Charted History Of The Music Player

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 From ShortList

Abandoned Radio Stations

Radio stations are a unique breed. Some of them sign on the air and gain instant success, some never amount to much. Or until they are bought and transformed by another entity. And there are those that just simply fall by the wayside.

Every major city has a few AM radio stations that were once popular 40-50 years ago that have gone through countless ownership/call letter/format changes and now languish as unknown ethnic, religious, Radio Disney, sports or fourth string talk formats. The intentions of the owners were good. A new and untried format. Or a stab at competing with the heritage local station with a different spin on their format. But somehow, fate had other plans.

Let's look at a few of those who somehow just fell apart and their remains still stand.......

WHOW 1520 AM Clinton, IL 

Probably the very best (and rare) example of a radio station that has gone to hell.....and BACK to tell about it.

Photo by Tim Messer -  http://photos.tmesser.com/v/radio/whow/

I don't know what the hell happened in here. But Casey Kasem never did it this way. Note the ashtray on the console and dig that Radio Shack mixing board .......

Please note the station had signed off in 2002, about the time these pictures were taken. Note the lack of computer equipment in the WHOW on-air studio. Virtually ALL radio stations in 2002 - including most of the smallest, had fully digital computer controlled automation by that time.) Not WHOW.

There is what appears to be an elderly computer mouse on top of that 1970's vintage automatic record changer you see in the first picture and it's quite possible all the computer equipment was taken out from it. But how many stations played their programming off cassette tapes in 2002? There a LOT of those you can see there, including cassette player - an ancient 1990s ghetto blaster! Most small stations like WHOW rarely, if ever played cassettes in 2002. It just wasn't a suitable quality medium for radio programming 

In fact, cassettes were rarely used in most commercial radio stations beyond recording news bites, occasional public service/religious programs (usually speech), and for DJs to record "airchecks" (a kind of live sampling of how they sound over the air to play for radio stations that hire them....or not., with all the music cut out and just the DJ's monologues and some commercials recorded.) Even THAT had gone to CD-Rs by the early 2000s in most parts of the country, as they were recorded onto hard disk and edited digitally by then.

Today, WHOW is back with modern facilities and runs a News/Talk format with an emphasis on farming news.

There's more....

WISL 1480 AM, Shamokin, PA

Photo by Jim Treese

There's an old gutted tape automation system back there and what appears to be a cart recorder deck and a reel to reel tape deck.


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=82847&id=660789285&l=f9c85fd27a

WISL was an Oldies station in central Pennsylvania. It left the air in 2003 after it was sold to Clear Channel and a subsequent sale to another broadcaster who could not afford to keep the station on the air and the station's license expired in 2006. The station was officially deleted from the FCC database in 2008. However WISL remains online as a tribute internet radio station  - http://www.wisl1480.com/

KOME 1300 AM Tulsa, OK

Photos by Jim Hartz - Tulsa TV Memories http://www.flickr.com/photos/tulsatv/sets/72157621986456279/

KOME in Tulsa was off the air by 1965 (although the Stetson Hats poster in the studio here looks oddly '80s vintage), the KOME call letters were used a few years later for a rock station in San Jose, CA. However the remains of the KOME station building in Tulsa remain. AM 1300 in Tulsa is now KAKC, an all sports station.

WCHR 94.5 FM Trenton, NJ

WCHR is a religious radio station in Trenton, NJ which currently broadcasts on 920 AM.  WCHR originally broadcast on 94.5 FM. But left the FM dial in 1998 and after a number of call letter/format changes 94.5 is now WPST an Adult Contemporary radio station. This is the former WCHR station building.

KSVY 1550 AM, Opportunity, WA

Photo by Bill Harms

KSVY was an Oldies (later Classical) music station located in the Spokane suburb of Opportunity, WA. The photo above is the remains of the trailer that held their transmitter.

http://radiotowers.info/wa/spok/ksvy/ (You can hear samples of KSVY here.)

Here's the remains of one station in Alabama:

http://rural-ruin.livejournal.com/815925.html

More:

Automated Radio Stations

Many people have a disgusted view of radio these days. And who can blame them? They lament the lack of personality, the bland repetitive playlists, the high commercial loads per hour and most annoyingly, the "liner cards" (trust me, the jocks more than anyone HATE these. They know you're not stupid and it's embarrassing on both ends.)

