Time Machine co-ordinates VILXXXIII5303158

Yes, I'm done teasing you all!  Due to a relentless lobbying campaign by a certain song, we now have the 100th #1 song in M10 history!  And because of that, I'm gonna spend a LOT of time telling you who it ISN'T this week!  Also this week, we have Sonny James to tell us about 1958, a 6D that might be an even bigger failure than my "what 45 in on the The Beths video" adventure (though this time it's not my fault), and I promise, no Pat Boone in leather this week!  Fortunately, I have no time to tell you what happened on our target date of March 1st, 1958 ( a good thing, 'cause all there was was a Turkish shipwreck that Wiki can't agree with itself on the casualty count), But I can tell you the obvious...

...Liz Cooper and the Stampede's Outer Space, which slips to #2, is NOT the 100th #1!

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Ladies and gentlemen, let's hope our time with THIS vet goes a bit better- Sonny James!

Glad to be here- I guess... this isn't considered a club, is it?

No, Sonny, and with Elvis in charge of the commissary, no alcohol.  I made sure that you'd be comfortable.  Folks, he left his first big break- a tour with Slim Whitman- because his family had never approved of playing in clubs when they were together.  That cover it?

Pretty much.

Now you served in Korea.  I bet you'd be amazed that it's taken us this long to elect a President willing to try and make peace- on our terms- with the North Koreans.

How long would that be?

From where I grabbed you, 61 years...

GEE willikers!  Just now?  I thought with that Krushchev guy taking over in Russia, things might change a bit...

Well, that actually took about 30 years...

Man... maybe we'd best git back to the music...

I think you're right.  You have a list of 13 songs from 25 stations this week, so it's a tight race and the votes are real spread out.  So I'll give you the one vote wonders, and throw in the only two-vote choice...

Okay!  Lessee here... Jimmie Rodgers is at #15 on the Cashbox charts with a tune called Falling In Love Again.

Then comes Maybe by the Chantals at #26...

And then comes two more songs that ain't #100!  One of them is...

...Leonard Cohen's You Want It Darker, which does move up from 7 to 5.  Also on that not-number-one list is...

...the Essex Green, who slip one more spot to #7 in their 6th week with Sloane Ranger...

Are you gonna do that a lot?  'Cause that's kinda annoying...

Er, well, not during your particular segment.

Good.  Ed Sullivan never did that to me, an' I was the first country and western act on his show...

Sorry, Sonny...

Anyway, next is CB's #1 this week, Elvis doing his hit Don't.

Ya know, I'm a bit disappointed in my vote totals here the last couple weeks...

Yeah, me too, buddy...

The Royal Teens were at #3 with Short Shorts...

E:  Huh?  My song got beat by that stupid thing?

No, you got the same votes.  But at least you were number one...

S:  Hey, guys, I ain't gettin' paid for this...

C and E:  Sorry, Sonny...

S:  Mitch Miller was at #22 with the River Kwai March- if'n you like a lot of whistlin'...

Pat Boone had a Wonderful Time Up There at #34...

E:  Until he showed up in that there leather suit.  Chris, don't you do it...

I won't... this week.

S: Finally, the 2-vote song was the Silhouettes with Get A Job at #2.

Which means the top 3 on CB got a whopping 4 votes- one less than the winner got by itself.  And here are the finalists...

S: Awl right, make your choices from Chuck Berry and Sweet Little 16 at #18, the Champs and Tequila at #23, Perry Como's Catch A Falling Star at #4, or the Crescendos and Oh Julie at #6.




Thanks, guys, and here's a couple more to chew over on the "I'm not #1" list.  The 100th #1 is NOT...

...Santana's In Search Of Mona Lisa at #3, climbing one notch.  And it is not the debut at #10, which Laurie picked from a three way tie for me!  For their big return since last being on the M10 since November of 2015, here is Pure Bathing Culture at #10...





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So our 6D song- the one that charted highest this week without a Panel vote- is the #5 Sail On Silvery Moon by Billy Vaughn's Orchestra.  I noted that the first time it charted (according to a stumbling Wiki) was in 1937, by Bing Crosby, who hit #4.  And I thought it might be fun to find out what three songs beat him out of the top.  So I went to a site which had top tens for all these bygone weeks, and looked for it.

