1.
Single (music)
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In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a song recording of fewer tracks than an LP record, an album or an EP record. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats, in most cases, a single is a song that is released separately from an album, although it usually also appears on an album. Typically, these are the songs from albums that are released separately for promotional uses such as digital download or commercial radio airplay and are expected to be the most popular, in other cases a recording released as a single may not appear on an album. As digital downloading and audio streaming have become prevalent, it is often possible for every track on an album to also be available separately. Nevertheless, the concept of a single for an album has been retained as an identification of a heavily promoted or more popular song within an album collection. Despite being referred to as a single, singles can include up to as many as three tracks on them. The biggest digital music distributor, iTunes, accepts as many as three tracks less than ten minutes each as a single, as well as popular music player Spotify also following in this trend. Any more than three tracks on a release or longer than thirty minutes in total running time is either an Extended Play or if over six tracks long. The basic specifications of the single were made in the late 19th century. Gramophone discs were manufactured with a range of speeds and in several sizes. By about 1910, however, the 10-inch,78 rpm shellac disc had become the most commonly used format, the inherent technical limitations of the gramophone disc defined the standard format for commercial recordings in the early 20th century.26 rpm. With these factors applied to the 10-inch format, songwriters and performers increasingly tailored their output to fit the new medium, the breakthrough came with Bob Dylans Like a Rolling Stone. Singles have been issued in various formats, including 7-inch, 10-inch, other, less common, formats include singles on digital compact cassette, DVD, and LD, as well as many non-standard sizes of vinyl disc. Some artist release singles on records, a more common in musical subcultures. The most common form of the single is the 45 or 7-inch. The names are derived from its speed,45 rpm. The 7-inch 45 rpm record was released 31 March 1949 by RCA Victor as a smaller, more durable, the first 45 rpm records were monaural, with recordings on both sides of the disc. As stereo recordings became popular in the 1960s, almost all 45 rpm records were produced in stereo by the early 1970s
2.
Sam & Dave
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Sam & Dave were an American soul and R&B duo who performed together from 1961 until 1981. The tenor voice was Sam Moore and the voice was Dave Prater. According to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Sam & Dave were the most successful soul duo and brought the sounds of the black gospel church to pop music with their call-and-response records. Except for Aretha Franklin, no soul act during Sam & Daves Stax years had more consistent R&B chart success, Soul Man was featured as the soundtrack and title for a 1986 film and also a 1997–1998 television series, and Soul Men was a 2008 feature film. Nicknamed Double Dynamite, The Sultans of Sweat, and The Dynamic Duo for their gritty, gospel-infused performances, Sam & Dave are considered one of the greatest live acts of the 1960s. Sam Moore and Dave Praters early musical backgrounds involved listening to and singing gospel music in their homes and churches, Dave later sang with his older brother JT Prater in the gospel group The Sensational Hummingbirds, who recorded Lord Teach Me in the 1950s. Sam recorded Nitey-Nite/Caveman Rock in 1954 with the doo-wop group The Majestics, Moore and Prater listed Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke as influences on their styles, and Moore was also influenced by Little Willie John, whom he and Dave opened for often in the early 1960s. Sam & Dave met working the gospel circuit, and later in small clubs in Miami during amateur nights in 1961 according to Dave. They sang together one night at the King of Hearts club, Soul singer and record producer Steve Alaimo discovered them while performing during the same show with them at the King of Hearts nightclub in Miami and signed them to Marlin Records. After two singles in early 1962 were released on the local Marlin label owned by Miamis Henry Stone, Stone helped sign them to Roulette Records in New York City and they released six 45s from 1962–1964 with Roulette, and one single on Stone and Alaimos Alston Label. A few of the singles received airplay, but did not achieve national chart success. The songs, some of which were produced by Steve Alaimo and some of which were produced by Henry Glover, were similar in ways to R&B recordings by Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson. Prater was the lead vocalist on most of singles, with Moore singing harmony. In summer 1964, Stone introduced the duo to Atlantic Records Jerry Wexler, Wexler asked Memphis, Tennessee-based Stax Records, which Atlantic distributed nationally, to work with Sam & Dave. Wexler wanted the Southern roots and gospel style of their performances, so the pair were loaned to Stax to record. According to Wexlers autobiography Rhythms & Blues, Their live act was filled with animation, harmony, I put Sam in the sweet tradition of Sam Cooke or Solomon Burke, while Dave had an ominous Four Tops Levi Stubbs-sounding voice, the preacher promising hellfire. The duo then moved to relative newcomer writers and producers Isaac Hayes, Hayes and Porter wrote and produced the duos biggest hits. Sam & Daves Stax records also benefited from the musicians and engineering at Stax, the Stax house band, Booker T. & the M. G
3.
