This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And a nice history lesson as today's subject is the 1948 recording ban of the AFM, the American Federation of Musicians, their second ban as the union had ordered one before, from 1942 to 44. The music industry, who'd seen the devastating effects of the first ban, quickly organized a recording frenzy to get as much material as possible so that they could live on that, for the time the ban was in effect. And it's the music recorded in December 1947 anticipating the ban that I'll play for today. So let's start with Al 'Cake' Wichard, leader of a sextet that had a long-time association with Modern records and the vocals are Duke Henderson. Here is His Majesty's Boogie.
01 - Al 'Cake' Wichard Sextette & Duke Henderson - His Majesty's Boogie
02 - Amos Milburn - It Took A Long Long Time
Recorded on December 18, 1947 just before the start of the second recording ban of the AFM, on Aladdin that was Amos Milburn with It Took A Long Long Time.
Now there had been a ban before, from 1942 to 44, that I featured some months ago here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. The reason for this strike was to establish a fund for out-of-work musicians, and there were many of them since recorded music had taken over the place of live musicians for radio broadcasts, in bars and in the cinema after the talkie, the movie with sound, had taken over from the silent movies. The battle had been effectively won by the AFM and so a fund was instituted that was managed by the AFM.
In '47 a law, the Taft-Hartley Labor-Management Relations Act, was passed that restricted some of labor unions power, and a few of them directly hit the powerful AFM. One was, that unions could not force employers to hire personnel that they don't need - and many radio stations had to keep a payroll of unnecessary musicians.
Another one was that workers could not force employers to pay their representatives - and that outlawed the AFM fund that was the outcome of the earlier strike of the mid-war period. The recording companies saw their chance - they announced not to renew the agreement they'd been forced to sign after the first strike.
This strike's aim was to secure the fund, but there was an important difference with the first recording ban. The primary opponent of the first strike had been the recording industry. Now it rather was the government - and that would make a great difference for the union's odds to win this battle.
03 - Marion Abernathy - Undecided
04 - Wynonie Harris - Good Rockin' Tonight
You heard Marion Abernathy with Undecided, recorded for King on December 23 in Cincinnati, and after that, on the same label, from December 28 Wynonie Harris with perhaps the most influential record of the December recording frenzy - Good Rocking Tonight.
The strike lasted eleven months and two weeks. The union's fund remained - but it had to be managed by an independent trustee and the money could only be spent to fund free public concerts. It's still that way, and chances are fair that the band playing at the local county fair still is being paid through this fund - a pretty unique situation both compared to other American arts or industries as compared to how this works in other countries.
But instead of starting the recording ban, the union could have hired a few good lawyers in the first place to come up with this solution. Keeping this in mind, the AFM actually had achieved nothing with the strike. Apart from that, the strike could only harm anyone involved - both musicians and recording companies - and trigger some unexpected side effects that I'll look into later.
05 - Ravens - Together
06 - Jimmy Liggins - Careful Love
You got The Ravens with Together recorded on December 22 of 1947 for the National label and after that for Specialty on December 30 Limmy Liggins with Careful Love.
Now the real concern for the AFM wasn't the recording industry - it was recording in general that had made thousands of musicians jobless, musicians that had been employed in bars, restaurants and for radio stations. The union had never objected the sale of records for the home market. So Columbia as one of the highly affected recording companies of the first strike, developed the 33 RPM microgroove LP, that could hold up to 22 minutes of music per side for the 12-inch version, and aimed that to the market of home consumers. Now this technical innovation would have been done anyway but the strike is said helping to speed this process.
In response, RCA introduced the 45 RPM single. For the AFM it was cynical that it were the radio stations that immediately embraced that new single format for it was so much more practical than the large, breakable and heavy 78s.
Later, the 45 would become favourite with the teenagers together with low-cost portable phonographs, paving the way for rock 'n roll, while the LP could hold long improvisations for jazz musicians, and they were encouraged to do so, to get less number of tracks on an LP, cutting costs for royalties to songwriters. The 78 as a format stayed until the late fifties, and remained popular in Rhythm & Blues for the targeted audience, African Americans, on average were poorer and often could not afford modern record players.
07 - Four Shades Of Rhythm - One Hundred Years From Today
08 - Sonny Thompson - Not On A Christmas Tree
And that was definitely not a Christmas song, but a blues about an ugly woman. Sonny Thompson was that with Not On A Christmas Tree and it was recorded on December 31 of 1947 and issued not earlier than November of '49. Before that you got the Four Shades Of Rhythm with One Hundred Years From Today and that is a very rare issue on the Vitacoustic label. The exact recording date is unclear but it must have been in the end of December as well.
From the war to 1948, the number of musicians being a member of the union jumped from a 147 thousand to 232 thousand. Compared to other unions, you can call that an overwhealming succes. You may wonder though whether musicians joined for they thought the AFM would represent their interests, or rather because they had no choice. A few weeks ago I told you the story of Chance records, that was punished heavily by a union boycott for employing one - just one - non-union musician in a session.
The AFM had grown into a kartel of itself, dominating the industry and as a musician who wanted to get anywhere, you had to buy yourself a ticket by joining the AFM. The organization was feared by the whole music industry, and their doings had been noticed as unwanted by the government. The Taft-Hartley Act - the legislation that caused the '48 strike - was aimed at all labour unions, but the AFM practices were mentioned openly by Senator Taft.
