1950

The Fat Man - Fats Domino / Recorded '49?, Released Apr / (Fats Domino / Dave Bartholomew)
Mardi Gras In New Orleans - Professor Longhair / Recorded Oct '49 / (Roland Byrd)
I Almost Lost My Mind - Ivory Joe Hunter / Recorded '49 / (Ivory Joe Hunter)
Were You There When They Crucified My Lord? - Rosetta Tharpe / Recorded Dec 12 '49 / (Traditional)
Double Crossing Blues - Johnny Otis Orchestra With Little Esther Phillips, Mel Walker + The 4 Robins / Released Feb, Recorded Dec 1 '49 / (Johnny Otis / Jessie Mae Robinson)
The Very Thought Of You - Doris Day / Recorded Jan 25 / (Ray Noble)
This Is Heaven To Me - Billie Holiday / Recorded Mar 8 / (Frank Reardon / Ernest G. Schweikert)
Mona Lisa - Nat King Cole / Recorded Mar 11 / (Ray Evans / Jay Livingston)
Count Every Star - The Ravens / Released Apr / (Bruno Coquatrix / Sammy Gallop)
You Don't Love Me - T-Bone Walker / Recorded Apr 5 / (V. Lee)
The Boulevard Of Broken Dreams - Tony Bennett / Recorded Apr 17 / (Al Dubin / Harry Warren)
The Story Of A Married Woman - John Lee Hooker / Recorded Apr 28, Released 73 / (John Lee Hooker)
Bryant's Boogie - Jimmy Bryant + Speedy West / (Jimmy Bryant)
Ain't Misbehavin - Sarah Vaughan / Recorded May 18 / (Andy Razaf / Fats Waller / Harry Brooks)
Gonna Dance All Night - Hardrock Gunter + The Pebbles / (Sidney Louis Gunter)
Rollin' Stone - Muddy Waters / Released Jun, Recorded Feb / (McKinley Morganfield)
Goodnight Irene - The Weavers / Released Jul/Aug? / (Traditional)
Sam's Song (The Happy Tune) - Bing Crosby With Gary Crosby / Released Jul? / (Lew Quadling / Jack Elliott)
Teardrops From My Eyes - Ruth Brown / Released Oct, Recorded Sep / (Rudy Toombs)
The Other Night Blues - B.B. King / Recorded Sep, Released Jan '51 / (Riley B. King / Joe Bihari)
Looking For A Boy - Ella Fitzgerald / Recorded Sep 11 / (George + Ira Gershwin)
Should I? - Frank Sinatra / Released Oct 16 / (Arthur Freed / Nacio Herb Brown)
Moanin' The Blues - Hank Williams / Released Oct 27, Recorded Aug 31 / (Hank Williams)
I'm Gonna Live 'Till I Die - Frankie Laine / Recorded after Sep / (Mann Curtis / Walter Kent / Al Hoffman)
The Tennessee Waltz - Patti Page / Released Oct / (Pee Wee King / Redd Stewart)
If - Dean Martin / late '50 / (Stanley Damerell / Tolchard Evans / Robert Hargreaves)
Please Send Me Someone To Love - Percy Mayfield / Released Nov / (Percy Mayfield)

Selected Notes and biographies:
The Fat Man was the first single by Fats Domino, and one of many songs up for debate as being the first rock and roll record, featuring a rolling piano and Domino doing wah-wah vocalizing. The record, a reworking of Junker's Blues by Champion Jack Dupree, was a massive hit in 1950, selling over a million copies. At the time, Domino is playing in Honky-Tonk bars in New Orleans for $3 a week.

In the late 1940s, Roland Byrd sat in on piano at the Caledonia Club while Dave Bartholomew's band was taking a break. He was an immediate hit and Bartholomew was fired. The band all had long hair and were dubbed Professor Longhair and the Four Hairs. His signature song, Mardi Gras in New Orleans (still the theme song of New Orleans Mardi Gras) was recorded in 1949 under the name Professor Longhair and the Shuffling Hungarians. "I had one Hindu in the band, but there weren't no Hungarians," he explained. He had another hit in 1950, Bald Head under the name Roy Byrd and his Blues Jumpers.

A recording artist since the 30's, a songwriter since the 40's, Ivory Joe Hunter was a great talent as a singer and especially as a songwriter. I love the simple slow, sloping melody of this song. His music was popular in both rhythm and blues and country sectors.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was a gospel singer, singwriter that dared to bring gospel music into clubs and in front of big bands in the 30's and 40's. Seeing her perform spirituals with a choir, and then slip into an electric guitar solo midsong, certainly an anomoly at the time, is a great thing. She is an electrifying performer to see and hear, if you can find old footage, don't pass it up.

