Cowboys and Indies - The Epic History of the Record Industry

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Cowboys and Indies, The Epic History of the Record Industry is a non-fiction, literary study of the music business. Its 416 pages cover a wide variety of musical, economic, sociological and technological themes, with a particular focus on talent spotting, or A&R; illustrating how a surprisingly small number of pioneers, typically founders of independent record labels, discovered and developed nearly all of the important musical genres and stars of the 20th Century. Written as a "music business bible," the book is encyclopedic in its scope. Beginning in the late 19th Century with the discovery of sound recording, it is the first study to cover the entire genealogy of recorded music from its origins to today. Beatles producer Sir George Martin endorsed the book, describing it as a "fascinating account of the way recorded music has evolved, touched people, and helped shape popular culture as we know it today."
The opening chapter, entitled Talking Machines, maps the innovations and life stories of the record industry's founding fathers, beginning with Frenchman, Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, whose phonautograph inspired the work of Alexander Graham Bell. When Bell's telephone was first exposed at the Centennial Exposition of 1876, one passing visitor was the future inventor of the disc record, Emile Berliner. Excitement about Bell's telephone also inspired Thomas Edison's discovery of the phonograph, technically the first recording device that allowed playback. Chpater two, entitled Judgements then explains the legal exploits of Columbia founder Edward Easton who litigated his way into sharing Berliner's disc patents with Victor Talking Machine founder, Eldridge Johnson, as such bringing the fledgling record industry into a new era dominated by lawyers and salesmen. Chapter three, entitled His Master's Voice, charts the rise of the world's first major record corporation, Victor Talking Machine which, in 1906, invented the hugely popular Victrola record player, and sold hundreds of millions of Enrico Caruso records in the first two decades of the 20th Century.
Chapter four, entitled Exodus explains the huge demographic upheavals provoked by the First World War, notably the Great Migration of African-Americans into New York and Chicago. With the simultaneous emergence of flappers, the popular Victorian fashions of vaudeville and grand opera were gradually supplanted by successive dance crazes: tango, foxtrot and most spectacularly of all, jazz. Throughout this section of the book, arguably America's first alternative record label emerges as the artistic leader of the twenties; Okeh, a German owned label which released the first jazz and "hillbilly" hit records. Other influential pioneers of this period are Delta blues talent scout Henry Speir, jazz impresario Irving Mills, and an Okeh employee, Ralph Peer who, in the late twenties, became an independent country music impresario.
Chapters five, six and seven, The Invisible Wave, Survivors and Dead Sea Crossing respectively, explain the first prolonged record recession and crash. Competition from radio provoked a record business recession, leading up to the Wall St crash of 1929. Record production in America collapsed from an already diminshed 100 million records in 1927, to just 6 million by 1932. It was during the collapsed record market of the Great Depression, that one of the most important music talent scouts in history, John Hammond, discovered the likes of Billie Holiday, Count Basie and Benny Goodman. Thanks to the end of Prohibition in 1933 and arrival of Wurlitzer jukeboxes in bars, American production recovered to 33 million records in 1938. However, it was World War II that sent demand for records soaring. By 1941, America was buying 127 million records a year. Between 1946 and 1947 alone, record sales rocketed from 275 to 400 million. This spectacular industrial renaissance culminated in the launch of Columbia's new 33rpm Long Player format in 1948.
Following the evolution from fifties rock n roll and folk to psychedelia, disco, New Wave, hip hop and eventually electronica, the entire second half of the book draws from over one hundred hours of exclusive interviews with many of the record industry's surviving producers. Cowboys and Indies collaborators include Elektra founder Jac Holzman, Rolling Stones producer Andrew Loog Oldham, A&M co-founder Jerry Moss, Sire Records co-founder Seymour Stein, Virgin Records A&R man Simon Draper, Chrysalis co-founders Chris Wright and Terry Ellis, Rough Trade founder Geoff Travis, Casablanca VP Larry Harris, Mute founder Daniel Miller, 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell, Stiff Records founder Dave Robinson, Beggars Banquet founder Martin Mills, Tommy Boy founder Tom Silverman, Def Jam founder Rick Rubin, Atlantic Records CEO Craig Kallman, and many others. The book's final chapter, entitled Revelations, attempts to explain the common denominators that motivated most of the important A&R men of the 20th Century.
Its author was Gareth Murphy. It was edited by Rob Kirkpatrick and copy edited by India Cooper, a 1992 semi-finalist of TV quiz show, The publisher was Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin's Press based in the Flatiron Building, New York.

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