Seriously, what the fuck is "Now Playing An Even Better Mix of Continuous Lite Favorites With More Variety and Less Talk....."

How many of you have heard something like that on the radio and screamed back at it "Well DO WE, NOW? DUH!"

(Please remember it's all radio program director ego masturbation and does not represent the opinions of those who are/were forced to say it, strictly verbatim, to keep their jobs.)

Many of us will look back at the radio industry deregulation of the '90s, which lifted ownership caps on how many radio stations one corporation could own in one city from one AM and one FM to 8 total (5 FM and 3 AM stations. Or vice-versa) as the beginning of bland, stale, canned sounding radio. And to some degree, they're right - it just went south on a MASSIVE scale after that. But corporately programmed, bland boring radio been around longer than you think.

When the FM radio band was finally established in the late '40s it had a really slow start. One was most stations were co-owned with major local AM stations and simply simulcasted their AM programming on FM 24/7. Others simulcasted most of the time and would produce nightly programming. And the rest were upstart independents that focused on their music. Mostly classical music and easy listening/show tunes. Always accentuating the "high fidelity" of FM. 

When FM Stereo debuted in 1961, it wasn't much of a game changer at first. Few stations adopted it immediately and it wasn't until the early '70s when most stations did. So apart from a few daring originals, FM was stagnating.

So in 1966, the FCC decided to do something about it. It wasn't in the back pocket of lobbyists at it is today. So it mandated that all AM/FM combo's FM stations have a mandatory minimum of separate programming from their AM stations.

The radio industry was not happy. Many AM/FMs actually didn't even have separate studios for their FM stations. But they had to get something - ANYTHING to fill all this new airtime. This meant hiring people who will work really cheap, which led to the progressive rock era OR.....

Enter the radio automation machine.

It was first invented in the 1950s, but it didn't work very well because the very first ones played 45 RPM records using a jukebox-like mechanism. The selector mechanism that put each record on the platter had to be cleaned and well lubricated. Often. Otherwise, the selector would not properly retract and as the powerful motor moved the player on to the next selection, the selector would ride along, happily SMASHING every record it encountered..... SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!.

Back to the drawing board.

By the late '60s, they had improved to the point of enough stability (or at least less destructiveness) to make them a viable option for most of the bigger FM stations.  
 
Here's how it worked (in the TM Stereo Rock format):

"Hi..."

First, you panic a little.

Next you opened up four boxes of two track reel, one sided  tape and threaded them accordingly. The 100 Series was for currents. These were newer hits were in sets of two songs, back announced with "That was (last song played) and before that (the first song)"

The 100 series reel was also where the announcer lurked.

The 200 Series were the oldest songs in the format. The 300s were recurrents (songs released in the last 7 years that people still like.)  There was also a 400 series for nighttime airplay. It featured more album cuts and newer or "buzz" material, each back announced with not only title and artist, but also album the song came off of.

New music reels were shipped out to replace older reels several times a year. Currents were replaced every two weeks, recurrents four times a year and oldies twice a year.

And these tape reels needed constant changing, so it was usually up to the jocks in the AM studio to rewind them. These reel to reel machines had POWERFUL rewind motors, they were a marvel to watch the tapes rewind so fast. But you had to make sure the reel hubs were on tightly or the reels would wobble off and fly across the room projectile (and they HURT) and replace them in mid-airshift.

This was also the era of the 2-3 minute pop song, which meant they had to work fast - VERY fast (one can only imagine the horror of hearing "White Rabbit" through the hallway AM air monitors approaching it's end and you're still trying to get a tape threaded in the machine and just as Grace Slick starts singing "Feed your head!......Feed your head!", race back to the AM studio to open the mic before the very last note faded out.)

And under NO circumstances were you allowed to break a sweat.

TM Stereo Rock subscribing stations were required to return the outdated reels back to the company (the metal reels themselves were pretty expensive.) But this left a narrower playlist, so stations often held on to older reels to add more variety.

Next, you put the jingles, commercial spots, PSAs, weather and time checks and mandatory hourly station identification on cart tapes.

Carts are essentially similar to 8-Track music tapes. More about them here.

