Like the soundies, scopitones were short musical films viewed in jukeboxes equipped with projectors. Developed in France, the first scopitones appeared in the U.S. in 1963 but featured European artists with limited appeal to Americans hanging out in bars and diners. Among the artists who made scopitones were Debbie Reynolds, Neil Sedaka, Nancy Sinatra, and The Hondells. The hope was that the scopitone jukeboxes would be more appealing to café and bar owners than TV sets because patrons would have to pay to watch and the films could be accompanied by advertising. But the content was problematic, developing narratives that were fragmented and nonsensical, and the juxtapositions were often jarring, pairing staid artists like Kay Starr and Brook Benton with scantily clad dancers. In one of the great prognostication mis-reads of all time, a Billboard article suggested that “if the insertion of advertising [into scopitones] is successful it promises to replace TV altogether because of its revenue-generating advantage” (“Ad Tests”).
As Amy Herzog notes, perhaps the greatest significance of these visual experiments was that the songs were emphasized and the images were “driven by a purely music logic” (31), an orientation that would not necessarily be carried over in later decades in the production of music videos. But neither the scopitone nor←65 | 66→ the tele-record made much of an impression, for two main reasons. First, they were behind the musical curve, favoring performers more associated with Tin Pan Alley than rock ‘n’ roll. Second, they were unable to compete with the music-related visuals that were increasingly available, free of charge, on television.
When rock ‘n’ roll first gained popularity in the 1950s, television was still a nascent institution, just beginning to assume its cultural dominance, and by no means secure of its status. Music was a staple of television programming from the outset, in part because it was less expensive than scripted shows, and precursors to rock ‘n’ roll popped up occasionally, but almost exclusively as novelties. As Tom McCourt and Nabeel Zuberi write, “the networks were concerned with ‘cultural uplift’ during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and they viewed ‘high culture’ as a way to add cultural legitimacy to the new medium” (“Music on Television”). But even as NBC’s early broadcasts of classical music attracted sizable audiences, the emphasis on celebrity conductors Arturo Toscanini and Leopold Stokowski was a clear indication that the television camera privileged charisma over musical content. Apart from overestimating the American appetite for high-brow fare, the idea that television would serve to filter out undesirable ideas and people created what Lynn Spigel calls a “fantasy of antiseptic electrical space” (35).
Some “serious” jazz was deemed acceptable by television producers, at least in part because many in the generation of TV executives had grown up with it. A good example is the 1957 Seven Lively Arts Sunday afternoon series on CBS hosted by TV critic John Crosby, which included an episode entitled “The Sound of Jazz” that featured Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Pee Wee Russell, Coleman Hawkins, Jo Jones, and Thelonious Monk.3 Another episode was devoted to folk music, hosted by Theodore Bikel. The following year, NBC ran a 13-part series developed by Gilbert Seldes called The Subject is Jazz that also drew on top talent.
Television viewers were also introduced to Martha Davis, a transitional figure who bridged the jazz and jump blues of the 1940s with the more insistent beat of the 1950s. Hot on the heels of Helen Humes’s “Be-Baba-Leba” in 1945 (which some consider the first rock ‘n roll record), Davis’s 1946 “Same Old Boogie” dropped the names of many of the hot jazz bands of the day. The title notwithstanding, Davis was pointing the way toward a new boogie. Unfortunately, commercial success eluded her and she was reduced to doing comedy, billed as Martha Davis and Spouse (with husband/bassist Calvin Ponder), as much as music. In 1954, however, she was booked for three appearances on The Blue Angel Show, a CBS variety show hosted by Orson Bean with a nightclub setting designed to suggest the high-tone club featured in the 1930 film The Blue Angel. That led to appearances on the Perry Como and Steve Allen shows and to a recurring spot on The Garry Moore Show (CBS 1958–67). According to biographer Dave Penny,←66 | 67→ these TV appearances allowed Davis and Ponder to make three times as much money in 1958 as they made from all their recordings combined.4
But these performances of precursors to rock ‘n’ roll were exceptions. Overall, the music favored by teenagers was considered antithetical to the goal of civic improvement. As rock ‘n’ roll became more popular and prevalent, the antipathy towards it also gathered steam, and the last thing most parents needed to incite their paranoia were televised pictures of gyrating musicians and teens. So much of rock ‘n’ roll was inexplicable to adults that to have it on display in their living rooms felt like an affront. As Harry Bannister, general manager of WWJ-TV in Detroit, put it after censoring the novelty song “Sweet Violets” from the regional The Wayne King Show in 1951, “This television business is not radio. It’s too powerful, too vivid, too compelling to be allowed to run loose”5 (Pondillo 118–19).
What followed was a bifurcation of the American music audience into adult and youth camps. If rock ‘n’ roll caught the American public between two impulses, one to stifle it and the other to dance to it, there was little doubt which impulse the television networks would obey. Citing a study by Chudacoff, Kier Keightley describes how music appealing to the older faction was generally described as “sophisticated” and understood to be played on LPs, giving rise to a “timeless” radio format unambiguously called “good music.” By inference, music aimed at young people was amateurish, played on expendable 45s, and suitable only as fodder for the ephemeral “Top 40” radio format. The use of the term “standard” denoted not only commercial success based on sales and radio play over time, but a cultural seal of approval. The “standard” label gave radio and television programmers, publishers of sheet music, and other gatekeepers a benchmark that denied the cultural contribution of novelty, shock, nonsense, absurdity, and pure play—all salient attributes of rock ‘n’ roll. Keightley cites critics Dwight MacDonald and Alec Wilder among the culture warriors who held up theatre music and other “adult” pop fare as “a bulwark against the other, more debased end: television and rock ‘n’ roll” (11–12).6
But the juggernaut of television was building its inexorable momentum and popular music was an integral programming ingredient. Even before rock ‘n’ roll coalesced, television exerted a significant effect on musical tastes and record sales. A glance at the number one records from 1950 to 1954, when rock ‘n’ roll began to show up on the Billboard charts, reveals that artists who enjoyed high television profiles, such as Gene Autry, The Andrews Sisters, Perry Como, Tony Bennett, Patti Page and Eddie Fisher, are disproportionately represented. A fair indication of mainstream tastes is reflected in the fact that when Arthur Godfrey started playing the ukulele on Arthur Godfrey and His Friends (CBS 1949–59) in the early 1950s, the plastic Maccaferri Islander Model he recommended sold millions.7←67 | 68→
In 1949, The Kirby Stone Quintet began performing jump-style music in the style of Louis Jordan, along with novelty songs and skits, on a 15-minute weeknight show called Strictly for Laughs (CBS). The next year, the group had become the main feature and the program was re-titled The Kirby Stone Quartet. On the strength of the show, the group started getting better live bookings, performed before larger audiences, and