Payola (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

 OED has 1938 for Payola.  HDAS is noncomittal on the subject.

Here's a non-standard usage (at least to me), which antedates:


"Tune Merchants Approved by F.C.C." (no author) _Traverse City [MI]
Record-Eagle_, 10/20/1937 p. 16 col 2.
"A "payola" is an orchestra leader who expects to receive a fee
from a publisher for "plugging" a song."

It may go back further, though:
"Obituary:  Abel Green, 72" _The Rolling Stone_ 6/21/1973 issue #137. p
12 col 3
"In 1921 he wrote an article about payoffs to bandleaders for performing
publishers' songs, and two words were born:  "payola" and "plugger"."
[note: OED has this sense of "plugger" going back to 1908]

>From the same Rolling Stone obit:

"Green is credited with the creation of the unique show business slang
language still in wide use today.  Words such as "boffo," "whammo,"
"biz,"
"eatery," "thrush," "diskery," "socko," "obit," "pix," "flick" and
"webs"
(for networks), "biopic" (for film biography) and "cleffer" (for
songwriter)
were first used in the pages of Variety in Green's stories and
headlines."
[note that OED has obit back to 1459; eatery to 1901; biz to 1862 ]
Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org