Back in time

31 March 2025

RCA Records (now owned by Sony Music Entertainment) introduced
the 45rpm record, which had been in development since 1940.

The 7-inch disc was designed to compete with the Long Playing record introduced by Columbia Records a year earlier. Both formats offered better fidelity and longer playing time than the 78rpm record that was currently in use. Advertisements for new record players boasted that with 45rpm records, the listener could hear up to ten records with speedy, silent, hardly noticeable changes.

Cool thing to know: the colored vinyl wasn’t an invention of the punk era. From the start, back in 1949, each genre of music had its own color. Country releases were on green vinyl, children’s records were on yellow, classical releases were on red and popular releases on standard black vinyl. The very first 45 rpm record created was a child song entitled ‘PeeWee the Piccolo‘, pressed on 7 Dec 1948 and launched months later.

Anyway, on 31 March 1949, today 76 years ago, a country song
titled Texarkana Baby, written by Fred Rose and Cottonseed Clark
and performed by Eddy Arnold was among the first seven-inch
45 rpm records releases by RCA in the USA and given the credit
of being the very first 7″ ever.

Hear history here.