If the union, and Petrillo in particular, was popular with the musicians... I don't know. What's clear is that the December '47 recording frenzy was a joint effort of the recording business and the musicians. And this instrumental that was recorded for the Modern label does give an opinion. Here is the pretty obscure Art Shackelford Sextette with Beatin' The Ban recorded for the Modern label.
09 - Art Shackelford Sextette - Beatin' The Ban
10 - Camille Howard - X-Temperaneous Boogie
And that must have been the very last recording of 1947, done out of improvisation on New Year's Eve just before the clock struck midnight. Camille Howard's was the last session on a busy recording day and just a few minutes to twelve there was still some time left. Well Camille hit her piano with a raucous boogie-woogie that sold pretty well in '48.
The success - or rather the power - of the AFM stands with James Caesar Petrillo, the chairman of the AFM from 1940 to '58. Before he already had led Chicago's Local 10 of the union from 1922. He was the son of Italian immigrants and he had no education - it took him nine years to get to the fourth grade and then dropped out. He learnt to play the trumpet but had to find out that he didn't have a real talent for that. And so he became an organizer for the AFM in 1919 and as said, made it to president of the Local 10.
His power was undisputed within the union - of the only one who'd dared to challenge him for president, back in the thirties, he torn up his membership card and threw him out of the union. And in the same decade he caused a national scandal for writing Mussolini that he should reprimand the Italian consul-general in Chicago for hiring non-union musicians. Now stories like these pretty much characterize the man.
Petrillo was a typical reactionary force - his main crusade was against the recording of music that had put so many musicians out of work in the twenties and thirties. As late as in '48, after the recording ban, he stated that the Union's "declared intention, permanently and completely, [is] to abandon [recording]".
In 1958 he resigned as president of the AFM but he remained the boss for Chicago's Local 10. Now the AFM was a segregated institution, having the black Chicago musicians in a separate Local, number 208. It were the ones who wanted to merge these two who finally succeeded in a coup d'etat against Petrillo. Ironically, Petrillo spent his last years with the union as manager of the civil rights division, traveling nationwide, also in the deep south, to merge the black and white locals of the AFM.
11 - Muddy Waters - Good Lookin' Woman
12 - T-Bone Walker - Plain Old Down Home Blues
T-Bone Walker was that with an odd mix of blues and rumba and an outtro in Spanish. Recorded for the Black & White label on December 18 of 1947. Before that you got Muddy Waters with his Good Lookin' Woman, recorded in late December of 1947 for Aristocrat but never released for that label. It was included later on an LP of the successor of Aristocrat, Chess.
I already told that Petrillo's main crusade was against recording music and he managed to maintain that for decades. Now he may have been a powerful man, but he hasn't been able to fight technological change.
Now for obvious reasons, part the music business always has fought technology instead of embracing it. And were it the union in the forties, nowadays it's the music industry itself being the reactionary force trying to fight the digital revolution. The success of modern music services like Apple's iTunes, Spotify and Deezer shows us that it's better to invest in an innovative way in the new technologies than to fight what will happen anyway.
I use these services too, in addition to my own collection, they're convenient and you don't have to buy a whole CD if you're interested in just one track. So that's where I got the next tracks from. Recorded on December 27 of 1947 for Columbia you'll get Memphis Minnie with Shout the Boogie and after that Big Bill Broonzy with his Summertime Blues, that actually is about the cold of the winter and that was recorded on December 18, also for Columbia.
13 - Memphis Minnie - Shout The Boogie
14 - Big Bill Broonzy - Summertime Blues
(jingle)
15 - Martha Davis - Kitchen Blues
16 - Lloyd Glenn - Midnight Boogie
Lloyd Glenn with his Midnight Boogie that was recorded on December 26 for Imperial and from the same day for Decca was Martha Davis with the Kitchen Blues. And these two mark the end of this show where I played the music that was recorded just before the 1948 recording ban of the American Federation of Musicians.
Now I come from a country where labour unions, employer's federations and the government every year get together and make an agreement on important economic decisions, a situation we inherited from the after war years when the country had to be rebuilt from the devastations of the war. A consultative body like that is pretty unique in the world and in my country strikes are pretty rare, unlike in many other European countries. A situation as with the AFM, where a union can just stop a whole industry for a year or, like in '42-44, for over two years, would be unthinkable here.
Now I never met the man, but from the stories I read I don't think mr. Petrillo was a nice man. And I think the union didn't work for the benefit of the musicians it should represent, but it had its own agenda that was set by its president. I'm a progressive man, I don't believe in reactionary forces because I don't believe you can turn back the time, and if anything proved to be unstoppable, it's been technological advance. And had Petrillo really achieved his ultimate goal - to outlaw the recording of music - well then you wouldn't have been able to listen to the music of this show. What a shame that would have been.
You can react on my program or ask questions at my e-mail address rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. And if you want to read back the history lesson that I gave you today, just do a google search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and you will easily find my site. Go to the episodes section, click on the title of this show and you will find the playlist and a link to a transcription of today's story.
Time's up for now, so have a wonderful, and rocking day and I hope to see you next time, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!