For Adults Only: “Party” Records and Censorship
in the 1930s

By Allan Sutton

 

 

In 1896, comedian Russell Hunting was arrested and jailed for selling  “obscene” phonograph records. [1] The message was not lost on other performers, nor on the record companies. Commercial recordings would remain largely free of anything smacking of “obscenity” in the four decades that followed Hunting’s arrest.

Under federal law, any materials deemed obscene were prohibited in the mails. Otherwise, censorship of phonograph records was left largely to local governments, law-enforcement officials, and self-appointed moral guardians like the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. During the 1920s there were record-smashing parties in Salt Lake City, and in Baton Rouge the mayor ordered the removal from stores of any “vulgar or indecent” records.  [2]  In 1925, police officials in Washington, D.C. decided to enforce an old statute prohibiting “indecent music,” whether it had lyrics or not. What one Washington attorney termed “that hootchy-kootchy sort of intonation” could be sufficient to establish indecency. Rhoda Milliken, a district police sergeant, took it upon herself to declare that saxophone music was immoral. [3] Her boss, Lieutenant Mina Van Winkle, even found American Indian music to be indecent. She took “that tom-tommy sort of Oriental music that makes men forget home and babies” to be a particular threat:

The desert natives play that sort for dancing, but they have self-respect enough to dance by themselves. They would be shocked to see the way our boys and girls hug each other and vibrate to the tune of those compelling pieces. [4]

One has to wonder how many youths were “vibrating” to, or were even aware of, American Indian music in 1925. A writer for the music trade journal Presto wondered if Ms. Van Winkle might be a practical joke foisted upon the public by a D.C. correspondent. She was not. [5]

The record companies had long been self-censoring. The occasional “cussing song” found its way onto records in the early 1900s (“The Whole Damm Family,” “Oh, Helen!”), and mildly suggestive lyrics like “How Could Red Riding Hood Have Been So Very Good (And Still Keep the Wolf from the Door)” were common in the 1920s. They generally were taken in stride by all by the must prudish. Vocal blues were sometimes quite suggestive, but being largely sequestered in the segregated race-record lists, they tended to escape notice in the mainstream market. When complaints did surface, Vocalion responded by advertising its line (none too honestly) as “The Cleaner Race Records.”

As far as can be determined, no “adult” record labels were produced commercially until the early 1930s, when Dwight Fiske launched Fiskana. Fiske, who studied piano at the Paris Conservatory, began his career as a concert performer. By the late 1920s was performing his own mildly risqué songs and monologues at private parties and in upscale lounges. Fiske was the picture of respectability, and his prissy, stilted performances were rarely anything more than mildly suggestive.

Fiske’s first issued record was made in 1933 by Byers Recording Laboratory, a small New York producer of radio transcriptions and custom labels. Privately issued and barely advertised, it attracted little attention. He quickly shifted production of his label to RCA Victor, which apparently had no qualms about working with him — an indicator of just how tame his material was (and perhaps, how desperate RCA was for work of any sort at that time). RCA produced Fiskana as a client label from 1933 through early 1937, and even numbered the records in its own 36000 series. Although the RCA Victor name and trademarks never appeared on the labels, at least one dealer advertised them as Victor records.

 

(Top) An RCA-produced Fiskana record and one of Fiske’s Liberty Music Shop releases. (Bottom) Although RCA did not allow its name or logo to appear on the Fiskana labels, the records were given Victor catalog numbers and sometimes advertised by dealers as regular Victor releases.

 

Fiskana records were targeted to a fairly sophisticated, affluent clientele. Marketing was handled by Mayfair Features (named for the Mayfair Yacht Club, at which Fiske was performing) and the records were sold by some well-respected dealers, albeit rather discreetly. Among them was publisher Robert M. McBride, who also operated a record shop in Hollywood. In 1936, McBride published a collection of Fiske’s stories in book form, as “Why Should Penguins Fly?” [6]

A writer for the H. Royer Smith Company, a major Philadelphia retailer, touted an early Fiskana release without acknowledging that his company was handling the line:

They tell us that a phonograph record with a rather unattractive green label is taking the Smart Set of New York by storm. The fat dowagers simply explode…the “ladies” of Park Avenue giggle and blush…the female impersonators go into hysterics…the “old smoothies” bite their cigars in half. … The title of this “wow-of-a-record,” of which thousands of copies, or was it millions, have been sold to all the “smart people” in gay New York at $1.50 each, is Fiskana. [7]

Approximately thirty titles were issued before Fiske and RCA parted ways. Fiske later had his own pressings made from the RCA masters, from which Victor’s telltale “VE” logo was effaced. He went on to record six sides for the Liberty Music Shop label in 1939, then became a staple on the less respectable Gala label in the 1940s. He continued to record into the early LP era, never venturing beyond the tired double entendres and occasional mild expletive.