Hold On, I'm Comin'
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Hold On, Im Comin is the 1966 debut album by Atlantic Records soul duo Sam and Dave, issued on the Atlantic-distributed Stax label in 1966. The album reached number one on the Billboard Black Albums chart and number 45 on the Billboard 200, launching two charting singles. The title track peaked at one on the Billboard Hot Black Singles chart. An Allmusic review refers to Hold On, Im Comin as epitomizing Memphis soul in all its unpretentious, down-home glory. According to Steve Cropper, lead guitarist for Booker T and the MGs, Stax Records was an old Movie Theater located at 926 East McLemore Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. The mens restroom in the studio had tile walls and tile floors. This arrangement produced both the reverb and echo heard on Stax Records, the Song was written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter. They had been working for a while when Porter went to the restroom, Hayes grew impatient yelled for Porter to get back to the writing session. Porter replied, “Hold on, I’m comin’. ”They both recognized the sexual overtone and completed the song within an hour, except where otherwise noted, all tracks written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter. & the MGs and the Mar-Key Horns – instrumentation, Booker T. Jones – keyboards Steve Cropper – guitar Donald Duck Dunn – bass guitar Al Jackson, another cover version was recorded by Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers in 1966. Tom Jones covered it on the 1967 album 13 Smash Hits, Hold On, Im Comin was featured during a scene in the film The Blues Brothers, along with the song Soothe Me, also performed by Sam and Dave. It was also featured in the 2007 film American Gangster,2009 videogame Skate 2, the cover by The Neville Brothers was featured in commercials for the film Toy Story 2. A goof/errata was created in the film We Were Soldiers where one of the characters sang it during a going away party for their unit, the time period of the scene was at least five months prior to the song actually being released. UFC Welterweight Champion Robbie Lawler used the song as his entrance song, list of number-one R&B albums of 1966
4.
A-side and B-side
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The terms A-side and B-side refer to the two sides of 78,45, and 33 1/3 rpm phonograph records, whether singles, extended plays, or long-playing records. Creedence Clearwater Revival had hits with both A-side and B-side releases, others took the opposite approach, producer Phil Spector was in the habit of filling B-sides with on-the-spot instrumentals that no one would confuse with the A-side. With this practice, Spector was assured that airplay was focused on the side he wanted to be the hit side, the earliest 10-inch,78 rpm, shellac records were single sided. Double-sided recordings, with one song on side, were introduced in Europe by Columbia Records. There were no record charts until the 1930s, and radio stations did not play recorded music until the 1950s, in this time, A-sides and B-sides existed, but neither side was considered more important, the side did not convey anything about the content of the record. The term single came into use with the advent of vinyl records in the early 1950s. At first, most record labels would randomly assign which song would be an A-side, under this random system, many artists had so-called double-sided hits, where both songs on a record made one of the national sales charts, or would be featured on jukeboxes in public places. As time wore on, however, the convention for assigning songs to sides of the record changed. By the early sixties, the song on the A-side was the song that the company wanted radio stations to play. It was not until 1968, for instance, that the production of albums on a unit basis finally surpassed that of singles in the United Kingdom. In the late 1960s stereo versions of pop and rock songs began to appear on 45s. The majority of the 45s were played on AM radio stations, by the early 1970s, double-sided hits had become rare. Album sales had increased, and B-sides had become the side of the record where non-album, non-radio-friendly, with the advent of cassette and compact disc singles in the late 1980s, the A-side/B-side differentiation became much less meaningful. With the decline of cassette singles in the 1990s, the A-side/B-side dichotomy became virtually extinct, as the dominant medium. However, the term B-side is still used to refer to the tracks or coupling tracks on a CD single. With the advent of downloading music via the Internet, sales of CD singles and other media have declined. B-side songs may be released on the record as a single to provide extra value for money. There are several types of material released in this way, including a different version, or, in a concept record
5.
