With a variety of factors all simultaneously conspiring to create a seemingly insatiable desire among (mostly) teenagers for an ever-greater supply of new music, it was time to start turning out some new singles. Fast.
    Transistor radios were getting cheaper all the time and practically every kid had one. In addition, Top 40 AM radio stations were springing up everywhere, catering to the growing throngs of youthful listeners by playing all the latest tunes. In particular, big-market broadcasters such as KFWB in Los Angeles, WLS in Chicago, and WMCA in New York became instant success stories, setting the tone for the rest of the country. And the kids just loved the often up-tempo, vaguely suggestive thrill and danger that rock and roll provided. Straightlaced heartthrob crooners of the day like Johnnie Ray, Eddie Fisher, and Pat Boone never knew what hit them.
    It was the simplest of business equations, really, one that benefited everyone involved: playing rock-and-roll records on the radio equaled higher ratings, higher ratings equaled more and better-paying advertisers, and more and better-paying advertisers equaled increased revenue for station owners. The owners, in turn, were only too happy to perpetuate the cycle, in the process creating an endless stream of free marketing (via airplay) for the record labels.
    From an economic perspective, unprecedented national prosperity also enabled individual households to enjoy larger levels of discretionary income, providing much of the wherewithal for kids to run down to the local record shop and buy those 45s they kept hearing on the radio. And in terms of sheer volume, the post-war baby boom created the largest number of junior high and high school students—and bumper crop of new music consumers—the country had ever witnessed. TV sets, too, were finally in most homes, regularly playing teen-themed music programs like American Bandstand to riveted adolescent viewers.
    By 1959, new indie label releases recorded in Los Angeles like “Donna” by Ritchie Valens, “Teen Beat” by Sandy Nelson, and “It Was I” by Skip & Flip were routinely selling over a million copies each. Record companies, hungry to cash in on the phenomenon, clamored for ever more product, cutting songs in the studios sometimes twenty-four hours a day. Songwriters, producers,