A relic of my childhood and maybe yours I always
remember someone blasting jockjams when I was at basketball practice in junior high.
Chances are you if played some sort of sport or been to a sporting event, then you probably
have heard jock jams as well, but how did they get so popular and whatever happened
to them.
That’s what were going to explore in today’s video.
Jockjams owes its success to several woman.
This story begins in 1977 in chicago at comiskey park where the Chicago White Sox played.
The organist at home games was a woman named Nancy Faust.
Organ music in baseball dated back several decades all the way to 1941.
By the 70’s organists for sports team was mostly a male profession but Faust was a trailblazer
and it would be an experiment of hers that changed the sound of sports as we know it.
She would tell the Atlantic that one summer night of 1977 while the White Sox were playing
the Kansas City Royals, the Royals pulled their pitcher from the game.
She would then play Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye a song that topped the music charts
in 1969 by the band Steam.
The crowd soon sang along to the chorus with Faust teling the atlantic ‘it created quite
a stir.’
“I never heard people sing like that before,” Mercury records would re-release the song
and Faust got awarded a gold record.
It would be another Chicago native Monica Lynch who would move to new york city by 1978
getting involved in the party scene being a waitress and working as a topless dancer.
But by 1981 she wanted a different job answering an ad in the village voice for a struggling
rap label called Tommy Boy Records.
She would end up being the first employee of the label and by 1985 she became the label
president having steered it through better times and in the subsequent years they would
have artists such as queen latifah and de la soul on their roster.
The new york times would label Lynch in the 90’s as and i quote the high preistess of
hip hop.
Tommy Boy would team up with MTV in 1994 to release a compilation called Party To Go,
which was successful selling over half a million copies in America.
Tommy Boy Founder Tom Silverman would tell MTV why they partnered with the network saying
‘we did a compilation series called "MTV Party to Go" to raise money for the American
Cancer Society after [former Viacom Inc.
CEO] Tom Freston's dad died of cancer.
We raised $12 million with a compilation of MTV party records.
That laid the groundwork for what was to come, but compilation records were nothing new though.
In the 60’s and 70’s there was a company called K-Tel who was putting them out, but
by the 90’s Tommy Boy soon took their place.
So how does Sports tie in to the whole thing?
Well, one of the perks of Lynch’s job was that she had box seatsat Madison Square Garden
and attended numerous New York Rangers and New York Knicks games.
It was while she attended those games noticed that the loudespeakers were playing rock,
hip hop, r&b music mixed in with the organ.
She noticed the energy of the crowd responding to the music wondered if she could create
a compilation album or greatest hits of the songs being played at the sports games.
Lynch would tell the Huffington Post “To tell you the truth it was just like one of
those very simple, very obvious ideas,“I would hear the same music being played at
the games, all these classic rock and R&B tracks with these organ bits in between, so
I thought this stuff would probably be pretty easy to license."
She would end up reaching out to Ray Costaldi who had been the new york’s madison square
garden musical director/organist and DJ since 1989.
He jumped at the idea telling the huffington post . “It’s an idea that had been going
around in my head,” “We have all these songs we play at the games from a wide variety
of genres but they all seem to work together in the context of making people crazy at sporting
events.
Why don’t we put them all in one place?”
You have to remember this was way before napster, apple music, spotify existed so it wasn’t
easy to get all these songs in one place.
Costaldi was a trailblazer himself sometimes butting heads with his management admitting
to ESPN.com ‘Hip-hop as a pop music form, that idea was still pretty new.
My first bosses at MSG told me "Ray, we're not running a nightclub up there.
These hip-hop records -- are they really the kind of music our audience is gonna groove
to?"
And the answer was: Of course!
Absolutely!
Adding how he chose music to play at games Castoldi would tell Huffington Post how he
chose the songs for the compilation revealing “It’s got to have a really clear, engaging
beat and a certain tempo range that will be a sweet spot -- not too fast, not too slow,”
“These songs are being played back in a big reverb chamber, a sports arena with crowd
noise and sound echoing around, so the song can’t be too busy or have too many components
because it has to engage the fans.
If the song has a part to chant along to or do certain dance moves to, it’s going to
have an extra edge.
Tommy Boy Records now just needed a partner to give some legitimacy to the whole thing
and who better than ESPN.
ESPN was experiencing phenomenal growth by the mid 90’s., But ESPN and Tommy Boy Records
were two completely different run companies and were really an odd couple.
Sharyn Taymor, former director of ESPN Enterprises would tell ESPN.com
In the 1990s, the ESPN brand was starting to be everywhere.
ESPN2 had just started and there was talk of ESPN News and Classic, and we wanted to
start licensing the ESPN brand to products and services.
It was like the wild, wild west.
We worked on dot-com, The Magazine, video games, fantasy sports, merchandise and music.
We didn't even have to seek out that many opportunities; you just had to sit back and
see what people brought to us.
…And ESPN was kind of straight-laced and Tommy Boy Records was not.
We weren't into being provocative at all, and Tommy Boy was totally the opposite.
[But] it was an area that made sense for us because we hadn't done anything in that genre
and music and sports are so closely tied together.
ESPN had no experience with music at the time and they weren’t fully sold that the idea
could be successful.
It wasn’t just ESPN who was skeptical but people at Tommy Boy Records too with Steve
Knuston the director of sales at the time told huffington post “I thought it was the
worst idea,” “I thought it was really stupid.
Why would anyone do this, especially a hip-hop label?”
Prior to Jockjams which first debuted in 1995, Tommy Boy released a compilation album along
with ESPN called Jock Rock Volume 1 in 1994, which proved to be a success selling half
a million copies.
Jock rock would contain old rock staples like ‘We Will Rock You’ by Queen, Born to Be
Wild by steppenwolf, and Takin Care of Business by bachman turner overdrive to name a few.
