"Rock did not outsell jazz until 1973." What's the truth?

I was reading through a Steely Dan thread last night when I came across this claim about halfway down the page:

Almost all North American musicians that came out in the late 60's and 70's were influenced by Jazz in some way or another. This is because, like most human beings, they heard their PARENTS music first. Rock n Roll did not outsell Jazz until 1973. So guess what they all heard? (...)

― Jason Tucker, Sunday, April 16, 2006 5:34

I've never read anything about this before, but it intrigued me. 1973 seems fairly late in the "rock era" for rock to finally overtake jazz in the sales arena. Can anyone corroborate this claim or provide any insight?

That's a hell of a claim, and fascinating if it's true. I assume it could only remotely be close to being true in the States.

if jazz includes sinatra and all the crooners and herb alpert and all the easy listening jazz instrumentalists, then yes, maybe this claim might be true?

Maybe if this was from an albums perspective?

Yeah, it's gotta include crooners, and not be about singles.

I thought that including Sinatra & co would boost the numbers, but it's still quite a surprising revelation if true. Circa 1968 I could understand, but 1973 was the era of glam and funk... and jazz's reign must have seemed a very long time ago by then.

Were US sales figures reliable/even being collected for genres at all back then?

I would have thought the really big selling albums - pre 1973 - would be musicals and soundtracks not jazz

Yer South Pacifics/ Sound of Musics

Yeah, lots of those pre-1970 in the UK:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_of_the_1970s_in_the_United_Kingdom

Wrong fucking link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_by_year_in_the_United_Kingdom

West Side Story! I suppose that has its jazzy moments.

i'm trying to think of a jazz album that has sold a million copies and all i can think of is kind of blue. and that's over decades.

Interesting to note that the soundtracks don't really get dislodged for good until 1968. I still see old vinyl copies of South Pacific and The Sound of Music everywhere.

In comparison, the US overthrows soundtracks by 1966. Not that this means much, as I'm sure they continued to sell in considerable quantities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best-selling_albums_by_year_in_the_United_States

Scott: Head Hunters?

Not really pure jazz though.

most jazz albums are considered huge if they sell over, like, 20 thousand copies. jazz was a loss leader for a lot of labels in the 50's and 60's. unless you were brubeck or louis armstrong or ella. swing era had big sales though. glenn miller. benny goodman. but that was singles.

the 70's is actually when sales got bigger for jazz albums because rock fans bought the records! fusion. yeah, herbie, weather report. they sold a lot of records.

Can't find sales figures for it, but for a long time, maybe up until Bitches Brew, Porgy & Bess was Miles' best-selling record. I guess it's not inconceivable that it's hit a million copies by now.

But yeah, Kind of Blue and Bitches Brew are the only ones I can think of offhand. I don't think A Love Supreme has even sold a million yet.

coltrane in the 60's was just a blip compared to sales of dave clark five or herman's hermits or whoever. louis armstrong was the best-selling jazz artist of the 60's. probably. don't quote me on that.

1973: The Year Rock Broke

Circa 1968 I could understand, but 1973 was the era of glam and funk

Glam never sold much in the US did it?

... not sure funk did either

the big reason why labels put out so much jazz - big non-jazz labels - is because they were mostly really cheap to make. take a day or two to record. didn't pay the musicians much. something for their catalog. they got street cred. if they hit with some bossa nova novelty then hey even better. they had a small built-in audience. guaranteed to sell a certain number.

True re: Coltrane. Interestingly, though, he made more money in the 60s than the Who did. Like, exponentially more. But then, he started earlier, and didn't destroy his saxophone every night.

xp

pretty sure just elvis alone outsold most jazz released in the 50's. just a guess though! i'm not really a big numbers kinda guy.

they were mostly really cheap to make. take a day or two to record.

Yeah and they can sure churn them out, those jazzers

xxxxpost: it was more an aesthetic portrayal of what was new and current in the two biggest Western markets: glam in the UK and soul/funk in the US. I might be wrong, but Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye were among the big sellers of the time, surely? Along with Elton John and Led Zeppelin of course, so it's quite a mix.

Either way, my point was to illustrate how archaic jazz must have seemed by that time.

a lot of these went gold or platinum in the 90's.

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/Rifugium/best_selling_jazz_albums_of_all_time__riaa___or_theres_no_money_in_jazz/

I dunno, I think older boomers, who might've dug Sgt. Pepper but found the rest of "rock" immature, thought Zep was for dirtbag stoner kids, and instead bought Weather Report or Herbie records.

xp

Like I said, if you include vocal jazz and the more easy listening stuff, Sinatra blows sales for Miles et al out of the water. A Man and His Music went platinum in the US, so did Strangers in the Night. Duets went 3 x platinum!

Also, sales for individual albums is one thing, but someone like Duke Ellington, who had a shit-ton of albums and reissues, surely has sold at least a million total.

Charles Lloyd's Forest Flower went platinum in the '60s.

I guess it also depends on your definition of jazz, as has been stated above. If you consider easy-listening pop of the era to be jazz because of the instrumentation, then you can add Herb Alper & The Tijuana Brass to boost the numbers; they were certainly huge in the mid 60s.

Herb Alpert*

al hirt. pete fountain.

I'm wondering if the title claim total record sales in history.

It sounds totally plausible that, by 1973, fifteen years worth of rock vinyl had sold as much as sixty-odd years of jazz vinyl/shellac/wax combined.

First part of that wasn't a sentence but you get my point

The problem is, accounting was sketchy at best; labels in the 70s would count records shipped as records sold ("Who gold in one day!" = MCA shipped half a million copies of Quadrophenia on release day). And who even knows how accurate the accounting was pre-50s.

the biggest jazz sales were in the 40's. that was pretty much the last decade that jazz ruled. glenn miller sold millions of singles.

i mean if we are talking jazz jazz.

maybe we're talking about number of souls sold by musicians