John Howell wrote:
Hmmm. I was a bit too young to belong to the union during WW II, although I was forced to join at the age of 15 in the early '50s, but I don't remember a strike against the recording industry. In fact, new recordings by popular singers and big bands were considered extremely important for morale during the war, and that I DO remember. What I do recall is the strike by ASCAP against the broadcast industry, which ASCAP did win but which broke the stranglehold that Tin Pan Alley had enjoyed on American Popular Music and opened up the broadcast industry to the many small-time and ethnic musics that subsequently became powerful forces in the industry. (I can never remember whether that came before or after WW II, but I doubt that it happened during the war itself. Too many ASCAP celebrities like Irving Berlin considered themselves an important part of the war effort--which they were!)
The James Petrillo-led AFM strike against recordings was in 1942, and is often cited as a factor in the decline of the big band era -- many well-known bands lost their momentum in the recording business. (See, for example: http://www.swingmusic.net/Big_Band_Era_Recording_Ban_Of_1942.html ) (Interestingly, vocalists were not in the same union and all-vocal recordings were made (this was the golden age for groups like the Golden Gate Quartet and there is an interesting -- and not always "mediocre" as my reference above claims-- repertoire of all-vocal War Songs from that time; e.g. "Stalin wasn't Stallin'")). In part due to the FDR administration's arguments about the lack of patriotism of a strike during wartime, the strike ended but not without seriously damaging the position of instrumentalists due to loss of sales and market position.
I believe that the effect of ASCAP-BMI conflict was an important background event to the AFM strike, although I have a different take on the net effect. Tin Pan Alley composers did suffer from lack of continuous exposure to the public, but ASCAP itself survived just fine. Prior to the ASCAP ban, many of the larger recording firms had subsidiary "race" labels for local and minority musics. After the agreement, and no longer bound not to compete directly with BMI, ASCAP expanded its membership franchise into any recorded genre. But it is not difficult ot recognize that as relationships between ASCAP and broadcasters renormalized and renegotiated blanket contracts, radio networks began to program more uniformly and many labels dropped their minority catalogues. Simultaneously, smaller, independent, labels were largely driven out of both the record sales and broadcast markets by the change to electrical recordings, lps, and vinyl, for which production techniques were monopolized.
Daniel Wolf _______________________________________________
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