Marjorie McCabe, 1946:

The squares can temporarily retire to the sidelines with their dreamy discs. We’re going to dig some solid stuff! The local platter emporiums are offering some fairly righteous items for your turntables this week.[i]

Introduction

These words were written by a young writer for the San Francisco Chronicle who proved that female journalists could compete in the male-dominated field of postwar music journalism. In her column “Jukebox,” Marjorie McCabe showed that women journalists were especially attuned to a rising new genre: teen music.

Despite McCabe’s notable accomplishments, historians overlook her. While the history of music journalism highlights the important role of female music journalists and their significant contributions to various publications, historians often neglect a crucial platform for postwar women music writers: the newspaper teen column.

In fact, McCabe launched one of the first of these columns, “Jukebox.” Her column proved that a female music journalist could equal her male peers. The young writer understood the rising teen generation and shaped young readers’ tastes with her concise and witty reviews.     

McCabe and the Silent Generation    

McCabe wrote for the first generation of American adolescents who identified as “teenagers.” This quietly rebellious cohort, aptly named the “Silent Generation,” set the tone for postwar teen music.   

Born in Oakland, California, in 1920, McCabe grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. After graduating from UC Berkeley, she worked as a copy editor and writer at the Chronicle. The young staffer became known for her wit and intellectual curiosity.  

When McCabe named her column “Jukebox,” that term was new. The word derived from rowdy juke joints, where dancers popped dimes into these record machines to keep the rhythm going. Teens loved them, as can be seen in this excerpt from a letter to the editor by a young writer in 1946:   

We teenagers want some excitement. If we had a building with a jukebox in it, that would solve the problem of excitement.[ii]

Some enlightened communities provided their teens with recreational facilities equipped with the record-spinning music machines:

Along with “jukebox,” another prominent postwar term was “teenager.” Adolescents became more vocal after the Second World War as a gap opened between the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation. Silent Gen teens enjoyed unprecedented spending power and shaped the popular culture of the 1940s and 50s.

These teens became a target market for the journalism industry, and publishers responded with magazines such as Seventeen and a new type of newspaper feature, the teen column. Editors assigned women journalists to these columns, likely because readers were mainly girls and young women. In doing so, editors created new opportunities for female music journalists.

Postwar Teen Columns by women Music Journalists   

These journalists highlighted pop music, particularly “singles,” two-sided 78 rpm discs spun on the new jukeboxes showing up in drug stores and teen clubs. The demand for singles led the record industry to create a new marketing category, “teen records,” by big bands, crooners, and boogie-woogie pianists. Fans raved over artists like Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, and Perry Como. 

This rise of teenage music coincided with the first teen columns, such as “Teen Age Chatter” by Connie Doerr:

Teen-Age Problems

Some teen columns addressed pop music, like Sheila John Daly’s syndicated feature “Teen-Age Problems.” Her sister, notable journalist Maureen Daly, founded the column.

Sheila wrote an intriguing column in which she addressed the gender line between jazz and pop:  

Jazz Records Keep Platter Party A-Spin

Whether you are an old-jazz enthusiast with an original pressing of Louis Armstrong’s “Potato Head Blues” tucked away among your souvenirs or have just discovered music in the modern idiom and have gone mad over George Shearing’s polite bop, it’s fun to gather with a group of friends whose tastes match yours to listen to your favorite artists.

One of the pleasantest ways to listen to good music is on record when you can select the pieces you want to hear, demand repeat performances of solo spots just by moving the needle back a few grooves, and not have to worry about sitting through 17 sets of songs you don’t like just to bend your ear around to favorite ditty.

When your next empty evening rolls around, why not call in the crowd for a session of hot music and cold colas around the record player? …

… It’s likely that some of the girls won’t be as appreciative of the jazz records as your fellow friends … get the gal pals swooning quietly over the moon and Como, and then slip the jazz numbers on the spindle while they’re still speechless.[iii]

Put another way, “Girls prefer pop singers, while boys favor jazz.” This generalization was broadly valid and evident in the jazz-focused record review columns that dominated postwar newspapers, primarily authored by men. A review of music columns from 1946 to 1950 reveals that all the reviewers were male.

Sidenote: Like her mom, Daly became a mini-celebrity:

Righteous Items for Your Turntables  

Thus, when Marjorie McCabe grew up in the Bay Area—a hotbed of postwar jazz—women jazz writers were rare. However, McCabe loved jazz and wanted to write about it. This meant looking outside the usual home for jazz criticism in daily newspapers, the arts and entertainment sections typically staffed by male critics.       

Instead, McCabe found her outlet in the Chronicle’s women’s section. After the war, these pages took on a more serious tone as women journalists asserted their right to speak out on the day’s issues.

Women’s pages also contained the new teen columns that flourished after the war. This was the case at the Chronicle, where McCabe launched “Jukebox” in the spring of 1946. The column shared the page with two prominent features for young people:

• “Under 21: Campus Co-Editings,” which covered events at Bay Area colleges.
• “Teen-Age Personalities Plus,” which highlighted local teens.

