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duced on, of all things, discs made of discarded X-ray plates salvaged from the hospitals. A marked favorite at the moment is Elvis Presley . .
Now back to our subject of taste. Things are really not as black as some of the public denigrators of American taste would lead us to believe. The cardinal mistake that so many people make is to talk about “taste,” “America’s taste,” “what the young people like,” as if it were all an entity, one loaf of bread with the same dough and flavor on top, in the middle and at the bottom. But there is no such thing, fortunately, as one taste. Taste is a thousandlayer cake. To be sure, the layers are of unequal thickness, but they make a cake in which there is room for diverse kinds of taste, different flavors, variegated music.
The New American Appetite for Music
There has sprung up a great new appetite for music in our country, and with all modesty I may say that the recording companies, who have made so wide a repertoire available to the public, are to be thanked for a fine contribution to our musical development. There should be
room for all music — rock ’n’ roll and sweet songs and Berlioz and Sam Barber’s new opera, Vanessa.
There is such room! When 210,000 people buy a fairly expensive recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony conducted by Toscanini, one can hardly claim that America is musically illiterate and its taste debauched. I happen to agree with a statement made by Victor Borge, quoted by John ’Crosby, which says: “Across the country there is a tremendous demand for good music, and for music, period, from Elvis Presley to concert stuff. Music is music, no matter how presented. It says something to people, whether it’s wearing a cowboy hat or white tie. We must not condemn music which is not on a level as high as we’d like.”
My conclusion is this: it is absolutely untrue that the public is being deprived in any way or form of any music that it wants. It is absolutely untrue that it cannot hear the music it likes to hear. For sound and good business reasons, the record companies have no other interest than to recognize and satisfy the only legitimate bosses of the music business — the people who buy music. There is no need for any legislation such as the bill we have been discussing. RCA is opposed to it.
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