May 22, 2017 at 13:46“How Rock and Roll Sounded”: Marshall Brand History
This name can be seen at almost any live concert. Their amplifiers are popular with small beginner groups as well as mastodons such as System of a Down, Papa Roach and Deftones.
For more than 50 years of existence, the Marshall brand has become associated with the true sound of rock and roll. We will talk about who was behind the company's success story below. Photo Federico Ettlin CC
Jim Marshall was born in 1923 in one of the working areas of London. His father, James, acted as a sparring partner for boxing professionals, and this family earned a living. At five, Jim is diagnosed with a difficult diagnosis of bone tuberculosis.
This "carapace" was removed once every three months for only a few minutes, and in this form Marshall lived seven years of childhood. He was taught to read and write at home; naturally, the boy had no friends.
Only by the age of 12, Jim freed himself from the plaster "shell" and almost immediately began to work. After the recent Great Depression, the family had almost no money left, and Jim, who had almost no education, was very difficult to study at school, so he persuaded his father to let her leave and work part-time.
Suddenly, Marshall showed a talent for singing. At the insistence of his father and to strengthen the bones, Jim went to tap dance. The teacher was at a loss: "You are the only boy in my class, and I do not know what to do with you." He invited Jim to sing for several numbers, while the girls would dance the tap dance around him.
So, for the first time singing at age 14, Marshall tore a storm of applause. At one of the performances, Marshall was noticed by Charlie Holmes, the owner of the best orchestra in London of those years, and offered Jim a place as a singer. Marshall performed with the orchestra several times a week, but the rest of the time he continued to work on studies.
When the war broke out in England in 1940, Jim Marshall was 17. Among the other young people, he went to the military enlistment office to go to the front, but because of his childhood illness, he was unfit for service. Therefore, Marshall left to work at the Heston Aircraft aircraft factory.
Despite the war and hard work at the factory, Marshall continued to perform with the Charlie Holmes Orchestra, which was at the peak of popularity. Often during breaks between songs, as Jim himself said, fights broke out in pubs because the audience had nothing to do.
Then the pianist invited him to take pauses by playing the drums - in the end, Jim's dance past provided him with the sense of rhythm necessary for the drummer.
Marshall agreed, and it really helped - drum solos distracted the cocky audience. And later, the permanent drummer of the orchestra was drafted into the army, and Marshall was offered to take his place so as not to look for a new member of the collective and divide the proceeds into six, not seven. So Jim Marshall became a singing drummer.
We can say that everything worked out: Marshall removed the phalanx of one finger, and he was able to continue his career as a singing drummer.
Jim never received a musical education over the years of his pop career - to improve his skills, he simply watched the game of professional drummers. However, Marshall nevertheless had to undergo training: once the orchestra was offered to play something from Latin American tunes, which the self-taught drummer had no idea about. Then Jim went to the famous drummer Max Abrams, from whom he studied for two years.
At the same time, Marshall begins to attract many beginner musicians to his performances, so in the end he quits work at the factory and begins to teach.
He took 64 students a week, sometimes working 20 hours a day. Marshall gave lessons in a small closet, which was located in his house. There he made noise isolation so that the neighbors did not complain, put a drum kit, two speakers and a 35-watt amplifier.
Thanks to his hard work, Jim Marshall began to earn incredible amounts for that time: he received five thousand pounds a year. According to Marshall, he attracted so many students because he was the first to teach rock and roll.
First, the 37-year-old Jim Marshall wanted to open a drum business. Giving lessons, he preferred to play Premier drums, and Marshall's students adopted his teacher's preferences. This prompted Jim to turn to the producer with a proposal to sponsor his drum set in order to engage with students in exchange for advertising. But at Premier, they understood that Marshall was already making a profit for them, and only agreed on coupons with a ten percent discount for students.
The popularity of the new place grew, in particular, thanks to Jim's students, and soon the store began to sell more than 20 drum sets per month.
Photo by Arnaud Abadie CC
At the same time, Jim Marshall understands that the “singing drummer,” as he himself once was, must be able to hear the melody and harmony as clearly as possible.
To do this, he began to design his own columns. Jim continued to do this after the opening of the store, putting up for sale his home-made speakers, which buyers were keenly interested in.
Among them was Pete Townsend., founder of The Who. He was brought to Marshall's shop by drummer Keith Moon, who at one time took a couple of lessons from the game from Jim. The musicians who visited Jim’s store wondered why he didn’t sell goods for guitarists. Then Marshall realized that, expanding his assortment, he would attract more customers, which means that more people would hear about his store.
