Pilgrimage to Music Part 7 : 1930 -1933 Music Facts & Events

1930 Warner Brothers buys Brunswick

1931 ' Adolph Rickenbacker' invents the electric guitar. Known as the Frying Pan, it was a lap-steel guitar with an electromagnetic pickup, created by Adolph Rickenbacker and George Beauchamp, in which a current passed through a coil of wire wrapped around a magnet. This created a field that amplified the strings' vibrations.

EMI (Electrical and Musical Industries), formed by the merge of Gramophone and the British subsidiary of Columbia, opens the largest recording studio in the world at Abbey Road in London, while the USA division of Columbia is sold

"It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" is a jazz song composed by Duke Ellington in 1932 with lyrics by Irving Mills. Singer Ivie Anderson introduced the song with the Duke Ellington Band, and the same year a rendition by the Mills Brothers rose to the charts. The song's title introduced the term "swing" into common usage and gave name to the swing era.



1932 Thomas Dorsey's Precious Lord invents gospel music in Chicago

Milton Brown and Bob Wills invent "western swing"

1933 Cuban bandleader Ignacio Pineiro releases Echale Salsita, the song that gives the name "salsa" to Cuba's dance music



Only six million records are sold in the USA

The IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) is founded to represent the recording industry worldwide

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Pilgrimage to Music Part 8 : 1934 -1937 Music Facts & Events

1934 John Lomax and his son Alan begin recording black music of the southern states, and discover the gospel genre of "rocking and reeling"

Laurens Hammond invents the Hammond organ

The first magazine devoted to jazz music, Down Beat, is published

1935 The radio program "Hit Parade" is launched




Woody Guthrie writes the Dust Bowl Ballads and becomes the first major singer-songwriter



Max Gordon founds the jazz club "Village Vanguard" in New York

1936 Bluesman Robert Johnson cuts his first record

Carl Stalling begins scoring the soundtracks for Warner Brothers' cartoons

The Gibson company produces its first electric guitar, the ES-150


 
1937 Records by the "big bands" are the best sellers

 


One O'Clock Jump" is an instrumental twelve-bar blues composition by Count Basie. It was used as the theme song of Basie's band. The song was partly written by saxophonist Buster Smith, but co-credit was denied by Basie. An influential performance was by Benny Goodman in his 1938 Carnegie Hall concert.



The mambo is born in Cuba

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Pilgrimage to Music Part 9 : 1938 -1939 Music Facts & Events

1938 John Hammond stages the "Spirituals To Swing" concert in New York City Carnegie Hall to highlight black musical styles. The stars of the show are the duo of singer Big Joe Turner and pianist Pete Johnson who kick off a national "boogie woogie" craze.

Saxophonist Louis Jordan leaves Chick Webb's band to form the Tympany Five, a slimmed down group that begins the rhythm & blues revolution.



CBS buys USA's Columbia

1939 Leo Mintz opens The Record Rendezvous in Cleveland, Ohio, a store specializing in race music. 12 years later he will convince DJ Alan Freed to start playing those records on the air which launches the rock 'n' roll era.

The Panoram visual jukebox is invented
(plays short films of records, the first music videos)










Moonlight Serenade was composed by Glenn Miller with lyrics added later by Mitchell Parish. The recording reached no. 3 on Billboard and was the no. 5 record on the 1939 Billboard year-end list of the top recordings of 1939.



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Pilgrimage to Music Part 4: 1910s Music Facts & Events

1912 William Spiller's band, the Musical Spillers, export ragtime to Britain
The first blues is published, Hart Wand's Dallas Blues



1914 Jerome Kern invents the "musical" by integrating music, drama and ballet and setting it into the present

The American Society for Composers (ASCAP) is founded to protect songwriters



1915 The 'Chicago Automatic Machine & Tool Company' invents the jukebox.





 1916 The first record to be advertised as "samba" is Ernesto Joaquim Maria dos Santos, better known as "Donga", Pelo Telefone



Piano makers Brunswick start a record label


1917 The first jazz record is cut in New York

1918 James Europe's Hellfighters export jazz to France

1919 General Electric absorbs the American branch of Marconi Wireless Telegraph and renames it Radio Corporation of America (RCA)

 Will Marion Cook's syncopated orchestra plays jazz for King George V  in Britain



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Pilgrimage in Music Part 5: 1920 -1925 Music Facts & Events

1920 Mamie Smith's Crazy Blues is the first blues by a black singer to become a nation-wide hit



Westinghouse Electric starts the first commercial radio station, "KDKA"

1921 106 million records are sold in the USA, mostly published on "Tin Pan Alley", but control of the market is shifting to the record companies


Okeh introduces a "Colored Catalog" targeting the black community, the first series of "race records"





1922 The words "rock" and "roll", which were black slang for sexual intercourse, appear on record for the first time, Trixie Smith's "My Baby Rocks Me With One Steady Roll".