In 1950, Johnny Otis was a west coast musician, big band leader and talent repertory man for King Records. He discovered Etta James, Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard, Little Willie John, and in 1947 he brought Esther Philips into his own band straight from a talent show win at a club he played at. With Otis, Little Esther had several hits, she left his revue in 1951. She wasn't as successful again until 1962, rediscovered by Kenny Rogers. This song was the first in a series of blues hits on the Savoy label, including Mistrustin' Blues.

In the 50's and 60's, Doris Mary Ann von Kappelhoff, known to the world as Doris Day, was the wholesome role model for a generation of women. She was a dancer in the 30's, a singer in the 40's, and eventually a movie star, in the 50's. She sang in most of her films, this song made it's home in Young Man with A Horn. Her career painted her mainly as a good-hearted woman with a strong will, a hint of naïveté, and the purest virtue this side of a nun.

An American singer, Billie Holiday is generally considered to be, alongside Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald, one of the greatest female jazz voices of all time. Her singing career began in the 30's and surged in the 40's. By the 50's she had gotten involved with drugs and drinking. This is Heaven To Me was recorded in a slow period, in between her tenures at Decca and Verve Records.

In the 30's, Nat Coles began his career as a pianist with his brother Eddie Coles, a bassist. In California, Long Beach, and Los Angeles, Nat started a few bands and began playing clubs in the area. He began singing in the 40's, his singing style was calm and low-key, and at odds with most Jazz performers, but his popularity grew, so that by the time 1950 came around he was an icon. He was not particularly enthusiastic about Mona Lisa, but it grew to be a huge hit, selling three million copies.

The Ravens were one of the earliest groups of the sound that would come to be known as doo-wop. This style featured a group harmony with a bass and falsetto key amongst the singers. In an unheard of move, the Ravens even brought their bass singer, Jimmy Ricks, up front for a lead in the now classic '47 recording of Old Man River. Black pop music in the 40's had been geared toward a white audience, with a straight forward sound, and none of the influence of rhythm and blues heard here.

An acknowledged major influence on B.B. King and Jimi Hendrix, Aaron (T-Bone) Thibeaux Walker is believed to have been the first bluesman to use an amplified acoustic guitar. He learned his craft from Blind Lemon Jefferson, and began his recording career in 1929. He brought to the blues electric guitar solos, of a style that is still used today, and in the 40's he added a big band background to most of his blues hits.

With a career began as a singing waiter, Anthony Benedetto was discovered after serving in WWII by Pearl Bailey and Bob Hope in 1949, performing at the time under the name Joe Bari. Mitch Miller signed him to Columbia Records at the same time Frank Sinatra was leaving, christianed him Tony Bennett, and Boulevard of Broken Dreams is his first recorded single for the label.

John Lee Hooker ran away from home at age 15 when his father died. He had learned to play blues style guitar from his step-father, and in Detroit, began playing at blues clubs and bars. He also began recording at various studios, and is known for recording at more studios then any other musician. In 1948, he recorded Boogie Chillen, and his career began in earnest.

The fastest guitar in the country, Jimmy Bryant, met pioneering pedal steel guitarist Speedy West in the 40's. Bryant was influenced by Django Reinhardt, and a session musician for country, blues, and rockabilly records. Speedy was signed to Capitol Records and when the two were heard together, Capitol signed them both for a series of instumental records in 1950. Bryant's Boogie is a typically breath-taking display of instrumental prowess from Bryant on electric lead and West's steel.

Sarah Vaughan's career began when, at the age of eighteen, a dare from friends resulted in her entering the famed Amateur Contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater in 1942. Her rendition of the jazz standard Body and Soul won her first prize. In the audience that night was the singer Billy Eckstine. Six months later, she had joined Eckstine in Earl Hines’s big band, and sang alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, as well as being the bands second pianist. In 1945 she went solo, and became an extremely popular standards vocalist.

Gonna Dance All Night is supposedly, along with Birmingham Bounce, also by 'Hardrock' Gunter, the first time the term 'rock and roll' was used to describe dancing or a dance. The term itself is found in songs as early as the 20's however. A few years later Hardrock was able to rerelease this song as something that fit perfectly with the music of the times. Previously calling himself Goofy Sid, he was renamed for his head being hard as a rock, and seemed to be interested in this rock theme so much that he named his backing band the Pebbles.

