Overview
As we saw in earlier lessons, solo singers became increasingly important during the 1930s. Singers such as Ella Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby built long, successful careers with their interpretations of jazz and Broadway standards. More and more singers followed in this mold in the 1940s and early 1950s, including Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Patti Page, and Doris Day. Singing groups were common as well, such as the Ink Spots and the Boswell Sisters. Although many singers began in the Broadway or big band mold, many branched out into covers of all types of tunes from a variety of genres.
Objectives
- Examine a number of popular singers and singing groups from the 1940s and 1950s
- Examine how each singer or group offered a unique perspective for the interpretation of standard tunes
- Recognize the different interpretations of the same standard
- Examine how each artist was able to create an identity while performing much of the same repertory
The Hit Parade
From 1935 to 1959, the barometer of success for pop songs was a radio show called Your Hit Paradepopular radio show that featured a staff of professional singers who performed the top ten pop songs each week, which was sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes and aired over the CBS network. On Saturday nights, the top ten pop songs were performed by a staff of professionals. Decisions as to which songs would appear were based on the number of performances the tunes had received that week over the radio, on jukeboxes, and among the dance bands around the country, as well as how many copies of the sheet music and the recordings had been sold. The exact method of calculation was a carefully guarded secret and was the work of the accounting firm Price, Waterhouse, and Co. Each Friday before the broadcast rehearsal, a Brinks armored truck collected information from several unidentified national locations and delivered it to the producers of the radio show. The top three tunes were not even disclosed to the singers until the last possible moment.
Most of the great pop singers sang for a time on the show, including Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mercer, Dinah Shore, and Dorothy Collins. The all-time hit, appearing 33 times on the show, ten times in the first position, was Irving Berlin’s "White Christmas ♫." Next, 30 times, was "People Will Say We're In Love ♫," from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! Finally, appearing 29 times, was "Harbor Lights ♫," a 1937 English pop song by Kennedy and Grosz.
