When Music Went Mobile with 8-Track Tapes
by Best Classic Bands Staff
Recorded music made the first step in greater mobility when, on September 15, 1965, the Ford Motor Company offered 8-track cartridge players as an option in all its sports car Mustangs and Thunderbirds as well as luxury Lincoln vehicles. RCA Records soon after begins releasing its catalog on 8-tracks, and the other major labels follow suit.
Over the next two years auto companies start to offer the players as a factory installed option, and players for aftermarket installation are introduced. The 8-track becomes the option for listening to albums in vehicles and home players are introduced as a feature on many integrated home stereo systems.
The consumer stereo 8-track was invented by the Lear Jet Corporation, who also pioneered the private jet industry. As appealing as the option of playing your favorite albums rather than hearing whatever radio stations air becomes, the 8-track cartridge format has its issues. Albums must be divided into the four discrete channels (segments), meaning songs are sometimes interrupted as the channel changes. The tape inside the cartridges can sometimes break, stretch and get tangled. Despite its shortcomings, the 8-track nonetheless becomes popular with music consumers and car players become a symbol of hipness.
Watch this ad for the 1966 Ford Mustang, complete with a “stereosonic tape player”
In the early 1970s sales of cartridges and players begin to decline as cassettes are introduced into the car stereo market. The cassette tapes and their players prove more compact and reliable. (A similar car stereo paradigm shift happened about two decades later when CDs supplanted cassettes.) By 1982 8-tracks are no longer sold at retail and only available via mail order record clubs. The last 8-track offered by a record label is believed to be Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits in 1988.
Do you still owe them money?
Today a small but avid group of aficionados collect 8-track cartridges and players. Cheap Trick offered a limited 8-track release of a 2009 album. As clunky as the format may have been, in the late 1960s it was considered by consumers to be at the technical leading edge and an innovation in recorded music portability.
A steal!
Whoever is in charge of such things has designated April 11 as National 8-Track Tape Day.
Watch a primer on the evolution of car audio
Listings for 100s of classic rock tours
28 Comments so far
Jump into a conversationDoes anyone remember 4 track tapes – they had only two programs instead of four.
You bet I do, they were the fore bearer of the 8 track tape, they didn’t last long, but they made their mark on the industry. 8 tracks only lasted a few years as well before the cassette became the answer to everyone’s prayers.
I used to repair 8 track players …Talk about Simple Technology!!!
I didn’t even know about 8-tracks till the early 70’s….?? Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was our first one!!
Had an 8 track under dash installed in my 72 Dodge Colt. Great sound over the AM/FM radio. Brings to mind Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein”
I had an after-market 8-track player put into my new ’73 Firebird. Unfortunately, while I was at the movies one night, someone broke the passenger window and liberated the 8-track player. :o( But it was a great sound while it lasted! I specifically remember flying down the highway to Elton John’s “Love Lies Bleeding” from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road!
I also had a 73 Firebird. I had an FM convertor attached to my AM radio. Car rusted out within 8 years
The forerunner of the 8-track was the “cart,” a staple at radio stations for playing commercials (and sound effects). You can see a wild setup in early Mission Impossible episodes (2nd and 3rd season) when Mr Phelps (Peter Graves) gets his mission orders by playing what looks like an 8-track cart in a primitive car player.
I worked at radio stations in the 70s and 80s. We carted commercials & PSAs, music, bits, news stories, everything. In the storage room of every station, was a cart repair and tape replacement area. Those carts had the same issues as the consumer 8-tracks.
does anyone remember the under-dash car stereos that played both 8-track AND cassette tapes from the same bay?
I had several in the day, a couple of different brands from Kraco (?) to Craig and I think there was even a Pioneer version … but I have only been able to find an ad for RadioShack’s Realistic brand … ahhh, nostalgic tech!
Wow, this goes way back. My dad who naturally was the driver at first wore out an 8-track tape of “The Sound of Music”. It goes without saying I soon knew every song, not by choice, although I began to like some of them. Then I got my license, and it all changed to Jethro Tull, Zep, and Yes, which was so much better.
If you had a book of matches You were good to go.
