High Fidelity, Stereophonic Sound, and Authenticity and Fantasy

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[8] The high-fidelity (hi-fi) record served as one of the technologies that allowed Americans to consume exotic experiences. Emory Cook, audio engineer and founder of Cook Records, recorded some of the first albums that were marketed and appealed to future hi-fi enthusiasts. Cook admired the anthropologist Melville Herskovitz, whose 1941 book, Myth of the Negro Past, argued that African Americans had not lost their African culture due to their experience of slavery but had in fact retained aspects of it in their music, art, social structure, family life, religion, and speech patterns. Cook strove to record several “cultural pasts” and traveled domestically and abroad to take field recordings of American blues music, Yemeni and Cuban religious rituals, Japanese koto, and Caribbean steel pan music. To do so, he equipped himself with a Telefunken U-47, a new omnidirectional microphone. This microphone differed from the commonly used directional ribbon microphones by its ability to capture sound from all directions. Just like Alan Lomax’s famous field recordings, Cook Records’ Grenada Stories and Songs and Mariachi Music of Mexico documented the cultures of the world during the late 1950s so that high fidelity enthusiasts could experience them without ever leaving their living rooms.

 

[9] Just like Cook Records began to do twenty years prior, Audio Fidelity’s hi-fi bossa nova albums promised to give listeners windows into a distant and foreign lands. It was allegedly an authentic introduction to Brazilian culture and music. Advertisements in hi-fi magazines claimed that Juca Mestre’s Panorama Musical do Brasil and Oscar Castro-Neves’ Big Band Bossa Nova were “authentic performances” recorded in Brazil and Rio de Janeiro.          Audio Fidelity’s album, Bossa Nova at Carnegie Hall, appealed to the same interest but in a different manner. Instead of going to Brazil to record, Sidney Frey – founder of Audio Fidelity – brought bossa nova propagators like João Gilberto, Luiz Bonfá and Oscar Castro-Neves to New York for a recorded concert that took place in December 1962. The advertisement for the album stated, “all the great Brazilian talent gathered at Carnegie Hall to treat the U.S. to the first live performance of authentic bossa nova, the sensational new Brazilian jazz form."         Bertram Stanleigh, writing for Audio, thought of the album as a type of field recording that captured a place. He wrote that the quality of this album “documents an event” and at least a portion of its interest is in the “noises made by the audience."          Just like Emory Cook’s field recordings, Audio Fidelity’s bossa nova releases captured the sounds of specific, authentic, places.

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[10] Musicians and record labels also recorded bossa nova albums in a way that harnessed technological developments in stereophonic sound; in this way the music itself helped transport listeners outside of their living rooms and to a foreign fantasy land. Prior to 1958, stereophonic albums represented only six percent of the total dollar record volume. In other words, ninety-four percent of the money spent on record albums in the United States purchased disks recorded in monaural sound – a way that that ensured that if one of your headphone speakers shorted out, you could nevertheless still experience the Toscanini RCA Symphony (let’s say) in its entirety because engineers sent the same audio signal to each channel. Despite the benefits that monoaural sound could provide, it did not necessarily capture the live experience of hearing that Toscanini Symphony because the audio would not reproduce the spatial representation of the orchestra (i.e., hearing bassists stage left, violins stage right, etc.).          But in 1957 Sidney Frey, founder of Audio Fidelity records, collaborated with Western Electric to help fix that issue and produce an affordable stereophonic record. Although no commercial phonograph player could reproduce stereophonic sound at the time, Audio Fidelity nevertheless released their album to the market. Fairchild Recording Equipment Co. instantly began to manufacture a stereophonic cartridge with which to play these new Audio Fidelity releases. Record labels and recording equipment companies followed suit and began to release their own stereophonic albums and cartridges. 

 

[11] Although Audio Fidelity helped to make stereophonic sound affordable, American consumers did not immediately see a need to switch from their monoaural systems to stereophonic ones; Enoch Light’s Command Records helped convert the public. Many of the early stereophonic albums recorded between 1958 and 1960 were “demonstration disks” used to show the capabilities of stereophonic sound by recording the sounds of airplanes, trains, or thunderstorms. Light decided he would make a compelling stereophonic recording of popular music. He recorded Persuasive Percussion in 1959 and released it to wide acclaim. The album made use of stereophonic sound by using the left and right audio channels to create a dialogue between various instruments. For example, the album opens with a call from the bongos in the right track followed by a response by the bongos in the left track. Light personally took 150 copies of his record to a convention of high-fidelity audio companies held in New York City and handed them out to the exhibitors selling their latest systems, speakers, and cartridges. The next day it became the new “demonstration disk” as all the exhibitors swapped out their albums of train sounds for Persuasive Percussion. Billboard magazine later credited it as the most important record of 1960.

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[12] In time, stereophonic sound became one of the defining features of exotica music, a style of music that tried to produce and capture a foreign, distant past. Although record labels originally intended stereophonic sound to help recreate the real-life experience of sitting in a concert hall and hearing the spatial representation of a classical orchestra, by the 1960s stereophonic sound allowed listeners to escape into an aural soundscape.          Exotica was a style that offered a similar sublime experience. In many ways, it resembled the high-fidelity field recordings that Cook took. Both were trying to capture the sound of a specific locale.          However, exotica often captured an imagined, fanciful place that allowed listeners to derive pleasure from hearing a deracialized, sonic other.          It produced the sounds of birds flying from right to left channels, endless patterns of waves breaking, tramcars passing rapidly on the street, and reverberant gongs. Reverb specifically played an important role in such music. “Hawaiian” and cowboy music of the 1930s and 1940s and rock and roll of the 1950s often incorporated artificial reverb to present a type of sonic pictorialism.          The music of exotica composers like Juan García Esquivel often merged this reverb with trills, glissandi, gauzy timbres, and coloristic harmonies to create seductive and fanciful music.

