Radio as entertainment medium initially meant the radio music box, much to the detriment of the phonograph companies,

but radio stations and radio networks experimented with other forms of entertainment and eventually hit upon the radio series.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Music Episode 238, Holy Macquarol.

Jack and David Cap were brothers, born into a Jewish-American family in Chicago in 1901 and 1904, respectively.

Their father had worked as a door-to-door salesman for the Columbia Phonograph Company,

and in their youth, the two boys helped their father load his horse-drawn buggy

with record players and records every morning before he went out on that day's sales calls.

By the time they were teenagers, their father was selling

phonographs and records out of his own store, where the boys helped out after school.

In 1921, when Jack and David were 19 and 16, respectively, and David had just finished high school, the two brothers opened to their

own store. It was located in a rundown section of Chicago, close to the dividing line between a

white neighborhood and an African American one. There, the Cap record Store sold Jazz Records.

The record industry was changing.

The original patents were expiring,

meaning record companies were now free to make and sell records for each other's machines.

And the Cap brothers were among the first to take advantage of this development

to open a store

that sold records for more than one brand of phonograph. Instead of selling by brand, they could

focus on the music itself. In post-war America, jazz was sweeping the nation, episode 227,

but you wouldn't know it from listening to the radio,

where jazz was scarcely acknowledged to exist. What were they playing on the radio?

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