Then, came the fun part - Programming the beast. Each system was different. Some were computerized, some used switches. And when you're done (and hopefully done right), you had something that sounded like this (This isn't TM Stereo Rock, this is the Drake-Chenault Hit Parade.......)

WRAL 101.5 FM, Raleigh, NC (1974)

As the '70s progressed and FM became more dominate, many automated FMs went live and some used the automation for AM programming.

Like many automated radio stations, KISM-FM's jocks often pre-recorded their shows prior to airtime.

But automated radio never went away. In fact, it's status quo. But using computers today. That big wall of tape machines can all be done from a laptop computer today. Very few stations today have live announcers physically playing the music.

You MUST Have THIS: Mail Order Madness

The Bhutanese Stamp Records

(The Bhutanese Stamp Records....Actual Size.....)

Anyone who collects stamps knows the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has by far the strangest and most unusual postage stamps in the world.

But these have to be amongst the STRANGEST of the strange. In the early '70s, Bhutan issued record-stamps. They are actual one-sided phonograph records, playable on any turntable without automatic, end of side pick up.

They featured history talks and traditional Bhutanese folk music.

In a 21st century update, Bhutan recently issued a series of CD-ROM stamps....

8-Track Flashback: The Flipside

Remember those old 8-Track music tapes you still probably got stashed somewhere?

How one day, somewhere in the summer of 1980 as you're driving your AMC Pacer to a Sambo's for pancakes, you decided to break out that Loverboy 8-Track out of the glove box.  Thirsty as hell, you stop by a Tradewell store on the way to Sambo's and buy a can of Tab.

You open up the can of Tab and the can erupts, spilling the fizzy brown saccharine flavoured liquid down onto the Loverboy 8-Track.

Well, it looked like only the label got soaked. So you think 'why not' and put the thing in the player. "Working For The Weekend" plays and...well...never mind, just listen to this:

http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/BT/Egnekn_-_Going_off_the_deep_end.mp3

Now how MUCH would YOU pay to hear THAT again?

For only $15, you can have this damaged classic and more JUST LIKE IT on one dysfunctional CD. Introducing 8-Track Magic, a compilation CD of music from messed up 8-Track tapes from Artists Throwing Money Out the Window.

And surprisingly, this disc was made in 1994.

http://www.generatorsoundart.org/GL-02.html

ATMOW has either gotta be the trippiest bunch of aural freaks I've heard since Negativland (or even The Residents.)  Or the biggest rip-off in the name of "art" in history. Perhaps it should be "People Throwing Money Out the Window"

I mean, for that same price, I could buy a whole box full of REAL messed up 8-Track tapes (including the player) and actually get a more artistic experience because I am WATCHING the machine destroy the tapes before my eyes.

Here's another one.

Check this out: OK, your buddy calls you and dude says his refrigerator is silent. I mean like, REALLY silent. So for some reason, you don't plug it in, call the landlord (or even maybe grab a blow dryer and do a defrost.) Instead, you stick a tape recorder in it (WARNING: THE FOLLOWING AUDIO MAY BE SHOCKING TO SOME LISTENERS):

http://www.generatorsoundart.org/sound/GL-06.mp3

This ENTIRE smash CD The Silent Fridge of POP.AC also is yours for $15:

http://www.generatorsoundart.org/GL-06.html

Curly Toes

Back in the '70s, someone found a homemade recording on a cassette that was thrown out, lost or abandoned. The story of how it was found....and who found it...and where is unknown.

The recording, which had circulated in the tape underground for decades, was that of a woman with a Southern accent, probably middle aged (or a young smoker.)

She sings an a cappela song on a cheap cassette recorder of doing a burlesque striptease for her boyfriend, some, um...lucky guy named "Ben"

Nobody knows who sang this. Or who our lucky Ben is. But everyone who's ever heard this wonders if she really wrote this or just ad-libbed her way through it. But they all had the same look of catatonic shock you'll probably have upon hearing this, before busting out in uncontrollable laughter. Or have to swallow a whole bottle of Advil just to cope with this woman's migraine-inducing singing in their heads the rest of the day...

You can find this on Irwin Chusid's Songs In The Key of Z, Vol. 2 compilation of outsider music. LOADS of bizarre musical oddities on these discs.