 

[13] Such sounds often exaggerated the type of field recordings Cook took and made famous. Prominent exotica artists like Les Baxter and Martin Denny began to record exotica albums in the early- and mid-1950s before the widespread use of stereophonic sound. However, Denny’s Exotica II, from 1957, was one of the first to feature this new development. The technique meshed perfectly with the exoticized and foreign sound Denny was trying to produce in songs like “Island of Dreams,” “Singing Bamboos,” and “Japanese Farewell Song.” All these song titles attest to Denny’s interest in capturing an exotic quasi-East Asia and Orient, full of bird calls, shakers, bongos, and congas.          Other lesser-known exotica artists like Stanley Black, Irv Cottler, and George Cates followed suit in the early 1960s and began to use stereophonic recording more regularly. Their albums like Exotic Percussion, Around the World in Percussion, and Polynesian Percussion used stereophonic effects to convey the exotic, Polynesia, and traveling around the world.          The sound and affect proved popular amongst Americans. Enoch Light capitalized on the success of his exotica-tinged album Persuasive Percussion and released a sequel, Provocative Percussion, one year later. Cumulatively, they sold around 800,000 copies in two years.

 

[14] Several musicians and record labels recording bossa nova similarly utilized an expanded instrumentation to take full advantage of stereophonic sound’s capabilities. When Light decided to record bossa nova music, he hired three percussionists for his Big Band Bossa Nova session: Phil Kraus, Bobby Rosengarden, and Ed Shaughnessy. Likewise, Dauntless Records, a subsidiary of Audio Fidelity, released Desafinado, an album by the Orchestra Saxsambistas Brasileiros whose instrumentation not only consisted of an uncharacteristically large seven-person rhythm section but also an astonishing woodwind section of ten (!) saxophonists. When Oscar Castro-Neves recorded his album Big Band Bossa Nova for Audio Fidelity in March 1962 in Rio de Janeiro, he featured not only Roberto Pontes-Dias on drums but additionally Wilson das Neves on cabaça, Chico Feitosa on ganzá, and Gilson Vieira da Silva on pandeiro.

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[15] Stan Getz’s Jazz Samba demonstrates the effect advertisers were hoping stereophonic sound could have on bossa nova listeners. Like several other stereophonic albums, Jazz Samba relied on an expanded instrumentation to harness the possibilities of stereophonic sound. Verve Records hired a guitar section that featured Charlie Byrd as well as his brother Gene while the percussion section consisted of Buddy Deppenschmidt and Bill Reichenbach, Sr. Verve’s engineer Ed Greene did not exactly mix Gene and Charlie’s guitar in the dramatic way found in exotica albums such as Persuasive Percussion. However, both guitarists’ presence on Jazz Samba achieves a similar result. The album contains Charlie’s acoustic guitar primarily in the right channel while placing Stan Getz’s tenor saxophone in the left channel. Gene’s electric guitar sounds faintly in the background somewhere equally between both left and right channels. Greene’s engineering created a tamer stereo effect compared to Light’s Command records – but a stereo effect, nevertheless. The combination of bossa nova and stereophonic recording offered multiple outlets for listeners to imagine themselves someplace else. A newspaper advertisement for Jazz Samba captured this idea perfectly. It claimed that by listening to this album, “a jaunt to Rio’s sunny beaches and festive night spots is just an album away."          In large part due to the expanded instrumentation and recording techniques, some bossa nova albums conflated the real and imaginary as the living room momentarily transformed itself into a beautiful setting in Rio de Janeiro.

 

[16] Like Jazz Samba, Dizzy Gillespie’s Dizzy on the French Riviera demonstrates how recording engineers utilized stereophonic sound to help place listeners in a different space. The album, which Gillespie recorded live in Juan-Les-Pins, France, begins with the stereophonic sounds of bathers enjoying themselves on the French Riviera. The sounds of laughter and crashing waves abound. After twenty seconds, the sounds of the beach fade out. In its place emerges a bossa nova pattern played by drummer Rudy Collins. He is also accompanied by percussionist Pepito Riestra who plays the cuíca, a Brazilian friction drum with origins in Africa, and a shaker. Together, they set up the first track on the album, “Chega de saudade.” Like several other bossa nova albums with multiple percussionists, the Phillips Records engineer panned the percussion to the left and right channels. While the incorporation of the field recording of the beach made the listener feel as if they were on the French Riviera, the stereophonic percussion also immersed the listener and conjured images of Brazil, the rainforest, and even Africa.

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[17] The worlds these bossa nova albums tried to aurally depict are best understood by reading their liner notes.          Oftentimes these albums strove to conjure up anti-modernist and exoticized views of Brazil. Throughout the twentieth century, American authors and journalists compared the United States’ modernity or underdevelopment to their neighbors to the south. While at times Americans understood “underdevelopment” in Cuba as similar to the “underdevelopment” of the slums of New York City and Chicago (or the modernity of Cuba, for instance, as equal to the modernity of New York City and Chicago), other times authors contrasted Latin America with the United States: one was more or less developed than the other.          The advertisements for Brazilian coffee that reached the United States during the 1920s depicted a moment when Americans understood Brazilians as semicivilized, Latin “others.” Yet, at the same time, Americans drank and enjoyed coffee to engage in the dark pleasures of colonial exoticism.          Such depictions existed even though Brazilians participated in a vibrant, modernized consumer culture during the twentieth century. They took advantage of supermarkets like Peg-Pag. They purchased radio and television sets. They worked at domestic plants for companies like Walita and Aero where they produced blenders and automobiles.          However, an analysis of bossa nova advertisements shows that Americans nevertheless understood Brazil as a rather pre-modern place.

