The Remarkable Background Of Madame X

 The Remarkable Background Of Madame X

- jim Young

“My record collection probably tells the story of my life better than I could in words.” - Colleen Murphy

When I first started my disc jockey business, Simple Motion in the mid 1970s I was using primarily 45 rpm records. They cost about a buck each and for only a few dollars every week I could maintain a collection that always included the current top 10 hits according to the 1050 Chum Chart. 

Although I did carry some LPs with me, they were heavy, bulky and too cost prohibitive as most LPs at the time only had 1 popular hit song on it anyway.

There were a few nicknames for the adapters required to play a 45 rpm record on a turntable with a small spindle. Some of these nicknames included Spider, 45 rpm Center, Spindle Adapter, 7-inch Adapter and Single Extender.  However in my circle which included several disc jockeys, it was mostly referred to as a 45 rpm adapter.

The Record With The Big Hole 

RCA came up with the large holed 7” 45 rpm record as an alternative to their rival Columbia’s small holed 12” 33 ⅓ LP records. Developed under the code name “Madame X” the project took 3 years to develop with the 45 rpm record first being released in 1949. At that time RCA record players had large diameter spindles upon which up to ten 45 rpm records could be stacked for continuous play. In today’s lingo you might call that a “playlist”.

The Jukebox

            Contrary to what some people may tell you, the 45 rpm adapter was not invented to allow records from jukeboxes to be played on home systems. The large spindle home system came in 1949 while the first jukebox to hold 45 rpm records wasn’t introduced until the following year. 

Seeburg first started using 45 rpm records in their jukeboxes in 1950. The smaller size of the 7” 45 rpm single was seen as beneficial over the larger 10”-12” 78 rpm records that were being used prior to the introduction of the 45. The smaller size allowed the juke boxes to hold more records. Just a few years later a single juke box could hold up to 100 45 rpm records.

Because jukeboxes tended to focus on single songs, the 33 ⅓ rpm Long Playing record was never much of a contender for use in jukeboxes.

The Adapter  

As the popularity of 45 rpm records began to grow, their proprietary design with the large hole meant 45s could only be played on RCA’s record players that were dedicated to that format.

The first adapter to allow RCA 45 rpm records to be played on other systems was the Webcor around 1950 which was made of metal and difficult to use without breaking the record. James L.C. Morrison invented the first plastic adapters around 1951. By the 60s RCA conceded that the market for their large hole records was going to be shared with Columbia’s small holed LPs. Accordingly, they commissioned Thomas Hutchison to invent the Spider 45 rpm adapter to help ensure that if the public was opting to buy Columbia’s record players, they could still at least with the adapter, also play RCA’s 45 rpm records .

The Spider 45 rpm adapter is the most commonly recognized adapter, usually in yellow or red, but was sometimes also manufactured in white, black and a few other colours. 

Technically the Spider really only refers to one specific design of the 45 rpm adapter. So it could be said that while every Spider is a 45 rpm Adapter, not every 45 rpm Adapter was a Spider.

There were many colours and shapes of 45 rpm Adapters.

As a disc jockey it was not practical for me to have a 45 rpm adapter for every 45 record in my large collection so I would have a few on hand to be put into and removed from the record in play. The plastic Spider was the quickest to insert but the downside was they would sometimes fall out leaving me to scramble to get another in place in time to play continuous non-stop music.

The metal Webcor adapters became my favourite as once inserted, they didn’t come out. Sometimes not even when you wanted them to. The metal adapters could be difficult and time consuming to insert and remove and there was always the risk of breaking the record when attempting to do so. But with a bit of practice I was able to master the procedure without mishap.

Another option I sometimes used was an adapter that sat on the small spindle of the turntable effectively adapting the small spindle into a large spindle as opposed to adapting the large hole record into a small hole record.

The First 45s

The first 45 rpm single released by RCA in March 1949 was “Texarkana Baby / Bouquet of Roses” by Eddy Arnold.

In the beginning 45 rpm records by RCA were produced in various colours according to genre. 

Black - Popular Music

Red - Classical Music

Green - Country and Polka

Yellow - Children’s

Orange or cerise - Rhythm and Blues

Midnight Blue - Broadway and Operettas

Light Blue - International Music

However due to production costs, this practice was soon abandoned just 2 years later in 1951.

The Three Minute Standard

A typical 7” 45 rpm record will usually play for 3 to 4 minutes.

In the early days of rock ‘n roll, radio disc jockeys would typically refuse to play a song that was over 3 minutes long. Bands that recorded songs over 3 minutes long would often have the time on the label printed as 2:58 to get their record played.

Then Came Bob

While Columbia records was reluctant to release it as a single, Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” which lasted just over 6 minutes, was first recorded on 45 rpm records across both sides of the record. The song faded out at the end of Side A and then faded back in on the B-Side. It was first released as a promotional record to disc jockeys and jukebox distributors. But the listening public wanted the whole thing and the record industry had to find a way to accommodate it. Using narrower and shallower grooves, reduced bass, lower volumes and by adjusting the distance between the grooves, 45s were soon able to record longer songs. The tradeoff was a slight but generally acceptable reduction of quality.

Longer Songs

This opened the door for records such as “Hey Jude” (7:11) by The Beatles, “The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald” (6:30) by Gordon Lightfoot, and “MacArthur’s Park” (7:20) by Richard Harris.

At 8 minutes and 33 seconds, “American Pie” by Don McLean was just a little too long to squeeze in on one side even with all the advances that had been made in record production to accommodate longer songs. When released on 45, it too had to be split across both sides of the 45.

The capability for recording longer songs had been around for sometime, but some earlier artists were unwilling to accept the quality trade-off.  Songs like “Shout” (4:25) by the Isley Brothers and “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” (4:07) by James Brown were also split across both sides of the 45 for that reason.

Shorter Songs

Other artists chose to edit their songs and release shorter versions to ensure radio play such as “Light My Fire” by the Doors. Their LP version of the song was 7 minutes and 10 seconds long while the 45 lasted only 2 minutes and 53 seconds. The Iron Butterfly did likewise by reducing the 17 minute and 4 second version of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” down to 2 minutes and 52 seconds. Needless to say there was no drum solo in that version.

45 RPM Oddities

Some records, particularly radio disc jockey promo copies had the same song on both sides with one side having the stereo version of the song and the other recorded in mono. While stereo records were mostly backwards compatible with mono record players and there were no issues with playing mono records on stereo equipment, over time, sometimes playing stereo records on mono equipment was not as forgiving, resulting in surface noise and damage to the grooves. These issues however, were resolved by the mid 1960s as over time most mono record players were replaced with stereo.

The B-side for the novelty song “They’re Coming To Take Me Away Ha-Haaa!” by Napoleon XIV was the same song but played backwards. This was even before fans started looking for hidden messages in songs played backwards.

When Suzy And The Red Stripes (aka Paul and Lind McCartney) recorded the single “Seaside Woman”, McCartney chose a little play on words by titling the song of the flip side “B-Side To Seaside”.

Some artists included the instrumental version of the A-Side on the B-Side of the 45 such as “Gone Too Soon” by Michael Jackson. Still others, such as Suzanne Vega did the opposite by recording an acapella version of “Tom’s Diner” on the B-side of the 45.

Like its cousin the LP - 45 rpm records did not go the way of the dinosaur as had been anticipated with the introduction of digital recordings. Despite the many mediums which have come and gone, or are at least going - reel-to-reel, cassettes, 8-tracks and even CDs, 45 rpm records are still being manufactured for audiophiles, indie bands and collectors. Sometimes you just can’t let go of a good thing.

Yes, my friends... Those were the days. 

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