The YouTuber who posted this dedicated it to Bettie Page:

Election Day Hits: "Vote With A Bullet" Corrosion Of Conformity (1991)

Classic Ghetto Blasters of The '80s

The Queen Mother of ALL Ghetto Blasters, the Lasonic TRC-931 was a wall - literally. WITH all 10 "D" size batteries it required, it weighed a good 30 pounds. It had a dual cassette deck and not just any dual cassette deck. This thing was so badass, the Play deck was side-loading (like in a car stereo), just to make room for the massive 12" inch woofers. The radio had not one, but TWO telescopic antennas, AM/FM and two Shortwave bands. A full 5 band graphic equalizer, auxiliary inputs (earliest models included a PHONO input for your turntable!) stereo enhancement and pumped out a generous 50 watts per channel. And where where you most likely to buy one? Try WOOLWORTH! 

No photo does justice to this one - this one is, to this day the BIGGEST ghetto blaster ever made. It sported an AM/FM/Shortwave radio, which was a strange feature on many portable stereos in the '80s.

No American teenager actively listened to shortwave radio back then - in spite of stations like the English transmissions of Radio Moscow (which broadcasted Western rock music that would get any Soviet teenager sent straight to the gulags if they were ever caught listening to it. With a healthy dose of anti-American propaganda in spite of the fact many of the Western rock acts they did play were AMERICAN.)

Secondly, the low-fi, wildly fluctuating unevenness and irregularity of the shortwave radio signal made music listening on it an endurance test. My guess was the manufacturers were thinking of some phantom jet-set people who wanted to take a radio with them that could allow them to pick up The Voice Of America or the BBC World Service should they wind up in say, Nairobi. But the size of this ghetto blaster (the actual size of a suitcase), to say nothing of the weight (30 lbs. - with the 10 - yes, I said 10 - "D" cell batteries required to feed this thing off of the AC power grid) and weight (did I mention the $200 - about $400 in 2012 dollars) price tag?) guaranteed this radio was STAYING in America.

It had a dual cassette (one deck was a player that you inserted a cassette into it like a car stereo) while the other was a typical ghetto blaster player/recorder for dubbing your Iron Maiden tapes (for your friends in Nairobi) both with auto-reverse, a 5 band graphic equalizer, a Loudness button (for extra punchy bass) through the 12" speakers and countless other buttons as well as a light show in itself just to make this work.

Lasonic went ass over tea kettle (whatever that means) on this product. But even though Lasonic (who?) weren't a very well known electronics name like Sony, Panasonic or Aiwa, this radio became so influential on the TRUE ghetto blaster folks (early rap stars), that Lasonic reissued the TRC-931 in 2007, with iPod connections replacing the often faulty dual cassette system. I really think, why not just BUILD an MP3 player/recorder into it, using thumb/flash drives (the cassettes of today?)

Portable stereos in the early '80s were HUGE things only for the most headstrong music fan when a simple Walkman won't do.

I once knew a kid named Glenn who owned one of these General Electric babies. When he blasted his Judas Priest tapes out of this thing, every moose in Canada could hear it. The FM and AM reception was STUNNING. I ALWAYS wanted one.... 

But by the mid '80s, they started getting smaller...and smaller.

I'm not sure if it was the lawyers were getting on them for the hernia problems these huge radio/tape decks were potentially causing for kids at school (I mean with 30 lbs. of boombox and cassette tapes on one arm and another 30 lbs. of Trapper Keeper and books on the other.). But the rockin' out sure took a hit.

Then it really got colourful:

The Sharp QT-50

 Then these things started showing up. The Sharp QT-50 from 1985. A sort of retro-trip in pastel colours (pink, lavender, peach, seafoam green, banana yellow, powder puff blue and even beige) that even the girliest of girls and gayest of guys get nervous at today just looking at this thing. But 1985 was also the year of guys wearing pink polo shirts and Miami Vice.

There were 8-track capable sets

This was Montgomery Ward's 1983 offering. Montgomery Ward, Radio Shack and the RCA Music Service were the final outposts for the hardened 8-track tape lover in the '80s as Montgomery Ward still made players by the end of 1984, Radio Shack still sold blank 8-tracks, tape head cleaners and cases and the RCA Music Service still made and offered a slowly decreasing, selection of new 8-track tapes well into 1988.