Well sir, Bing either by himself or in duets or with orchestras, had a BUNCH of hits in 1937.  Blue Hawaii got to #8.  There's A Gold Mine In The Sky, Sweet Is The Word For You,  and The One Rose (Left In My Heart) made #7, I Still Love To Kiss You Goodnight made #5, Too Marvelous For Words hit #3, as did The Moon Got In My Eyes; Sweet Leilani and Never In A Million Years hit #2, and Remember Me? and Pennies From Heaven hit the top.


But no Sail On, Silvery Moon.

So I tried MusicVF, where I always go first when Wiki fails me.  It agreed with the Wiki claim of it hitting #4.  And, it claimed that it charted in between two particular songs; but when I referred back to the charts I found, those songs charted 6 months apart, in April and September, and needless to say, he had a lot of other hits float in between.  Next up, I found a video that claimed first that it wasn't even recorded until September of '37, but still insisted it made "Billboard's Best Sellers Chart" that same year.


Then, I found out that the Billboard Best Sellers Chart wasn't actually started until 1940.  Huh?

Then I found an article from 1987, which said this whole "pre-1940 charts thing" was a bunch of BS.  He critiqued Joel Whitburn's research as sloppy and making stuff up, and that several sites had fallen for his inaccurate work- mentioning by name Wikipedia and MusicVF.  Which makes sense, because MVF got the number from Whitburn's book and Wiki got it from MVF.

Whitburn had debated the issue with the blogger, who told him, "I have microfilm copies of all the sources you list in my personal library".  Whitburn had then apparently agreed to "look into things, and work with you on fixing errors", but according to the blogger, 20 years later that had not happened.

Sigh.

So as I'm typing this, I thought to myself, "Was it the b-side of one of these other hits?"  And I learned, b-side yes; hit, well...

I went through a record discography and I never quite found  the song on any a or b side.  So I decided to try permutations of "Bing Crosby, Sail On Silvery Moon, Decca" (Decca being the label it was most likely on) on Google images.  That led me to the song of which Sail On was in fact the b-side- a tune called When You Dream About Hawaii.  And then I went back to wiki and MVF, and none of them had it as a charting hit.  And then I saw what might just be the reason why...

Both sides, right under the Decca logo, are "clearly labelled":  NOT LICENSED FOR RADIO BROADCAST.

No airplay, no hit.  So how did Whitburn get it to be a #4 hit? For that matter, how did he have Sweet Leilani as the top song of the year by a wide margin, when Pennies From Heaven spent January AND February at or near #1 and SL only hit #2?  Answer, both charts are BS.  The first chart I found- the one which had no Sail On- claims to be a Hit Parade chart.  And wiki says, back then EVERYBODY called their top ten a Hit Parade.

So who did finish ahead of Bing?  Either it was three songs we'll never know, or every song that ever played legally on the radio.  You choose.

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So who else WASN'T the 100th #1?  Well, it wasn't...

...Criminal Hygiene's Greetings From A Postcard, which in a bad week for songs in their 6th week fell from three to 6.  And since I bad mouthed the 6-weekers, that means you can also cross off the bookies' odds-on favorite...

...Roseanne Cash's The Only Thing Worth Fighting For, who exhausted herself against Liz Cooper and falls two spots to #4.


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I had a pretty sorry Stat Pack this week.  The big mover was the Crickets and Maybe Baby, going up 17 to #36, and the Brit #1 was Perry Como with Magic Moments.

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That leaves me with the winners and the last two "Sorry, Charlie" songs.  They would be...

...Leon Bridges with If It Feels Good (Then It Must Be) moving up one spot to #9, and...

...the Fast Romantics doing the same with Mexico at #8.


And now.....


The 100th #1 M10 song, pestering me to move it up all the way from #5...







And the winner of the Panel vote, getting 5 votes to 3 for all the rest...

...The Crescendos and Oh Julie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Next week, 1959, a Crescendo or two, and Joel Whitburn's lawyer....