Phonograph record
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The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc. The phonograph disc record was the medium used for music reproduction until late in the 20th century. It had co-existed with the cylinder from the late 1880s. Records retained the largest market share even when new formats such as compact cassette were mass-marketed, by the late 1980s, digital media, in the form of the compact disc, had gained a larger market share, and the vinyl record left the mainstream in 1991. The phonograph record has made a resurgence in the early 21st century –9.2 million records were sold in the U. S. in 2014. Likewise, in the UK sales have increased five-fold from 2009 to 2014, as of 2017,48 record pressing facilities remain worldwide,18 in the United States and 30 in other countries. The increased popularity of vinyl has led to the investment in new, only two producers of lacquers remains, Apollo Masters in California, USA, and MDC in Japan. Vinyl records may be scratched or warped if stored incorrectly but if they are not exposed to heat or broken. The large cover are valued by collectors and artists for the space given for visual expression, in the 2000s, these tracings were first scanned by audio engineers and digitally converted into audible sound. Phonautograms of singing and speech made by Scott in 1860 were played back as sound for the first time in 2008, along with a tuning fork tone and unintelligible snippets recorded as early as 1857, these are the earliest known recordings of sound. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, unlike the phonautograph, it was capable of both recording and reproducing sound. Despite the similarity of name, there is no evidence that Edisons phonograph was based on Scotts phonautograph. Edison first tried recording sound on a paper tape, with the idea of creating a telephone repeater analogous to the telegraph repeater he had been working on. The tinfoil was wrapped around a metal cylinder and a sound-vibrated stylus indented the tinfoil while the cylinder was rotated. The recording could be played back immediately, Edison also invented variations of the phonograph that used tape and disc formats. A decade later, Edison developed a greatly improved phonograph that used a wax cylinder instead of a foil sheet. This proved to be both a better-sounding and far more useful and durable device, the wax phonograph cylinder created the recorded sound market at the end of the 1880s and dominated it through the early years of the 20th century. Berliners earliest discs, first marketed in 1889, but only in Europe, were 12.5 cm in diameter, both the records and the machine were adequate only for use as a toy or curiosity, due to the limited sound quality
6.
Soul music
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Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It combines elements of African-American gospel music, rhythm and blues, Soul music became popular for dancing and listening in the United States, where record labels such as Motown, Atlantic and Stax were influential during the Civil Rights Movement. Soul also became popular around the world, directly influencing rock music, catchy rhythms, stressed by handclaps and extemporaneous body moves, are an important feature of soul music. Other characteristics are a call and response between the lead vocalist and the chorus and a tense vocal sound. The style also occasionally uses improvisational additions, twirls and auxiliary sounds, Soul music reflected the African-American identity and it stressed the importance of an African-American culture. The new-found African-American consciousness led to new styles of music, which boasted pride in being black, Soul music dominated the U. S. R&B chart in the 1960s, and many recordings crossed over into the pop charts in the U. S. By 1968, the music genre had begun to splinter. Some soul artists developed funk music, while other singers and groups developed slicker, more sophisticated, by the early 1970s, soul music had been influenced by psychedelic rock and other genres, leading to psychedelic soul. The United States saw the development of neo soul around 1994, there are also several other subgenres and offshoots of soul music. The term soul had been used among African-American musicians to emphasize the feeling of being an African-American in the United States, according to another source, Soul music was the result of the urbanization and commercialization of rhythm and blues in the 60s. The phrase soul music itself, referring to music with secular lyrics, is first attested in 1961. The term soul in African-American parlance has connotations of African-American pride, gospel groups in the 1940s and 1950s occasionally used the term as part of their name. The jazz style that derived from gospel came to be called soul jazz, important innovators whose recordings in the 1950s contributed to the emergence of soul music included Clyde McPhatter, Hank Ballard, and Etta James. Ray Charles is often cited as popularizing the genre with his string of hits starting with 1954s I Got a Woman. Singer Bobby Womack said, Ray was the genius and he turned the world onto soul music. Charles was open in acknowledging the influence of Pilgrim Travelers vocalist Jesse Whitaker on his singing style, little Richard and James Brown were equally influential. Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson are also acknowledged as soul forefathers. Cooke became popular as the singer of gospel group The Soul Stirrers
7.