...and those with TVs

Some even had turntables (for warping and scratching your records while playing volleyball on the beach.)

Sadly...by 1990, the portable stereo had become, seen-one, you seen 'em, all black things in weird shapes with CD players. They brought the colours back too more recently, but I still wish they made them like those BIG powerhouses from back in the day....

Halloween Hits: "The Mummer's Dance (Radio Single Version)" Loreena McKennitt (1997)

It's amazing how so many people get Loreena McKennitt mixed up with Enya. And contrary to widespread urban legend - and one of my pet peeves when talking to the utterly CLUELESS about the song - Enya NEVER sang backup on the chorus on this radio single remix. That was just an overdub of Loreena McKennitt's voice in a different key. I have the radio promo CD and nowhere on it does Enya's name pop up ANYWHERE.

"The Mummer's Dance" hit #14 on the Top 40 radio charts in 1997.

So what's a mummer and why is it dancing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummers_Play

Loreena McKennitt also had another creepy earlier Canadian hit single "All Souls Night" (1991)

Halloween Hits: "Voodoo" Godsmack (1998)

Halloween Hits: Chilling, Thrilling Sounds Of The Haunted House - Disneyland Records (1964)

http://www.haunteddimensions.raykeim.com/index361.html

Who could forget this kid classic?

If you grew up in the '60s and '70s (as well as many from the '80s), this record was a part of your childhood. Even if you never owned a copy, you knew all about it's existence because you often had a friend that did.. 

Originally released in 1964, Chilling, Thrilling Sounds Of The Haunted House remains a perennial Halloween holiday classic.

(Kinda like this album, but for Halloween.)

It was re-released in 1973 with an orange jacket and it has been re-released in it's entirety on CD.

Side One of the LP is narrated by the great Laura Olsher, who sadly passed away in June 2012.

Side 1

Side Two has a compilation of classic Disney sound effects. The most famous one is here.

Side 2

Laura Olsher's voice could be heard on many Disneyland story albums........

                              (Let's hear it for the G.E. Wildcat Portable Stereo Phonograph )

.........and even appears as a sample on Ice Cube's 1991 gangsta rap classic "Jackin' For Beats"

Her performance as Mrs. Cratchit in the 1962 Christmas special Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol is another one of her famous roles......

                                  

Lost '80s Pop Classic Week: "Twist In My Sobriety" Tanita Tikaram (1988)

Tanita Tikaram was all of 19 years old when she recorded this song. But she had the voice and words of someone far beyond her age. This was from her apropos titled album Ancient Heart.

But being 19 and singing material this far advanced probably created a bit of an uncomfortable match. Her follow up albums reflected a more pop direction, which didn't sit well with American fans expecting another "Twist In My Sobriety".

She still performs and records and has a new album out, Can't Go Back. This is her new single "Dust On My Shoes".....

Vinyl Mystery: Wrongly Mastered Singles And Albums

Ahhh......the long and odd sounding history of the wrongly mastered record....

Nothing new really. Countless early recordings since the days of the very first hand wound cylinder recordings have had various pitch and speed anomalies until the earliest standard was set when electrical recordings were introduced in 1925, mandating 78.26 RPM as the universal speed for recordings on disc records in North America from 1925 until the end of the 78 RPM record (slighty less, 77.94 RPM for European recordings.).

And all was well...for the most part. There are some who beg to differ. Many Glenn Miller fans had issues with some of his recordings, namely this classic:

But considering there was only so much recording time on one side of a 78 RPM record, if it sounded a tad rushed, it probably was. Just like many other 78 RPM direct to disc mastered recordings. But everything seems to be on the right key here.

However, when tape began to be used as a standard of mastering albums, an old problem reared it's ugly head. Some of the earliest tape mastered albums of the '40s had something called "wow and flutter", very noticeable on analog piano recordings when the player plays a sustained note. (Play a sustained C major note on a piano and record it on an average analog tape deck, then play back the tape and you'll hear the difference.) Technology improved to reduce that artifact dramatically over the years. But analog tape still had that problem, no matter how top quality the tape and recording machine was. But the technology was refined enough on better tape decks to make it much less noticeable.  Digital recording virtually eliminated that problem, but at the expense of everything else in the recording. Namely high-hat and cymbals on the early digital recordings.

