Back in the late 1950s when there were jukeboxes everywhere, a Detroit guy named Bill Rabe came up with a way to buy a little silence. His label, the Hush Record Company, specialized in releasing 45 rpm singles that contained nothing. The grooves were perfectly silent.
Why? It was genius, actually. If you were in a bar or restaurant and you got really, really tired of the music coming from the jukebox, you could drop a nickel or dime in the machine to call up one of these silent records and for the next three minutes or so, the jukebox was muted and quiet. And people who wanted loud music were powerless to stop the silence.
Silent records were a big deal in jukeboxes for a while and even spawned something called “Silent Record Week” in January 1959.
More next time.
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