From time to time the recording industry indulges in a format-war blowout, inevitably to consumer disadvantage. A current medium comes to be seen as inadequate; competing companies introduce new, mutually-incompatible media that promise improvement; nobody talks to anybody else; the battle is on. Recently we saw precisely such a scrum fought over high-definition video disc formats: would it be Blu-Ray or HD-DVD? Blu-Ray won out, although it’s likely to be a hollow and short-lived victory: digital downloads look to be the future king of the marketplace.
Most of us of a certain age can remember one of the more bruising battles, also over video but this time over competing tape formats: Betamax versus VHS. Despite Betamax’s vaunted technical superiority, VHS emerged as the market favorite, mostly due to longer playing times. A chastened industry avoided a format war for the next technical cycle, and the DVD appeared without fuss and took over the market.
For sheer teeth-gnashing, nail-biting, fist-clenching angst, nothing beats the Battle of the Speeds, waged fiercely from about 1948-1950. The argument between lateral- and vertical-cut discs back in the ‘teens? Tempest in a teapot. Choosing between cylinders and discs? Nobody cared except for Edison Records, who persisted stubbornly in releasing cylinders long after the public had gone disc. No: when it comes to format wars, there’s the Battle of the Speeds, and then there’s everything else.
The prize: to replace the record format that had been standard for forty some-odd years. That was the good old 78 RPM shellac disc, an international lingua franca of a medium that meant "record" to everybody everywhere. To this day 78s exist in droves, gazillions of them, offering everything from speeches to comedy acts to presidential addresses to stage productions to movie scores to Broadway shows to pop songs to operas to oratorios to symphonies to chamber music to piano players to accordion players to guys making silly sounds with their armpits. You name it, it’s on 78. Records, records, and more records. And they were universally compatible: buy ’em in Bangladesh, play ’em in Boston. Absolute standardization, allowing for the one minor wrinkle of small speed variances—"78 rpm" in one country might be a bit different in another, thanks to different voltages that caused slightly different rotational speeds from geared electric motors. So it wasn’t perfectly consistent, but it was close enough. The world had a standard, a koine, for records.
Standard, yes. Perfection, no. 78s suffered from a laundry list of flaws:
1. The frequency range was narrow, topping out around 6000 Hz or so, far below the upper end of human hearing.
2. They snapped, crackled, and popped even when new.
3. They broke easily.
4. They warped easily.
5. They were heavy, difficult to store and to transport.
6. They played a maximum of about 4 1/2 minutes per side, and that was only the big 12" discs; 10" discs pooped out after about 3 minutes.
The two titans of the American recording industry, RCA Victor and Columbia, both sought an all-encompassing remedy. Each introduced its own all-encompassing and incompatible remedy. As usual, the poor consumers got caught in the middle.
RCA saw the solution as evolutionary: introduce a format that solved items 1-5 and don’t worry so much about item #6. Their format was a 7-inch microgroove vinyl disc that rotated at 45 RPM. It was distinguished by a large center spindle hole that enabled the discs to be stacked onto a supercharged record-changer mechanism that could shift discs in a few seconds. Because the disc was made of vinyl, it was resistant to breakage, and due to its small size, it was much more warp resistant than 12" discs. It was lightweight and compact, about halfway between the size of a 12" disc and a modern compact disc. Vinyl can record more minuscule detail than shellac, with the result that 45s have a wider frequency range than 78s—about the same as an LP, in fact. But 45 RPM discs are much closer in spirit to 78s than LPs: they offer almost exactly the same playing time per side as a 78, so 45s replaced 78s on a tit-for-tat basis. If Stokowski’s Brahms First with the Hollywood Bowl required 5 78 RPM discs, it also required 5 45 RPM discs. You still had all those annoying pauses to deal with as the discs changed, even though the process was now a lot faster.
Columbia also saw the solution as evolutionary, but chose to retain the familiar 12" diameter. Columbia also employed vinyl and microgrooves, but by retaining the 12" diameter and reducing the speed to 33 1/3 RPM, Columbia was able to stretch the playing time per side to 20 minutes or more, especially after developing a sophisticated technology that widened or narrowed the space between the grooves as needed, making maximum use out of the available space. Columbia’s solution fixes all of the listed problems save #4—LPs warp almost as easily as 78s. The LP more or less abandons the 78 gestalt entirely: that Stokowski Brahms First that requires 5 discs—either in 78 RPM or 45 RPM format—fits just fine on a single LP. No more breaks every 4 minutes.
And there it was. The opposing camps presented their respective champions, the battle lines were drawn, the standards were raised, and the carnage began. In this corner: 7" 45 RPM discs with the big hole in the middle. In the opposite corner: 12" 33 1/3 RPM discs with a small hole in the middle.
45s or LPs? The public was caught right in the middle
The public was expected to chose, and the public didn’t like it one bit. The public continued to buy 78s while those hopeful in-store displays of 45s and LPs sat there gathering dust. Folks needed a new record player for either format, and folks weren’t about to gamble on which model to buy.
