—From “The Dumb Sound” by Alfred G. Aronowitz, from the October 5, 1963, issue of The Saturday Evening Post
The new sounds that Dick Clark says the kids listen for are often regarded by parents as nothing more than noise. But then, the sounds of popular music are not designed for the parents; they are designed for the kids, or more specifically, for that patroness of the pop-record business, a sometimes tom-boyish and sometimes entirely feminine creature with an identity as vague as her years and as elusive as her tastes. Billboard, one of the chief trade publications of the business, says she is about 14 or 15 years old. Other market surveys show her to be 13 and getting younger. One magazine describes her as “desperate, unhappy, 12 years old.” Desperate and unhappy though she may be, she still contributed the major share of the $161 million that the pop-record business collected for the 210 million 45-rpm records it sold last year.
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