The new technology

The Electric Guitar

Just as had been throughout the jazz age, there was a lot of shifting of the sands early on in the new genres. The music industry and the technology made some adjustments. A good example is the new use of the “electric guitar”, made popular and recorded by Charlie Christian starting in 1938. Before that time, you could hardly hear an acoustic guitar in recordings because they were out-blasted by the horns. In the 1940s the electric guitar began to be a “lead” instrument like a trumpet or saxophone. T-Bone Walker influenced a young generation of Chicago electrified blues guitarists on the usage of this new electrified “blues” genre who in turn would influence a generation of rock & roll guitarists in the fifties.

The Jukebox

After the war, the jukebox industry was re-instated which energized the record buying industry. Jukeboxes were responsible for a spike in record buying in the post WWII years and began replacing live music and the “player pianos” (self playing mechanized pianos) first in “juke-joints” or bars and clubs, and then eventually in diners.

The late 1940s saw the technology begin to advance enough to allow for better recordings that could now capture the exhilarating sounds of a live performance with all its volume levels. Also, audio fidelity and authenticity and timbre of the sound characteristics all had improved in the years following the war.