November 21, 2009
Best of 1900-1960–#1s
Besides my quest to find the best songs of each year, I do not want to neglect songs from those years before 1955. You see, most pop song reference books start in 1955. July 9, 1955, to be precise, is the date that Rock Around the Clock went to Number One.
Fortunately, not all reference books start there. The one I’m using for this part of the quest is called A Century of Pop Music, by Joel Whitburn. In it, he lists the top forty songs of each year.
For the years 1900-1960, I am not taking the year-by-year approach, but instead I am taking the Biggest Hits of each year and comparing them against each other, then the second biggest hits, and so on.
Many of these songs, especially those before 1920, I have not been able to find. I am grateful to those who have posted videos of Victrola’s and other grammophones playing these songs (youtube.com) and also The University of Santa Barbara’s Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project. (cylinders.library.ucsb.edu) for their efforts in preserving some of these songs on the most ancient recordings.
So, going only by the Biggest Single hit of each year, the best was:
1944: Bing Crosby–Swinging on a Star
And here are the six best, by decade:
- 1895: John Phillip Sousa’s Orchestra–The Stars and Stripes Forever*
- 1906: Billy Murray–The Grand Old Rag
- 1915: John McCormack–It’s a Long Long Way to Tipperary
- 1927: Gene Austin–My Blue Heaven
- 1930: Rudy Vallee–The Stein Song (University of Maine)
- 1949: Vaughn Monroe–Riders in the Sky (A Cowboy Legend)
- 1953: Les Paul & Mary Ford–Vaya Con Dios (May God be With You)
*I may have said this somewhere else, but my quest is to find the Best Pop Songs of All Time. The first recordings were made in 1888, and by 1890 they were releasing songs for sale to the public. Unfortunately, my reference book doesn’t cover 1890-1899, but I was able to find this one in a list of pre-1900 recordings. It was by far the best of the 1890-1899 recordings that I could find. I mean, this was Sousa’s own actual band! You can find this recording at cylinders.library.ucsb.edu.
Filed by listmeister at 7:21 pm under Music
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