Born in rural Mississippi, McKinley Morganfield was first recorded for the Library of Congress by Alan Lomax, in 1941. Lomax had come searching for Robert Johnson, who had died three years earlier. Morganfield left for factory work in Chicago in '43, also around the time he switched over to electric guitar. By '46 he was recording blues records for Chess Records. Now, in 1950, Muddy Waters has made his name as Chicago's leading blues singer; his electrification of the blues and raw vocal style will make him a major influence during the dawn of rock and roll. In fact, the birth of rock and roll can be simplified as an amalgamation of the music of Muddy Waters and Hank Williams.

The Weavers formed in 1948 by Pete Seeger, the Weavers were the first superstar folk group. Goodnight Irene is a sweet revision of an old composition by Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly. The legendary folk/blues singer frist recorded it in 1933 for John and Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress.

Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor whose career began in 1926. He was one of the most successful performing artists of the 20th century. Arguably the first true multi-media star, Bing Crosby's influence on popular culture and popular music is enormous -- from 1934 he held a nearly unrivaled command of record sales, radio ratings and motion picture grosses. He is usually considered to be a member of popular music's "holy trinity" of ultra-icons, alongside Elvis Presley and The Beatles. Bing Crosby popularized singing with conversational ease, or crooning. His musical interpretations amalgamated rhythm and romance with scat singing, whistling, rhythmic improvisation and melodic paraphrasing as elements of a hotter, sexier sound than had been conceived before. Crosby is also credited as being the major inspiration for most of the male singers that followed him, including the likes of Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Dean Martin and Tony Bennett. Sam's Song is a duet with his son Gary.

Ruth Weston was a nightclub singer that was introduced to Atlantic Records by young DJ Willis Conover in 1948. Before her first recording session however, she was severely injured in a terrible car accident. Her legs were shattered, and would cause her pain for the rest of her life. But injury or no, Ruth Brown wouldn't give up. Nine months after her accident, she made it through her first recording session, while standing on crutches. Although her repertoire was mostly popular ballads, Ahmet Ertegun convinced her to switch to rhythm and blues. His productions for her, however, retained her pop style, with clean, fresh arrangements and the singing spot on the beat with little of the usual blues singer's embroidery. This style will enable her to cross over into the emerging rock and roll scene.

Riley B. King, born in Mississippi, got his start in Memphis Tennessee broadcasting his music live on Memphis radio station WDIA, a station that had only recently changed their format to play all-black music which was extremely rare at the time. He became known as the 'Beale Street Blues Boy' because of his playing on Beale Street in Memphis. The name was then shortened to just Blues Boy and, eventually, simply B.B. His variation of electric blues involved more of a big band approach, and continues to do so throughout his career.

Okay, so this is the first time I ever really listened to Ella Fitzgerald. I mean, I'd heard her before, but never so close to the mike, nor so purely simply recorded. Piano and voice. I stopped in my tracks. I had to listen. And relisten. Ella Fitzgerald had a tumultuous early life, but somehow she made it through and became a major force in Chick Webb's Orchestra. She became a solo artist in the 40's, and as popularity of swing and big bands faded, and at the pressure of her manager, she started recording more intimate impressions of classics of the american songbook. The mid 1950s saw Ella become the first African-American to perform at the Mocambo, after Marilyn Monroe had lobbied the owner for the booking. The booking was instrumental in Fitzgerald's career. The incident was turned into a play by Bonnie Greer in 2005.

At this point in Frank Sinatra's life, his career is on a downward slope. No longer popular with teenagers, the core of his 40's audience, Columbia Records is going to let his contract expire, leaving him without a job. Of this first phase of the crooner's career, it can be said that it anticipated virtually every phase of what, in the 1960s, would be called 'the youth movement.' His sudden--and for many his alarming--appeal to teenagers became a topic of journalistic and even sociological comment. Later musical idols would pass through the same stages of massive initial appeal, decline, and retrenchment.

