Pastore Hearings

Chairman John Pastore

The Congressional hearings on the Smathers Bill raised the question payola again.The Smathers bill marked the culmination of series of law suits and congressional investigations in which various strands of opposition to rock and roll, popular and professional, moral and aesthetic, economic and racial fused

In the summer of 1957, Florida Senator George Smothers (D Florida) introduced a bill "to provide that a license for a radio or television broadcasting station shall not be granted to, or held by, any person or corporation engaged directly or indirectly in the business of publishing or of manufacturing or selling musical recordings." Initially drawing support from both Republicans and Democrats; John Kennedy (D Massachusetts) inserted anti-BMI editorials into the Congressional Record; and Barry Goldwater (R Arizona) said "the airwaves of this country have been flooded with bad music since BMI was formed."

Senator Smathers assured his broadcaster constituents that the sole target of the bill was the networks and their recording businesses. he did not intend to destroy BMI but insisted on hearings.

The Senate Interstate and Foreign commerce Subcommittee hearings were brought about by lobbying of the Songwriters Protective Association whose members were virtually all ASCAP affiliated.

The hearings began in of March 1958 with Oscar Hammerstein II as the first witness. Oscar Hammerstein testified that the public's taste in popular music had been "artificially stimulated" by BMI in a conspiracy with radio stations. Hammerstein said that people loved the music of Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Victor Herbert and George Gershwin and their songs "deserved a  place in the permanent catalogue of the nation, while rock and roll, bebop and "corny guitar songs" had to be played constantly on radio to become hits and "die as soon as the plug stops."

Senator Smathers: Is what you are trying to say in fact that they (rock and roll, swing, bebop and corny guitar songs) are not very popular, that they are just played frequently by disk jockeys?

Oscar Hammerstein II: Yes, I am saying they are artificial stimulated, and are not the expression of public taste.

Other witnesses supporting the bill were concerned about the social effects.

Arlan Coolidge, chairman of the Department of Music at Brown University claimed that despite increased sales of classical music and the availability of symphonic, operatic and choral music on educational television "the growth of healthy music culture in the United States had been retarded by the growth of and commercial impact of rock." Coolidge had been stunned " by the perpetual banality" spewing out of the radio. Every advertiser knows that constant repetition of an idea gradually sinks into the public's consciousness. Since all music teenagers heard came from radio and jukeboxes  they imagined they knew what they liked and liked what they knew but only knew "what was ground out by disc jockeys."

Composer Arthur Schwartz claim the quality of music was dropping. Educator Louis Picheri testified "history shows the cultural prosperity of the nation is closely allied to its moral spiritual and economic prosperity. when the cultural prosperity is allowed to lapse or deteriorate, the moral spiritual and economic prosperity likewise detritus." These men hoped to stem the tide of change that threaten to render their own ideas of cultural vales obsolete. for composers like Hammerstein and Schwartz there was an economic motive, though they downplayed that view. the witness who the longest and most virulent attack on rock, and country music too, was Vance Packard. conspiratorial take since he was  for his appearance by the songwriter's protective association, a group with close ties to ASCAP claimed to be fighting conformity on behalf of the individual rock was the most blatant form of rebellion against conformity in the 50s.

Of the supporters of the bill, the star witness was Vance Packard the author of bestseller The Hidden Persuaders. The theme of The Hidden Persuaders was a warning to the consumer that advertisers had designed ads to appeal to their subconscious motivations.. Packard began "my particular beat or field of special interest is the manipulation of people, wherever it rears its head and it is getting to be a pretty big beat, because the professional persuaders in our society, especially the Madison Avenue brand, are becoming too powerful and to ingenious for comfort." "My interest in the manipulation of musical taste arose before I heard of any dispute between the songwriters and ASCAP. I have no interest in their disputes broadcasters; I wouldn't even know how a tune is composed. In fact I can't even carry a tune. Packard then invoked racial, sexual and generation disputes in his attack on BMI.

Packard continued that broadcasters used "their privileged position of power" in radio to generate a demand for music in which they had an interest the cheapest types were rock and roll, hillbilly and Latin music which  BMI controlled flooding the airways "with whining guitars, musical riots put to a switchblade beat, obscene lyrics about hugging, squeezing and rocking all night long. That rock 'n' roll was "inspired by what has been called race music modified to stir the animal instincts in teenagers. Its chief characteristic now are a heavy, unrelenting beat and a raw, savage tone. The lyrics tend to be either nonsensical or lewd, or both." rock 'n' roll might best be summed up as monotony tinged with hysteria." The intent was the making of low cost music, the conspirators "would be willing, I am convinced, to drive us all to the dark ages of music, if necessary in order to achieve their goal and frankly, judging from the current state of music I hear my children listen to on the radios, the broadcasters wouldn't have to drive much further."

After fourteen supporters of the bill completed their testimony it was BIM's turn. Variety reported that the polished BMI performance "was designed as a counterbalance against the ASCAP testimony - lawyer against lawyer, publisher against publisher, composer against composer, singer against singer."

Among its twenty-four witnesses were operators of small radio stations, spokesmen for the motion picture industry and constituents of every member of the Senate Commerce committee, they wrapped themselves in the ideology of free market capitalism, consumer choice and opposition to censorship. they dismissed the claim that rock and roll had been pushed on the public as the whine of those unable to meet the popular demand of the present day market.