Stax Records
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Stax Records is an American record label, originally based in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1957 as Satellite Records, the changed its name to Stax Records in 1961. It was a factor in the creation of Southern soul. Stax also released gospel, funk, jazz, and blues recordings, while renowned for its output of African-American music, the label was founded by two white siblings and business partners, Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton. It featured several popular ethnically integrated bands and an integrated team of staff and artists unprecedented in that time of racial strife and tension in Memphis. Over the next five years, Bell expanded the labels operations significantly, in order to compete with Staxs main rival, Motown Records in Detroit. During the mid-1970s, a number of factors, including a distribution deal with CBS Records, caused the label to slide into insolvency. In 1977, Fantasy Records acquired the post-1968 Stax catalogue and selected pre-1968 recordings, beginning in 1978, Stax began signing new acts and issuing new material, as well as reissuing previously recorded Stax material. However, by the early 1980s no new material was being issued on the label, after Concord Records acquired Fantasy in 2004, the Stax label was reactivated, and is today used to issue both the 1968–1975 catalog material and new recordings by current R&B and soul performers. Atlantic Records continues to hold the rights to the vast majority of the 1959–1968 Stax material, Stax Records, originally named Satellite Records, was founded in Memphis in 1957 by Jim Stewart, initially operating in a garage. Satellites early releases were country music, rockabilly records or straight pop numbers, in 1958, Stewarts sister Estelle Axton began her financial interest in the company. Taking a considerable risk, she mortgaged her family home to invest $2500 in the company. The company set up a recording studio in Brunswick, Tennessee. Around this time, Stewart was introduced to rhythm and blues music by staff producer Chips Moman. In the summer of year, Satellite released its first record by a rhythm and blues act, Fool in Love, by the Veltones. However, Satellite remained primarily a country and pop label for the year or so. While promoting Fool in Love, Stewart met with Memphis disc jockey and R&B singer Rufus Thomas and it went on to sell between thirty and forty thousand copies, becoming Satellites biggest hit to that time. With the success of Cause I Love You, Stewart made a deal giving Atlantic first choice on releasing Satellite recordings
8.
Atlantic Records
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Atlantic Recording Corporation is an American major record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegün and Herb Abramson. In 2004, Atlantic Records and its sister label Elektra Records merged into Atlantic Records Group, craig Kallman is currently the chairman of Atlantic Records. Ahmet Ertegün served as founding chairman until his death on December 14,2006, the brothers had become ardent fans of jazz and rhythm & blues music, amassing a collection of over 15,00078 RPM records. He convinced the family dentist, Dr Vahdi Sabit, to invest $10,000 and recruited Herb Abramson, Abramson had worked as a part-time A&R manager/producer for the jazz label National Records, signing Big Joe Turner and Billy Eckstine. He founded Jubilee Records in 1946, but had no interest in its most successful artists, so, in September 1947, he sold his share in Jubilee to his partner, Jerry Blaine, and invested $2500 in the new Atlantic label. When interviewed in 2009 she attributed her reputation to the companys chronic cash-flow shortage, most of the problems we had with artists were that they wanted advances, and that was very difficult for us. We were undercapitalized for a long time, the labels original office in the Ritz Hotel, Manhattan proved too expensive so they relocated to an $85 per month room in the Hotel Jefferson. In its early years Atlantic focused principally on modern jazz although it released some country and western and spoken word recordings. The union action forced Atlantic to use almost all its capital to cut and stockpile enough recordings to last through the ban, Ertegun and Abramson spent much of the late 1940s and early 1950s scouring nightclubs in search of talent. Ertegun composed many songs under the alias A, in early 1949 a New Orleans distributor phoned Ertegun trying to obtain Stick McGhees Drinking Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee, which was unavailable due to the closure of McGhees previous label. Ertegun knew Sticks younger brother Brownie McGhee, with whom Stick happened to be staying, so he contacted the McGhee brothers, Ertegun asked about artists royalties, which he paid, which surprised Columbia executives, who did not, which scuttled the deal. On the recommendation of broadcaster Willis Conover, Ertegun and Abramson went to see Ruth Brown at the Crystal Caverns club in Washington and she was badly injured in a car accident en route to New York but Atlantic supported her for nine months and then signed her. Her first release for the label So Long, cut at her second Atlantic session on May 25,1949 with the Eddie Condon band, was a major hit, reaching #6 on the R&B chart. Brown went on to more than eighty songs for the label, becoming the most prolific. So significant was Browns success to Atlantics fortunes that the label became known colloquially as The House That Ruth Built. The Clovers Dont You Know I Love You became the labels first R&B #1 in September 1951 and she hit #1 again in March–April 1952 with 5-10-15 Hours. After she left the label in 1961 Browns fortunes declined rapidly - within a few years was reduced to working as a cleaner and bus-driver to support her children. Brown eventually received a payment of $20,000 and founded a charity
