<h1 class="articleHeadline">For Columbia Records, This Is How History Sounds</h1>
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<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/ben_sisario/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by BEN SISARIO"><span>BEN SISARIO</span></a></span></h6>
<h6 class="dateline">Published: October 30, 2012 </h6><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/books/360-sound-celebrates-columbia-records-125th-anniversary.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/books/360-sound-celebrates-columbia-records-125th-anniversary.html</a><br>
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In the recorded-music business, most of the recent headline numbers
haven’t been good. Sales are down, layoffs are up. Don’t even ask how
many people downloaded the latest Katy Perry album illegally.
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<h6 class="credit">Jim Marshall Photography</h6>
<p class="caption">Janis Joplin in 1969. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/10/31/arts/music/20121031-columbia.html">More Photos »</a>
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<h6><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/10/31/arts/music/20121031-columbia.html?ref=books">
Touring Columbia’s Roster of Stars</a></h6>
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But for a project by Columbia Records in celebration of its own big
number — 125 years in business — the label decided to take the high road
by focusing on the broad historical influence of the company and its
artists, including Bob Dylan, Barbra Streisand, Johnny Cash, Leonard
Bernstein, Billie Holiday and Al Jolson, to name just a few of its
giants. </p><p>
The centerpiece is “360 Sound: The Columbia Records Story,” a book by
the Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, which will be published this week
by Chronicle Books. A related exhibition at the Grammy Museum in Los
Angeles opens on Nov. 7. </p><p>
Mr. Wilentz, whose books include <a title="Times review of the book" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/books/review/13wood.html?pagewanted=all">“The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln”</a> and <a title="Times review" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/books/10book.html">“Bob Dylan in America,”</a>
met with Columbia executives two years ago, after first being
approached by Mr. Dylan’s manager, Jeff Rosen. They wanted a serious
assessment by someone outside the industry, at a relatively modest
length of 30,000 words. </p><p>
“They wanted a historian to tell the story of Columbia in the context of
American social and cultural history,” Mr. Wilentz said recently. His
condition was complete editorial control, which he said was honored.
</p><p>
Rob Stringer, the label’s chairman, said that after meeting with Mr.
Wilentz, he was not worried what kind of book would result. “He was
reverential to the label,” Mr. Stringer said. </p><p>
Thirty thousand words came and went. Published at more than 300 pages —
and around 90,000 words — “360 Sound” is just long enough to pass
breezily through nearly every important chapter of Columbia’s history,
while leaving plenty of room for hundreds of delicious archival photos;
Mr. Wilentz describes it as “the most erudite coffee table book.”
(Perhaps he could have written even a little more: there are no fewer
than 15 pictures of Mr. Dylan and 13 of Bruce Springsteen.) </p><p>
The deluxe version of the book also includes “Legends and Legacy,” a
flash drive and accompanying book by the critic Dave Marsh with his
selection of 263 tracks from Columbia and its affiliated labels, from
John Philip Sousa’s “Washington Post March” (1895) to Adele’s “Rolling
in the Deep” (2011). </p><p>
In “360 Sound” — the title was taken from a Columbia slogan in the 1960s
— Mr. Wilentz relishes telling the stories of some of Columbia’s
signature artists and the visionary executives behind them. The best
known of these is John Hammond, whose run as a talent scout lasted half a
century and helped bring the label Holiday, Bessie Smith, Benny
Goodman, Mr. Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Mr. Springsteen and, in the 1980s,
the blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan. </p><p>
“I listened to a lot of music doing this,” Mr. Wilentz said in a lunch
interview on the Upper West Side, after ordering a sandwich that he
neglected over most of an hour. “I don’t get to listen to a lot of music
when I write about Andrew Jackson,” he added, and appended a footnote,
“Well, ‘The Battle of New Orleans,’ maybe.” </p><p>
Columbia’s history is entangled with that of the larger music industry,
and some of the most engaging parts of the book trace the early
development of the business. (For sticklers, the Columbia Phonograph
Company was founded in 1889 but dates itself from a predecessor, the
American Graphophone Company, which started two years earlier. Columbia
is now part of Sony Music Entertainment.) </p><p>
While some of the artists from the early 20th century are unfamiliar — <a title="Mr. Williams’s "Nobody" " href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI8e2_Ymo9Q">Bert Williams</a>? <a title="Johnson’s "Laughing Song" " href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kXxqJ7pY6g">George Washington Johnson</a>?
— the emerging industry’s technological and legal crises are strikingly
similar to the situation in our own time, with patent wars, endless
litigation and a struggle between labels and radio networks, the tech
start-ups of the era. </p><p>
Columbia was at the center of several important technological
developments, like the long-playing 33 1/3 record, which it introduced
in 1948. The LP heritage helped lure at least one marquee act. Marty
Erlichman, Ms. Streisand’s longtime manager, told Mr. Wilentz that in
1962 she got a better offer from Capitol Records but went with Columbia,
partly because of its attachment to the format. </p><p>
“They weren’t as dogmatic about having a hit single,” Mr. Erlichman is quoted as saying. “They were an album company.” </p><p>
Perhaps inadvertently, “360 Sound” also documents some of the less
fortunate peculiarities of the music industry. In reprinting a famous
photograph of the Byrds walking down Avenue of the Americas in the
mid-1960s, for example, the book’s editors used a doctored version that
removed the band members’ cigarettes. A spokeswoman for Columbia’s
125th-anniversary project said the shot could have been retouched for
any reason over the years and that it was chosen unwittingly, with no
intention of censorship. </p><p>
For Mr. Wilentz — who said he was not involved in photo selection — a
bigger issue was how a historian should handle an industry that these
days seems to be in constant tumult. “I have to admit that I wondered,
am I writing a book or am I writing an obituary?” he said. </p><p>
Columbia is currently at a business high point, with a market share of
8.6 percent, more than any other label. It owes much of that success to
Adele’s album “21,” which Columbia releases in the United States through
a deal with Adele’s label, the <a title="Times article about XL" href="http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/adele-leads-record-label-to-67-million-profit/">British independent XL</a>. </p><p>
Keeping in mind Columbia’s many near-death experiences over its 125
years, and the industry’s history of struggles over technology, Mr.
Wilentz said he was reluctant to write Columbia into the grave. </p><p>
“The recording industry was supposed to have died any number of times,”
he said. “It was supposed to die with radio, it was supposed to die with
the jukebox, and it never dies. They reason is that they manage to
adapt, in technology and in business. I was not willing to write them
off completely.” </p><p>
If Columbia had not been having a good run on the charts lately, though, he might never have had to make the choice. </p><p>
“We thought that we had enough positive coming out that it would not be a grisly ending,” Mr. Stringer said. </p><p>
“If we had no record in the charts,” he added, “I’m not sure we would have commissioned it.” </p> <div class="articleCorrection">
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-- <br><div>carlos palombini<br></div><a href="http://www.researcherid.com/rid/F-7345-2011" target="_blank">www.researcherid.com/rid/F-7345-2011</a><br>
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