How Hugh Hefner and Playboy staked a lasting claim to musical hipness

[danasgoodstuff]

Esquire was racy in the 40s & 50s, racy by the standards of the time, then they went one way (largely empty pretense, IMHO) and the standards went another (south, so to speak).

[medjuck]

Esquire was racy in the 40s & 50s, racy by the standards of the time, then they went one way (largely empty pretense, IMHO) and the standards went another (south, so to speak).

I remember Esquire mostly from the '60s when Robert Benton and David Newman were there.  They had amazing covers (Sonny Liston as Santa Claus etc).  To quote Wikipedia 

"In the 1960s, Esquire helped pioneer the trend of New Journalism by publishing such writers as Norman Mailer, Tim O'Brien, John Sack, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, and Terry Southern. In August 1969, Esquire published Normand Poirier's piece, "An American Atrocity", one of the first reports of American atrocities committed against Vietnamese civilians.^[7] "

[JSngry]

Yeah, I first "imprinted" on Esquire in the alte 60s/early 70s. Seemed to be a really "in tune" magazine as far as "mainstream" magazines went. The whole thing, content, design, graphics, really "grabbing", or so it seemed to a quai-backwoods kid whose hometown had a library that covered a lot more bases than did the general local population. Can't tell you how much I got out of that place...

"Racy" Esquire...other than the pinups (that's what they were, right?), how far did they go into the "entertainment for men" thing? I'll happily give credit to Playboy as a benchmark in the evolution of popular sexual mores and such, just wondering what Esquire was into. Nothing graphic I'm sure, but were their pinups ever even photos? And did they ever "show" anything, or was it all just "almost"?

I do remember that the library's collection only began somewhere in the mid 1960s, and knowing Mrs. Bauman (the librarian) as I did, I'm sure that it would have been completely acceptable by then. OTOH, when I returned Ulysses at the end of one summer, she grinned and said, "Well, that was quite a read, wasn't it!". And I never will forget her reaction when the Faye Dunaway-cover Newsweek came in. She just pulled it out of the mail, said a rather comprehensive "Oh my..." and then put it out on the shelves. When I went to check it out (about 30 seconds later...), I got one of those raised eyebrows/eyes over the glasses looks that more or less defines who's your friend and who's not. She was my friend.

Gladewater Public Library car #551. Still remember it.

[danasgoodstuff]

I love that you remember your card #!

[JSngry]

Dude, it was a small town with oil money (but not for us). The library was often the hippest place it town for me, because they had stuff, you know? GOOD stuff. Jazz Masters Of the 50s. S.J. Perelman books (old ones, with the funny caricatures of Perelman with the foot-long chin), Faye Dunaway-covered Newsweeks, Bronc Burnett & Highpockets booss. Saturday Review, New Yorker, Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, shit you had to actually READ, ya' know?GOOD stuff. Plus old as hell Life, Look, & Saturday Evening Post. Pictures, and most importantly, advertisements. Goldmines of unfiltered America Pop Culture, decades of it bound for your convenience (as convenient as a year's worth of those bigass things bound together could be, anyway). Knowledge, things that you weren't gonna get to just living the Gladewater life the Gladewater way,.all you had to do was find it, take it to the front, call "551", let Mrs Bauman run the Due Date card through the stamper, and bam, what is it that you now don't yet know?

That's how I found out about Saturday Review, we had a class in school about how to use The Reader's Guide To Periodical Literature, and of course, the library had those (in the back), so...look up "Jazz", start looking on the shelves to see if the magazines were there, and viola, all of sudden, you got news you can use. Old news, but when you got something instead of nothing, hey...

Amazing things, public libraries. May they adapt as necessary and live forever. Literally, forever. Because there's never not gonna be a need for something like that.

[medjuck]

This comment from the WSJ article:

There was also the factor that Playboy's market predecessor and partial competitor in the "sophistictaion for males" category, Esquire, had been heavily committed to jazz coverage and celebration, too. No?

I've only known Esquire since the late 1960s, by which time it was reputable fare found in doctor's offices and such. But other than the Vargas Girls, etc things, how "racy" was it, ever?

