Working Across the Markets: Records, Songs and Artists in Pop, R&B and Country, 1954-1956

Working Across the Markets: Records, Songs and Artists in Pop, R&B and Country, 1954-1956

Between 1954 and 1956 the American trade press still treated pop, rhythm and blues, and country & western as separate categories, with separate charts and separate classifications. Its own pages, in those same years, show records, compositions and performers appearing across more than one of them.

1954: a country tune identified by another market

Billboard of 7 August 1954, page 39, reviewing a release in its `Country & Western Records` section. The record is by Billy Walker; one side, Going Going Gone!, is `a poignant weeper`, and of the other the reviewer says only this:

`the flip is the country tune now a hit in the pop market`

A country record, filed in the country section, identified by where else it was selling.

One composition, two sections

Shake, Rattle and Roll was recorded by Big Joe Turner for Atlantic and by Bill Haley for Decca in 1954. Billboard printed the same title and the same `Progressive, BMI` publishing credit against both, which is how the paper identified them as one piece.

What the issue of 16 October 1954 adds is where each one appeared in the charts, in the same week, on different pages of the same chart section.

On page 42, under `The Billboard Music Popularity Charts — RHYTHM & BLUES RECORDS`, Turner's `Atlantic 1026` sits at six in `Best Sellers in Stores` and at five in `Most Played in Juke Boxes`. Both charts are `For survey week ending October 6`.

On page 28, under `POPULAR RECORDS`, Haley's `Decca 29204` is at eight in that section's `Most Played in Juke Boxes`, for the same survey week. Its flip, A.B.C. Boogie, is printed with it.

And the two are not strangers to each other's territory. In the rhythm and blues territorial listings on that same page 42, they appear together: `4. Shake, Rattle and Roll, J. Turner, Atl.` and `5. Shake, Rattle and Roll, B. Haley, Dec.`

None of these notices calls either record a version of the other. The pages establish what they establish: two recordings of one composition, each with its own position, in two named sections of the same week's charts.

One composition, one section

The same test on a second pair gives the opposite result.

Blue Moon of Kentucky also exists on two 1954 records, identified as one composition by the same method — the title and the credit `Peer, BMI`, printed by Billboard against Elvis Presley's `Sun 209` in August and against Bill Monroe's `Decca 29289` in October. That identification is set out in full elsewhere.

In the two October issues examined — those of the 9th and the 16th — both recordings appear only within `Country & Western`. Presley is in the `C & W Territorial Best Sellers`; Monroe is reviewed in the country section. Neither turns up in the pop or rhythm and blues charts of those issues.

Two compositions, two pairs of records, and in those issues only one of the two is visible across more than one market. A second recording of a song was not, by itself, a movement between categories.

Two deals, November 1955

Billboard of 3 December 1955 put a story on its front page under the headline `DOUBLE DEALS HURL PRESLEY INTO STARDOM`, datelined New York, 26 November. The plural matters: there were two contracts, with two different companies.

`RCA Victor beat out the diskery competition and signed the 19-year-old to a three years-plus-options contract.` (The paper's figure; Presley had turned twenty that January.) `Besides which, Hill & Range inked him to a long-term exclusive writing pact, and at the same time set up a separate publishing firm, Elvis Presley Music, Inc., which will operate within the H.&R. fold.`

What RCA Victor bought from Sun Records was the contract itself — `The latter still had a year to run` — together with `rights to all of the singer's Sun pressings, including five unreleased waxings`. The price the paper gives is `a reported pay-off of $40,000`, and `reported` is Billboard's own word. No figure is given for anything else in either deal.

Hill & Range bought publishing. The paper says the firm `entered the Sun picture in a deal to buy the publishing rights in Hi Lo Music, a subsidiary of the Sun label`, whose copyrights included the Presley Sun sides Mystery Train, You're Right, She's Gone and You're a Heartbreaker. Separately, `Another tune previously recorded by Presley on Sun ("That's All Right") has been acquired by H&R from Wabash Music` — the same publisher Billboard had credited for That's All Right in its 1954 review of `Sun 209`.

