260 PART 3 | FROM WORLD WAR I THROUGH WORLD WAR II
to produce small numbers of cylinders through the next decade, alongside
the more popular discs. The standard format for recorded music was now the
78-rpm single—a disc, usually ten inches in diameter, that spun at 78 revolutions
per minute, yielding a playing time of about three minutes per side (twelve-inch
discs, with a playing time of four and a half minutes, were in use for classical
music but rarely for popular music). At fi rst one-sided, 78s by 1920 were consis-
tently manufactured with a second musical selection on the back or “fl ip” side,
also called the B side. With the introduction of the electric microphone into the
recording studio in 1925, the sound quality of recorded music advanced, and the
market for records grew dramatically. By the mid-1920s the phonograph was a
prized possession in many homes that otherwise might have few luxury items—
much as pianos had been in earlier days.
Even before 1920 record companies had discovered that Americans would
buy a wide variety of recorded music: everything from band music to opera,
hymns, minstrel songs, and the music of immigrant groups. As the industry
grew, it learned to market records by advertising to the audiences most likely
to buy them. In 1920 the record industry discovered a new specialty group that
grew rapidly into a shaping force in American music: the audience for records
featuring African American performers singing and playing the blues.
A handful of black dance bands had made records before 1920, but those
records had been marketed to the same general audience that also bought
records by white dance bands. That changed after August 10, 1920, when Mamie
Smith recorded “Crazy Blues” for the Okeh label. The record was advertised in
black newspapers and at fi rst wa s sold ma i n ly by ma i l order. A lt hough no attempt
was made to reach the much larger white market, the record’s sales reached a
surprisingly high 70,000 copies in the fi rst month. The appeal of black records
for a black audience had been shown, and a new segment of the record industry
was born: race records. If the term sounds derogatory to present-day ears, “race”
in that day could signify pride in the era of the New Negro, when an advocate
for African American advancement might be admiringly called a “race man” or
“race woman.”
The success of “Crazy Blues” created a demand for more race records, and
soon Okeh was joined by other labels: Paramount and Brunswick/ Vocalion,
small independents like Okeh that focused primarily on black artists, and later
Columbia, a major label that coined the term “race records” to distinguish that
line from its other genres. The largest record company, Victor, was slow to enter
the fi eld, buying out Okeh in 1926 and starting its own race-record division,
Bluebird, in 1932.
The audience was there: in the mid-1920s, by one estimate, African Americans
were buying 10 million records per year. Though often lacking the economic
resources of whites, black record buyers, according to one retailer in the South,
“outbought whites in record consumption 50 to 1”—an exaggeration, no doubt,
but proof of the high value those consumers placed on race records.
The vast majority of race records were blues numbers. And at fi rst, most of
those blues records followed the pattern set by “Crazy Blues”: a female vocalist
with instrumental backing, ranging from one piano player to a “combo” of fi ve
or six “pieces” (instruments). The record companies found most of their blues
artists working for the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA), which
dominated the black vaudeville circuit, thus this style of blues performance is
sometimes referred to as vaudeville blues. Alternatively, as the fi rst fl owering78-rpm singlerace recordsclassic blues172028_11_254-279_r3_ko.indd 260 23/01/13 8:42 PM