James Sterling buys out the British division of Columbia

1923 Bessie Smith cuts her first blues record
John Carson records two "hillbilly" songs and thus founds country music

1924 The Music Corporation of America (MCA) is founded in Chicago as a talent agency
German record company Deutsche Grammophon (DG) founds the Polydor company to distribute records abroad

Riley Puckett introduces the "yodeling" style of singing into country music

1925 The Mills Brothers popularize the "barbershop harmonies"

Carl Sprague is the first musician to record cowboy songs
(the first "singing cowboy" of country music)

the electrical recording process is commercially introduced, quickly replacing the mechanical one

78.26 RPM is chosen as a standard for phonographic records because
phonographs at that speed could use a standard 3600-rpm motor and 46-tooth
gear (78.26 = 3600/46).


Nashville's first radio station is founded (WSM) and begins broadcasting a
program that will change name to "Grand Ole Opry"


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Pilgrimage in Music Part 6: 1926-1929 Music Facts & Events

1926 Bing Crosby cuts his first record
and invents the "crooning" style of singing
thanks to a new kind of microphone.

Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice
made him one of the best-selling recording
artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion
records in circulation.
 



Blind Lemon Jefferson is the first bluesman to enter e major recording studio



Will Shade founds the first "jug band" in Memphis, inspired by Louisville's first jug bands

The British magazine "Melody Maker" is founded

General Electric founds the "National Broadcasting Company" (NBC)

1927 Meade Lux Lewis cuts Honky Tonk Train, the most famous boogie woogie



Jimmie Rodgers, the first star of country music, adopts "yodeling" style of singing, the blues style of black music, and the Hawaian slide guitar

Classical composer Kurt Weill begins a collaboration with playwright Bertold Brecht, incorportating jazz, folk and pop elements in his soundtracks

Sales of "race records" reach $100 million

1928 The United Independent Broadcasters (later renamed Columbia Broadcasting System, or CBS) of 47 affiliate stations is founded

Clarence "Pinetop" Smith cuts Pinetop's Boogie Woogie

1929 Decca is founded in Britain by Edward Lewis as a classical music company

RCA buys Victor Talking Machines

The "Great Depression" destroys the record industry

Blind Lemon Jefferson dies




For a most detailed music timeline, you can visit www.scaruffi.com/music

An Endless Pilgrimage To Music

There are two different ways to look at the history of music... both of which are valid for me.

One way is to view the objective as it is stated by the majority of critics and the charts. The other way is to view the subjective, our point of view... our favorites.

They may contradict with each other but each of them serve valuable purposes...                        ..the destination remains the same,an endless pilgrimage to music...

The journey begins with the period from 1860 to 1930 with a brief presentation of the major music events of that era.. A year by year review will follow starting from 1940 up to nowdays..

New posts will be published on a weekly basis on Mondays while the other days themes remain the same.. for the time being...

Pilgrimage in Music Part 1: 19th Century Music Facts & Events

1860 Eduard-Leon Scott invents the phonautograph and makes the first visual recording of sound

1867 The first collection of "Slave Songs of the United States" is published



1877 Thomas Edison invents sound recording, and a phonograph to play sound recorded on cylinders. It had two diaphragm-and-needle units, one for recording, & one for playback. When he spoke into the mouthpiece, the sound vibrations were indented onto a metal cylinder with tin foil wrapped around it by the recording needle in a vertical groove pattern. The first words recorded and played back were "Mary had a little lamb...", spoken by Edison. He filed for the patent on December 24, 1877.

1880 The tango is born in Buenos Aires

1885 Benjamin Franklin Keith and Edward Franklin Albee set up a nation-wide chain of vaudeville theaters

1887 Emile Berliner builds the first gramophone, that plays sound recorded at 78 RPM on a flat record

1889 Columbia is founded by Edward Easton


For a more detailed music timeline, you can visit www.scaruffi.com/music

Pilgrimage in Music Part 2: 19th Century Music Facts & Events

1892 Popular music becomes big business and music publishers rent offices around Union Square in New York City, an area that is renamed "Tin Pan Alley" (sheet music is the primary "product" of popular music and the industry is dominated by music publishing houses)

1893 Kerry Mills's Rastus On Parade is the first published cakewalk


1894 The weekly Billboard magazine begins publication, offering "charts" of music sales

1895 Ben Harney's You've Been a Good Old Wagon is the first ragtime piece to be published.
The first jazz band, the Spasm Band, first performs in New Orleans
Gugliemo Marconi invents the radio

1898 Emile Berliner sells the European rights to the gramophone to the Gramophone Company or HMV (His Master's Voice)

1899 Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag (1899) starts the ragtime craze




For a most detailed music timeline, you can visit www.scaruffi.com/music

Pilgrimage in Music Part 3: Early 1900s Music Facts & Events

1901 Emile Berliner founds the record label Victor Talking Machines

1903 Will-Marion Cook's musical revue exports cakewalk to Britain

1906 Thaddeus Cahill builds the first electronic instrument

1908 Cubism is the new fad in Paris

1909 The term "jazz" is used for the first time in the song Uncle Josh in Society (but it refers to ragtime)

1910 350,000 pianos are manufactured in the USA


For a most detailed music timeline, you can visit www.scaruffi.com/music