Jim's customers were interested in his home-made cabinets, but they went to the store primarily for popular guitars and amplifiers: Fender, Gretsch, Gibson, etc. Realizing this, Jim decides to purchase several amplifiers, including Vox and Selmer. Vox did not sell, but Selmer, on the contrary, was taken because of cheapness.
And yet, most often, buyers were interested in Fender amplifiers, which were used by famous American rock musicians of that time.
By 1961, the drum shop had become a large guitar store where musicians came not only to shop, but also to chat, exchange news and hang out.
Jim sold the entire assortment of guitars that the musicians were interested in: Stratocaster, ES-355, Telecaster, etc., and the most popular amplifier was Fender Bassman, although for some musicians its sound seemed too glossy.
So, for example, Pete Townsend once came to a Marshall store and said:
And Jim Marshall was ready to make the "gun more powerful."
The basis of the first prototype was taken Fender Bassman , which the musicians liked so much. For preamplification, we chose 12AX7 lamps, which we got at British military depots, and on the amplifier circuit we changed the arrangement of elements.
The prototype was developed for three months, and guitarists, regulars of the Marshall and Son store, including Townsend, were invited to test. As a result, after several tests, we got a more “dirty”, overloaded sound that the Who leader liked.
They called this amplifier JTM45 (John and Terry Marshalls, 45 watts). In reality, it only gave out 35 watts, but even that was more powerful than the musicians expected. The JTM45 went on sale in 1962, and the first prototype was sold to a casual buyer. He wanted to buy a linear (modified and put into series) JTM45, but they were not on sale, then Marshall offered to purchase "prototype number 1".
A few months later, the buyer returned and nevertheless exchanged it for the serial JTM45, and “prototype number 1” is now a valuable exhibit that could easily fall into the hands of a stranger. At one time, Gary Moore even offered Marshall an unfilled check in exchange for this prototype, but Jim refused to sell his brainchild, which still stands at the Marshall Museum.
Despite the first success, a small team of Jim (only five people) could not cope with the volumes, and only one or two amplifiers were produced per week. In 1963, the Marshall and Son store moved to a more spacious room opposite, and Jim finally had the opportunity to organize a full-fledged showroom.
Photo Forest Floors CC
The first JTM45 sold only as amplifiers, without speakers, but Jim continued to experiment with speakers for portal systems. Such speakers were sometimes in demand by some buyers, because among Jim's customers there were more and more guitarists.
Soon after the start of serial production, Marshall ceased to have enough space even in the new building, and in June 1964 the first ever Marshall plant appeared, which employed 15 people (in those days, 600 people worked at the same Fender company), and the production of amplifiers increased to 20 per week.
During experiments with his brainchild - JTM45, Jim tried to make him "growl" by connecting to speakers of various configurations. In the end, he settled on two cabinets with 2 × 12 inch speakers, but the amplifier was too powerful for them, the speakers burned out one after another. Thus, the only solution was a cabinet with four 12-inch speakers.
Marshall built the first 4 × 12 cabinet in his garage: Celestion G12 speakers were installed in it. The Marshall cabinets gave a more aggressive sound, unlike the Fender, because they had a closed design, while a number of Fender cabinets had an open rear wall.
Among the visitors to the Marshall and Son store was the legendary Eric Clapton , who quickly fell in love with the new JTM45, but the cumbersome combination with speakers did not suit him. Clapton toured often, and he needed something that could fit in the trunk. His request to do something similar can be considered the starting point for the development of the Marshall Bluesbreaker combo. The name, or rather, the nickname of the new combo amplifier, appeared after Eric Clapton recorded the album " John Mayall Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton ".
In pursuit of a powerful sound, Pete Townsend turned to Marshall, who asked him to assemble an office with eight twelve-inch speakers for him. (“The Who” guitarist John Entwiesl heard himself poorly during Kit Moon’s drums even after Marshall boosted the JTM45 to 50 watts). Marshall warned that the construction would be cumbersome, and the technicians who carried the “Who” equipment would be furious. To this, Townsend replied: "Yes they went, they are paid for it."
But after a few weeks, Pete returned to Marshall and still asked to somehow reduce the weight of the cabinet. Then it was decided to install one combo on another - that is how the legendary stack was born.
The fashion for stacks has spread widely around the world: for example, the KISS group put 44 of these cabinets on their photo shoot sites, and Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth photographed opposite 80 cabinets. The record was broken by Jim Marshall himself, for whom during the 30th anniversary of his company a stack of 175 offices was built.