His songbook is one of the backbones of country music, several are pop standards as well. He has been covered in a range of pop, gospel, and rock styles. In his songs you can hear early rock and roll, rockabilly, the blues, gospel, and honky tonk. Hiram Williams grew vastly popular in the american south in the 40's, despite his alcoholism. His idol, Grand Ole Opry star Roy Acuff warned him of the dangers of alcohol, saying, "You've got a million-dollar voice, son, but a ten-cent brain." Despite Acuff's advice, Williams continued to show up for his radio show intoxicated, so in August, 1942, WSFA fired him due to habitual drunkenness. As a writer, Hank would sing about having a rowdy time or drifting aimlessly, but would then sing religious songs of remorse, most particularly, the title track to the album I Saw The Light. And the more successful he got, the more unmanagable his life became.

Frank Paul LoVecchio is considered a pioneer of white soul music. A clarion voiced pop singer with lots of style, able to fill halls without a microphone, and one of the biggest hit-makers of late 1940s/early 1950s, he began a rhythm and blues influenced jazz singer, Laine excelled at virtually every music style, eventually expanding to such varied genres as popular standards, gospel, folk, country, western/Americana, rock 'n' roll, and the occasional novelty number. The first and biggest of a new breed of black-influenced singers who came to prominence in the post-WWII era, he belted out torch blues while stomping his foot in cutting edge joints like Billy Berg's, Club Hangover and the Bandbox. In 1948, Mitch Miller at Mercury Records, recognized a universal quality in Laine's voice which he began to exploit via a succession of chart-topping popular songs often with a folk or western flavor.

Clara Ann Fowler became a featured singer on a 15-minute radio program at age 18. The program was sponsored by the 'Page Milk Company' and so young Clara Ann Fowler became songstress Patti Page. She was popular in the late 40's as a singer who multi tracked her songs, sometimes four times over, in four different voices. The Tennessee Waltz remains her most successful hit song, and enjoyed the number 1 spot on the billboard charts for 13 weeks.

Dino Paul Crocetti started as a boxer, and eventually part time singer, Dino Martini. In the late 40's he developed his own smooth singing style, featured here, and also became half of the hit comedy team Martin and Lewis, with Jerry Lewis.

Percy Mayfield began his performing career in Texas and had moved to Los Angeles by 1942. He recorded his song Two Years of Torture in 1947.In 1950, he signed with Specialty Records and released several well-received R&B records. Mayfield's songs tend to be downbeat and his lyrics tend to be heartbreaking, but his vulnerability and emotional sensitivity prevent songs like Life Is Suicide and The River's Invitation from being maudlin. A 1953 auto accident left him seriously injured, including a facial disfigurement that limited his performing.

1951

Long Distance Call - Muddy Waters / Released Mar, Recorded Jan 23 / (McKinley Morganfield)
My Heart Cries For You - Guy Mitchell / Recorded '50 / (Carl Sigman / Percy Faith)
B.B.'s Blues - B.B. King / Recorded Jan 8, Released Jun / (Riley B. King / Joe Josea (Record company cryptonym))
Jesus Gave Me Water - The Soul Stirrers / Recorded Mar 1 / (Lucie E. Campbell)
Rocket 88 - Jackie Brenston + His Delta Cats / Released Apr, Recorded Mar 5 / (Ike Turner)
Kitch's Bebop Calypso - Lord Kitchener / Recorded Mar 15 / (Aldwyn Roberts)
Sixty Minute Man - Billy Ward + The Dominoes / Released May, Recorded Dec 30 '50 / (Billy Ward / Rose Marks)
Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand - Ray Charles / Recorded after Mar, Released before Jun / (Ray Charles)
Jezebel - Frankie Laine / Recorded Apr 4 / (Wayne Shanklin)
Detour Ahead - Billie Holiday / Recorded Apr 29 / (Herb Ellis / Lou Carter / John Freigo)
Eyesight To The Blind - The Larks / Released Jun / (Sonny Boy Williamson)
Come On-A My House - Rosemary Clooney / Released Jun / (Ross Bagdasarian / William Saroyan)
The Glory Of Love - The Five Keys / Recorded Mar 22, Released Jul / (Billy Hill)
Because Of You - Tony Bennett / Recorded Apr 4, Released before Aug / (Arthur Hammerstein / Dudley Wilkinson)
Ramblin' Man - Hank Williams / Released Dec, Recorded Jun 1 / (Hank Williams)
How Many More Years - The Howlin' Wolf / Released Aug, Recorded May 14 / (Chester Arthur Burnett)
Green Tree Boogie - Bill Haley + The Saddlemen / Recorded Jul 14, Released Aug
I'm In The Mood - John Lee Hooker / Released Nov / (John Lee Hooker / Bernie Besman)
I Got Loaded - Peppermint Harris / Recorded Aug / (Harrison Nelson Jr)
In The Cool, Cool, Cool Of The Evening - Bing Crosby + Jane Wyman / Recorded Jun 20, Released Jul 16 / (Hoagy Carmichael / Johnny Mercer)
I Get So Weary - T-Bone Walker / Recorded Aug 20 / (J Williams)
I'm Gonna Dig Myself A Hole - Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup / Released before Nov 3 / (Arthur Crudup)
Lovin' Machine - Wynonie Harris / Released Nov / (Dave Lambert / O O Merritt)
Blues You Never Lose - The Delmore Brothers / Recorded Oct 5 / (Alton Delmore / Rabon Delmore)
Dust My Broom - Elmore James / Released Nov 27, Recorded Aug 5 / (Robert Johnson)
The Little White Cloud That Cried - Johnnie Ray / Recorded Oct 15, Released before Dec 21 / (Johnnie Ray)
Love Song Of The Waterfall - Slim Whitman / Released Jan 1 '52, Recorded Nov / (Bob Nolan)
Would You Like To Take A Walk? - Ella Fitzgerald + Louis Armstrong / Recorded Nov 23 / (Mort Dixon / Billy Rose / Harry Warren)