Tape and record players themselves always had pitch and speed control problems. Until the '60s when better audiophile technology came of age and pitch controls were a feature of better made turntables, there was not much you could do about the problem.

However in the mastering process of many recordings, either deliberately or by accident, some tracks in the studio tapes were mastered at the wrong speed. The most infamous example was the original Family Production's label 1971 release of Billy Joel's Cold Spring Harbor LP.

The instrumental tracks sounded fine, but Joel's voice was speeded up and sounded far too high pitched. It's been said Joel himself went around to New England record stores to buy up as many copies of Cold Spring Harbor as he could (luckily, it never fully went into national release at the time. But the 1971 release never sold many copies to begin with.) Some of the 1971 originals sold then and they are prized collector's items today.

The original copies of Billy Joel's Cold Spring Harbor album did not have a Columbia label.

Here is a sample of that original recording (note the pitch difference in Joel's vocals):

It was re-released by Columbia in 1983 with the vocals restored to normal pitch, but also remixed with slightly different instrumental arrangements on some tracks.)

But the crux of this particular biscuit is Robert Johnson's blues recordings of 1936 and 1937, which have been featured on countless compilations. In 1990, Sony re-released these historic sessions on CD, faithfully remastered from original acetate master discs.

However recently, it's been discovered that the pitch of the original recordings may have been exaggerated. When the recordings were slowed down by 20%, some say they had a more "natural" sound to them than the more frenzied tempo we are used to hearing Johnson's recordings at. The sound that many claim started rock 'n roll.

And if that's the case, how many other classic blues recordings from everybody from Bessie Smith to Blind Lemon Jefferson are mastered at the wrong speed?

Well first, being direct to disc, it's hard to deliberately master the disc at the wrong speed. But on a portable recorder/cutter being battery powered (likely), as used in those San Antonio and Dallas hotel rooms when Johnson cut these sessions, it COULD make a slower initial recording and when the recording was played back at AC powered 78 RPM, it can sound faster than the actual recording was.

It's debatable amongst blues fans, but it IS a plausible scenario.....read more here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/may/27/robert-johnson-blues

The History of The 45 RPM Record

In the late 1940s, record sales were great. The Depression and the war had passed and America was entering a new period of comfort and affluence. Just sit back and relax, Truman was going to take care of everything.

But there WAS one little problem......the records themselves.

Recording technology had changed tremendously since Emile Berliner's first gramophone records in the 1890s. We had gone from unresponsive acoustic recording horns and direct to disc master recording to full electrical recording and tape masters.

But very little had changed with the records themselves. They still rotated at 78 RPM, still made of noisy shellac and extremely fragile.

Berliner Gramophone Record, 1897

RCA Victor 78 RPM Record, 1948

In 1948, Columbia Records unveiled the 33 1/3 RPM long playing record. It played for about 20 minutes per side and made of thick and much quieter vinyl.

The first LP Record, 1948

RCA Victor, Columbia's long time rival was also working on a newer and better record at the same time as Columbia. When Columbia came out with the LP record, RCA scrambled on it's own project and in 1949, unveiled the 45 RPM record.

""Texarkana Baby" Eddy Arnold (1949), the world's first commercially released 45 RPM record.

The RCA 7" inch 45 RPM record was cute, VERY small, and RCA's very colourful vinyl (each genre of music had it's own colour of vinyl!) made it an instant hit with younger people. Popular releases were on standard black vinyl. Country releases were on green vinyl, Children's records were on yellow vinyl, Classical releases were on red vinyl, "Race" (or R&B and Gospel) records were on orange vinyl, Blue vinyl/blue label was used for semi-classical instrumental music and blue vinyl/black label for international recordings

Eventually, RCA soon ended it's coloured vinyl lines due to the price of the coloured vinyl compared to the standard black.

It also employed "The World's Fastest Record Changer"

Here's the demonstration record that came with one of these players......

But the 45 RPM record and RCA 45 players DID have a few problems. First, the players could only play 45 RPM records. Nothing else. Second, classical music fans still had to put up with the same mid-movement breaks that plagued symphonic fans since the dawn of classical recording. Something the 33 1/3 RPM record rarely had.