You wouldn’t think they were so groovy if you had been trapped in the back seat of a 60’s Chevy listening to Grand Funk Railroad Live clicking from one track to the next …on and on… all while under the influence of a certain recreational chemical…. Oh my god!!! This will never end!!!! I’m trapped for ever!!! Thank you Tim Leary and Ernie “Madman” Muntz.
I can tell you during stairway to heaven when the tape changed tracks during the song. I had Poco, Crazy Eyes that did the same thing.
Don’t forget the mandatory pocket comb in the corner so it would play.
All great memories. As for myself, were it not for the famed 8-track player I would not have an ingrained knowledge of every note from “Aqualung” or “Nantucket Sleighride,” both loops played endlessly for an undetermined period that seemed like forever. I’m grateful.
Agree with Da Mick.
I, too, had “Nantucket Sleighride” ‘and “Flowers of Evil” on continuous loop, along with Ten Years After’s “Rock and Roll Music To The World”, on my home stereo, car 8-Track, as well as my portable GE 8 – Track, while working outdoors.
Good times.
I gotta share = liked previous comments CLICK I had hooked up an 8-track player
to my 1974 Plymouth Gold Duster CLICK
which benefitted me on long trips because
CLICK radio stations faded from town to CLICK town. Plus I was the DJ & I could play
CLICK all my favorites. In its day, I loved it! But
I would love to have CLICK my 1974 mettalic
green gold Duster CLICK back updated w/CD.
I have a quad 8 track player in my 71 Imperial topped with 2 stereo EQs for front and rear channels and cooled by 2 modern computer cooling fans. It’s a pretty sharp setup for when I go for a summer drive.
I owned a 2003 Mercedes compressor and I KNOW it had an 8 track player in the glove compartment. My children say it could not have had one that late, but I swear it did. How can I prove it. I just sold it last year.
Some of the recent Nancy Sinatra (as well as a few other artists) reissues and compilations have and are being offered on 8-track cartridges.
I had a compact 8 track mounted in the glove box of my 65 VW bug. It was out of sight in several ways.
Book ’em Dano! My first car was a 66 VW bug. I still remember having to get a voltage converter to up the 6 volt system to 12 volts in order to install my tape player – also in the glove box.
Great article! I remember fighting with my siblings to listen to our 8-track tapes in the car. Those were the days!
The first 8-track I remember was in my dad’s 1969 (might have been a ’70) Olds Toronado. I was about six years old and was sitting in it while it was parked and pulled the cartridge out. I thought I’d broken it and quickly shoved it back in, hoping nobody would notice. It was the complimentary tape that came with the car. The only two tracks I remember were the 5th Dimension’s “Up, Up and Away” and Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind”.
Nice comments, I think that it was 1973,parents got me for my 12th birthday a portable Sears 8-track player 6 d size batteries/ac adapter when for near outlets, 1 favorite tape that I never was without kept in it was Foghat Rock and Roll Outlaws, and when I got my DL in 77 it was with me and my 2 24 tape cases.
My older sister had a beautiful black 1960 Thunderbird that was affectionately known as “the Batmobile”. When Madman Muntz first came out with the 4 track players she had one installed at their shop in West Los Angeles. It was good weekend fun to pick up bootleg 4-track tapes at the Roadium Swap Meet kitty-corner from El Camino Jr. College in Torrance. Both Brian Wilson and Al Jardin were students at ECC. As much as I listened to the radio, it was a trip to be able to pop in tapes of music of your choice and cruise the expanse of Los Angeles. Great memories for sure!
We must have been a bit slow in Arkansas (insert hillbilly joke here) in changing from the 8-track to cassette decks, because I don’t think I saw a cassette deck in a car until at least 1975, maybe ’76. Everyone I recall with cars in high school (’75-’77) had an 8-track. But in the two years after high school, the rush from 8-track to cassette players was rather extreme. I was still buying 8-track tapes into 1980 (had one in my car), but within three years of that, there wasn’t hardly anyone carrying them anymore. And yes, there are certain albums that I STILL recall precisely where the “rumble” was when the channel changed. The one I recall best was on “Dark Side of the Moon”, as just when “Us and Them” goes into “Any Colour You Like”, it faded and went from channel three to four.