Selected Notes and biographies:
Around this time, Muddy Waters fronts a group known as The Headhunters, perhaps the hottest blues group ever: Little Walter on harmonica; Jimmy Rogers on guitar; Elgin Evans on drums; Big Crawford on bass; and Waters handling vocals and slide guitar. They'd move into a club, challenge the incumbent band, blow them off the stage in a cutting contest, then move on and repeat the process. Eventually they were banned by most club owners from entering competitions, and promoted to regular, if poorly paid, appearances.

Groomed as a child star by Warner Brothers Pictures, Albert George Cernik, son of immigrants from Croatia, supplemented his income by singing whenever he could. Eventually, in 1950, after being in a number of bands, he was noticed by Mitch Miller, who was in charge of talent at Columbia Records, and he joined Columbia and got his new stage name at Miller's urging: Miller is supposed to have said, "my name is 'Mitchell' and you seem a nice 'guy', so we'll call you Guy Mitchell."

Still recording at Sam Philip's Memphis Recording Service Studio, B.B. King tracks sell well locally, enough to interest the Bihari brothers' Modern Records, who sell King to their label and begin supervising Philip's recordings. It will be another year before King starts to enjoy any kind of substantial success.

In 1950, at the age of 19, Sam Cooke, born Samuel Cook, joined The Soul Stirrers, replacing the most popular member of the group, R.H. Harris, as singer. Jesus Gave Me Water is from Sam's first recording session with the Soul Stirrers, a major hit that brought the Soul Stirrers massive acclaim, a startingly confident performance from a fresh-faced twenty year old still trying to grow a moustache.

Another of those songs cited to be the 'first rock and roll song', Rocket 88 Featured Jackie Brenston on vocals, the band, Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats was a name created by Chess Records for this cut, leased to them by its producer Sam Philips. Rather, Jackie Brenston was the saxophonist in Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm. It's precedent for being early rock and roll lies in its heavy backbeat, enthusiastic vocal, and one of the first examples of distorted "fuzz guitar". Bill Haley and the Saddlemen would later cover it, which was also quite successful, and may have led Bill Haley into this rock and roll direction.

Born Aldwyn Roberts in Arima, Trinidad and Tobago, Lord Kitchener became a very important to figure to West Indian migrants to the UK. His music spoke of home and a life that they all longed for but in many cases couldn't or wouldn't return to. His fame continued through the 1950s, when calypso achieved international success.

Seeing the stylings of rhythm and blues vocal artists were starting to gain acceptance with white audiences, pianist and songwriter Billy Ward and talent agent Rose Marks decided to put together a group to rival the Ink Spots and the Orioles. The Dominoes consisted of Clyde McPhatter (lead tenor), Charlie White (tenor), Joe Lamont (baritone), and Bill Brown (bass). Sixty Minute Man, on which Bill Brown sang lead, was an important record in several respects – it crossed the boundaries between gospel singing and blues, its lyrics pushed the limits of what was deemed acceptable, and it appealed to many white as well as black listeners, peaking at #17 on the pop charts. It was banned by many radio stations, and was seen as a novelty record at the time.

