I would like to think that anyone with a decent appreciation for the history of American popular music would know “Autumn Leaves,” “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing,” and at least two others: “The Yellow Rose of Texas” by Mitch Miller and “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford. “I Hear You Knocking” would be more familiar in versions by Smiley Lewis and/or Dave Edmunds than the one by Gale Storm. A regular reader of this blog would certainly know the Platters’ “Only You” and Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline,” as well as “Ain’t That a Shame,” although probably the Fats Domino version and not so much the one by Pat Boone.
#Moments to remember sing tv#
The song from this chart best known to the non-geek population today might be Frank Sinatra’s “Love and Marriage,” thanks to its use as the theme song for the TV show Married With Children. Other songs heard in multiple versions include “At My Front Door,” “Only You,” “He,” “Black Denim Trousers,” “Seventeen,” “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” “Suddenly There’s a Valley,” and several others. Two versions of “The Shifting, Whispering Sands” are in the Top 10. For example, the Top 100 shows four versions of “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing”: the Four Aces at #1, Don Cornell at #30 (a Top-10 hit the previous week down so far this week thanks to the new methodology), David Rose at #60, and Woody Herman at #79. The new Top 100 has cleared the way for five other versions to debut: by Steve Allen (#44), Victor Young (#54), Mitch Miller (#64), Jackie Gleason (#67), and the Ray Charles Singers (#77).Īs we saw with a March 1956 chart a few months back, it was common for multiple versions of the same song to chart at the same time. The biggest and best-known version, by pianist Roger Williams, is at #2 in this week. Six versions of “Autumn Leaves” appear on the 11/2/55 chart. The domination is led by one song in particular. On this new chart, Pat Boone and the Platters are in the Top 10, and a handful of other records have an early rock ‘n’ roll sound, but the chart is dominated by the kind of pop music that had been popular since big-band jazz fell out of fashion after World War II: songs by solo vocalists and vocal harmony groups, and orchestrated instrumentals.
It’s the first week for this new chart, which incorporates sales, airplay, and jukebox play into a single big chart, even though Billboard will continue to publish those separate charts for a couple of years yet. Take as an example the Billboard Top 100 singles chart dated November 2, 1955. But if a new era had really begun that year, it wasn’t a clean break from the era before. Also, was it necessary to include two different versions of "Harbor Lights," one by the Platters and one by Sammy Kaye? (It has to be granted, however, that at least nine versions of that song reached the Hit Parade during the '50s.(Pictured: the Four Lads harmonize, 1955.)Īlthough there are better dates, a lot of authorities date the birth of the rock era to 1955, specifically when “Rock Around the Clock” became a national hit. It's hard to believe the compilers forgot "Cry" by Johnnie Ray, "Wheel of Fortune" by Kay Starr, "The Tennessee Waltz" by Patti Page, and "Because of You" by Tony Bennett, each of which ruled the roost for months and were available for licensing (in fact, other hits appear from Starr and Page).
A few of the era's biggest hits are missing, however. Better still is how the compilers spice the mix with the odd middle-charting hit - Jim Lowe's "The Green Door," Archie Bleyer's "Hernando's Hideaway," "See You in September" by the Tempos, "Eh, Cumpari" by Julius LaRosa - that sums up the era as well as the smashes. As a summation of '50s pop, it's an excellent overview, providing an extended look at the great good feeling ("Dear Hearts and Gentle People" by Dinah Shore, "How High the Moon" by Les Paul & Mary Ford, "Lollipop" by the Chordettes) hopeful sentimentality ("Chances Are" by Johnny Mathis, "April Love" by Pat Boone, "You Belong to Me" by the Duprees) and occasional bursts of ennui ("Where the Boys Are" by Connie Francis, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" by the Platters, "Crazy" by Patsy Cline) that characterized vocal pop music during that decade. Shout Factory's three-disc set of vocal pop hits from the '50s (and early '60s) is a valuable collection, both because it includes a wealth of chart-toppers and because it unearths quite a few of the nuggets that rarely make it to anthologies of this sort.
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