 

Album cover for a set of Dwight Fiske’s Liberty Music Shop records,
c. mid-1930s.

 

If Dwight Fiske didn’t fit the stereotype of a party-record producer, Ray Bourbon certainly did. An alcoholic and flamboyant female impersonator who had frequent run-ins with the law, he sometimes went by the alias Hal Waddell or Richard F. Mann. [8] Bourbon worked in vaudeville before moving to the gay nightclub circuit, beginning with New York’s Pansy Club, in late 1930. From there, he moved on to a string of underground West Coast nightspots that showcased female impersonators and openly gay performers in material that far exceeded what could be safely presented in the burlesque houses. Local authorities became alarmed as the clubs began to proliferate. In 1932 the Los Angeles police raided Bourbon’s “Boys Will Be Girls” revue, which succeeded only in driving it to San Francisco. [9]

Bourbon made two test recordings for Brunswick in October 1929, but he was not signed. A second Brunswick test session, in March 1931, went no better. With no other potential takers, he finally launched his own Bourbana label in 1935. Produced by the Western Record Company in Hollywood, Bourbana records were a modest underground hit. Some of the recordings were licensed to other early “adult” labels, including Hot Shots from Hollywood and Good-Humor, and in later years many were pirated by less reputable producers. The Liberty Music Shop released four of its own rather tame Bourbon sides, recorded for them by Decca, in 1936. A second batch of Liberty Music Shop releases followed in 1940, this time recorded by Reeves Sound Studios. In the meantime, Bourbon had launched his own Imperial Record Company.

 

Album cover for a Ray Bourbin set on his Imperial label. Imperial’s end came in 1942, after Eli Oberstein launched his own Imperial Record Company.

 

Unrelated to the later rhythm-and-blues label, Imperial was a shadowy business for which no incorporation or other legal documents have been found. Based on Bourbon’s own claim, the company must have begun operations in or around 1937. The titles became a bit more suggestive — “My Ace in the Hole,” “Take a Lei,” “Gland Opera” — although the content remained relatively innocuous. The label’s end came after Eli Oberstein launched his own Imperial Record Company in 1942, apparently unaware of Bourbon’s minuscule operation. Bourbon placed a notice in Billboard in December, claiming to have operated his Imperial Record Company “for five years,” [10] but both parties ended up abandoning the name. Bourbon was soon back in business with The New Bourbon Records labels.

 

(Left) Ray Bourbon’s early eponymous label was distributed by Robert McBride, who also published Dwight Fiske’s books. (Right) Bourbon discontinued his Imperial label after Eli Oberstein launched a similarly named company.

 

Bourbon performed with Mae West in the 1940s, but his career faltered as his behavior became increasingly bizarre. In 1956 he officially changed the spelling of his first name to “Rae” (which he had first used in 1929, for his Brunswick test) after claiming to have undergone a sex-change operation in Mexico. He claimed that his surgeon had discovered uterine tissue during the course of the operation [11]. The tale was generally assumed to have been fabricated (as would be proved later), and Bourbon continued his downward spiral. On February 21, 1970, he was convicted as an accomplice to murder, following a botched attempt to remove his dogs from a kennel by force, during which one of his accomplices killed the kennel owner with Bourbon’s gun. Bourbon was sentenced to ninety-nine years in the men’s  prison at Big Spring, Texas, where he died in July 1971. [12]

With the way now opened by Dwight Fiske and Ray Bourbon, several specialty labels decided to take a chance with mildly risqué “adult” material. The most active was Liberty Music Shop, a well-respected  niche label that catered to what Billboard characterized as “the plush record-buying trade.” Its roster included cocktail-lounge pianists, salon orchestras, white “chamber jazz” groups, and Broadway headliners, but there was also some riqué material by Bourbon, Fiske, Nan Blakstone, and Stoughton J. (“Bruz”) Fletcher.

