How Old are Mix Tapes?

In a 2020 episode of Mrs America (spoiler alert), the Phyllis Schlafly character opens her adolescent daughter’s mail and finds a mix cassette from a boy, which when Schlafly slides it into the tape recorder turns out to begin, shockingly (for her) and hilariously (for us) enough, with “Cherry Bomb.” Later Schlafly explains to some fellow antifeminists that teenagers make these “compilations, like movie soundtracks” for their “sweethearts,” and it inspires her to cut and paste recordings of Bella Abzug speeches out of context, which makes even less sense than the idea that the Runaways (whose debut LP peaked at #194) weren’t all kinds of obscure in mid-America in 1977. (Their appearance on Battle of the Network Stars spinoff Rock N Roll Sports Classic wasn’t until a year later.)

Excellent TV show anyway, but my main question with this Mrs. America scene is: Did ANYBODY actually make mix tapes for high school crushes or anybody else as early as 1977?? Like, even by taping songs off the radio through the actual air? I doubt they did, but I’d welcome evidence to the contrary.

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Here are responses I got from 17 fellow (mostly) oldsters when I raised this important historical question on Facebook, also in 2020:

Werner Trieschmann: “It sure seems early to me. Doesn’t mean it’s not possible. I don’t recall mix tapes until late high school (81-82), if then. I am the age of lugging milk crates of heavy albums back and forth to college.”

Mark Richardson: “Total guess: I would think mixtapes took a big jump with the advent of the dual cassette deck, which started to be common in the early 80s.”

John Boegehold: “1977? Doubtful. Seems to me mixtapes started in the mid 80’s. I remember holding up my cassette recorder to the radio trying to record songs the second the DJ stopped talking so I’d have a copy to hear ‘on demand’ haha. That was around 1969-1970-ish. But I don’t think making a mixtape for a girl you liked became a thing til the 80’s ala John Hughes movies.”

Mark Kemp: “Yep, I remember holding my cassette recorder up to the radio to record a Rolling Stone radio special look-back at the Summer of Love in ‘76 or so. I think I still have it. In 1977? I made a few (I also made a few mix 8-tracks earlier). But, as I recall, it was still a bit of a hassle until around 1980 or so, when recording devices got more user friendly and making mixtapes began getting a lot more popular.”

Eric Johnson: “Definitely earlier than the mid-80s. I was making them for myself off the radio by 1978-1979. But I was a pretty socially isolated preteen & wasn’t taking part in a thing I knew as ‘making a mixtape,’ I just wanted to not have to depend on the radio playing those songs when I wanted to hear them. However, it was definitely already a thing by the mid 80s. Maybe not so much as a sweetheart gift, like it became later tho…1980 sounds right. One of the vectors here is going to be the spread of affordable modular stereo systems.”

Edd Hurt: “I did on my crude cassette recorder off the radio, the stereo. For my high school crushes! I can recall the playlists–early Hall and Oates, Eddie Kendricks, ‘Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight,’ ‘Bungle in the Jungle’.”

Greg Morton: “Minority report here I guess. My first cassette C-90 mix tape was 1974. Grin, “Jewel Eyed Judy”, “I Wish I Was Your Mother”, Flo and Eddie, American Spring-“Shyin Away”, probably “Forever” off Sunflower, maybe some Ziggy Stardust. Kept it for myself.”

Michaelangelo Matos: “Christgau was making mixtapes of Clash B-sides for friends in 1978.”

Nate Patrin: “Hey, it’s how Tom Moulton got paid in ‘73. That’s its own thing tho.”

Pete Scholtes: I doubt any adolescents were making mix tapes in the ’70s, but maybe I was too young, like I was for beer-can collecting. In 1980 or ’81 we got a cassette player not unlike the shoebox ones shown here that started coming out in ’77, though there were earlier versions that passed me by — we had a reel-to-reel tape recorder that we used for skits and songs right through the ’70s. By ’82, my best friend Joe was definitely using the shoebox cassette player to tape the radio, stopping and starting on favorite songs, but the idea of a mix was not a thing for us then. My first mixes were made on my stepdad’s pretty sophisticated stereo equipment, when you could seamlessly pause, and I never gave or received tapes of anything until after 1985.”

David Williams: “Oh hell yes mixtapes for crushes. And I had to wait for ‘good FM weather’ to get decent radio out of Dallas, 120 miles to my west. And for a ravenous, rural Creem reader, the Runaways weren’t obscure. Let’s just say when I finally met Joan Jett in the 90s, my heart still melted!..The problem where I grew up was having a crush receptive to my nascent good taste! (BTW since FM is line-of-sight, ‘good FM weather’ was usually low clouds or fog.)”