Esquire was into jazz before my time but I do have an old Esquire Jazz Yearbook that gets pretty heavily in to the moldy fig/bop controversy.  People forget that the Great Day in Harlem photo was taken for Esquire. Not only that, but it was part of an issue devoted to "The Golden Age of Jazz"-- by which they meant right then:1958.  I'm sure people laughed at that but they were right, it was a golden age  and people rarely know when they're living in one. . Though Bird had died, The Sound of Jazz had just been broadcast and many of the older greats were still alive and working.  Miles in '58 had Trane, Bill Evans and Cannonball in his group. The list goes on.  

I don't have a copy of that issue and I forget what else is in it. (I think an article on John Hammond-- IIRC he went on and on about how much he hated Artie Shaw.)  Remember the Esquire jazz polls and concerts?  I   don't know when they started covering jazz or when they stopped but for a time they were a force for the music. 

I just discovered that it's on-line:

http://archive.esquire.com/issue/19590101

Amongst other things I got wrong: it's dated January 1959.  And  "The Golden Age of Jazz" article is by Ralph Ellison!

[Big Beat Steve]

All four Esquire Books of Jazz (1944 to 1947) are very nice to have and peruse today IMO if you do not take the moldy fig/bop schism too seriously. The 1947 yearbook had such a heavy bias in favor towards the Condonites that the series was abandoned (rightfully so by the criteria of the time) but if you just take the yearbooks as PART of what the history and legacy of jazz were all about then they all are fine. My understanding also is that Esquire was seriously into jazz for quite a while in the late 30s and the 40s (cf. the musician polls etc, like Medjuck mentioned) and no doubt played a similar role to what Playboy did later on in spreading the image of jazz among a certain spectrum of those who saw themselves as particularly hip (for better or worse). And they must have had some coverage because the 1944 Book of Jazz edition was also produced as a pocket-sized paperback edition for the G.I.s (so there must have been some out there who did not just listen to hillbilly or crooners, it seems ).

As for how long the flirt of Esquire with jazz lasted, those in the US will  know but at any rate Esquire did a nice book with various essays on jazz about 1960 - "Esquire's World of Jazz". Still an interesting read today.

[Teasing the Korean]

The whole point of Playboy in its heyday was that it was supposed to provide, for better or worse, a roadmap to "the finer things in life" for a couple of generations of males in the U.S. who had fallen off the turnip truck and suddenly found themselves in the middle class, back when it was still somewhat possible to attain middle-class status in the US. 

If you want to know what Playboy was really about, skip the photos, skip the interviews, skip the articles, skip the fiction, and (1) look at the ads; and (2) read the letters, which are priceless:  "We're having my boss and his wife over to celebrate my promotion.   We are serving chicken paprika.  What kind of wine should we serve?"  "I just bought a new stereo system, and when I hooked it up, it's not making any sound.  What do you recommend?"

Can you imagine, if you did not know the answers to these questions, writing a letter to a magazine, and then waiting months for a response?  

I have no idea what Playboy is like now, but I collect/accumulate vintage issues up until maybe the mid- to late-70s, and these are a great window into another era.  It is almost like a form of time travel.  

Perhaps paradoxically, disposable artifacts tell us much more about a culture than its high art communicates.  

Edited October 1, 2015 by Teasing

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Dude, it was a small town with oil money (but not for us). The library was often the hippest place it town for me, because they had stuff, you know? GOOD stuff. Jazz Masters Of the 50s. S.J. Perelman books (old ones, with the funny caricatures of Perelman with the foot-long chin), Faye Dunaway-covered Newsweeks, Bronc Burnett & Highpockets booss. Saturday Review, New Yorker, Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, shit you had to actually READ, ya' know?GOOD stuff. Plus old as hell Life, Look, & Saturday Evening Post. Pictures, and most importantly, advertisements. Goldmines of unfiltered America Pop Culture, decades of it bound for your convenience (as convenient as a year's worth of those bigass things bound together could be, anyway). Knowledge, things that you weren't gonna get to just living the Gladewater life the Gladewater way,.all you had to do was find it, take it to the front, call "551", let Mrs Bauman run the Due Date card through the stamper, and bam, what is it that you now don't yet know?