 

 

The Liberty Music Shop’s “adult” stars included Bruz Fletecher, whose own label (top left) appears to have been produced for him by John McClelland’s Novelty Record operation. The son of a prominent Indiana banker, he committed suicide in February 1941. Nan Blakstone recorded for Decca and other mainstream labels, reserving her more provocative fare for niche labels like Liberty Music Shop.

 

Hazard Reeves’ General Records also issued some party material, mostly novelty tunes like the Three Old Roosters’ “Who Slapped Annie in the Fanny with a Flounder?” and “Biggest Kanakas in Hawaii.” The party material was largely limited to General’s Tavern Tunes label, which was intended for the jukebox trade. For the most part, however, mainstream producers preferred to steer clear of questionable material, leaving the field open to newcomers.

The most prolific of the new party-label producers was John Collins McClelland. A well-known Los Angeles entrepreneur, McClelland controlled thousands of jukeboxes and other coin-operated entertainment devices through his National Amusement Company. He also owned several side-businesses with ties to National Amusement, some of which appear to have been little more than shell corporations. Among them was the Los Angeles–based Novelty Record Distributors, a.k.a. Novelty Record Company. Launched in 1935, it released “adult” material under the Hot Shots from Hollywood label. [13] McClelland lived large, even installing a private bar adjacent to his office that was decorated with paintings of life-size nudes and said to be a popular gathering spot for others in the jukebox trade.

 

“Pure and Simple”: The Nudist Colony 

Hollywood, CA: 1936
Hollywood Hot Shots 372

 

Milton Swanstrom was recruited as McClelland’s sales manager. His previous employer had been the Rock-Ola Manufacturing Company, one of several jukebox operations that had recently taken a strong stance against party records. [14] Perhaps not coincidentally, David Rockola declared after Swanstrom’s departure,

I feel that the use of suggestive songs and questionable ‘ditties’ is jeopardizing the good, clean, well-established and well-thought-of legitimate business of the music operator. People can be very modern and liberal and still dislike to take their wives and children where they will unconsciously and unintentionally be compelled to hear ribald words on a phonograph record. [15]

The Hot Shots from Hollywood discs initially were sold only to jukebox operators, with the same selection pressed on both sides. Unlike many later party labels, they were professional productions, recorded at the Associated Cinema Studios in Hollywood and pressed by the Allied Record Manufacturing Company, which had taken over Columbia’s former Los Angeles pressing plant. Early releases featured Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards, a stage and radio star of the 1920s whose career was foundering. The records were only mildly suggestive and apparently did nothing to sully Edwards’ reputation. He would go on to voice the character of Jiminy Cricket for Walt Disney.

The Hot Shots records were an immediate hit with local jukebox operators, and by 1936 they were being sold nationally. In August, Billboard reported that Midwestern distribution was being handled by the firm of Gerber & Glass (a large supplier to  jukebox operators), which was “swamped with orders.” [16] Production lagged far behind demand. Although Milton Swanstrom reported “increasing business” on October 8, the company managed to ship only 806 records that week. [17]

 

Hollywood Hots Shots was the first in a line of “adult” labels produced by John McClelland. The address given was that of McClelland’s National Amusement Company. The recordings would soon begin showing up on other Hollywood-based labels, like Racy Records.

 

In December 1936, McClelland — noting that demand for the Cliff Edwards’ records was still exceeding production capacity — announced a new approach for Novelty Record Distributors that “broadens the field and places it in the diversified class, using name singers and orchestra.” [18] Among them were Ben Light, John “Candy” Candido (of the popular duet, Candy & Coco), and Cleo Brown (a pop-blues singer and frequent guest on Bing Crosby’s and Jimmy Dorsey’s 1930s radio programs). McClelland even retained the team of Mac Maurada and Mac McGreevy as house lyricists. [19]

Billboard described the material as “new and distinct types of songs never before recorded [that] give the patron a big laugh in addition to beautiful and rhythmic dance music.” [20] Brown recorded five titles for Hot Shots in late 1936, including “Is Jenny Getting Any Anymore?” and “Who’ll Chop Your Suey?” They were no more suggestive than some of the songs Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith, and other blues singers had recorded in the late 1920s, but they still managed to raise hackles in some quarters. There were many issues by an impromptu jazz-inflected group labeled the Hollywood Hooters, and Ben Light contributed such titles as “Her Fuller Brush Man” and “Stick It–Shove It–Stuff It” with his Surf Club Boys.