Jack Thompson: “My memory, admittedly, not very reliable, is we started recording stuff off the radio, KINK or KGON in Portland, somewhere between 1975-1978. Never a song by song thing but the stations would announce these special programs, live Springsteen, Supertramp, or they were going to play the whole Boston album or the Beatles White Album, start to finish. A friend had one of those all-in-one radio, cassette, record player stereo systems in his bedroom. We’d listen to the 90-minute cassettes in our cars, cruising around town recklessly getting drunk and stoned, Putting vinyl albums on cassettes and playing those in cars came shortly thereafter. I got my first stereo with a cassette recorder in 1978-79. I don’t remember making too many song mixtapes (save maybe a couple of special dance party mixes) until the 1980s but those then became mini-obsessions and a 90-minute cassette could easily take 3-5 hours to record. So ’77 sounds a little too early to me too but mixtapes off the radio were I think technically possible by then.”

Phil Dellio: “I can say, without any uncertainty at all, that I made a few mix 8-tracks in either ’76 or ’77. My friend had a player that allowed you to record. Which doesn’t really answer your question, but if you could make a mix 8-track, I have to believe you could make a mix-tape, too…Mrs. America has had some good music. Favourites so far: the Mama Cass song that ended the first episode, the Kinks’ ‘This Time Tomorrow,’ and–the episode I think you’re talking about, which I’m only halfway through–Anna Karina’s ‘Roller Girl.’ Found this wild video yesterday….I also finally remembered my first real stereo, which had a double cassette deck built in. It wasn't a brand name. That would have been '78 or '79. I don't know how common mix-tapes were for other people then--I just made them for myself--but it was something you could do if you wanted to. Vaguely related: in 1974, I sat in front of the TV with a cassette player and taped Nixon’s resignation speech. Quite unnecessary–I should have sensed YouTube on the horizon.”

Greg Morton: “Our college radio station would record album sides on blank 8-tracks. Not individual songs though. 1971. First Boz Scaggs, B.B. King Completely Well with ‘The Thrill Is Gone’.”

Michael Little: “Wow. The only thing we could do with our 8-tracks is try to pull them out of the player when they got eaten. What I loved about 8-tracks is the way the player would stop in the middle of a song, make a click, and pick up the song where it left off. Really kept you in suspense, it did. Really pissed you off, too. I had an 8-track/radio boombox type of thing. I remember listening to UFO on it. And Boston. Boston ruled.”

Jack Livingston: “I wondered about that scene and where they got the info. If based on facts. My friends and I were making mix- cassette tapes in the early 70’s Midwest, Auroa, Ill. And Denevr Co. (I was 21 by 1973)—mostly for in car/van use as we could buy and install cassette decks. . Home recording was decent via cassette player/recorders. Car decks ate tapes like crazy though. We also made them for parties.
Soon started making tapes for other people of new artists that were hard to find for a bit for others. NY Dolls, Stooges, VU, MC5, Wayne County, etc. etc. It is sort of hard to believe now, but these were mostly not artists others listened to at all. The Runaways were even less known, but as Fowley was of interest (even had a terrible glam album by him then) so I knew the song but didn’t have that album until a bit later. My family was using cassette players like the ones in the Phyllis Schlafly scene, to send talk letters back and forth. It was a thing. So made me think of that. I don’t recall mailing mix tapes across country then yet. But richer kids may have if we were messing with the format.”

Brian Chin: “In 1974, my dad got me a compact Sony stereo with a turntable, tuner and cassette recorder in one piece, I often taped new records to avoid the wear of playing them, and played my taped selections while doing chores. I didn’t exchange tapes until the eighties, when i bought two Technics DJ turntables and a teeny Radio Shack mixer. I am transcribing some of the tapes I made for my then-partner to play in a retail store he managed, and listened to while jogging at the Y one side of a C-90 at a time. My brother had a portable cassette recorder that I used to tape songs off the radio, with DJ talk at the intro and fade. I would never give away tapes like that, i was avoiding buying records by sitting at the record button through Casey Kasem’s countdown".”

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(Back to me.)

Fun fact: Only 8-track I own is Hot Butter’s Popcorn (which I’ve never seen in any other format.) But I definitely remember beer can collecting. Pretty sure I even wrote a feature for my high school newspaper about the most prodigious collectors of beer cans in the school. And I also remember taping individual songs off the radio with a hand-held tape recorder (“The Night Chicago Died” comes to mind, for some reason.) But I’m pretty sure we never made a whole compilation, much less shared one.

PS#1 (two years later): Watched Rock n Roll High School for the first time in decades in my friend V. Marc Fort’s backyard a couple weeks ago; Mary Woronov as Principal Evelyn Togar reminded me both of Cate Blanchett as Phylis Schlafly in Mrs. America and Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

PS #2 (also two years later, on the occasion of Kathy Fennessy’s Pop Conference paper about Tim Curry’s “I Do the Rock”): I’ve always subliminally associated “I Do the Rock” in my head with Ian Dury’s “Reasons to Be Cheerful, Pt 3” — Also a kind of list rap, also from the same year. Plus their last names rhyme! Still have both 45s.

Facebook, 16 May 2020- 10 May 2022