🎸 ROOTS, RIFFS & RCA: THE SOUND THAT BUILT THE '70s

Step inside the smoke-filled studios, vinyl-cluttered boardrooms, and snow-dusted highways of early-1970s North America, when Canadian grit met American swagger and RCA Records quietly built the sound of blue-collar rock.This feature-length episode pulls the curtain back on how a major label once famous for Elvis pivoted to electric guitars, bar-band realism, and cultural rebellion. From The Guess Who’s thunderous “American Woman” to Five Man Electrical Band’s defiant “Signs,” our hosts trace the rise of the RCA sound, a fusion of high-fidelity craft and road-worn honesty that defined an era.Follow the story from Winnipeg basements to Los Angeles studios: producer Jack Richardson mortgaging his home to cut “These Eyes,” Les Emmerson scribbling “Sign, sign, everywhere a sign” on a diner napkin, and RCA engineers capturing the hum of live amps with precision that made FM radio shimmer. It’s the moment when working-class rock found its megaphone and a corporate giant learned to speak the language of rebellion.Along the way, our two hosts dig into:

• The cultural crossroads that let Canada’s prairie poets storm U.S. charts
• How RCA’s engineers and marketers turned bar-band grit into radio gold
• The label’s battles over censorship, politics, and authenticity, from Jefferson Airplane’s “Volunteers” to the Youngbloods’ peace anthem “Get Together”
• The birth of the “roots rock” sound that would inspire Springsteen, Seger, Mellencamp, and every band that ever sang about small towns and big hearts

Close your eyes and you can almost hear the tape reels spinning at RCA’s Chicago studios, the faint buzz of a Fender Twin, and Burton Cummings’ howl echoing off the walls. This is the story of a label that gambled on honesty, and the musicians who turned that gamble into legend.

Featuring:

The Guess Who · Five Man Electrical Band · The Youngbloods · Jefferson Airplane · Lighthouse · April Wine · and more from the RCA Victor vaults.

Produced in the spirit of

Rolling Stone Music Now

-- where journalism meets rock ’n’ roll mythology. Grab your headphones, drop the needle, and join us for a road trip through the heart of the RCA era: a journey of riffs, rebellion, and the relentless pursuit of real.

✅ What is RCA Victor

• • It originally started as the Victor Talking Machine Company (founded 1901) in Camden, New Jersey, best known for the “Victrola” phonograph and the “His Master’s Voice” dog & gramophone logo.
• • In 1929 the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) purchased Victor, and the label became the “RCA Victor Division”.
• • For many decades (through the 1930s–1960s) RCA Victor released a wide variety of music: classical, popular, jazz, country, and eventually rock.
• • Around the late 1960s/somewhere near 1968 the label branding shifted: RCA dropped “Victor” on many popular releases and became just RCA Records (or RCA) for many rock/pop records.

• That said, the “RCA Victor” name continued to be used in some contexts (for classical, red-seal types, and in some territories) even after the branding shift.

🔍 A few interesting label-history tidbits

• • In 1949, RCA Victor introduced the 7-inch 45 rpm single format in the U.S. that format is very connected to the “hit single” era of rock/pop.
• • In the 1950s-60s the label had several subsidiaries or specialty labels (e.g., Bluebird, Vik) for different genres.

• The label also had significant recording studios (e.g., in Nashville: RCA Victor Studio B) that produced many country & rock recordings.

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