 

[18] For instance, although Brazilians such as Antônio Carlos Jobim hoped that bossa nova music would help change Americans’ understanding of Brazil as an agricultural and coffee-producing nation, coffee and bossa nova were nevertheless joined in the minds of Americans listening to stereophonic bossa nova albums. Not only did the Brazilian Coffee Institute, for instance, help send Brazilian musicians to play at Carnegie Hall, but as an article in Billboard at the end of 1962 stated, “it is possible that by year’s end more bossa nova will be produced in this country than bags of coffee."          Columbia Records similarly created two separate advertisements for Paul Winter’s stereophonic album, Jazz Meets the Bossa Nova, that capitalized on ­– and perpetuated ­– exoticized, coffee-filled understandings of Brazil. In one advertisement, they promoted the album next to a full-page illustration of a bottle of rum (maybe cachaça, Brazil’s national alcohol?), a beating sun, and flowers.          In another, they capitalized more on Brazil’s status as a coffee exporter. The advertisement featured a photo of a burlap sack, but instead of containing coffee beans, it contained copies of Winter’s LP. The liner notes to Phil Bodner’s stereophonic bossa nova albums help explain the appeal of such characterizations. While his album, Quiet Nights, combined “that infectious bossa nova rhythm – easily the most stimulating import from Brazil since coffee – with some strictly made U.S. sounds,” his album The Soul of Brazil states that songs such as “Meditação” offer a “perfect antidote to modern-day stress.” In several ways, these albums offer more evidence of an anti-modernist fascination that began to emerge in the middle- to late-nineteenth century. As Americans increasingly lived in a society undergoing rapid urban-industrial transformation, secularization, and extreme environmental change, individuals like writer John Ruskin created a new movement of artisans skilled in Arts and Crafts. Others, like Teddy Roosevelt, promoted a “back to the earth” sensibility based on militarism and masculinity.          Consequently, a do-it-yourself culture materialized during the twentieth century.          A home improvement industry developed.        Yet, at the same time, men specifically combined this rugged ethic with technological mastery.          They began to tinker with radios during the 1920s and 1930s.          They purchased hi-fi stereo receivers.          Such technological interest continued into the 1960s as well. But it was just not men that listened to bossa nova. Copious amounts of bossa nova recordings momentarily promised all Americans anti-modernist escapes via, rather contradictorily, hi-fi, modern music recorded in stereophonic sound.

[5] Richard Harris, Building a Market: The Rise of the Home Improvement Industry, 1914-1960 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

[19] Gene Ammons’ Bad! Bossa Nova offers one of the more fanciful and inventive liner notes. The album presents the liner notes like a travelogue or travel diary. The traveler begins their excursion on a steamer in New Orleans where they heard the band play “Pagan Love Song,” (track 1 on the album) while sitting next to a “native chick.” When the traveler arrives in Colombia, he hears a deep rhythmic chant that forms the basis for “Ca’ Purange.” Ultimately the traveler “makes it down to São Paulo to get into the bossa nova scene” and comes across a “hip old cat” who tells the story of a time when Brazil was “all thick heavy jungle.” Before São Paulo became a modern industrial city, the story goes, a man had imported a tribe of destroyer ants, cross-bread them with a local variety of different ants, and raised approximately five million ants in a matter of months. This man also had a rival who imported an elephant from India with the intention of stomping all the ants into the ground. One day the ant-breeder let all his ants free to eat up the brush, vines, trees, and whatever else was in their way. The elephant-importer then released his elephant, but “the ants couldn’t be stopped naturally, they ate a wide deep swath into that old deep jungle.” The travel writer admitted that “we never get to what happened to the ants, but they sure left their mark on Brazil. The path they cut thru [sic] the jungle has since filled with deep dark murky water, and they say that the ants were the ancestors of the piranha fish, in any case the river is now called the Amazon.” Ammons’ liner notes do not just encourage the listener to imagine a pre-modern Brazil. Instead, Ammons goes even further back in time, offering listeners a fanciful origin story the country.

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[20] Another record that took advantage of stereophonic sound, Walter Wanderley’s Quarteto Bossamba, convincingly explained the “benefits” of such characterizations of Brazil as pre-modern. The notes’ author, writing in 1967, reserved some choice words for the Castelo Branco dictatorship that had taken over the country in 1964: “Ignoring the crammed and smoggy cities,” the author wrote, “the millions of television sets, or the violent economic and political clashes that characterize present-day Brazil, the listener finds himself in a colorful daydream of happy villagers picking coffee beans in a plush tropical setting with a constant chua-chuga samba beat in the background.” The album thus served as a “musical travel poster” that aurally enveloped the listener in a “world of Brazil that probably never existed."          Albums like Wanderley’s Quarteto Bossamba offer some respite from the real world. But the music does not engage productively with the Branco regime like artists like Nara Leão or some American civil rights activists might have preferred. Instead, it counters the contemporary moment by offering listeners to experience a pre-modern soundscape. On “Canto de Ossanha,” the engineer creatively pans Claudio Slon’s tom drums to the right and left channels, creating a dialogue that resembles Enoch Light’s technique on Persuasive Percussion. Together, the fantastical audio and accompanying liner notes encourage listeners to visit a Brazil full of villagers and coffee beans.