At the same time, in 1966, the Marshall factory expanded, and the brand experienced an unprecedented take-off: from 64 to 67, sales in America increased three times.
In these fruitful years, Jim does something he will regret all his life later on: Marshall signs a contract with Rose-Morris, a major distributor of musical instruments. Under the contract, the company received an exclusive right to sell Marshall products for 15 years.
Rose-Morris boosts prices by more than 55%, positioning the Marshall brand as premium. As a result, sales fall, because if earlier Marshall goods were considered affordable equipment, now only stars and wealthy buyers could afford them. Along with a drop in sales, revenue fell, and in order to somehow save the situation, Marshall decides to develop a line of Park amplifiers (by his wife’s maiden name).
The company worked in this format for 15 years - at the end of the contract, Marshall immediately reduced prices and for three years increased turnover by 360%, and the Park line went into the low-cost segment of transistor combo amplifiers Marshall MG .
The company managed to recover from this failure of a length of 15 years: in the early 80s the legendary Marshall JCM800 was created , for which Marshall later received the Royal Prize (for export).
Jim kept an eye on technology development all the time, so in the early 2010s he insisted on the release of a separate product line: Marshall Major headphones , which are made in recognizable forms of the brand. They were followed by Major II Bluetooth models and in - ear headphones, portable speakers and even a smartphone .
Jim Marshall died in 2012, but his company is still one of the leaders in the market, and its creator did everything to make Marshall products understandable and affordable. Jim amplifiers used the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Kinks, Jimi Hendrix, Iggy Pop, Kurt Cobain, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Static X and many other legendary musicians, and Marshall's signature sound cannot be confused with anything.
Additional materials on the topic:
For more than 50 years of existence, the Marshall brand has become associated with the true sound of rock and roll. We will talk about who was behind the company's success story below. Photo Federico Ettlin CC
Childhood in a Plaster Shell
Jim Marshall was born in 1923 in one of the working areas of London. His father, James, acted as a sparring partner for boxing professionals, and this family earned a living. At five, Jim is diagnosed with a difficult diagnosis of bone tuberculosis.
His bones become so fragile and brittle that the boy is placed in a plaster suit, and he is bedridden.
This "carapace" was removed once every three months for only a few minutes, and in this form Marshall lived seven years of childhood. He was taught to read and write at home; naturally, the boy had no friends.
Only by the age of 12, Jim freed himself from the plaster "shell" and almost immediately began to work. After the recent Great Depression, the family had almost no money left, and Jim, who had almost no education, was very difficult to study at school, so he persuaded his father to let her leave and work part-time.
Marshall got into the diner that his father opened in Southall, after which he changed several more jobs: a jam cook, a milkman, a shoe seller, and a scrap metal carver.
Suddenly, Marshall showed a talent for singing. At the insistence of his father and to strengthen the bones, Jim went to tap dance. The teacher was at a loss: "You are the only boy in my class, and I do not know what to do with you." He invited Jim to sing for several numbers, while the girls would dance the tap dance around him.
So, for the first time singing at age 14, Marshall tore a storm of applause. At one of the performances, Marshall was noticed by Charlie Holmes, the owner of the best orchestra in London of those years, and offered Jim a place as a singer. Marshall performed with the orchestra several times a week, but the rest of the time he continued to work on studies.
Singing drummer
When the war broke out in England in 1940, Jim Marshall was 17. Among the other young people, he went to the military enlistment office to go to the front, but because of his childhood illness, he was unfit for service. Therefore, Marshall left to work at the Heston Aircraft aircraft factory.
Despite the war and hard work at the factory, Marshall continued to perform with the Charlie Holmes Orchestra, which was at the peak of popularity. Often during breaks between songs, as Jim himself said, fights broke out in pubs because the audience had nothing to do.
Then the pianist invited him to take pauses by playing the drums - in the end, Jim's dance past provided him with the sense of rhythm necessary for the drummer.
Marshall agreed, and it really helped - drum solos distracted the cocky audience. And later, the permanent drummer of the orchestra was drafted into the army, and Marshall was offered to take his place so as not to look for a new member of the collective and divide the proceeds into six, not seven. So Jim Marshall became a singing drummer.
Pretty soon he gained popularity, becoming by the end of the 40s one of the best drummers in London. At the same time, Marshall continued to work at the factory, and once almost lost his brush as a result of an industrial accident
We can say that everything worked out: Marshall removed the phalanx of one finger, and he was able to continue his career as a singing drummer.
