CHARTS

The commercialisation of music has spawned many attempts to compare individual pieces of music and to rate them on some kind of scale, using record sales and airplay as the key indicators of success, popularity, and quality.

The relationship between the music industry and the rating charts, developed by enterprises such as Billboard in the U.S. and Melody Maker in the U.K. is not as simple as it might seem. The charts certainly reflect record-buying habits and the air-time radio stations give to different songs, but they also help to dictate such trends. Radio stations want to play the most successful chart songs, and the more airplay a song gets, the more people will hear it and thus the higher sales will go. Of course, many other factors also influence sales, including television, advertising, and the opinions of the music critics.

THE BILLBOARD CHARTS

In the 1890s, Billboard Advertising was a magazine focusing on advertising’s use of huge billboards to sell to the burgeoning populations of America’s towns and cities. In the early decades of the 20th century, the magazine, by then called The Billboard, expanded to cover the entire entertainment industry. Its first charts were based on sheet-music sales. A list of “Popular Songs Heard in Vaudevil [sic] Last Week” soon developed into “The Billboards Song Chart.”

During this same period, Victor and Columbia became successful manufacturers of records and spring-wound phonographs. The public’s appetite for recorded music grew fast, and in 1907, Enrico Caruso’s Victor recording of a solo from I Pagliacci became the first million-selling classical record. Later, jukeboxes brought the sound of early jazz to the masses at the drop of a coin, especially in rural areas where privately owned phonographs, concert halls, and live-music clubs were in short supply.

Electricity made for better recordings and phonographs, and by the 1940s radio had become a significant player in the music industry. The parallel development of Broadway musicals, sound in the movies, and the evolution of “big bands” made the roles of songwriters and vocalists more significant. Accordingly, The Billboard magazine focused its music coverage on music-shop dealers, radio “disc jockeys” (DJs), and jukebox entrepreneurs, and soon coined the term “picks” to single out likely hit records.

The magazine’s first official Top 10 singles chart, which was published in July 1940, was topped by Tommy DORSEY’S big band version of “I’ll Never Smile Again.” The song featured vocals by 25-year-old heart-throb Frank SINATRA. A “Harlem Hit Parade” (introduced in 1942) and the “Most Played Juke Box Hillbilly Records” (1944), began to chart the development of what would be known a decade later as rhythm and blues (R&B) and country music. By the early 1950s, The Billboard was charting “Best Sellers in Stores,” “Most Played in Juke Boxes,” and “Most Played by Jockeys,” limiting each of these charts to 30 records. Todd Storz is said to have started “Top 40” radio during this period, signalling a shift away from programming based on DJs’ individual preferences and toward tighter formats derived from the charts and other indices of popularity.

The Billboard introduced a “Hot 100” singles chart in 1955 to reflect the mushrooming interest in rock’n’roll. The magazine responded to the need to track singles (distributed as double-sided, 7-inch, 45-rpm records) separately from albums (in the “long-playing,” 12-inch, 33-rpm format), and to distinguish charts based on sales from those based on airplay. The magazine changed its name to Billboard in the 1960s, began identifying emerging hits as “bubbling under,” renamed its R&B chart as “R&B/soul/black,” and over the next several decades added to its pop/rock and country charts the genres of classical, gospel/spiritual, adult contemporary, new age, dance, rap, modern rock, world music, jazz, and contemporary jazz. In 1991, the charts became more reliable with the introduction of computerised sales-tracking.

GAVIN-A BILLBOARD RIVAL

Although Billboard’s charts have figured prominently in the promotion and public perception of the importance of popular musicians for over half a century, radio programmers have come to rely more on a system initiated by the innovative Bill Gavin. After working on radio as a musician and announcer, Gavin was hired in 1955 to programme the “Lucky Lager Dance Time” show, airing hits on 48 different radio stations across the American West. By this time, radio stations had begun developing their own hit-lists. Gavin decided to collect each station’s Top 10 list, combine them, and send the result out, providing what many thought to be a more accurate indicator than the Billboard charts. Bill Gavin’s Record Report soon expanded to include radio stations far beyond the West. It also caught the attention of the major record companies, and Gavin began charging subscribers for his services.

As well as a “Record Popularity Index” based on reports received from his “correspondents,” Gavin’s modest publication included a breakdown of favourites by station, a “Hot 20” list of newer songs, Gavin’s “Personal Picks,” and his editorial comments on the music and radio industries. Its reputation grew rapidly, bolstered by its founder’s proven ability to anticipate future hits, and by his refusal to be influenced by any form of bribery or power-mongering.

ETHICS VERSUS PAYOLA

Gavin expanded beyond pop and rock to other genres, repackaging his publication in a magazine format. He also founded the American Disc Jockey Association, which in I960 drew up a code of ethics, decrying the practice of paying for or otherwise soliciting airplay— a practice known as “payola.” Since the first days of Top 40 programming, the radio industry had been scrutinised by the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the U.S. Congress, all suspecting that radio playlists were being influenced by something other than the charts.

Perhaps the most spectacular target of the payola investigations was the legendary New York DJ Alan FREED, who allegedly coined the term “rock’n’roll,” and who was credited with getting the new genre accepted on radio, TV, and film. In I960, Freed’s reputation was tarnished by an indictment on commercial bribery charges relating to his selection of records for airplay.

Anti-payola legislation, however, proved difficult to enforce, and the influence of money on airplay continued, at least well into the 1980s, through the activities of “independent promoters”—outside operators hired by record companies to get particular singles or albums on radio playlists. Anecdotes never confirmed in court suggested that some of Billboard’s chart-preparing personnel might have been open to influence.

CHART RECORDS

A prominent and sustained presence on the Billboard charts (and, to a lesser degree, the charts of Gavin, Cash Box, Radio & Records, and other music industry publications) continues to count as a reliable measure of success. Bill HALEY and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” was the first rock’n’roll song to lead Billboard’s Top 5, reaching the top in the week of July 9, 1955 and staying there for seven more weeks. Elvis Presley, who had already appeared on Billboard’s country and western charts, equalled Haley’s achievement with “Heartbreak Hotel” in 1956. The same year, Presley’s two-sided “Don’t Be CruelV’Hound Dog” was a chart-topper for 11 weeks, longer than any other rock record, and was succeeded by another Presley hit, “Love Me Tender.” His life total of 17 U.S. No. 1 hits was surpassed only by the Beatles. Significantly, Haley’s and Presley’s popularity was bolstered by the exposure of their singles on film and TV, respectively. The Beatles’ domination of the U.S. charts began with “I Want to Hold your Hand” on February 1, 1964, signalling the end of America’s monopoly of the charts, the onset of the so-called British Invasion, and a new era for rock. By April 4 of that year, the group had tied up the entire Top 5 and had surpassed Presley’s record presence on the Hot 100—he had nine singles on that list in December 1956—with 12 concurrent hits. The longest-ever span of chart hits is 40 years, a feat achieved by Frank Sinatra, who appeared on the very first of Billboard’s contemporary charts (July 20, 1940), and who hit No. 1 again 26 years later with “Strangers in the Night” and made it to the number 32 slot with “Theme from New York, New York” in 1980.

Jeff Kaliss