 

[21] Cover art to stereophonic bossa nova albums also encouraged hi-fi listeners to imagine a pre-modern Brazil. The most overt was Tommy Garrett’s In a Brazilian Mood: The 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett, an album that featured a depiction of rainforest-foliage on the cover. The liner notes never explained what the “fifty guitars” alluded to but it could have been in reference to the use of 50 different guitar tracks over the course of the album’s 12 songs. While record labels usually relied on multiple percussionists to give their bossa nova albums a rather exoticized quality, several other albums relied on multiple guitarists. Oscar Castro-Neves’ Big Band Bossa Nova not only incorporated multiple percussionists, but Henry Percy Wilcox played guitar alongside Castro-Neves. Critics ensured that the effect of multiple guitarists was not lost on listeners. Charles Robertson noted in his review of Charlie Rouse’s Bossa Nova Bacchanal that “stereo harnesses choice teamwork from guitarists Kenny Burrell and Lord Westbrook."          In Stan Getz and Luiz Bonfá’s Jazz Samba Encore, Robertson noted “four-track stereo tape does full justice to Getz's beautiful tone and the listener gains a choice seat between unamplified guitars [played by Bonfá and Jobim] at ringside.” By 1964, Command Records even began to record with three guitarists to capitalize on their new Dimension 3 Process recording technique. Their dance album, Discotheque, featured Tony Matolla, Al Casamente, and Bucky Pizzarelli all playing guitar on an album that brought the sound of bossa nova to the American home.

 

[22] Guitarist Charlie Byrd and Riverside Records similarly often merged bossa nova music with rural and exotic imagery. Specifically, they were fascinated with parrots. The animal not only graced the album covers of several of Byrd’s bossa nova albums but also served as the backdrop to some of his live televised performances, such as when he played on Vic Damone’s show, The Lively Ones, on August 1, 1963. Albums like Bossa Nova Pelos Passaros (translated into English as “bossa nova by/via birds”) relied on a rather mild stereophonic sound that panned percussion to the right track, bass to the left, and guitars and strings somewhere in the middle. This recording technique helped Byrd “evoke [the] tropic charm” that critic Edwin Miller heard in albums such Bossa Nova Pelos Passaros.          But that cover art, which features several exotic birds perched on a microphone stand, evoked tropic charm as well.

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The Bossa Nova Dance Party 

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[23] While the music industry was selling Americans opportunities to listen to bossa nova in stereophonic sound (and read liner notes and view album art), they also sold opportunities to embody Brazilian culture and dance the bossa nova as well. In 1965, Seeburg, a famous jukebox and vending machine manufacturer, released a discotheque kit that brought the fun of dancing the bossa nova straight to the American suburban home. “Are you tired of the tranquil Saturday night route of beer, barbecue, and babysitting,” the advertisement for the kit asked. “Do you long for big city fun? Stay right where you are! The music industry is trying to fight those outlying pockets of passivism.” The discotheque kit came complete with its own speaker system, special recordings, fluorescent signs, portable dance floors, black lights, and cocktail napkins. It even included a cookbook, a guide to Latin slang (so readers could understand the translation of “bossa nova”), and dancing instructions to all the latest dance crazes, bossa nova included.

 

[24] Discotheques developed primarily in France during the 1940s as places where visitors could listen to – and dance to – jazz records. Dance halls had long existed in France and around the world; however, discotheques were unique in that disc jockeys played recorded music for dancers. A live band was nowhere in sight.          Ever since the 1920s, Americans had their own locations where they could dance to recorded music. But these locations – mostly taverns and juke joints – typically catered to America’s white and black working-class.          In contrast, French discotheques such as the Epi Club in the bohemian Montparnasse district or La Bada Club, located off the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, hired disc jockeys to play records on turntables for mostly white upper-class clientele. In 1962, the French nightclub promotor and entrepreneur Oliver Coquelin opened one of the first discotheques, Le Club, in the United States. By 1965, the New York Times had counted fifteen discotheques in New York City alone. Countless others existed in urban areas across the United States.

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[25] Thanks to companies like Seeburg, as well as several record labels, Americans could dance the bossa nova in the comfort of their suburban home: no need to travel to the big city or Europe. Command Records’ Discotheque offers an example of such service. The stereophonic album contained music in a bossa nova beat alongside other danceable tracks that showcased the frug, watusi, and merengue. Command’s follow up album, Discotheque Vol. 2, likewise claimed “a night club … is not the only place where darkness and a small dance floor can be found. These two elements can be located practically anywhere … at home or at any local gathering place."          In a similar marketing technique, Mercury Records sold David Carroll’s House-Party Discotheque with the promise that Carroll’s big band “can turn any living room into a discotheque for the night."          Thanks to Seeburg, Command, and Mercury Records, suburban Americans rarely needed to leave their suburbs to experience the discotheque or dance the cha-cha-chá, merengue, or bossa nova.

 

[26] Such discotheque records existed alongside a larger trend within the American entertainment industry to fabricate a new bossa nova dance craze. Those who purchased Colpix Record's New Beat Bossa Nova Means the Samba Swings received a free dance class at any one of Fred Astaire's dance studios across the country. Record Labels like Canadian American and Dauntless Records likewise released albums such as Bossa Nova for All Ages and Desafinado whose liner notes contained a visual diagram of how to dance the bossa nova. For those that did not understand the diagram, the Albert Butler School for Dancing “endorsed” Desafinado and used it as the album by which they instructed their own dancing teachers nationwide. And albums with titles such as Dance the Bossa Nova, Designed for Dancing, Do the Bossa Nova with Herbie Mann, Everybody’s Doing the Bossa Nova, and Let’s Dance the Bossa Nova all testified to the popularity of the newest dance steps.

