Records in the Trade Press: A Chronology, 1947-1956

Records in the Trade Press: A Chronology, 1947-1956

A list of records can be assembled two ways. One is to decide what matters and then find records to match. The other is to open the trade papers of a period and take what those pages carried.

What follows is the second kind, and a chronology of that sort still involves selection. The eleven issues of Billboard and Cash Box used here carry hundreds of records between them; the entries below are examples drawn from those pages. Each inclusion is tied to a dated page — a chart, a review or an advertisement — and the sequence makes no claim to completeness or canonicity.

1947-1949: race records and folk records

Roy Brown — Good "Rockin'" Tonight, `Deluxe 1093`. A distributor's advertisement in Billboard of 29 November 1947 lists it at 49½ cents, between `58TH STREET JUMP` and `HASTINGS STREET BOUNCE`. The advertisement says nothing about how it sounds.

Wynonie Harris — Good Rockin' Tonight, `King 4210`. Five months later the same title is on another label: Billboard of 1 May 1948 has it at number eight in `MOST-PLAYED JUKE BOX RACE RECORDS`. Nothing on those pages identifies the two as one composition.

Nellie Lutcher — Fine Brown Frame, `Capitol 15032`, at number two on that same chart, above Louis Jordan's two entries of the week.

Louis Jordan — Reet Petite and Gone, `Decca 24381`, at four, and Barnyard Boogie, `Decca 24300`, at five. A review elsewhere in the issue calls him `the disk-selling shouter`.

Eddy Arnold — Anytime, `Victor 20-2700`, at number one in `MOST-PLAYED JUKE BOX FOLK RECORDS` on the same page, in a chart whose rubric defines its contents as `hillbilly records`. Its flip, What a Fool I Was, is at four.

Hank Williams and His Drifting Cowboys — Love Sick Blues backed with Never Again, `MGM 10352`, at number one in the issue of 25 June 1949 — the week Billboard renamed that chart `Folk (Country & Western)`.

1953-1954: two markets, and a title in both

Rose Maddox — I'd Rather Die Young / The Nightingale Song, `Columbia 21127`, reviewed in Billboard of 20 June 1953: `Rose Maddox delivers a very strong performance…`. The same issue reports that Columbia had signed her as a solo artist after years with the Maddox Brothers & Rose.

Ruth Brown — Mend Your Ways, `Atlantic 993`, in the rhythm and blues territorial listings of that issue, printed alongside a B. B. King release.

Willie Mae Thornton — I Smell A Rat. Cash Box of 15 May 1954 reports the record `has started to take hold very quickly`.

Big Joe Turner — Shake, Rattle and Roll, `Atlantic 1026`. On 16 October 1954 it sits at six in `Best Sellers in Stores` and five in `Most Played in Juke Boxes` on the `RHYTHM & BLUES RECORDS` charts.

Bill Haley — Shake, Rattle and Roll / A.B.C. Boogie, `Decca 29204`, reviewed on 10 July 1954 and recommended for juke box operators. Billboard prints the same `Progressive, BMI` publishing credit against this record and against Turner's — which is how the paper identifies them as one composition. In the issue of 16 October, Haley's version is at eight on the `POPULAR RECORDS` juke box chart while Turner's is on the rhythm and blues pages.

Elvis Presley — That's All Right / Blue Moon of Kentucky, `Sun 209`, reviewed in the `Country & Western Records` section on 7 August 1954: `Presley is a potent new chanter who can sock over a tune for either the country or the r. & b. markets.`

Bill Monroe — Blue Moon of Kentucky, `Decca 29289`, reviewed on 16 October 1954: `Bill Monroe sings the ballad with an appealing catch to his voice. He starts it slow and then does a reprise with a stepped-up [tempo].` The credit printed beside it is the same as on Sun 209: `Peer, BMI`.

1956: rockabilly in these pages

Carl Perkins — Blue Suede Shoes / Honey, Don't, `Sun 234`, reviewed on 21 January 1956: `a lively reading on a gay rhythm ditty with strong r. & b. styled backing. Fine for the jukes.` Five months later the same paper called the same record one of `three rockabilly platters on the r. & b. list`.

Little Richard — Tutti-Frutti, on Specialty. An advertisement in Billboard of 23 June 1956 carries a first-person account: `Although TUTTI-FRUTTI was covered by several big-name artists, my record appeared on all the pop charts, as well as R&B charts.` The Top 100 on that page has Long, Tall Sally at forty. Being an advertisement, it records a claim and the language used to make it.

Roy Orbison — You're My Baby / Rockhouse, `Sun 251`, reviewed on 20 October 1956: `a fast country blues with a strong rockabilly beat. Flip, another good rockabilly rhythm side.`

Ray Harris — Where'd You Stay Last Nite? / Come on, Little Mama, `Sun 254`, in the same column: of the first side, `Typical rockabilly backing`; of the second, `Solid country blues, rockabilly style. Harris' vocal is backed by typical Sun back shack instrumental arrangement.`

What a list like this leaves out

Seventeen entries, and the omissions are not evidence of absence. Chuck Berry is on one of these pages: Roll Over Beethoven sits at nine on the same rhythm and blues best-seller listing that carried the June 1956 column quoted above, one place above Blue Suede Shoes. He is not in the sequence, which is a statement about how this list was assembled and none at all about the record.

What the sequence does follow is a vocabulary. There is a Ray Harris single here because a reviewer in October 1956 described it in the terms this chronology is tracking, not because the record outsold anything around it. That is what a list of this kind can do and what it cannot: it fixes what each record was called, by whom and on what date, and it settles nothing about quality or completeness.

A note on sources

• All entries come from issues of Billboard and Cash Box held as facsimiles in the World Radio History archive, `https://worldradiohistory.com/`. The issues used are those of 29 November 1947; 1 May 1948; 25 June 1949; 20 June 1953; 15 May 1954 (Cash Box); 10 July, 7 August and 16 October 1954; 21 January, 23 June and 20 October 1956.
• Dates are publication dates of the trade paper, not recording dates. None of these pages gives a session date, and none is supplied here.
• Chart positions are given with the chart's own name. A chart shows a section and a position; an advertisement shows what its buyer chose to say; a review gives only the words it prints. The three are not interchangeable.
• Quotations are transcribed from the archive's scanned text and corrected for obvious scanning errors.
• Catalogue numbers and record titles are as the pages print them, including Come on, Little Mama and Where'd You Stay Last Nite? on Sun 254.
• Billboard of 20 October 1956 heads the Sun 251 review `RAY ORBISON`. The artist is Roy Orbison; the first name is as the paper printed it, not a transcription error.