It was the following year they release Jock Rock Volume 2 and it was the same year that
the first volume of Jock Jams was released.
Costaldi would tell ESPN.com how Jock Jams differed from Jock Rock saying “ Jock "Jock
Rock" was almost entirely oldies.
With Jock Jams, it was all about: Let's talk about the new stuff.
Released on July 25, 1995 Jock Jams Volume 1 would contain an assortment of a dozen or
so stadium-friendly hip-hop, dance, and rock songs.
Costaldi would be critical in helping choose the best tracks as he was seeing in real time
what fans were responding to at Rangers and Knicks games.
The volume 1 compilation would open with the now infamous Let’s Get Ready to Rumble intro
by Michael Buffer.
It would turn out, much to the surprise of Tommy Boy Records, licensing Michael Buffer’s
famous line was quite expensive.
While it would contain classic tracks like YMCA by the village people and gary glitters
rock and roll part 2, there were many newer hits, that people probably heard on radio
before, but didn’t know who the artist was including Pump up the jam by technotronic
or gonna make you sweat by c&c music factory.
But not every song was easy to get or sat well with ESPN for Jock Jams..
While Tommy Boy wanted to get some rock tunes like Guns N’ Roses welcome to the jungle
they found that licensing a song like that was too difficult as the band wasn’t interested
in the project, while other groups like British band Blur didn’t want to be part of a sports
focused record.
Then came the back and forth between ESPN and Tommy Boy records.
ESPN was very protective of their brand which was family friendly and didn’t want to include
songs that had suggestive lyrics or double entondres.
So some of the artists who were included on the first jock jams compilation had to make
up stories about the song’s origins including the group 69 Boyz whose song Tootsee Roll
was part of the compilation.
. Jay "Ski" McGowan, Quad City DJ's member and 69 Boyz producer: We just decided, Hey,
if anyone from ESPN asks about 69 Boyz, just say the guys were all born in 1969 and "Tootsee
Roll" (Track 5) is a candy and a fun dance and just leave it at that.
As you can probably guess the members were not all born in 1969.
Sharon Taymor would tell ESPN.com that rather than slapping the ESPN name on the CD they
wanted to add a sports twist to the compilation revealing The challenge was how do we put
an ESPN spin on it?
How do we brand it with ESPN?
That's when we came up with the idea of what we called interstitials, little sports-related
sound bites you'd hear between songs with Castoldi adding The goal from the beginning
was to make it an immersive sports experience, like you were actually at the game.
I recorded my little "The Old Ballgame" organ riff (Track 19) at the Garden or maybe just
in my apartment.
We recorded cheerleaders, hot dog vendors at Yankee Stadium, marching bands, as well
as personalities like Michael Buffer.
I mean, how many people got married that year with Michael Buffer and 2 Unlimited kicking
off their reception?
The cover of “Jock Jams, Volume 1” would feature three cheerleaders — with a bright
orange background.
With the phrase “The Hottest Crowd-Pumpin’ Grooves Of All Time!”
Within 14 montsh the album was sold a million copies going platinum.
Then in 1996 came Jock Jams Volume 2 which was the biggest success of the franchise peaking
at number 10 on the album charts and going platinum in just three months.
The album was helped in large part by the inclusion of one of the years biggest hits
the macarena.
For the rest of the decade, Jock Jams were selling in the millions and during this time
Jock Jams made up 30 percent of Tommy Boy’s income.
What made the compilation release such an attractive business venture was that it was
low cost.
The biggest cost for assembling the compilation was licensing the music while a typical release
would have much more expensive as the label had to scouting for talent, record an album,
provide, tour support and so forth.
Tommy Boy fonder Tom Silverman would tell MTV why the albums were so successful stating
They're all psych up songs, songs that build up energy.
Kids would buy this record and use it when they were getting ready for a sports event
if they were athletes or if they were going to a college football game.
They got your adrenaline going with heart-pumping songs that make the experience more visceral.
What made the compilation so successful was that it was a pretty big demographic buying
the albums.
It wasn’t just fans of major league sports, as soon enough teenagers and college aged
kids who were buying it for their sports teams and people who stayed physically fit who wanted
music to workout to.
Tom Silverman the CEO of Tommy Boy would tell huffington post “It was the red bull of
music” The first four volumes of jock james would
go platinum, but Tommy Boy would cease to release any further compilations after 2001.
So what happened?
Well, part of the reason was the same thing that impacted the rest of the music industry,
file sharing sites like napster and CD burning technology allowed people to make their own
compilation records.
Why shell out money when you can get music for free and choose your own songs or just
copy the tracklist of jock jams.
On top of that it became more difficult to find songs each year with Silverman telling
MTV "It got harder toward the end to find songs," "We couldn't find 15 songs every year
that were the new anthems."
But then there’s the second half of what happened.
Jock Jams became a victim of their own success.
.The labels who had previously licensed music to the Jock Jams series soon decided to cut
out the middle man which was Tommy Boy Records and just start creating their own compilation
albums.By this point in time there were essentially four major record labels who controlled the
industry and they would negotiate between themselves to put out a compilation called
"Now That's What I Call Music.’
The royalties from these deals would be more lucrative than what Tommy Boy Records was
offering and soon enough the labels agreed to exclusively license their music to the
Now compilations.
It essentially made it next to impossible for Jock Jams to license music for future
iterations of their series.
As for lynch she would leave tommy boy in the 90’s being burnt out by the demands
of the music industry.
She would get involved in radio broadcasting and still continued to work with queen latifah
including on her hbo series bessie serving as executive producer and most recently as
worked with Sotheby's auctioning vintage hip-hop art and collectibles.
As for Costaldi he continues to work for Madison Square Garden.