 

[27] Unlike the bossa nova drumming pattern, nobody really codified these new bossa nova dance steps. However, most commentators agreed that whatever it was, teenagers were doing it wrong by mixing the dance with the twist. Murray the K, the famous rock and roll impresario and DJ, gave a reason why during an interview in late 1962. The bossa nova “is not going to be anything like the twist,” he told CBS Eyewitness. “Teenagers so far have just not taken to it at all. They may buy a record if they like the bossa nova beat or the bossa nova sound, but so far it doesn’t look like they’ve taken to the dance at all."          Another DJ made a similar claim. “It confuses the kids, most of whom try to dance it with a sort of modified twist," he commented.          Despite their dismissiveness, it appeared that the bossa nova dance was in fact a modified twist. Elvis Presley’s dancing on “Bossa Nova Baby” from the 1963 film, Fun in Acapulco, suggests this. During the film, Presley dances the bossa nova by moving his feet up and down and rotating his hips back and forth. The bossa nova dance also included some rather rhythmic motions. On beat 1, dancers in the film moved their right foot across their left and stomped. Then, on beats 2 and 4 of the next measure, the dancers moved their left foot across their right and stomped. Another possibility seemed to be dancing the bossa nova by mimicking the steps of the Brazilian samba or replicating what Carmen Miranda did in films like Springtime in the Rockies or Something for the Boys. Although Americans had no set guide, they could not ask Brazilians themselves. They had never heard of such a thing as dancing along to bossa nova.

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[28] Despite claims that teenagers did not dance the bossa nova, several seemingly took to it. Don Page, writing in the Los Angeles Times, spoke about changing teen taste when he noted that he came across a teen who did not listen to KFWB, a station specializing in rock and roll. Instead, the teenager was instead listening to KFAC, a classical station.          “The gig is anything that's cool, man. Good rock 'n' roll is cool, the bossa nova is cool and Beethoven is cool,” the teen reported to Page.          Pianist Sérgio Mendes and John L. Scott at New York Times thought teenagers were simply beginning to take to styles like bossa nova to “look for some relief from the monotonous, bang-bang beat of hard rock."           Evidence from newspaper reports shows that bossa nova appealed to teenagers as much as their parents. Freshmen at Archer High School in Lawrenceville, Georgia started a “bossa novas” club.          At Bryant Elementary school, also in Georgia, the Creative Dance Group gave a recital on April 8, 1963 that featured ballet, “Hawaiian,” “Chinese,” “Scottish,” and bossa nova dancing.          The Philadelphia Tribune reported that it was “bossa nova” time at a high school dance in Philadelphia.          Given the interest of teenagers’ of all races and classes for contemporary rhythm and blues, rock, and soul, several record labels and artists simply released music that Jack Maher at Billboard called “teen-oriented acts,” who released “teenage hits” for the “teenage audience."              Examples included “Our Day Will Come” by the soul group Ruby and the Romantics,” “Blame it on the Bossa Nova” by Eydie Gormé, and Elvis Presley’s “Bossa Nova Baby,” written by the famous songwriting duo Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller who were synonymous with such “teenage hits.”

 

[29] Throughout the 1960s, several magazines and newspaper columns geared towards women often recommended that housewives play bossa nova to accompany elaborately and thematically decorated dinner parties. In an example of Brazilian enterprise promoting bossa nova abroad, the Brazilian Coffee Institute published advertisements in Seventeen magazine throughout 1964 and 1965. The institute recommended readers of Seventeen, who were mostly teenage girls, plan a “gay Brazilian coffee house party.” The advertisement included recipes for frosted mocha drinks, cafezinho (a Brazilian demitasse), and Brazilian barbeque. The advertisement also offered ideas for how to decorate the house for such parties and encouraged hosts to construct paper doll cutouts to hang in walls, doorways, and on drapes. It also recommended hosts play “bossa nova,” which “can set the perfect note for background music.” The “bossa nova, as you may know,” the advertisement copy continued, “was born in Brazil. By combining the rhythm of the samba with cool jazz, it makes the ideal background for poetry reading, dancing, bongos, or just a plain gab, or food-fest."          In another example, Sybil Leek, who wrote the horoscopes for Ladies’ Home Journal, recommended in 1967 that Aries hosting parties that month play “bright bossa nova music, with perhaps a dash of Ravel for the more classical-minded."          In a final demonstration of advertisements marketing bossa nova to party planners, Patio frozen dinners asked newspaper readers in 1967 “what does it take to be a great Mexican cook?” The advertisement copy answered: “it takes not only one of Patio’s frozen Mexican dinners,” but also a “woman with a zest for living,” some “inexpensive papier-mâché candlesticks,” and “bossa nova music on the hi-fi.” The combination of food, décor, and music, the advertisement continued, would transform the household into “the gayest place north of Acapulco."          A long report on the social life of the Spanish Embassy in Washington D.C. even noted how Marquesa Mercedes, wife of the Spanish ambassador, included bossa nova music as part of her prandial entertainment. In all these instances, magazines and newspapers encouraged women hosts to make their parties livelier by playing bossa nova for their guests.