Jim never received a musical education over the years of his pop career - to improve his skills, he simply watched the game of professional drummers. However, Marshall nevertheless had to undergo training: once the orchestra was offered to play something from Latin American tunes, which the self-taught drummer had no idea about. Then Jim went to the famous drummer Max Abrams, from whom he studied for two years.
Pupil, teacher, businessman, engineer
At the same time, Marshall begins to attract many beginner musicians to his performances, so in the end he quits work at the factory and begins to teach.
He took 64 students a week, sometimes working 20 hours a day. Marshall gave lessons in a small closet, which was located in his house. There he made noise isolation so that the neighbors did not complain, put a drum kit, two speakers and a 35-watt amplifier.
Thanks to his hard work, Jim Marshall began to earn incredible amounts for that time: he received five thousand pounds a year. According to Marshall, he attracted so many students because he was the first to teach rock and roll.
Gradually, Jim realizes that he has enough money to earn for his own business, and the number of performances with the orchestra minimizes, and later completely abandons them.
First, the 37-year-old Jim Marshall wanted to open a drum business. Giving lessons, he preferred to play Premier drums, and Marshall's students adopted his teacher's preferences. This prompted Jim to turn to the producer with a proposal to sponsor his drum set in order to engage with students in exchange for advertising. But at Premier, they understood that Marshall was already making a profit for them, and only agreed on coupons with a ten percent discount for students.
However, Jim soon had a new idea: instead of sending students to Premier, he decided to order the tools himself. So there was a store " Marshall and Son ", in which the 16-year-old Terry Marshall stood at the checkout.
The popularity of the new place grew, in particular, thanks to Jim's students, and soon the store began to sell more than 20 drum sets per month.
Photo by Arnaud Abadie CC
At the same time, Jim Marshall understands that the “singing drummer,” as he himself once was, must be able to hear the melody and harmony as clearly as possible.
To do this, he began to design his own columns. Jim continued to do this after the opening of the store, putting up for sale his home-made speakers, which buyers were keenly interested in.
Among them was Pete Townsend., founder of The Who. He was brought to Marshall's shop by drummer Keith Moon, who at one time took a couple of lessons from the game from Jim. The musicians who visited Jim’s store wondered why he didn’t sell goods for guitarists. Then Marshall realized that, expanding his assortment, he would attract more customers, which means that more people would hear about his store.
Jim's customers were interested in his home-made cabinets, but they went to the store primarily for popular guitars and amplifiers: Fender, Gretsch, Gibson, etc. Realizing this, Jim decides to purchase several amplifiers, including Vox and Selmer. Vox did not sell, but Selmer, on the contrary, was taken because of cheapness.
And yet, most often, buyers were interested in Fender amplifiers, which were used by famous American rock musicians of that time.
By 1961, the drum shop had become a large guitar store where musicians came not only to shop, but also to chat, exchange news and hang out.
Jim sold the entire assortment of guitars that the musicians were interested in: Stratocaster, ES-355, Telecaster, etc., and the most popular amplifier was Fender Bassman, although for some musicians its sound seemed too glossy.
So, for example, Pete Townsend once came to a Marshall store and said:
“I have two amplifiers: Fender Pro AMP and Fender Bassman. They’re cool, but if I play, and in the front row someone yells, “What the crap?”, I hear everything. But I don’t want this, so I need something bigger and more powerful. ”
And Jim Marshall was ready to make the "gun more powerful."
The birth of a legend
The basis of the first prototype was taken Fender Bassman , which the musicians liked so much. For preamplification, we chose 12AX7 lamps, which we got at British military depots, and on the amplifier circuit we changed the arrangement of elements.
The prototype was developed for three months, and guitarists, regulars of the Marshall and Son store, including Townsend, were invited to test. As a result, after several tests, we got a more “dirty”, overloaded sound that the Who leader liked.
The admired Townsend said that this is exactly what brand sound of the Marshall brand should be.
They called this amplifier JTM45 (John and Terry Marshalls, 45 watts). In reality, it only gave out 35 watts, but even that was more powerful than the musicians expected. The JTM45 went on sale in 1962, and the first prototype was sold to a casual buyer. He wanted to buy a linear (modified and put into series) JTM45, but they were not on sale, then Marshall offered to purchase "prototype number 1".
A few months later, the buyer returned and nevertheless exchanged it for the serial JTM45, and “prototype number 1” is now a valuable exhibit that could easily fall into the hands of a stranger. At one time, Gary Moore even offered Marshall an unfilled check in exchange for this prototype, but Jim refused to sell his brainchild, which still stands at the Marshall Museum.