And on the far right side of the page, “Jukebox” with its logo of floating discs:

As noted at the top of this post, McCabe set a smooth groove from the start:

The squares can temporarily retire to the sidelines with their dreamy discs. We’re going to dig some solid stuff! The local platter emporiums are offering some fairly righteous items for your turntables this week.[iv]

McCabe wrote for a new generation entering adolescence with its own musical tastes and jargon.    

Marjorie McCabe and the Jazz Revival 

Silent Generation teens took to all types of jazz—traditional, bebop, and Third Stream (rock ‘n’ roll and R&B wouldn’t enter the teen scene until the 1950s). Traditional jazz was the rage in San Francisco, an epicenter of the New Orleans jazz revival, peaking in the mid-1940s.

Traditional jazz was called “hot jazz” because of its torrid improvisations. The music inspired a record-buying movement called “hot collecting.”   

McCabe’s reviews were straight from the hot collector playbook in her selections and parlance: 

• Clambake Seven: “Don’t Be a Baby, Baby,” with a nice Sy Oliver vocal, is a smooth swinging number with some fine guitar work.
• Jimmy Dorsey and his Jammers: “Jump” is a fine example of the relaxed jamming a small group can put forth. “Perdido,” on the opposite side, is a loud and fast riff tune.
• Bob Crosby: Bob Crosby’s new band gives us “I Wish I Could Shimmy like My Sister Kate.” Compared to Mugsy Spanier’s “Sister Kate,” this sounds a little dispirited … “The same Old You,” sung by Bob Crosby, is smooth, sentimental, and very dull.”[v]

Reviews like these demonstrated McCabe’s knowledge of jazz and an ability to balance positive and negative criticism. She excelled in writing “capsule reviews,” concise but lively:   

Lionel Hampton fills both sides of his new Decca disc with “Airmail Special.” He and his fellow jump artists whizz through the first side like something jet-propelled … Hamp’s vibes and a solid tenor contribute some worthy jive.[vi]

Hampton’s jump jazz foreshadowed rhythm and blues, starting to appear on bandstands around the country. McCabe liked the music’s propulsive rhythms. In her column, McCabe expressed a fondness for the hot jazz bands that were becoming popular among her peers:   

The Town Where Music Reigned

Jazz history fascinated McCabe. This can be seen in a lengthy article on New Orleans music she wrote for the Chronicle’s Sunday magazine, This World. Writing this article was unusual for a female Chronicle writer; for years, only men wrote about jazz history for the newspaper. McCabe gave the boys a run for their money.

In the article, McCabe focused on pioneering jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton and his recording history. The piece coincided with the release of a multi-record set of Morton reissues. McCabe beautifully captured the romance of New Orleans jazz as a people’s music: 

New Orleans, at the turn of the century and for nearly two decades afterward, was the town where music reigned, where the brass bands of the Odd Fellows, Elks, Masons, the secret societies, social and marching clubs paraded down Canal Street on major and minor holidays; where the same brass band that accompanied a hearse to the graveyard playing “Flee as a Bird to the Mountain” marched back to town to the uninhibited strains of “Didn’t He Ramble”; where the “second line” of kids followed along behind, blowing tin horns and whistles; where bands at the resorts on Lake Pontchartrain drew picnic crowds on hot summer evenings with even hotter music; and where the musicians who played in the cabarets, barrel houses, tonks and sporting houses of the Storyville district were making jazz history.[vii]

McCabe used free-flowing parallelism to lead the reader through the streets of New Orleans, where jazz resounded. She wrote with ease and expertise about the Crescent City’s music.

Some Nice Vibes Work    

Although a fan of traditional jazz, McCabe shared her readers’ curiosity about a new sound that was creating a buzz in Bay Area clubs. A blend of cool jazz, Latin, and chamber music that would one day be called West Coast Jazz.   

The music found a home on a new Bay Area record label, Fantasy. McCabe praised one of the label’s first singles by a young Bay Area pianist destined for fame:

The Dave Brubeck Trio, composed of local boys who are making good progressive music, has four sides on the Fantasy label … of unusually high quality.

The group’s treatment of “Lullaby and Rhythm” typifies their approach to all the sides. The brash riff tune is softened by the lack of brass and by Brubeck’s meandering piano. The same refinement distinguishes “I’ll Remember April,” with some nice vibes work by [Cal] Tjader, who also presides over the drums. …[viii]

McCabe recognized Brubeck’s potential before he became well-known. She added progressive jazz to her eclectic tastes just as the music became popular on college campuses. Although many hot collectors rejected modern jazz, McCabe listened with an open ear and curious mind.  

