When Billboard began publishing in 1894, Grover Cleveland was president of the US of America — all 44 of them. Parsing politics has by no means been this publication’s major goal, however over the many years since, each POTUS has popped up in our pages. So, forward of Election Day (Nov. 5), Billboard ideas its reporter’s hat to the commanders in chief whose insurance policies and cultural cachet helped form the music enterprise.
No. 1 With a ‘Bullet’
The Sept. 21, 1901, problem of Billboard coated “an virtually prophetic incident” that occurred on the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., the day an murderer shot President William McKinley on the Temple of Music (Sept. 6). (He died from the harm per week later.) “Solely a second or two earlier than the shot rang out,” a pal of McKinley’s instructed Billboard, the “orchestra had performed a German piece of music entitled ‘The Cursed Bullet.’ ”
Not ‘Ike’ Us
“Election yr introduced tangible ends in income to Madison Sq. Backyard,” reported the Feb. 16, 1952, Billboard, “as an Eisenhower-for-President rally, backed by leisure names, drew 15,000.” Luminaries included songwriting nice Irving Berlin, whose 1950 Broadway tune “They Like Ike” turned the marketing campaign slogan “I Like Ike.” The identical problem included a narrative about an “overzealous Eisenhower supporter” in Dallas who interrupted a live performance by “RCA Victor songbird” Mindy Carson and “insisted on pinning an ‘I Like Ike’ button on her shoulder.
Household Values
The Nov. 24, 1962, Billboard buzzed about John F. Kennedy impersonator Vaughn Meader’s album The First Household, calling it a “comedy smash” that “electrified the trade.” The title’s success helped heat the market chill that adopted the Cuban missile disaster, one of many defining moments of Kennedy’s presidency. The Dec. 8, 1962, problem stated the album boosted “a regularly enhancing gross sales state of affairs following the partial resolution of the Cuban scare.” “I had somebody are available for a duplicate of The First Household the opposite day and so they left the shop with $32 price of information,” a Miami retailer defined. “That’s what one in every of these smashes can do.”
Get Carter
Quickly after the 1976 election, the Nov. 13 problem described Jimmy Carter as “a pal within the White Home who’s sympathetic… to the music trade.” The Allman Brothers Band had performed a fundraising function in his major marketing campaign, and the music enterprise “acquired loads of early assist for him each by way of contributions and performances when money was important,” Capricorn Data president Phil Walden stated. It wasn’t simply Southern rock that carried Carter: The Sept. 18, 1976, problem reported on “a cell disco operation in Atlanta” that was “discoing across the nation” to lift assist for Carter.
Payments, Payments, Payments
The Nov. 14, 1992, Billboard coated a CMJ Music Marathon panel in New York titled “Are We Actually Voting Tipper Gore Into the White Home?” — a then-controversial thought, contemplating she had taken a stand towards music with specific lyrics marketed to youngsters. Panelists had “an ‘anti-Tipper-but-voting-for-Clinton-anyway’ theme.’ ” Greater than 20 years later, Invoice Clinton posed with Jon Bon Jovi for the quilt of the Nov. 5, 2016, problem, to highlight their philanthropy. “That is Bon Jovi’s Be Variety to a Senior Night time,” the previous president joked throughout the photograph shoot.
This text seems within the Oct. 26, 2024, problem of Billboard.
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