Then the sentence about how Victor intended to work him:

`Altho Sun has sold Presley primarily as a c.&w. artist, Victor plans to push his platters in all three fields — pop, r.&b. and c.&w.`

The expansion across fields came alongside a plan to retain the same backing lineup: `RCA Victor's singles specialty chief, Steve Sholes (who will record Presley), plans to cut the warbler with the same backing — electric guitar, bass fiddle, drums and Presley himself on rhythm guitar — featured on his previous Sun waxings.`

The transition included an overlap. `Sun has retained the right to press a certain additional number of the platter under its own label until the first of the year`, while `Victor expects to release the disk under its label within the next eight days`. The record in question, I Forgot to Remember to Forget, was `No. 4 on the c.&w. retail best-seller chart this week`.

What the trade press meant by crossing markets

By 1956 the sources examined were using several distinct expressions for these movements.

For a composition recorded by someone else, the verb in use was `cover`. Cash Box of 28 July 1956 has it while describing a role that had ended: the rhythm and blues artist and the country artist had `moved out from the status of launching platform from which a pop star could cover and ascend the charts with a national pop hit, and took the play away from the pop artist`.

For a performer, another phrase appears in the same editorial: `Fats Domino, Little Richard, Clyde McPhatter and many others crossed the line. And on the other hand Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Bill Haley all sell well in the r & b markets.`

And for where an act stood, the word in that poll is `classification`. On the same page, the Platters are reported as having won three firsts in the Cash Box disk jockey poll: `"Most Programmed Vocal Group" in the R & B classification`, `"Up and Coming Vocal Group" in the pop classification`, and most programmed record with The Great Pretender. One group, two classifications, one poll.

The same vocabulary also appears in first-person advertising. An advertisement in Billboard of 23 June 1956, page 50, written in the first person from `Macon, Georgia`: `Although TUTTI-FRUTTI was covered by several big-name artists, my record appeared on all the pop charts, as well as R&B charts. And believe me, I was in heaven!` The records named — Tutti-Frutti, Long Tall Sally, Rip It Up — are Little Richard's on Specialty, and the Top 100 on that same page carries `40. LONG, TALL SALLY — Little Richard — Specialty`. Being an advertisement, it records a claim and the language used to make it, not an account of the charts.

Separate categories, overlapping markets

In the issues that close this period, pop, rhythm and blues, and country & western are still three headings, with three sets of rubrics and three sets of positions. Nothing in these pages shows them merging.

What the pages do show is a composition holding places in two of them at once; a second composition that, in the issues examined, appeared only in one; a country review identifying its own record by the pop market; one vocal group winning in two classifications of a single poll; and a recording company setting out, in writing, to work one artist in all three fields — while keeping the four musicians who had made his previous records.

A note on sources

• Facsimiles from the World Radio History archive, `https://worldradiohistory.com/`. Page numbers are pages of the facsimile, not printed folios. Issues read for this article: Billboard of 10 July, 7 August, 9 October and 16 October 1954; 3 December 1955; and 23 June 1956; and Cash Box of 15 May 1954 and 28 July 1956.
• The archive's search locates candidate issues; multi-word queries there behave as AND searches rather than exact-phrase searches, so every quotation was read in the facsimile itself. Transcriptions are corrected for obvious scanning errors.
• Chart, advertisement and review are kept apart. A chart gives the section, positions and whatever each printed column explicitly labels; column values are not interpreted without their headings. An advertisement gives what its buyer chose to say. A review gives only the words it prints.
• No notice in the issues examined calls any of these records a `cover` of another. The word is quoted only where the sources apply it, in general terms. The four recordings discussed here are described as what the credits establish: two recordings of one composition, twice over.
• Names repeat across categories and can mislead a search: the Monroe in the pop charts of October 1954 is Vaughn Monroe, not Bill Monroe.
• Figures are given as the sources give them. `$40,000` is reported by Billboard, not confirmed by the parties, and no figure is printed for the Hill & Range agreements.