Customer Reviews

Revolutionizing Children's Records: The Young People's Records and Children's Record Guild Series, 1946-1977 (American Folk Music and Musicians Series)

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American Baby Boomers are the luckiest generation in world history. Education, social services, medical discoveries, self-developed efficacy, and of course...The Beatles. Those who factor in how childhood prepares one for big historical events might remember that we also lived through the golden age of children's entertainment, a cultural revolution directed at kids, for kids, and by adults who didn't talk down to kids. We heard all this on the radio, saw it on television, but before all that...we had record players. We could not appreciate, at the time, the artistic professionalism that went into the production of our phonograph records, but David Bonner's "Revolutionizing Children's Records" can now instruct us in what we may have come to suspect but never really knew for sure: There were Giants instructing our consciousness and making our everyday lives happy.

When I say Giants, I mean real musicians, real composers, real poets, real authors, real vocalists from opera to folk--the plethora of artists with real careers who somehow managed to take time to write plays, operettas, choral performances, all kinds of production numbers...so that children might gain intimate knowledge of art, folklore, songs, classical music, history, dance, literature, drama, technology, on and on.... It wasn't that these people were working for such a corporate giant as to be a cash cow, no. I've always figured there was something sacrificial in the time and attention devoted to these marvelous records. They were not very expensive, and the industry gave a lot of them away. This was not the Walt Disney empire, and, unlike Walt, they really knew how to integrate classical music into story telling while retaining its original form and integrity. Any kid who got to know these records would automatically know the music for an "A" in any future music appreciation course or music recognition contest. Moreover, the original scores that went with these stories rivaled the music of the masters, so we gained a little something extra besides.

If you remember Children's Record Guild or its near-twin Young People's Records, you get my gist. David Bonner tells the story of these people and puts identity to those we remember as "the Emperor" or "Celeste" or "the train singing man" or just "that nice guy who tells stories". We see their pictures and read how their private lives, problems, and scandals wove around one another in the back stage of our audio past. We learn of their connections to leading institutions we had no awareness of as children but surely recognize today--what did Julliard have to do with the Queen of the Elephants? We are delighted to learn how our children's records survived the McCarthy era and how worried certain government agencies were that this decidedly capitalist project might be turning a generation of children into collectivists (who could grow up someday and oppose a nationalist war or two). And along with this comes connections demonstrating the continuity of our age group as we moved along in years--the "train singing man," it turns out, was a certain Mr. Pete Seeger.

Bonner somehow reveals this esthetic while retaining a certain kind of down-to-earthiness that goes with a story of entrepreneurial capitalism--the concept, the plan, the marketing, the partnering, the mergers and the buyouts, in short a very detailed and precise history. The book includes a detailed discography and several reference indices at the back. My personal favorite lists thirty-nine classical composers and the discs on which their music appears.

I found "Revolutionizing Children's Records" by David Bonner to be an excellent, well researched, and well documented book that provides not only a thorough history of the children's phonograph recording industry in the USA during the 1940-50's, but also delves into the fascinating connection between the volatile social and political climate of the times and its profound effect on the recording industry.

I recommend it highly to both those interested in early children's records and to history lovers who would like to gain a bit more of an understanding of the times from an unlikely, surprising, and fascinating perspective.

Thank you David Bonner for preserving this history, much of it first person oral history obtained directly from the aging principal players, and for providing documentation of an important part of our musical heritage. I particularly enjoyed reading the personal anecdotes that came out of interviews with musician Tom Glazer, whose music greatly influenced me as a child. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and it has a prominent place in my library next to my original YPR and CRG recordings.

Anita Ranucci Brandon
Professor Emerita
Music Department
Millersville University
Millersville, Pennsylvania

Revolutionizing Children's Records a very interesting and well written book. The author provides a glimpse into the lives of the singers, songwriters and business people who were involved in creating this amazing era in children's music. In addition, there is a wealth of information in the extensive discography about each record. The documentation of the authors sources of information is really thorough. I was reminded of the records I played as a child and learned what went into making them such a terrific memory. I highly recommend this book.