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[30] Americans could also purchase corresponding “bossa nova”-related clothing for their parties. The Broadway department store, with locations downtown and all around the Los Angeles area, advertised a new line of hats using the term. The copy stated: “the bossa nova, a ‘new feeling’… interpreted by Sally Victor in her exciting muchacho brims … very Latin, very chic!"          Bullock’s Store for Men, also located in downtown and suburbs across Los Angeles, advertised a tie by Cervantes by stating: “bossa nova … the new beat is right up from where it belongs, under your continental spread collar on the harmonizing Fiari shirt.”

 

[31] Several fashion writers in 1963 suggested that those who purchased certain items would be perfectly equipped to dance the bossa nova. The Los Angeles Times promoted the clothing of Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor and an American socialite, who wore a “danceable dress” that “squared daringly low in back” and was “set to swing into motion at even the thought of a bossa nova beat.” Similarly, Vi Weber’s fashion column in the Los Angeles Times promoted a Dacron and cotton blend formal jacket for men that would “stay smooth and unrumpled through any bossa nova.” An advertisement from 1963 for Creations ‘n Things (located in Manhattan’s Upper West Side) asked if customers danced the watusi, waltz, mambo, monkey, fox trot, or bossa nova. If they did, their store offered a suitable array of “bewitching tops, enchanting skirts, [and] beautiful dresses by new young designers” in which to dance. Creations ‘n Things also offered a “bossa nova sweater” for men, which encouraged those who put it on to “get in step with the newest [dance craze].” Tip-top, a company that made headbands, released a bow for women who “swings a mean bossa nova.” In an advertisement that conflated the bossa nova with the twist, another dance craze, M.C. Schrank Co. promoted a “bossa nova fringed shift dress” that would give women hosting pajama parties a “new twist.” Included above their copy was a full-page color photo of four women dancing the twist, one of whom was wearing a “bossa nova shift.” In all these instances, advertisers helped manufacture a bossa nova dance craze to encourage a customer to purchase their clothing.

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[32] Even domestic goods like the “bossa nova juniper plant” or “bossa nova rugs” promised consumers a dance-filled experience upon purchase. However, Penney’s Department Store did not explicitly intend for customers to dance the bossa nova on top of their new “bossa nova rug.” Instead, advertisements throughout the 1960s claimed the rug contained “rhythm ‘n’ color” and featured “abstract-design-rhythms” and “color rhythms.” All these descriptions gave the product a lively quality. The advertisements essentially suggested that the rug itself, thanks to its “rhythm,” could dance on the floor. Advertisers used bossa nova as a marketing term to suggest that even the most static of objects could move.

 

[33] Suburban parties featuring bossa nova did not have to feature dancing, however. Bossa nova served as suitable background music as well. For instance, in his review of Os Bossa Três’ self-titled debut album from 1963, Hi-Fi/Stereo Review critic Joe Goldberg called the music recorded “Brazilian lounge music” and “suitable background for a Brazilian cocktail party."          Ann C. Eisner, writing a column titled “Music for Summertime Listening” in 1965 for Tape Recording magazine suggested a wide range of music suitable for “patio cocktail parties.” She primarily suggested that hosts “stick to brass and the warmer woodwinds as much as possible” since “strings have a tendency to get swallowed up outdoors.” She offered several albums that fit this criterion, most of them the easy listening and light orchestral by bandleaders like Frankie Carle and David Carroll. She included in this list two bossa nova albums, Miles Davis’ Quiet Nights and Joe Harnell’s Fly Me to The Moon and the Bossa Nova Pops.          Music technology executives endorsed this understanding of bossa nova as well and companies that built systems that played background music often incorporated bossa nova into their offerings. In 1963, for instance, Seeburg executives were pushing a new Encore! 1000-series background system which utilized 16 2/3-rpm records, many of them reportedly instrumental bossa nova.          These writers and industry executives were all pushing bossa nova’s suitability as background music.

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[34] Judging by newspaper reports, many Americans included bossa nova as part of entertainment within the suburban home. Throughout the 1960s, newspapers often published society and “social scene” columns that reported on private parties, often reprinting the host (and occasionally the address of their residence), the party’s theme, what kind of food was served, what kind of entertainment was offered, and the guestlist, which was often extensive enough that it looked like it was reprinted straight from The Great Gatsby. In December 1962, for instance, Mary Matthew, writing for the Los Angeles Times, wrote about a welcome home party for a couple’s child who was attending boarding school in Switzerland. The party took place in Holmby Hills, a neighborhood just northeast of the University of California, Los Angeles, and offered entertainment that was provided by two Arthur Murray instructors who taught around forty teenagers how to dance the bossa nova.          In West Covina, a “beef and bossa nova party” held during the summer of 1963 closely resembled the party that would later be suggested by the Brazilian Coffee Institute in Seventeen magazine. At this party, attendees not only danced to and listened to bossa nova, but they also cooked steaks on braziers.          At a home in North Hollywood in fall 1963, for instance, members of the Valley Vista Junior Woman’s Club attended a “Mexican fiesta” that looked like it came straight out of a Patio frozen dinners advertisement. Guests of the party were treated to cocktails, an “authentic Mexican dinner,” and then after-dinner, an opportunity to dance the bossa nova and hit a piñata. Finally, an article by Enid A. Haupt suggested women throw World’s Fair-themed parties and adorn their houses in orange and blue streamers (the fair’s official color), balloons, colorful posters, and a fountain. Against this backdrop, Haupt suggested a guests dance several international dances: the merengue, the high life, and of course, the bossa nova. The suburban housewife adorned their house with visual representations of locations as specific as Mexico and as broad as “the world.” All the while, bossa nova offered an aural backdrop to such décor. 

