By the 1950s, jukeboxes were as influential as radio in breaking hits. From 1943 until 1957, the industry trade magazine Billboard maintained a hit chart based on jukebox plays. “Popularity meters” that counted plays of each record were becoming standard on the machines by the 1940s, though operators often ignored them to push their own favorite records. If Thomas Wayne’s “Tragedy,” from the South Memphis Fernwood label, was taking off in one joint, operators would put that record elsewhere, and they’d replace worn-out copies again and again. If Buster wanted to help a small label like Fernwood, he could report higher plays of “Tragedy,” which would prompt others outside of the region to give the record attention. “Tragedy” eventually hit No. 5 on Billboard’s Top 100 chart.
A mogul like Buster Williams who serviced operators with multiple routes and whose machines were wearing out multiple copies of the latest from Bobby “Blue” Bland or Johnny Cash played a big part in making a hit. “Over a period of time,” says Leon McLemore, the manager at Williams’s Music Sales, “we could distribute forty or fifty thousand copies of a record.” The Music Sales distributorship played a role in establishing careers for all the Sun Records artists, many Stax hits, Al Green at Hi—pretty much all the familiar names established on indie labels. Buster’s operation accrued a lot of power.
The major labels controlled the record pressing plants, and work for the independent labels was often bumped to the back of the line. But at Buster’s Plastic Products, indies got respect and soon they were coming from all over the nation. Manhattan’s Atlantic Records, which would grow into a major label, was one of their leading clients. By 1956, Plastic Products was at capacity, pressing records in three shifts around the clock, using a vinyl compound that Buster created.
To expand, Buster bought a former cheese factory in Coldwater, Mississippi. “We put in a hell of a plant down in Coldwater,” says McLemore, who worked closely with Buster. “We had ninety-seven presses at one time down there, and we were shipping two hundred and twenty-five thousand records a day out of Memphis, three shifts a day. Tonnage wise, Coldwater was the largest shipper that Delta Airlines had for a couple of years. We’d send a truckload of records into the airport every night.” The records pressed by Plastic Products were shipped all over the country.