“Jukebox” Ends Its Run

After embracing modern jazz, McCabe retained her passion for hot jazz. For example, she gave props to a group of tracks by a local hot band, Clancy Hayes and His Washboard Five:

“Auntie Skinner” is far and away the best. Habitues of the pre-war Dawn Club will probably be carried away with nostalgia over it. The five play with gusto, especially the artist on the washboard, rumored to be Lu Watters …[ix]

McCabe likely knew the Dawn Club played a critical role in the Bay Area jazz revival by hosting local hot jazz players like Watters.

In the same column, McCabe noted that,   

Billy Eckstine, who can be heard in person at the Fairmont, can be heard also on a new MGM pairing [single]…[x]

Eckstine also caught the ear of a Chronicle freelancer, Ralph J. Gleason. Inspired, Gleason wrote a lengthy profile of the dynamic Black vocalist, a favorite of teen listeners.  

That article and others prompted the paper’s Sunday magazine editor to hire Gleason as the Chronicle’s full-time record reviewer, effective February 1951. “Jukebox” ended its run after four and a half years; Chronicle editors likely decided that one record review column was enough. Gleason brought 15 years of experience covering jazz, including a column in DownBeat, along with male privilege.

However, well into the 1960s, the editors of women’s sections nationwide continued hiring female music journalists to write teen music columns. McCabe pioneered a new mode of music journalism that foreshadowed the rise of teen music magazines in the 1960s, edited and staffed by remarkable women writers.    

After the Chronicle     

Even though McCabe’s “Jukebox” played its last tune, the jazz-loving writer continued to write insightful articles about prominent musicians, paving the way for female music journalists. McCabe remained in the Bay Area, writing for two prominent dailies, the San Francisco Examiner and the Oakland Tribune. McCabe wrote on various topics, including jazz and pop music.  

These articles make for great reading. For instance, as the San Francisco counterculture emerged in the fall of 1965, McCabe published an interview with Pat Boone, an icon of square culture. Although she played the interview straight, she delighted in calling attention to Boone’s squareness.

For example, McCabe noted that Boone arrived late to the interview because of a snafu at one of his many business interests, Roy Rogers Pioneer Village, a “Western Disneyland.” Then, she detailed Boone’s terrible reviews for his part of Tony in a recent production of West Side Story. McCabe noted that one critic said Boone was miscast as a gang leader. Understandable, given that Boone wanted to play him as a “nice guy.”

McCabe described another of Boone’s business ventures, selling reproductions of a Beatles painting. Boone saw this as an ironic payback for losing his career to Beatlemania.[xi]

The following year, McCabe began writing for the Oakland Tribune. In one interesting article, she wrote about Janie Hines, the wife and “home girl” of legendary bandleader and pianist Earl “Fatha” Hines, one of the founders of swing music. McCabe provided a rare woman’s-eye look at the life of a jazzman.[xii]  For example, she highlighted the unsung role of spouses in the lives of traveling musicians.  

McCabe continued to write for the Tribune into the early 1980s. She passed away in 2007 at the age of 86.

Conclusion

Marjorie McCabe proved that female music journalists could write about popular music with the same verve as their more prominent male peers. Writing on the leading edge of America’s first teen culture, McCabe foreshadowed the critical role of women music writers such as Judith Sims and Gloria Stavers in reaching young pop music fans.    

By highlighting the writings of McCabe and other unsung women writers of the postwar era, we open up an exciting but overlooked period in music journalism history. These writings document a pivotal turn in American musical history when teen culture emerged. Additional research is needed to explore this turning point’s social and aesthetic significance.     

McCabe set a clear tone for “Jukebox,” telling her teen readers, “The squares can temporarily retire to the sidelines with their dreamy discs. We’re going to dig some solid stuff!”[xiii] An opening volley in the generational wars to come.

[i] Marjorie McCabe, “Jukebox,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 5, 1946: 40.

[ii] “Teenagers of Janesville,” “Voice of the People,” Janesville Weekly Gazette, Aug. 28, 1946: 6.

[iii] Sheila John Daly, “Teen-Age Problems,” Post-Standard, June 1, 1950: 12.

[iv] Marjorie McCabe, “Jukebox,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 5, 1946: 40.

[v] Marjorie McCabe, “Jukebox,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 5, 1946: 40.

[vi] Marjorie McCabe, “Jukebox,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 7, 1946.

[vii] Marjorie McCabe, “Jelly Roll and Jazz Have Come From New Orleans to Records,”  San Francisco Chronicle This World, Dec. 14, 1941.

[viii] Marjorie McCabe, “Juke Box: Some of that Old Dixie is Becoming the Fashionable Thing,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 23, 1950: 8L.

[ix] Marjorie McCabe, “Jukebox,” San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 3, 1950.

[x] Marjorie McCabe, “Jukebox,” San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 3, 1950.

[xi] Marjorie McCabe, “Meet Boone the Tycoon,” San Francisco Examiner Show Time, Sept. 12, 1965: 6.

[xii] Marjorie McCabe, “At Home with Janie: A Jazz King’s Queen,” Oakland Tribune, Feb. 20, 1969. 

[xiii] Marjorie McCabe, “Jukebox,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 5, 1946: 40.