 

[35] Reports in the African American press documented the popularity of such parties amongst the country’s middle class black population. Evelyn Cunningham, for instance, wrote in the Pittsburgh Courier about her experience attending an elegant “bossa nova cocktail party."          At the 1963 Debutante Cotillion in Chicago’s Pick-Congress Hotel, Theresa Fambro reported for the Chicago Defender that some of Chicago’s most pretty and young women, alongside their escorts, “did very intricate steps to the bossa nova."          The Baltimore Afro-American likewise covered the 5th Annual National Convention of the Little Foxes and Hares in Los Angeles. After the pageant, the newspaper reported, La Parisienne Studios hosted a “Bossa Nova After-Party” for the delegates and friends who participated.          The recently crowned “Miss Africa,” Abby Ekwonna, similarly visited Chicago where the same newspaper praised her for her ability to dance the “twist and the bossa nova."          In a demonstration of their cultural acumen and social status, middle-class African Americans turned to dancing the bossa nova. Doris McNeil’s “Westchester Notes” column for the New York Amsterdam News covered this community and often reported on where locals could dance the bossa nova: at places like the Johnson County club scholarship fund dance or at a residential “ViVants Bohemian” party. Bossa nova was danced to – and listened to – in black middle-class communities like Westchester County.         Sometimes, such parties even assumed a political focus. Take a “social swirl” party that occurred in Atlanta on March 24, 1963, at the Gammon Theological Seminary. There, guests Lorenzo Benn and Greta Gaston gave a history of the bossa nova dance and offered dancing demonstrations for the other guests. Among the attendees was a local NAACP representative.          Not every house party tried to channel Ford’s colonial expansion.

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Background Music at the Supermarket

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[36] The process of storecasting began in the 1940s and was popularized by Stanley Joseloff, president of the Storecast Corporation of America. Joseloff began his career as an advertising agent with Young and Rubicam and during World War II worked as a functionary for the Office of War Information. After the war, he devoted his attention to his storecasting company which operated primarily in the Northeast. His service was an immediate hit. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Joseloff’s company received rave reviews from business periodicals such as Sponsor, Broadcasting Telecasting, and Radio Daily.

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[37] Part of storecasting’s success during the 1960s relied on its method of dissemination. Previously, grocery stores that wanted to offer pre-recorded background music to customers had two options: either they could subscribe to a company that transmitted music via telephone wires, a process made famous by the Muzak Corporation in the 1930s; or they could purchase an in-house system, like Seeburg’s Library Unit, which operated exactly like a standard jukebox but did not require the operator to insert coins or any other method of payment.          However, Joseloff thought there was a better way to provide background music: FM radio provided better fidelity than telephone wires as well as wider coverage than what could be furnished by individual machines.

 

[38] Storecasting offered an alternative to piping in music via telephone wires or purchasing a large in-house unit. The Storecast Corporation of America operated like this: Joseloff either purchased a radio station outright or purchased airtime on a FM radio station to broadcast his service. One of the more popular stations Joseloff used was WMMW-FM (95.7), based out of Hartford. He initially went to any number of grocery stores in the area, such as First National, Acme Market, and Giant Eagle, and asked if they would like to subscribe to his service.          Joseloff also asked food manufacturers like Libby, Swift, General Foods, and Heinz if they would like to participate in the storecasting service as well. Once all the parties agreed, the grocery stores then received a specialized receiver that Joseloff set permanently to the storecasting radio frequency (95.7). The receivers also contained a specialized circuit board, called a tone plate, that received supersonic signals broadcast from 95.7. Nobody would have been able to audibly hear the supersonic signal being broadcast. Furthermore, when the sound reached the receivers of individuals who did not subscribe to Joseloff’s service, nothing would happen. However, the tone plate located in the subscriber’s receivers would pick up the signal, which would trigger a switch and either boost the volume of the receiver or turn off the receiver entirely. This service appealed not only to individual subscribers who wanted to mute advertisements, but to supermarkets as well.

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[39] Storecasting’s success also relied on its ability to generate targeted advertisement to the listener.          Factories and households that subscribed to WMMW-FM generally chose to have the receiver turned off. Prior to the broadcast of an advertisement or an announcement required by the Federal Communications Committee (such as a station identification), WMMW-FM broadcasted a supersonic beep that triggered the receiver to turn off, thus muting the announcement. When the announcement finished, another supersonic beep sounded and turned the receiver back on. The supersonic beep could also increase the volume of a receiver as well, making advertisements much louder than the background music playing previously. Depending on the situation, supermarkets chose to use either option: when WMMW-FM was broadcasting an advertisement that did not apply directly to the grocery store (like for Ford Automobiles), the radio station would mute the advertisement. During this moment, the supermarket took an opportunity to play a relevant advertisement (say for Libby or Swift or any of the other participating manufacturers) directly from the store; conversely, if the WMMW-FM advertisement pertained to the supermarket’s customer base, the supersonic tone would increase the volume of advertisement for all shoppers to hear. Thanks to a series of on/off switches built into their receiver that responded to several different supersonic beeps of different frequencies, grocery stores were able to offer background music and targeted advertisements to their listeners. This method of broadcasting using supersonic beeps, known as simplexing, served as the primary method of storecasting until the late 1950s.