Several witnesses countered Packard's depiction of hillbilly music, politicians who knew how much southerner's liked it. Tennessee Governor Frank Clement sent the committee a telegram denouncing Packard's comments as " a gratuitous insult to thousands of our fellow Tennesseans." clement pointed out that bmi represented writers and publishers music that helped make Nashville "one of the major music capitols of the world." senator al Gore added that country music expressed the hopes and aspirations of "pioneer stock" of the mountain people of Tennessee and :I would not like to see all country branded intellectually cheap." gore threatened a floor fight if the bill made it out of the committee.

The writer of Heartbreak Hotel, Mae Boren Axton a mother of two, schoolteacher, active in her community and married to a teacher, coach and athletic director testified. Axton asked "judge for yourself whether people like me. who wrote compositions called rock 'n' roll, are villains we have been painted."

At the second round of hearings, Sydney Kaye chairman of BMI board and a member of the law firm representing BMI spoke against the proposed legislation.

Sydney Kaye BMI chairman of the board of BMI testified that additional government regulation was unnecessary and harmful evidence of a conspiracy in restraint of trade was "so irrelevant, so trivial so easily susceptible of explanation" that it lacked not only individual but cumulative force. That BMI would only plea guilty to "the guilt of competition." That ASCAP had long record restrictive policies on members, while BMI's "open door policy." Before BMI there were eleven hundred writers and one hundred thirty-seven publishers In 1956 six thousand writers and almost thirty-five hundred. That additional government regulation was unnecessary and harmful evidence of a conspiracy in restraint of trade was "so irrelevant, so trivial so easily susceptible of explanation" that it lacked not only individual but cumulative force. That BMI would only plead guilty to "the guilt of competition."

Virtually all stations had agreements with both BMI and ASCAP and did not make or save money by  exclusion. Virtually all  their fees allowed them to play as frequently as wished BMI had more pop hits because ASCAP refused to change in the musical marketplace and/or represent artists with a contemporary sound. respond.

Kaye observed that every generation criticized the taste of young listeners "you can't catch up with public taste, music for programs is selected by tens of thousands of persons" through polls, purchases and call-ins to disk jockeys. in the fullness of time, good music endures and fads fade: "all we do is take what comes, we don't try and act as censors."

It didn't help ASCAP's case that Packard had been commissioned and paid for by the Songwriters Protective Association an ASCAP affiliate

Chairman Pastore (D Rhode Island) took the position that Congress shouldn't and probably couldn't improve the quality of music by regulating the entertainment industry "I don't like rock 'n' roll too much, but there are a lot of people who do and I don't think it is within the province of Congress to tell people whether they should listen to South Pacific, or listen to rock 'n' roll." Even if the Smathers bill passed "you would have rock and roll as long as any disk jockey was willing to play it and we couldn't stop him."

Pastore didn't see rock and roll as a present danger so clear and that it justified constraints on consumer choice. Pastore asked professor Coolidge "but if the stamping of feet is the result of the music that a child is listening to that it induces the child to buy more bubblegum what do we do about it?" Congress can not dictate to a record company executive, a radio station manager, or a jukebox operator :as to the kind of music he is going to play, no more than I can tell a man what kind of coffee he is going to sell."

Pastore did not believe the argument that BMI and the broadcasters had create in teenagers a taste for rock and roll. he asked Coolidge to "at it objectively. Do you think the disk jockey played rock and roll because he wants that child to hear rock and roll or because the thinks the child wants to hear rock and roll?" Pastore believed the ASCAP witnesses underestimated the intelligence of the American people: "I mean it is not that pliable." even if Congress passed a bill you would have rock and roll blared as long as any disk jockey was was willing to play it and we couldn't stop him."

When John Schulman, general consul of the Songwriters Protective Association read twenty-four page statement of rebuttal.Pastore interrupted him frequently. Pastore said that his daughter liked Leiber and Stoller's "Yakety Yak" as did many other young people. When Judge Samuel Rosen rebutted the rebutters for BMI he said "never in my experience have I seen such sweeping charges made against so many people with such flimsy evidence."

Pastore conducted his own 'freedom of music on the air" test. He called several local stations asking that the ASCAP song "Louise" be played for his daughter's birthday and all did so. Pastore believed that the proposed ASCAP regulations would harm thousand of small independent stations, singers, musicians and songwriters and owners of small independent station. "throwing every Tom, Dick and Harry into the soup."

ASCAP attorney Seymour Lazar said payola was part of BMI's corrupt plot to promote its music. When questioned by Pastore, Lazar admitted that the major record companies didn't like BMI music and at most it was a "potential danger" to ASCAP. When record promoter Bob Stern offered to refute Lazar about the pervasiveness of payola, Pastore felt there was no need to do so. That would changed with the quiz show scandals of 1958-1959.

The Smathers bill was finally axed in July 1958. The thousands of pages of oral testimony and written testimony revealed no evidence of conspiracy or impropriety on the part of BMI. rather, the vast majority of the testimony given at the hearings and given to Smathers personally held that BMI had curtailed an existing monopoly and greatly expanded opportunities within the industry.