This era in the turn of the '50s was called "The Battle of The Speeds" Some people preferred the 33 1/3 RPM LP, others the new 45 RPM players and old timers who insisted on the 78 RPM speed. The other major labels mostly aligned with the 33 1/3 RPM LP for albums (Capitol however released albums in all three speeds) and 45 and 78 RPM for singles. The 78 RPM single began disappearing in the early '50s and the 78 RPM speed regulated to children's records through hand-me-down phonographs from their parents. The last American commercially released 78 RPM singles appeared in 1959, however they were still made for children's records and older jukeboxes until 1964.

And thus began the era of the 45s. An era that lasted 40 wonderful years. Before the cassette tape, CD and MP3 player, 45s were the perfect portable personal music medium.

Remember these?

And the 45s themselves were super cheap too, less than a dollar each. Fun to collect, share and trade with friends. While some kids had baseball cards and comic books, others had 45s. Portable battery operated phonographs were also made for taking your music anywhere.

Check this little baby out!

 And another one.....

And who could forget THESE?

Also known as "spiders"

The very first Stereo 45 RPM record was introduced by Bel Canto Records in June of 1958.

 In the UK, Japan and some European countries 45s were pressed with detachable centres. In other European countries, 45s were pressed with a standard 45 spindle hole. The reason there were detachable centres was for compatibility with some foreign record changers (like the early RCA changer, which was extremely popular) and jukeboxes.

US 45

UK 45

Japanese 45

Greek 45

Italian 45

Turkish 45

In Australia, most 45s had standard LP spindle holes.

German 45

Thai 45

Lebonese 45

45s also had the B-side. Most were a second, non-single track from the parent album. But sometimes, it would be a live track, an instrumental version of the A-Side song, an outtake from the parent album session. Or sometimes, a completely original song. Most of the B-sides of Elton John's 45s had songs recorded just for them, as Elton John felt it gave his fans better value for their money. And they did. Most of them are collector's items and many were never released to CD.

There's also been the question of how long can one side of a 45 play. Most 45s run from 2-5 minutes. John Lennon once asked this to George Martin in 1968 and George Martin, after some experimenting, found the answer - 7 minutes, 11 seconds. And thus the playing time of "Hey Jude".

    
But bear in mind he was also taking into account standard groove width and the automatic record changer, which was very popular in those days. If he went any longer, he risked tripping the automatic changing mechanism of many of these record changers (this record did on many of them regardless.)

(UPDATE: Thanks to John Cerra for reminding me that "Hey Jude" was actually the SECOND longest pop 45 of the '60s and that "MacArthur Park" Richard Harris was actually LONGER than "Hey Jude" by 9 seconds (7:20) and was released earlier than "Hey Jude". My brain isn't what it used to be. - Larry)

However, this wasn't the longest 45 side ever. That distinction belongs to Bruce Springsteen on the B-side of his 1987 single "Fire", a live version of "Incident of 57th Street". It clocked in at just over 10 minutes (10:03)

I'm sure there could have been longer. But I haven't seen any.

(UPDATE 4/30/15 - Wayne Whitehorne says "Longest one I've ever seen is "Lunar Sea" by Camel, Janus J-262 (B side) 10:27. Shortest one I've seen is "Beside" by The Fastest Group Alive, Valiant V-754 (B side) :35". Both have been verified.)

"Little Boxes" The Womenfolk (1964) at 1:03 actually charted in the Billboard Hot 100!

But that's the fun of record collecting. Just when you think you've seen and heard it all.....Surprise!

By the beginning of the '80s, sales of 45s were beginning to gradually slip as sales of cassettes and blank tape began ushering the "mixtape" era. CBS noticed this and test marketed the one sided single. In 1987, A&M released the first cassette single and other record companies quickly followed suit. By 1990 however, record companies began discontinuing the 45, except for jukebox releases and collector's items. However with the vinyl resurrection of the last few years, many companies are back to pressing vinyl.

But there's something about the 45 that an MP3 simply can't mimic. It's REAL. Just the right size. Something you can hold.

And no matter what next big thing comes along, they'll NEVER go out of style.