Music of the Postwar Era Recent Titles in American History through Music Music of the Counterculture Era James E. Perone Music of the Civil War Era Steven H. Cornelius Music of the Colonial and Revolutionary Era John Ogasapian Music of the Great Depression William H. Young and Nancy K. Young Music of the Gilded Age John Ogasapian and N. Lee Orr Music of the Postwar Era Don Tyler American History through Music GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tyler, Don. Music of the postwar era / Don Tyler. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978–0–313–34191–5 (alk. paper) 1. Popular music—United States—History and criticism. 2. Popular culture—United States—History—20th century. 3. United States—Social conditions—1945- I. Title. ML3477.T85 2008 781.640973009045—dc22 2007032817 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright C 2008 by Don Tyler All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007032817 ISBN-13: 978–0–313–34191–5 First published in 2008 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Preface vii Acknowledgments xi 1. Charting the Hits 1 2. How Was Popular Music Dispensed? 9 3. From Swing to Sing 31 4. The Pre-Rock Fifties 55 5. The Early Years of Rock ‘n’ Roll 73 6. Hollywood’s Biggest Hit Songs and Movie Musicals of the Postwar Years 103 7. The Best of Postwar Broadway 127 8. Country and Western Music of the Postwar Years 155 9. The Most Noteworthy Composers and Lyricists of the Postwar Years 185 10. The Top Recording Artists of the Postwar Years 201 vi Contents Appendix: The Combined Hits Charts for 1945–1959 229 Bibliography 255 Index 261 Preface I was honored when Debra Adams, senior acquisitions editor, asked if I’d be interested in writing the Postwar Music volume for Greenwood Press’ ‘‘American History through Music’’ series. I was particularly excited because, literally, this is the ‘‘music of my life.’’ I was in the first grade when World War II ended, and in high school when Elvis Presley burst into the nation’s consciousness. Obviously, as a first grader I was not completely enthralled with the hit songs of the era, but my family was listening to Your Hit Parade weekly. And my parents and I were always singing the currently popular hits. Popular music has been an important part of my life as a consumer, performer, and teacher. I wish musical labels didn’t exist because they tend to create barriers. Good music is the music that affects the listener’s emotions, whether it is classical or popular, pop or country, jazz or semi-classical, rhythm and blues (R&B) or swing. In order to get an accurate view of any era, we must con- sider various styles of music to try to determine how they influenced—and were influenced by—the nation’s music-listening public. When it comes to judging the American public’s taste in popular music, one must be extremely careful. It does appear, however, that the public chooses commercialism over quality most of the time. A song may be well written but still have no hit potential. If it isn’t commercial—if it doesn’t appeal to a broad market—it isn’t really successful in the eyes of music viii Preface publishers and record-company executives. Beauty is definitely in the ear of the beholder when it comes to popular music hits, and commercialism defeats quality in most instances. The starting point for me in the writing process for this book was to look at the various charts that were available between 1945 and 1959. I knew what songs I liked and thought were the best from this time period, but I thought it was extremely important to find some evidence to support or to refute my personal preferences. Some critics may rightfully claim that I have been too chart oriented, but as fallible as the pop charts were, they fur- nished me with reasonably accurate information as to which songs should be included. I quickly found that the various charts very seldom agreed with each other, so I decided to combine the available charts to form a more accurate measurement of popularity. The charts available during this era were Bill- board, Your Hit Parade, Variety, and Cash Box. Joel Whitburn, generally rec- ognized as the Billboard guru, has published several books using the Billboard charts, but for this book I primarily used A Century of Pop Music and Pop Memories. I used John R. Williams’s This Was Your Hit Parade for information on that hit survey. I simply counted the weeks each song spent at number one over the period covered by this book. The tiebreaker was the total number of weeks on the program. Variety published a top ten for each year from 1941 through 1980 in its January 14, 1981, edition. I used it as Variety’s contribution. There were two potential sources for Cash Box information: Frank Hoffmann’s The Cash Box Singles Charts, 1950–1981 and Randy Price’s Web site. There were many conflicts of information between these two sources. For instance, Hoffmann’s book named ‘‘Any Time,’’ ‘‘Tell Me Why,’’ and ‘‘I’m Yours’’ the No. 3, No. 7, and No. 8 songs, respectively, in 1952, even though they didn’t register at number one for any week of that year. Therefore, I chose to simply count the weeks at number one from Price’s Web site and rank them accordingly. The unfor- tunate result was several ties when songs collected the same number of weeks at the top. Next, I simply assigned numbers to the corresponding place on the charts. I started with number one equaling 40 points, number two equaling 39 points, etc. Taking each song’s rankings, they were added together. For example: ‘‘Till the End of Time’’ in 1945 was number two on Billboard (39 points), number one on Your Hit Parade (40 points), and number two on Variety (39 points), which equals 118. That qualified the song as the top Preface ix hit of 1945 because no other song collected more points. The Cash Box chart began in 1950. Your Hit Parade ended on June 7, 1958. This simple system did necessitate a few arbitrary decisions. In instances when multiple recordings of the same song made it to number one or, for that matter, when multiple versions were in Billboard’s year-end top forty, I decided to count only the highest ranking. Some of the charts counted all recorded versions of the song as one, while others ranked each version as a separate entity. In normal circumstances, using all four charts, if a song was number one on all the charts, the total number of possible points would be 160. Using three charts (pre-1950, before Cash Box started), the total would be 120. However, in the case of ‘‘To Each His Own’’ (1946), with Billboard rankings of No. 4, No. 12, and No. 18, the total, once added to Your Hit Parade’s number-one tie and Variety’s number two, would be 172, which is 52 points above the maximum allowed when using three charts. The same thing would apply to ‘‘Peg o’ My Heart’’ (1947). Billboard had three popular versions of it ranked No. 4, No. 5, and No. 7, while Variety had two ranked No. 4 and No. 10, and Your Hit Parade had the song, not the recording, ranked No. 1. Those rankings added together came to 215 points, 95 points too many. Therefore, I made an executive decision: adding up all the rank- ings would skew the results far more than provide a clear view of the top songs. I have listed the multiple rankings under each song in the Top Hits of the year so readers can make their own judgment as to relative popularity. The combined charts from 1945 through 1959 are available in the appendix. In addition to chart hits, I included works from Songs of the Century and Rolling Stone magazine’s ‘‘The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.’’ In 2001, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced the Songs of the Century project, a national education initiative to promote a better understanding of Ameri- ca’s musical and cultural heritage in the nation’s schools. The songs included were from a variety of genres from country, jazz, Hollywood film music, Broadway musical songs, gospel, rhythm and blues, calypso, and mainstream pop. The December 9, 2004, edition of Rolling Stone magazine listed its choices for ‘‘The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.’’ The best thing about their list is that it was not at all chart based. Several songs are included that did not chart particularly high, but were important or historic songs. I tried to write this book in a reader-friendly style, not to impress some imaginary music critic, but as I would want someone to write for me to x Preface read. I do not pretend to be a popular-music scholar. My goal is to play the role of guide for those reminiscing readers, or for those too young to remember, but who want to learn about the popular music of the postwar era.