Playboy Swings: How Hugh Hefner and Playboy Changed the Face of Music by Patty Farmer (2015)

Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine in the mid-1950s became famous for a number of attributes. Not only was the concept of a magazine that featured a very modern and liberal lifestyle and aimed mostly at white new middle class bachelors very new.

Style, fashion, food, sports and of course excellent photographs of beautiful, scarcely clad girls defined the flair of the magazine. 

And there was more to it: When in 1953 founder Hugh Hefner asked future Playboy promotion manager Victor Lownes to write a jazz LP review (Mabel Mercer) for the introductory issue of the magazine, the strong relation between the magazine and jazz music was already there. The objective Hefner envisioned when he published the first edition of the magazine in December of the same year (with cover girl Marilyn Monroe) was not simply made up of half-naked girls and sleazy content.
Moreover, Playboy wanted to give the impression that the company of these beauties was the final reward the male reader would receive if only he followed Playboy’s suggestions of what to read, how to order the right wine and food in a restaurant, how to decorate the (bachelor) pad and how to develop into a man who knew his way around and would easily impress women. Furthermore, the subjects that finally would complete the attractive man were an understanding of the arts and music, most of all jazz, since Hefner was a jazz fan.

So in 1959 he set up the Playboy Jazz Festival which drew almost 70,000 spectators and was held in the Chicago Stadium, becoming an immediate success. One year later, the magazine opened its first own American night club, and it naturally featured live jazz music in a cabaret room, besides beautiful women and an excellent bar. Soon, the location was known to be the stage for new talent. Additional clubs worldwide that would open over the years to come would also feature live jazz as main entertainment.

In the sixties, the Playboy jazz poll that was introduced in 1957 (where a number of musicians was selected to become a fictional All-Star band), became a big hit. By then, the poll was even more important that those of Down Beat and Metronome, the leading jazz magazines. In 1968, due to changing tastes of the readership, it was renamed “Jazz & Pop” poll and the title lasted until the final poll year in1972. Playboy also invented further categories like the Playboy Hall of Fame and the Playboy All-Stars’ All Stars (where musicians picked their favorite jazz men). Many stories with a jazz theme and a high number of interviews, featuring Louis Armstrong, Miles Davies and others is proof of Playboy’s fascination with music and Hefner’s private obsession with jazz.

So Farmer’s book actually has the focus on the coverage of jazz in connection with Playboy magazine in varying ways. This includes the Jazz Festival, the Playboy record label, the two TV shows Playboy’s Penthouse and Penthouse After Dark (with live jazz and interviews with musicians) and naturally the live music at the various Playboy clubs. Nevertheless, Playboy was not mainly a music magazine.
It is also worth mentioning that the poll winners – picked by the readers, not the writers – and the albums praised most were not the inspired recordings of avant-garde jazz men, but mostly the smooth, rather easy sound of the West Coast (that commercially was actually very successful, but not very innovative). And the poll winners were white, for the most part, until the end-1960s. So we could begin to speculate about the average Playboy reader.

All of this would make Playboy a very good shopping guide for conveniences, clothes, music and beverages, but…. it would remain in what would be mainstream, in things jazz, even if it seemed very modern at the time.
Besides from the focus on the association of jazz with Playboy magazine, there is much more information in Patty Farmer’s book that tells about many good ideas on lifestyle marketing. About half the book then is not exactly about jazz, but gives a deep insight into the unusual success story of Hugh Hefner’s enterprise.
Yet the magazine enormously helped spread jazz music as a cultural good and both the magazine, the festival and the clubs promoted the careers of many, many jazz artists.

Review by Dr. A. Ebert © 2016

Patty Farmer. Playboy Swings: How Hugh Hefner and Playboy Changed the Face of Music. Beaufort Books, 2015, 320 p.