 

Gladys Bentley, whose recording career began in the 1920s, was featured on McClelland’s Hot Shots records before launching her own label around 1939. “The Locksmith” was a later, anonymous (and most likely pirated) reissue of her “Lock and Key.”

 

McClelland eventually overcame his production problems, and in 1937 he moved into the consumer market, shortening his label’s name to Hollywood Hot Shots in the process. Now with a different selection on each side, the records were advertised to the general public as “The Life of the Party — Recorded in Hollywood with that ‘Hollywood Touch.’” Generally kept behind the counter, they retailed for $1.25 each, [21] nearly four times the price of a popular mainstream label like Decca or Vocalion.

McClelland’s masters soon began showing up on a group of obscure party labels that were clustered in the Los Angeles area. They were credited to Amusement Record Distributors, Hollywood Specialty Recordings, and other shadowy operations, which appear to have been nothing more than offshoots of, or aliases for, Novelty Record Distributors. New arrivals included Torchies from Hollywood and Racy Records, both of which got their start by reissuing McClelland’s Hot Shots sides. Despite the reclining semi-nude (and later, fully nude) model on the labels, Racy Records generally promised much more stimulating content than they actually delivered. Good-Humor, an obscure label with more tenuous ties to McClelland, retailed for $2.50 per record, ensuring its quick failure.

In New York there were the Radio and Novelty labels (the latter unrelated to Novelty Record Distributors), which offered some mild double-entendre material by comedian Ben Samberg, masquerading as “Benny Bell.” Billboard dismissed them as “innocuous…simple and silly.” Even producer Eli Oberstein got into the act. Oberstein, who proclaimed the beginning of “the double-entendre era” to a Time magazine reporter, launched the Party Record Company in New York in 1939. [22] In February 1940, Oberstein claimed that the biggest hit to date on his Varsity label was Johnny Messner’s suggestive “She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor,” which reportedly had already sold 150,000 copies. Oberstein also claimed sales of 75,000 copies for the follow-up, “She Really Meant to Keep It till She Married,” and said he was thinking about releasing  “I’m a Virgin, But I’m on the Verge.” [23]

Inevitably, there was a backlash from that those who demanded that “obscene” records be banned, particularly on jukeboxes. Among them was columnist Earl J. Morris, who urged the removal of all “filthy records” from jukeboxes. “Children drop nickels to hear these tunes,” Morris warned. “These songs glorify depravity.” [24] Bowing to public pressure, states and municipalities began acting to outlaw the sale and use of party records.

Efforts to quash the party-record menace had so far been mostly local. Massachusetts passed a law mandating a one-year prison term and/or $500 fine for anyone “who uses or causes or permits to be used…a phonograph or other contrivance, instrument, or device, which utters or gives forth any profane, obscene, or impure language.” [25] One William Nevin, after receiving a suspended sentence in Boston for possessing obscene records, asked that they be returned, only to be informed that the police would be keeping them. [26] In Miami, the names of those arrested for stocking jukeboxes with forbidden records were reported to the appropriate jukebox distributors, who sent warning letters to the offenders. [27]

Under growing pressure to address the situation, the federal government finally launched an investigation into the records and their producers in late 1937. It was claimed that mail shipments of obscene records had increased by sixty-three percent over the previous fiscal year, and civic and religious groups were demanding federal intervention to stem the tide. [28] Pressure was coming as well from jukebox manufacturers, who filed a complaint with the Justice Department. The United Press reported,

They reportedly told the department that salesmen peddling the “smutty records” sold them to establishments which “sandwiched” the risqué pieces in with respectable recordings. The companies complained the records gave their machines a “black eye.” [29]

Ultimately, the Justice Department handed the matter over to the Post Office, which had the power to investigate those suspected of sending pornographic materials through the mail. John McClelland, it would turn out, was a person of particular interest. The investigation was made public on January 4, 1938. [30] 

 

John McClelland (center) and unidentified others, in the private bar that he constructed adjacent to his office in 1935.

