Musician Strike

On August 1^st, 1942 the American Federation of Musicians started a strike aimed at all major recording companies because of the disagreements about payments.  Starting from July 31^st at midnight, no musical artist could record for any record regarding the circumstances. This lead to no union musician was able to record during the strike.  During the strike, musicians were still able to perform live on radio shows, concerts, and clubs.  During the strike record companies made V- discs.  The distributed these V- discs to armed forces that were fighting in the war.  Keep in mind that this was not available to the general public.  The union would threaten to remove musicians from the radio network to crack down on network affiliates that were repeatedly showing the same broadcast of musicians.  The union thought it was unfair to display their music over and over again.  During the strike companies did release new music but after a while there stock pile was running empty they retreated to releasing deleted older records.  They even went back as far as the mid-twenties.  The strike was not all bad in some ways.  In the first year of the strike 127 million records were sold.  Two years after the strike 275 million records were sold.  This strike changed the music scene tremendously. 

With the beginning of world war two many of the musicians that are in big bands were sent off to war.  For the performers that remained in the states they had a difficult time traveling due to high taxes on gasoline also due to world war two.  Not only did the strike lead to the end of the big band era it also influenced a type of music known as bebop.  Since the strike did not allow musicians to record it influenced them to try and create music on there on and that started the creation on bebop.  Bebop is a style of jazz with a faster tempo in the music compared to regular “smoother” jazz.  The strike also hurt bebop in a way.  With the strike new artist in the bebop industry were not able to record their music.  It was harder as an artist to get themselves exposed to the general public.  The only way you would hear a new song by a bebop jazz artist is by listening to them performs live at a night club.  Some people say that bebop would have been a bigger hit if it got exposed more by being able to record their music early in that bebop era.