RCA had one more ace up their sleeve: the Extended Play 45 RPM, a finer-grooved version of the 45 that offered about twice the playing time per side. Thus a single 45 disc held about the same amount of music as two 78s. But a public already tearing its hair out about confusion in the record store wasn’t about to put up with yet another format. Even though the EP 45 was compatible with regular 45 players, it died a quick death in the marketplace.
Slowly, public opinion began to swing towards the LP, but ultimately the contest ended in a draw. The LP went on to become the marketplace standard, remaining so until the advent of the compact disc and now in the 21st century undergoing a happy rebirth. The 45 wound up as the medium of choice for pop singles, perfectly suited to the 4-minute running time of the average tune, and even more perfectly suited to those gaudy jukeboxes that sprang up all over America during the tail-finned 1950s.
As the dust settled, consumers realized that they could have their cake and eat it too. I grew up with a blondewood RCA New Orthophonic Hi-Fi record player that was designed in the aftermath of the battle. The turntable could rotate at 78, 45, or 33 1/3 rpm. The phono cartridge had a two-sided, pivoted stylus: one side gave you the conical stylus for playing 78s and the other was the finer elliptical stylus for 45s and LPs. It also had a cool built-in accessory for playing 45s, a bright-red geared plastic affair that you slipped on over the spindle, thus converting the automatic record changer for 45 RPM sets. So that RCA Hi-Fi could play just about everything equally well, or I suppose equally badly depending on your point of view. (Tonearms in those days rode a record groove like tanks on tarmac, remember.)
The Battle was all over by 1951, yet it remains a fascinating historical tidbit. Consider the 1942 RCA album of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade from Pierre Monteux and the San Francisco Symphony, an instant classic if ever there were. The original album (DM-920) was a luxurious affair on 5 shellac 78 RPM discs encased in a sturdy bound album with spectacular artwork. Scheherazade requires 9 sides, so Monteux had the happy inspiration to use the remaining side as a curtain-raiser, programming Rimky’s spunky "Warrior’s March" from Tsar Saltan. So Scheherazade has a little overture. Here’s that beautiful 78 album, at one time a staple in homes throughout America:
Scheherazade, 1942: The original with artwork and Warrior’s March
Then came the original 45 RPM reprint (WDM-920), one of RCA’s earlier salvos in the Battle of the Speeds. It’s more or less an exact copy of the original album, with 5 45 RPM discs tucked into a (smaller, lighter) box with the same spiffy artwork, also programing the "Warrior’s March" as Side One. That transparent red vinyl is seriously cool stuff; RCA made great use of it from 1945 onwards.
Scheherazade on 45’s: Transparent red vinyl, artwork and Warrior’s March still intact
RCA brought out the EP edition shortly thereafter. Scheherazade was one of the first of those EPs, as its catalog number (ERC 2) indicates. It’s three discs instead of five. But the EP edition did away with the "Warrior’s March." Now the album begins with the first movement of Scheherazade, with no curtain-raiser. But it still sports the great artwork.
Scheherazade on EP 45’s: No Warrior’s March, and a short lifespan on the market
By 1950 RCA had recognized the obvious and started releasing LPs, thus initiating one of the great success stories in American record history—RCA Red Seal LPs, many of them representing the pinnacle of American audio and album design. Scheherazade came out on a handsome LP that reproduced that same spectacular artwork from all of the previous sets, but like the EP edition, it nixed the "Warrior’s March."
Scheherazade on LP: RCA capitulates
Budget LPs became all the rage in the mid- to late-1950s. RCA developed its "Camden" line of low-priced reprints, most of them originating as 78 RPM albums. Scheherazade got the Camden treatment, for the first time in its American release history acquiring new (tacky) cover art. No "Warrior’s March."
Scheherazade’s budget release: what a sad comedown from the old cover art
When RCA’s French division put out a retrospective of Pierre Monteux’s recordings, Scheherazade was volume 7. This time it wasn’t alone—but the companion piece wasn’t the "Warrior’s March." Instead, RCA added the Bridal Procession from The Golden Cockerel—originally Side 4 of Monteux’s La Valse from 1941.
French Scheherazade re-release: Why the Bridal Procession and not the Warrior’s March?
When BMG Classics (RCA’s corporate successor) brought out Scheherazade on the 14-CD "Pierre Monteux Edition" in the 1990s, the "Warrior’s March" remained conspicuous in its absence. And the artwork is incredibly boring. And, to be really blunt, the sound isn’t that good either—BMG’s remasterings run harsh and unmusical. But at least it’s there. Well, it’s out of print. But you can buy each individual volume in nice reprints from ArkivMusic.com, so don’t even think of paying the gawdawful sums people are asking for secondhand originals.
Scheherazade on the PME: no Warrior’s March, no Bridal Procession, and graceless artwork
And the "Warrior’s March"? It dropped off the face of the Earth around 1949 or so. If you want to hear it, you have to find yourself an original 78 RPM album, or that 45 RPM album with its spectacular red vinyl discs.
And then you have to figure out a way to play it. Should you be interested, you might consult my article Shellac Romance, available right here on Free Composition.