 

Four days later, McClelland was arrested aboard an ocean liner in Honolulu harbor, bound for Australia. McClelland claimed that he was on vacation and was not attempting to elude prosecution in Los Angeles, [31] where a federal commissioner’s warrant had been issued charging him with using the mails to transport obscene recordings. [32] McClelland, it was alleged, had manufactured approximately 60,000 such records and was mailing 4,000 advertising circulars per month, which themselves were said to be obscene. [33] He was taken off the ship and escorted back to Los Angeles to appear before a federal grand jury. [34]

None of the commercial party-record offerings of the 1930s were truly pornographic, even by the prudish standards of the day. Most amounted to little more than sniggering adolescent humor, punctuated by the occasional expletive. The handful of unabashedly obscene recordings that circulated during the decade were mostly blank-labeled dubbings from rejected test pressings that somehow managed to escape from several major record companies.

The American Record Corporation, which seems to have been particularly lax in that regard, let slip a test pressing from a rejected alternate take of Lucille Bogan’s “Shave ’Em Dry.” One of the few 1930s recordings that still cannot be broadcast over the public airwaves, it begins, “I got nipples on my titty big as the end of my thumb” and gets considerably more graphic from there.

 

Lucille Bogan (anonymous): Shave ’Em Dry

New York: March 5, 1935
Unbranded 78-rpm record
Pirated dubbing from unissued ARC mx.16972 – ?

 

Another ARC escapee was an unlisted test of Gene Autry’s “Bye Bye Cherry” containing such lines as “Put your ass against the wall, here I come, balls and all.” Numerous examples of Bing Crosby’s studio profanity also found their way into circulation; so many, in fact, that by the early 1950s there was a party label devoted to them, named Crosby Blows His Top.

With jukebox suppliers and operators taking much of the blame for spreading such material, the Automatic Music Operators Association passed an ordinance in 1939 prohibiting the use of “obscene” records on jukeboxes. By 1940 some party record labels carried notices prohibiting jukebox use, a gesture that amounted to little given the lack of any enforcement mechanism. In the same year, members of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (Local 737) got into the censorship business by refusing to install or service jukeboxes containing “objectionable” records. [35]

 

(Left) Launched in the late 1930s or early 1940s, the Party Record Company was one of the more respectable operations; it was acquired by Musicraft in 1943. (Right) Label notices forbidding use of party records on jukeboxes did nothing to stem the practice.

 

The American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers joined the fray in 1940, issuing a statement condemning writers and publishers of “salacious and suggestive songs.” In December of that year, three offending ASCAP members were called before the directors and threatened with possible fines, suspension, or expulsion from the organization. Radio censorship was stepped up as well. NBC reported that it had placed 147 songs on its blacklist, 137 of which could not even be performed as instrumentals because their titles were considered suggestive. [36]

Increased policing dampened the party record business in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but it took World War II to bring production of the records to a near-standstill. With little or no access to rationed shellac, and much of their clientele serving in the military, most party-records operations shut down.

When record production resumed after the war, a new sort of party-record industry emerged that released some truly pornographic material. At the end of 1946 the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice seized hundreds of party records, and notice was given that similar raids were being planned for other cities. [37]  Such actions only served only to drive the business farther underground, resulting in party records appearing with no artist and manufacturer credits, and sometimes not even a label brand name. Shadowy labels and companies proliferated, and piracy became widespread, as a new market developed for the records in LP and 45-rpm form.

In 1950 Congress moved to officially ban the importation and interstate shipment by common carrier of what were considered to be “obscene” records. [38]  It was to no avail. For better or worse, adult  records were here to stay.

 

Notes

[1] “Arrested a Bad Voice — Comstock Hunted It Across the Continent and Back Again.” New York World (Jun 26, 1896).

[2] “The Trends of the Times.” Talking Machine World (May 15, 1926), p. 11.

[3] “Our Moaning Saxophone Is Now Called Immoral.” New York Times (Sep 13, 1925), p. SM2.

[4] “Will Bar ‘Indecent’ Music.” New York Times (Jul 31, 1925), p. 32.

[5] “May Can the Can-Can.” Presto (Aug 15, 1925), p. 25. Van Winkle (1875–1932) led the Women’s Bureau of the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department of the from 1919 until her death.

