![]() ![]() ![]() The number of jukeboxes in the country declined, boomer rock fans increasingly gravitated toward albums, and the cassette format (and even the wasteful “cassette single” and “mini-CD” format) began overtaking vinyl 45s. By the early Eighties, the 45 began dying a slow, humiliating death. The following decade, indie fans who snapped up Hüsker Dü’s “Makes No Sense at All” found their unlikely but fantastic cover of “Love Is All Around,” otherwise known as the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song, on the flip.Īccording to the New York Times, the peak year for the seven-inch single was 1974, when 200 million were sold. If you flipped over Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way” in 1977, you’d come across “Silver Springs,” the Stevie Nicks landmark that was dumped from Rumours. Some singles had picture sleeves or B sides of outtakes. A handful of classic-rock standards, including Bob Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street” and the Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women,” were only initially released as singles, unattached to albums. In the decades that followed, everyone from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones through Patti Smith, Nirvana and the White Stripes released their first music on 45s. One of rock’s most cataclysmic early hits, Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock,” sold 3 million singles in 1955. Teenagers of the Fifties took to the portable, less-expensive format one ad at the time priced the records at 65 cents each. It’s impossible to underestimate the impact of the 45, which was the iTunes 99-cent download or surprise single (à la the Black Keys’ sudden “Lo/Hi”) of its day. For added head-scratching, each 45 was printed in a different color, from “deep red” to “dark blue.” (Yes, colored vinyl actually existed in the years immediately after World War II.)īut with the release of those titles, and other companies soon entering the market, the singles revolution began. Not quite the stuff of the pop charts at that moment in history. The one most people will remember is Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s jumping-bean boogie “That’s All Right,” which became Elvis Presley’s breakout moment in the next decade, but the list also included a Yiddish song, “A Klein Melamedl (The Little Teacher),” sung by a cantor. Then consider those initial seven RCA releases, which, according to the label’s archives, ranged from classical to kids’ music to country. “They’ll come in, ask for a recording, and then ask me whether or not it can be played on the particular phonogram they have at home.” More often than not, he said, potential buyers left without forking over any cash. “My customers don’t know what to buy anymore,” a record store owner groused to the trade magazine Cashbox that month. The size of 45s alone, combined with the fact that different gear was suddenly required to play them, was enough to perplex the pre-rock music business. On March 15th, 1949, RCA Victor became the first label to roll out records that were smaller (seven inches in diameter) and held less music (only a few minutes a side) than the in-vogue 78s. When it arrived 70 years ago today, the 45 rpm single, a format that would revolutionize pop music, seemed less radical than simply confusing. ![]()
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