Despite the first success, a small team of Jim (only five people) could not cope with the volumes, and only one or two amplifiers were produced per week. In 1963, the Marshall and Son store moved to a more spacious room opposite, and Jim finally had the opportunity to organize a full-fledged showroom.
Photo Forest Floors CC
The first JTM45 sold only as amplifiers, without speakers, but Jim continued to experiment with speakers for portal systems. Such speakers were sometimes in demand by some buyers, because among Jim's customers there were more and more guitarists.
Soon after the start of serial production, Marshall ceased to have enough space even in the new building, and in June 1964 the first ever Marshall plant appeared, which employed 15 people (in those days, 600 people worked at the same Fender company), and the production of amplifiers increased to 20 per week.
Broken Blues and Stack
During experiments with his brainchild - JTM45, Jim tried to make him "growl" by connecting to speakers of various configurations. In the end, he settled on two cabinets with 2 × 12 inch speakers, but the amplifier was too powerful for them, the speakers burned out one after another. Thus, the only solution was a cabinet with four 12-inch speakers.
Marshall built the first 4 × 12 cabinet in his garage: Celestion G12 speakers were installed in it. The Marshall cabinets gave a more aggressive sound, unlike the Fender, because they had a closed design, while a number of Fender cabinets had an open rear wall.
Interestingly, the first Marshall cabinet had a straight front wall. Branded beveled, which has practically become the “calling card” of the brand, according to Jim himself, at first appeared only for aesthetic purposes.
Among the visitors to the Marshall and Son store was the legendary Eric Clapton , who quickly fell in love with the new JTM45, but the cumbersome combination with speakers did not suit him. Clapton toured often, and he needed something that could fit in the trunk. His request to do something similar can be considered the starting point for the development of the Marshall Bluesbreaker combo. The name, or rather, the nickname of the new combo amplifier, appeared after Eric Clapton recorded the album " John Mayall Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton ".
In pursuit of a powerful sound, Pete Townsend turned to Marshall, who asked him to assemble an office with eight twelve-inch speakers for him. (“The Who” guitarist John Entwiesl heard himself poorly during Kit Moon’s drums even after Marshall boosted the JTM45 to 50 watts). Marshall warned that the construction would be cumbersome, and the technicians who carried the “Who” equipment would be furious. To this, Townsend replied: "Yes they went, they are paid for it."
But after a few weeks, Pete returned to Marshall and still asked to somehow reduce the weight of the cabinet. Then it was decided to install one combo on another - that is how the legendary stack was born.
The fashion for stacks has spread widely around the world: for example, the KISS group put 44 of these cabinets on their photo shoot sites, and Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth photographed opposite 80 cabinets. The record was broken by Jim Marshall himself, for whom during the 30th anniversary of his company a stack of 175 offices was built.
At the same time, in 1966, the Marshall factory expanded, and the brand experienced an unprecedented take-off: from 64 to 67, sales in America increased three times.
Life mistake
In these fruitful years, Jim does something he will regret all his life later on: Marshall signs a contract with Rose-Morris, a major distributor of musical instruments. Under the contract, the company received an exclusive right to sell Marshall products for 15 years.
Rose-Morris boosts prices by more than 55%, positioning the Marshall brand as premium. As a result, sales fall, because if earlier Marshall goods were considered affordable equipment, now only stars and wealthy buyers could afford them. Along with a drop in sales, revenue fell, and in order to somehow save the situation, Marshall decides to develop a line of Park amplifiers (by his wife’s maiden name).
The company worked in this format for 15 years - at the end of the contract, Marshall immediately reduced prices and for three years increased turnover by 360%, and the Park line went into the low-cost segment of transistor combo amplifiers Marshall MG .
The company managed to recover from this failure of a length of 15 years: in the early 80s the legendary Marshall JCM800 was created , for which Marshall later received the Royal Prize (for export).
Marshall today
Jim kept an eye on technology development all the time, so in the early 2010s he insisted on the release of a separate product line: Marshall Major headphones , which are made in recognizable forms of the brand. They were followed by Major II Bluetooth models and in - ear headphones, portable speakers and even a smartphone .
Jim Marshall died in 2012, but his company is still one of the leaders in the market, and its creator did everything to make Marshall products understandable and affordable. Jim amplifiers used the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Kinks, Jimi Hendrix, Iggy Pop, Kurt Cobain, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Static X and many other legendary musicians, and Marshall's signature sound cannot be confused with anything.
Additional materials on the topic: