Young People's Records

Launched in 1946, the groundbreaking record label Young People's Records (YPR) was America's first popular mail-order subscription record club and the first label to issue its entire catalog exclusively on vinyl, rather than shellac. It was also the only record company ever to be blacklisted for allegedly being a Communist front (ABC 1950, 208).

YPR made records for two age groups: preschool and elementary. One record for each age group was issued every month. They initially issued 10-inch 78-rpm, vinyl records, enclosed in paper jackets with original cover art and liner notes for the parents. These were later issued on 7-inch 45-rpms and 12-inch LPs, but 78s were the most popular format by far.

Conceived as an educational guidance program, YPR was ideally suited to a mail-order club format. Although the records were also sold in stores, a subscription plan provided “the all-important element of continuity—not just an occasional fine recording—but a regular, monthly series designed to keep in step with your child’s expanding interests and fit into the pattern of his growing educational and emotional experiences” (Parent’s Magazine October 1946 quoted in Bonner 2008, 18).

YPR was the brainchild of musician Horace Grenell, a Juilliard graduate and former music professor at Sarah Lawrence College. He was also the conductor of the American People's Chorus (aka Jefferson Chorus), which was active in New York City's folk music scene and which served as a pool of talent for the label. (In 1946, Moe Asch's short-lived Union Records label issued an album of Grenell's chorus singing Picket Line Songs.).

The primary owner of YPR was Abraham Pomerantz, a Manhattan attorney who served as treasurer of the Progressive Party during Henry Wallace's 1948 presidential campaign. He was also chief prosecutor of Nazi industrialists at the Nuremberg Trials.

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  Horace Grenell, Groucho Marx, and Lester Troob at the recording session for "Funniest Song in the World," 1949
  Photo by Lee Weber / Hollywood Pictorial Service, courtesy of Rob Grenell.
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  Abraham Pomerantz
  Photo by Blackstone Studios.
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  Lester Troob at the Bretton Woods Conference, 1944
  Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt, courtesy of the family of Lester Troob.
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  Judith Sidorsky
  Courtesy of the Grenell Family.

YPR's production manager and recording supervisor was Lester Troob, who had a knack for making historic recordings. In the 1930s, he recorded Judy Garland's original CBS audition demos and was one of the recording engineers for Benny Goodman’s famous Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert (Troob quoted in Bonner 2008, 27). The recording remained unheard until issued by Columbia Records in 1950. For the Keynote label, he recorded the first two Almanac Singers albums: Songs for John Doe and Talking Union.

Also for Keynote, he remastered a set of European recordings of Spanish Civil War songs, which was issued in the U.S. in 1940 as Six Songs for Democracy (later reissued on LP by Folkways). Troob first met Grenell in 1939 at the recording session for Earl Robinson's song "Abe Lincoln." Issued on the Timely label, it was recorded by Troob, with Grenell conducting the chorus and Robinson as the lead singer. (Many years later, Robinson recorded it solo for Folkways.) During World War II, Troob worked for the Office of War Information, recording everything from Hitler’s speeches to the Bretton Woods Conference.

Grenell got the idea for Young People’s Records from his wife, Judith Sidorsky, a classical pianist whose experience as a music teacher in progressive schools heavily influenced YPR's philosophy. In these schools, teachers had learned what music children actually wanted to hear instead of what adults thought they wanted to hear. Historically, adults thought kids wanted to hear Mother Goose songs and such, performed in the style of what YPR star Tom Glazer caustically described as “some highfalutin’ lady with an upper class accent, singing to these dear little darlings” (Glazer in Bonner 2008, 11). But progressive teachers had discovered that children want rhythms they can move to and lyrics about things they can relate to: things from their own world—from the world of "here and now."

The resulting YPR preschool discs were "activity records," designed chiefly to promote rhythmic activity or “dramatic play." Examples include Tom Glazer singing about hammering a nail or sloshing paint, and Margaret Wise Brown's story about Muffin the blind dog, trying to identify the sounds around him—with the help of the children listening to the record.

Older kids didn't need a Disney-esque world of make-believe; they liked real history and songs about it. They were also more receptive to modern music and dissonance. At the Little Red School House, one of the first progressive schools in Manhattan, the Folkways children's music guru Beatrice Landeck noted, “What may seem like ‘strange sounds’ to an adult, whose ear has long been subjected to a particular style of music, takes its place naturally and normally in a child’s aural scheme" (1952, 225–6). Thus, YPR’s elementary-level records added more of a conceptual dimension with history, folklore, or music education.

Contributors

Some productions were as simple as a solo singer with instrumental accompaniment. Others blended narration, dialogue, music, and sound effects. Folk singers were preferred performers because, in Landeck's words, they "have a way with children for the simple reason that they are natural, down-to-earth, humor-loving, and ageless in spirit” (ibid.). Tom Glazer recorded dozens of folk songs for YPR. Oscar Brand, Charity Bailey, Pete Seeger, Betty Sanders, and Susan Reed were among the other folk song specialists on board. Contemporary composers Douglas Moore, Alex North, Herbert Haufrecht, Henry Brant, and Richard Mohaupt were frequent contributors, as were the conductors Walter Hendl and Max Goberman.

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  Tom Glazer
  Courtesy of the Glazer family.
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  Tom Glazer onstage with the American Young People's Theatre, Provincetown Playhouse, 1950
  Courtesy of the Glazer family.
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  Charity Bailey with autoharp
  Photo by Vito Fiorenza, courtesy of Faith Holsaert.
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  Walter Hendl
  Photo by Fabian Bachrach.
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  Narrator Norman Rose
  Photo by National Broadcasting Company.
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  Raymond Abrashkin
  Courtesy of William Abrashkin.
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  Abe Ajay, 1954
  Courtesy of William Abrashkin.

The actor Norman Rose also narrated a constant stream of titles. Children may have recognized his voice in the countless TV and radio commercials he made over the ensuing decades. Known as the “Voice of God” in the voiceover industry, he also could be heard reciting the Bible on records for the American Federation for the Blind and was the voice of Death in the Woody Allen movie Love and Death.

YPR's most prolific scriptwriter was Raymond Abrashkin, former education editor of the liberal newspaper PM. (His screenplay for the groundbreaking independent film Little Fugitive was nominated for an Academy Award in 1954. The soundtrack, supervised and recorded by Lester Troob, was issued on LP by Folkways.) The novelist Jay Williams also contributed many scripts, including those for the first children's records ever made about slavery (Underground Train, 1947, YPR 406) and jazz (Jazz Band, 1948, YPR 410). Williams and Abrashkin later co-authored the popular Danny Dunn book series.

Most of the cover art was by Abrashkin's best friend Abe Ajay, "an artist who challenged the boundaries of mid-century modernism," as he is described by the U.S. Department of State's Art in Embassies website.

The Children's Record Guild Connection

The Young People's Record Club was an instant hit, but Grenell didn't know much about running a subscription club—an expensive and complex business model. By 1950, YPR was organizationally overwhelmed, and its membership was declining.

For help, Grenell turned to book club experts Milo Sutliff and John Stevenson, whose office was in the same building as YPR. Sutliff and Stevenson ran a publishing house called Greystone, under which they sold millions of books by mail-order. Grenell wanted to know if they were interested in buying YPR. They were, but they couldn't reach an agreement with Pomerantz. In 1950, Grenell left Young People's Records and started the Children's Record Guild for Greystone. The first CRG record was narrated by Norman Rose, with accompaniment by a group of musicians who would later be known as The Weavers.

With the direct marketing prowess of Sutliff & Stevenson coupled to Grenell’s YPR formula, CRG's membership quickly outgrew YPR's, and in 1952 Sutliff & Stevenson finally reached a deal with Pomerantz, officially acquiring YPR. From then on, both labels were owned by Greystone. Stevenson became its sole owner after buying Sutliff's share in 1957. By that time, 1.2 million children had subscribed to CRG, according to what Stevenson told Newsweek magazine.

Under its new ownership, YPR ceased to exist as a club, but all titles remained in print and were sold in stores, while select YPR titles were issued on the CRG label for sale to CRG members. Most titles of both labels remained in print until the late 1970s.

In 2021, YPR and CRG were gifted to Smithsonian Folkways by the family of John Stevenson.

Sources

• Bonner, David. 2008. Revolutionizing Children's Records: The Young People's Records and Children's Record Guild Series, 1946-1977. Scarecrow Press.
• Landeck, Beatrice. 1952. Children and Music: An Informal Guide for Parents and Teachers. New York: Sloane.
• American Business Consultants (ABC). 1950. Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television.