[6]   “Books and Writers.” Honolulu Advertiser (Nov 22, 1936), p. 33. In 1939, McBride and Fiske were the subject of a defamation suit brought by one Phillip H. Pratt, who claimed he had been libeled and slandered by the use of his name in Fiske’s “Coney Island Honeymoon.” (“Suit Calls Song Risque.” Brooklyn Citizen, Dec 12, 1939, p. 5).

[7]   Untitled article. The New Records (Dec 1933), p. 1

[8]   “Ray Bourbon Goes ‘Clean-Up’ Route.” Billboard (Nov 18, 1944), p. 29. Bourbon disclosed this information in his 1944 bankruptcy filing. One biographer has stated that Waddell was Bourbon’s birth name, without citing a source.

[9] “Coast Raid on Panzee Joints.” Variety (Oct 4, 1932), p. 52. According to undocumented reports, the revue was raided again in San Francisco. One of the raids supposedly was broadcast over live radio, but the details (even including the year, which appears in various accounts as 1932 or 1933, with no source cited) vary widely.

[10] “Ray Bourbon Records, Owns and Operates Imperial Records” (ad). Billboard (Jan 17, 1942), p. 24.

[11] “Ray Bourbon’s Switch in Sex Allegiance; Now He’s a She — A Mexican Standoff.” Variety (May 23, 1956).

[12] “Rae Bourbon, a Protégé of Mae West, Dead at 78.” New York Times (Jul 22, 1971), p. 36.

[13] “P. O. Inspectors Nab Record Distributor.” Oakland [CA] Tribune (Jan 15, 1938), p. 3.

[14] “Mrs. Swamstrom Is Buried.” Billboard (Nov 14, 1936), p. 76.

[15] “Music Operators Again Cautioned.” Billboard (Dec 26, 1936), p. 124.

[16] “Paul Gerber Leaves for Coast.” Billboard (Aug 8, 1936), p. 73.

[17] “Los Angeles.” Billboard (October 24, 1936), p. 87.

[18] “Los Angeles.” Billboard (Dec 5, 1936), p. 79.

[19] “Endurance Shows.” Billboard (Ocotber 24, 1936), p. 28.

[20] “Paul Gerber Leaves,” op. cit.

[21] “Hollywood Hot-Shot Records.” Undated sales flyer (c. 1937–1938).

[22] “Music: Mr. Big.” Time (Feb 19, 1940). Time online archive (www.time.com).

[23] “Music: ASCAP Against Smut.” Time (Mar 25, 1940). Time online archive.

[24] Morris, Earl J. “Grand Town Day and Night.” Pittsburgh Courier (Jul 15, 1939), p. 20.

[25] “Cite Law Against Obscene Records.” North Adams [MA] Transcript (Sep 21, 1937), p. 14.

[26] Asks Return of Evidence by Which He Was Convicted.” Fitchburg Sentinel (May 1, 1938), p. 7.

[27] “Smutty Records.” Miami News (Nov 24, 1937), p. 1.

[28] “Investigate Traffic in Obscene Phonograph Records.” Catholic Advance (Feb 5, 1938), pp. 1

[29] “U.S. Starts Probe of Risqué Records.” Pittsburgh Press (Jan 4, 1938), p. 5.

[30] Ibid.

[31] “Man Held Here for L.A. Federals.” Honolulu Advertiser (Jan 11, 1938), pp. 1, 2.

[32] “Pornographic Record Seller Seized Here.” Honolulu Advertiser (Jan 11, 1938), pp. 1, 4.

[33] “Investigate Traffic,” op. cit.

[34] “Obscene Record Defendant to Sail.” Honolulu Advertiser (Jan 15, 1938), p. 4.

[35] “Juke Trade Leaders Decry Use of Smutty Disks, Scoff at Raid.” Billboard (Dec 14, 1946), pp. 3–4

[36] Ibid. The members’ names were not disclosed.

[37] Ibid.

[38] “Rapid Action on Record Bill Is Seen.” Billboard (Jan 21, 1950), p. 13.

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© 2024 by Allan R. Sutton. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction, distribition, and/or alteration of this article in any form and by any means, including but not limited to AI harvesting, is prohibited.

A preliminary version of this article appeared in the author’s Recording the ’Thirties (Mainspring Press, 2011), a revised and expanded edition of which is in preparation.