That's how I found out about Saturday Review, we had a class in school about how to use The Reader's Guide To Periodical Literature, and of course, the library had those (in the back), so...look up "Jazz", start looking on the shelves to see if the magazines were there, and viola, all of sudden, you got news you can use. Old news, but when you got something instead of nothing, hey...

Amazing things, public libraries. May they adapt as necessary and live forever. Literally, forever. Because there's never not gonna be a need for something like that.

Ha! You wouldn't have enjoyed growing up in Tonyrefail! We lost our library about a year ago; died through inanition; no bugger was getting books out. And the town's growing again! Another 1,000 houses to go up in the rural part, but no extra shops or anything whatever; just houses.

Mind you, you might have enjoyed the sexy perverts lingerie shop that just started up, Lord knows why, here of all Goddamn places, but I still go there (used to be a baby clothes shop) to get my trousers shortened, as I'm exactly halfway between standard sizes. But there's a GOOD butcher, one who uses real choppers (cf Roy Brown) and knives and will save the dog an occasional lamb bone, as well as cooking and providing good sliced meat for me sarnies on Saturdays. And a baker, that was closed when the chain it was part of went bust and the staff formed a workers' co-operative and got it going again. So it's not ALL bad. And we are still in the country.

MG

[Big Beat Steve]

 

Perhaps paradoxically, disposable artifacts tell us much more about a culture than its high art communicates.  

So true ...

 

Speaking of which ... talking about mens' magazines from that era, anybody remember TRUE - The Man's Magazine?

I have a couple of their "Automobile Yearbooks" from the 50s (who knows what other annual specials they did) - nice selections of VERY "period-flavored" articles probably geared to those who considered themselves "discerning" car buyers or car lovers - features on classics and racing, Tom McCahill readalikes, Consumer Guide-like topics, and lots of name automotive authors.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Big Beat Steve

[mjzee]

Last month, Cory Jones, a top editor at Playboy, went to see its founder Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion.

In a wood-paneled dining room, with Picasso and de Kooning prints on the walls, Mr. Jones nervously presented a radical suggestion: the magazine, a leader of the revolution that helped take sex in America from furtive to ubiquitous, should stop publishing images of naked women.

Mr. Hefner, now 89, but still listed as editor in chief, agreed. As part of a redesign that will be unveiled next March, the print edition of Playboy will still feature women in provocative poses. But they will no longer be fully nude.

Full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/business/media/nudes-are-old-news-at-playboy.html?_r=0

[GA Russell]

 

 

 

 

I just discovered that it's on-line:

http://archive.esquire.com/issue/19590101

Amongst other things I got wrong: it's dated January 1959.  And  "The Golden Age of Jazz" article is by Ralph Ellison!

Thanks a lot, Joe!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Last month, Cory Jones, a top editor at Playboy, went to see its founder Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion.

In a wood-paneled dining room, with Picasso and de Kooning prints on the walls, Mr. Jones nervously presented a radical suggestion: the magazine, a leader of the revolution that helped take sex in America from furtive to ubiquitous, should stop publishing images of naked women.

Mr. Hefner, now 89, but still listed as editor in chief, agreed. As part of a redesign that will be unveiled next March, the print edition of Playboy will still feature women in provocative poses. But they will no longer be fully nude.

Full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/business/media/nudes-are-old-news-at-playboy.html?_r=0

Struth! The world may come to an end

MG

[Brad]

It's the end of civilization as we know it! 

[Guy Berger]

Last month, Cory Jones, a top editor at Playboy, went to see its founder Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion.

In a wood-paneled dining room, with Picasso and de Kooning prints on the walls, Mr. Jones nervously presented a radical suggestion: the magazine, a leader of the revolution that helped take sex in America from furtive to ubiquitous, should stop publishing images of naked women.

Mr. Hefner, now 89, but still listed as editor in chief, agreed. As part of a redesign that will be unveiled next March, the print edition of Playboy will still feature women in provocative poses. But they will no longer be fully nude.

Full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/business/media/nudes-are-old-news-at-playboy.html?_r=0

I can't be bothered to look at the article, but it's almost certainly driven by the changing economics of the porn industry.

[johnblitweiler]

no reason to buy Playboy any more

[clifford_thornton]

Too bad Oui and Club didn't have jazz polls.

[JSngry]

or Players.