INTRODUCTION

The American recording industry has traditionally consisted of two types of companies, the so-called "majors" and the "independents." An "indie" differs from a major in that unlike the latter, which is a self-contained musical corporation, it must rely on other firms to distribute and sell its recordings to the public. Cuca Records of Sauk City, Wisconsin conducted business from 1959 to 1973 as an independently owned and operated record company. The independents, throughout recording history, have faced similar characteristics and obstacles. The majors have dominated the American recorded music market; they own and control all aspects of production: recording, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, and sales outlets.

The overall structure of the recording business has within it inherent characteristics that both allow an indie to operate truly independently and, at the same time, make the firm's survival difficult. These small businesses usually have limited capital resources to manufacture and promote their wares. However, because they do not have the large operating expenses or the corporate and bureaucratic structures of the larger firms and are anxious to secure a place in the industry, independents have historically been musical innovators. The single-owner or small group owners of the indies allowed them to make quick and creative decisions. By necessity and in hopes of releasing a hit record, indies more readily took musical and business risks to secure a standing within the industry. Desperation drove them to find a niche in a highly competitive market, increase their attractiveness to talented artists, and make enough profit to remain in business.

The musical and artistic contributions of the independent labels command their study as an important part of the music industry's history. To entice musicians to record with them, small companies sought music and musical markets ignored by the larger companies, markets they deemed unprofitable. Thus, independents helped democratize the recording industry. Musicians who were unable, because of geography, race, or economic circumstances, to record their music with the majors in New York, Chicago, Nashville, or Los Angeles found outlets for their cultural and artistic expressions with the indies. Consumers, too, benefitted because the independents responded quickly to musical cravings; indies were closer to the audience, both physically and economically, and therefore independents could and did react to popular demand for music not provided by the majors. For example, independent companies Sun Records, Sterling Records, and Vee Jay Records each "broke" Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, and the Beatles, respectively, elevating each artist to superstar status. Of course, as I will demonstrate, the independents' successes inevitably intensified competition from the larger and better organized record corporations for these previously ignored artists' sales. Throughout the twentieth century, majors co-opted the indies' musical innovations, commercializing new genres and gleaning profits through their extensive corporate structures, large promotion budgets, and distribution networks. In this way, the large firms lured talented artists away from the independents with the promise of even bigger hits and sales.

Technological innovation also contributed significantly to the successes and failures of independent labels. Especially after the First and Second World Wars, breakthroughs in recording techniques made the process cheaper and thus aided in the formation of many small companies. The independents' own technological experiments, often conducted out of financial necessity, also aided in their success. Technology, however, was a double-edged sword. While providing indies with the equipment necessary to be in business, new technology and a dependency on the materials to utilize it often caused monetary hardships and company failures. As the increased complexity of the new devices raised the costs for new electronic recording equipment, it was the majors who could afford to effectively implement new processes. Combined with innovations in promotion and marketing techniques, the new technology nearly killed the independents by the 1970's.

Although the indies are an integral part of the history of the recording industry, scholars have rarely analyzed them. Instead, they have referred to independent labels mainly in popular literature or in discussions of certain styles of music and famous artists who got their starts at small companies. For example, histories of Sun Records, Motown, and Atlantic Records do exist, but the writers have ignored their roles as independents within the larger music industry structure. Charlie Gillet's The Sound of the City dedicates a chapter to the subject but concerns itself with a large number of indies from the 1950's, giving extremely brief historical overviews of the labels as well as their contributions to the rock-and-roll genre. Seminal works such as Andre Millard's America on Record and Russell Sanjek's Pennies From Heaven mention independent labels but, given the large scope of the books, they do not examine how any of the businesses functioned or why individual indies succeeded or failed within the overall music industry structure. Other works on the recording industry theorize about the influence of such things as technology, distribution, and general business history upon independents, but none have conducted a case study to either prove or dispel their notions nor have any scholars given detailed attention to independents which established themselves after the industry boom of the mid-1950's. One author, who successfully dissected the history of an independent, explained the academic oversight.^[1*]

Private business files, both of the majors and the independents, are seldom available to scholars or people outside of the firms. A single person or small group of harried entrepreneurs trying to survive in a competitive and cyclical market usually operated an indie and owners were unlikely to save data for the sake of history. Most importantly, as many indies either went bankrupt or were taken over by larger firms, the documentation of their fate has been lost forever. It is therefore difficult to make many scholarly comparisons between Cuca Records and its contemporary independent labels. But this study should contribute to the basis of future works on the subject.

This story is the history of Cuca Records in the context of its role as an independent record company from the period 1959 to 1973. Like other independents, technology, shifts in the musical market, and pressures from the music industry as a whole all influenced its development and experiences. This indie's particular location in a small Wisconsin town, its unusual corporate policies, and its efforts to create a degree of self-sufficiency rarely seen in other similar firms also shaped its story, as did its music. Cuca attracted highly diverse musicians, creating a catalog often outside national popular taste and one which reflected the various cultural influences of Wisconsin's population. These particular characteristics made Cuca Records unique as an independent label during the 1960's and helped its survival during a period of intense industry conglomeration. It was Cuca's owner, Jim Kirchstein, who made the pro-active decision in 1973 to cease operation; the firm did not go bankrupt nor was it a victim of conglomeration.

The historic foundations of the recording industry, technology, industry structure, economic pressures, and musical diversity all contributed to Cuca's entrance into the recording field, its successes and struggles during its years of operation, and eventually its departure from the music business.