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[40] Supermarket managers and pundits quickly embraced storecasting's ability to broadcast advertisements and background music because they believed the service motivated customers to purchase more goods. Postwar grocery stores specifically thought they could tempt women shoppers with appeals to their senses. Visual appeals played an important role; supermarkets often embraced the latest developments in fluorescent lights, used bright pastel colors in the interior design, and installed plate glass windows on the exterior of their building to attract motorists.           Supermarkets also strove to remove the odors of perishing fish and produce, attracted shoppers with new odors by developing in-house bakeries, and encouraged shoppers to pick up the produce and feel it.          Executives thought storecasting would contribute to such sensorial experiences.          Advertisements specifically targeted female shoppers and used a range of rhetorical and persuasive techniques. A column about storecasting in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine from 1947 includes an advertisement that the author heard in a Philadelphia supermarket. It merits quotation in full:

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How do you do ladies? Could I have a moment of your time? I have something that will not only save you money but will pleasure the whole family. You remember in the old days when you came home from school and had a thick slice of delicious home-cooked bread made by your mother’s own hands with slathers of butter and jam? Well, now you do not have to burden mother over a hot oven if you will stop at counter seven and take home a full-sized loaf of oven-fresh delicious crusty-brown Mother’s Best Bread. A full-sized loaf for only 14 cents, sliced or not as you prefer. Now, don’t you think the time was well spent listening to my little message?

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While industry executives used advertisements to specifically target women, most industry pundits believed background music would appeal to female shoppers as well. They offered rather reductionist and sexist reasons why. For instance, a different article from Kiplinger’s Personal Finance stated that storecasting music “soothes the housewife while she eyes the bins and shelves, and by relaxing her nerves it relaxes her purse strings."          A newsletter published by Acme Markets, a supermarket chain operating primarily in the Northeast, felt that storecasting “relaxes the shopper” and that she consequently “falls into the spell of the rhythm and enjoys her shopping more.” The music such shoppers heard generally fell into the genres of light classical and jazz ballads: the aesthetic that was not too dissimilar from the background bossa nova played at dinner parties. For example, a survey by a storecasting company in 1956 asked what kind of music shoppers preferred to hear. The answers mentioned Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Some Enchanted Evening” – made famous by Perry Como, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra in the late 1940s – “Lovely to Look At,” a ballad by Jerome Kern from 1933, and “I’m in the Mood for Love,” by Jimmy McHugh from 1935.

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[41] Although storecasting gained the most traction and media coverage in the Northeast, several storecasting companies and participating grocery stores existed in Los Angeles as well. It should come as no surprise. Los Angeles grocers had been involved in the development of the modern supermarket since 1920 and stores like Ralphs Grocery Store, founded in 1873, were some of the first grocers to offer decentralized branches for commuters: large 10,000 square foot interiors, long checkout aisles for customers, and on-site parking for motorists. Such innovative and pioneering grocery stores ultimately embraced the possibilities of storecasting. In 1947, a report in Billboard announced that the National Marketcasting Company was serving 500 of Los Angeles’s 3,000 food markets. Stores like Myers Enterprises sold storecasting equipment like adapters, FM tuners, and receivers. In 1959, Broadcasting magazine estimated that not only were more residents of Los Angeles listening to FM radio than AM, but that a majority of the FM stations provided background music where people lived, worked, and shopped. Although popularized in the Northeast by executives like Joseloff, storecasting had arrived to the West Coast by the 1960s.

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[42] The Certified Store Broadcasting Corporation was one of the more influential and prolific storecasting companies in Los Angeles. It began around 1955 when it held an account with Boy’s Grocery Store in the Los Angeles suburb of Pomona.          In 1959, the company began to expand. Its owner, Edward Jacobson, purchased the local FM radio station, KGLA-FM (103.5), from the Echo Park Evangelist Association. He immediately turned the station into a source from which he broadcast music to Boy’s Supermarket and other supermarkets across the greater Los Angeles area. KGLA-FM was the second radio station he bought that year. In the spring, he also purchased a station in San Diego to serve the same function. It wouldn’t be his last purchase either; he was trying to start a storecasting empire. In 1960, he acquired two other stations in Arizona. From these stations, Jacobson was able to broadcast his music over radio airwaves and straight to supermarkets across the Southwest.          But in the Los Angeles area he mostly focused on attracting customers in the suburbs of Van Nuys and East Whittier.

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[43] Musicast was another influential and prolific storecasting company operating in the Los Angeles area. It was owned and operated by Jack Kiefer, a man of many hats who not only operated Musicast but served as the vice-president of the Southern California Advertising Agencies Association, on the board of the FM Broadcasters of Southern California, and general manager of the radio station KMLA-FM.         Musicast began in the early 1950s as a company that provided background music to a diverse range of stores across the region: some were restaurants (Nixon’s in Whittier and the Blue Fox in Magnolia); some were department stores like Sears (in Pasadena and El Monte); some were banks (like Pico Citizen’s in Pico and a Bank of America branch in Pasadena); and some were hotels (like the Statler on Wilshire and Hollywood Plaza in Hollywood).          In 1957, Kiefer purchased KMLA-FM, which he quickly transferred into a storecasting station. That year, Musicast also opened an office in Westlake where they published pamphlets on storecasting and operated a call center to answer questions regarding their service.          Between 1959 and the mid-1960s, KMLA and Musicast held between 750 and 800 subscribers, each who paid a monthly average of $22.60 for the storecasting service.          In a letter to the Pasadena Independent, Kiefer personally described the effects his service had on shoppers. During a test conducted in a large supermarket chain, Musicast discovered that without music, housewives bought just two items. However, after the music came along, they bought four. “The shopping housewife buys more when music eases the pain of high prices,” Kiefer summarized.         Companies like Certified Store Broadcasting and Musicast simply provided music in a way that, as these companies believed and argued, relaxed female customers and tempted them to purchase more goods.          The effect storecasting had on women shoppers, however, is an entirely different issue.