Ray Charles Robinson was born in Albany, Georgia, and was totally blind by the age of seven. He learned how to write music and play various musical instruments at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine, Florida. While he was there, his mother died. His father died two years later. After he left school, Charles began working as a musician in Florida in several bands that played in various styles including jazz and country music. Charles moved to Seattle in 1948, at the age of seventeen. He soon started recording, first for the label Swingtime Records, achieving his first hit songs with Confession Blues and Baby, Let Me Hold Your Hand

Laine began recording for Columbia Records in 1951, where he immediately scored a double-sided hit with the single Jezebel/Rose, Rose, I Love You, confirming his reputation as the premiere hitmaker of the early 50s. Laine's contract with Columbia was the most lucrative in the industry until RCA bought Elvis Presley's contract five years later. He signature concert moves and vocal belting were a major influence to Johnnie Ray.

By the 1950s Holiday's drug abuse, drinking, relations with abusive men, and deteriorating health set her life on a slow and steady decline. Her voice coarsened and did not project the vibrance it once did. However, she seemed to stand as a prime example of the struggling artist, and projected a certain bittersweet dignity.

The Larks were a former spiritual jubilee group from the forties, which became a secular group in the fifties. One of the important early vocal groups, they like the orioles, and the ravens, followed the contemporary trend and selected a "bird" name - the Larks. Their career spanned only a two year period, but they released eleven singles during that time. The Larks, who had such a beautiful sound, got very little out of their singing career. Each member found some form of success after the original group broke up.

Rosemary Clooney was born in Maysville, Kentucky to Catholics with Irish ancestry. Her father was an alcoholic and she and her brother and sister were constantly moving back and forth between her parents. In 1945 the Clooney sisters won a spot on Cincinnati's radio station WLW as singers. Her sister Betty sang in a duo with Rosemary for much of her early career. Clooney's first recordings, in May of 1946 were for Columbia Records as a singer with the big band of Tony Pastor. In 1949 she became a solo artist, still for Columbia. In 1951 her record of Come On-a My House became a hit, her first of many.

Modeled after the Orioles, the Five Keys brought their background singers more to the front then most groups had in the past and used a floating falsetto to add to the harmony. They also switched leads in the middle verse of the song. The Glory of Love was their first and biggest hit, and would inspire many of the groups that began to form in the 50's.

The first major hit for Bennett, a ballad produced by Mitch Miller with a lush orchestral arrangement from Percy Faith. It started out gaining popularity on jukeboxes, then reached #1 on the pop charts in 1951 and stayed there for 10 weeks, selling over a million copies. This was followed to the top later that year by a similarly-styled rendition of Hank Williams' Cold, Cold Heart, which helped introduce Williams and country music in general to a wider, more national audience.

Ramblin' Man is without a doubt my personal favorite Hank Williams song. Probably one of my favorite songs ever. In 1951, 27 year old Hank Williams is admitted to North Louisiana Sanitarium, suffering from acute alcoholism. The troubled country superstar singer/songwriter has regularly resorted to alcohol and narcotics to ease severe back pain, which is now diagnosed as the result of a birth defect, spina bifida occulta. Later he joins the Hadacol Tour variety trek (promoting its sponsor's product, a potent part alcohol, part laxative elixir.

Chester Arthur Burnett explained the origin of the name Howlin' Wolf thus: "I got that from my grandfather. He used to tell me stories about the wolves in that part of the country" and warn him that if he misbehaved, they would "get him". As a youth he played with Robert Johnson and Willie Brown, and he listened to Charley Patton, who taught him the rudiments of guitar, as well as Jimmie Rodgers, whose famous "blue yodel" Burnett integrated into his singing style. In 1951, he was simultaneously signed to The Bihari Brothers' Modern Records and to Leonard Chess' Chess Records.

Bill Haley was born William John Clifton Haley, and was blinded in his left eye as a child due to a botched operation. Haley later adopted his distinctive spit-curl hairstyle to distract attention from his blind eye. The spit-curl caught on as a 50's style signature. After gaining experience with a western swing band called the Down Homers, Haley set out on his own, forming a new group called The Saddlemen. After signing to Holiday Records, the Saddlemen becan to change musical musical styles to an as-yet officially unnamed hybrid of country and rhythm and blues, when songs of this nature started becoming commercially viable.

I'm In The Mood was a solo bluesman reconstruction of the pop song I'm In The Mood For Love, and gave him another hit. In 1951, John Lee Hooker was supporting himself and his family in Detroit playing rent parties, the inspiration for his John L.’s House Rent Boogie album. He released two other this year, Leave My Wife Alone, and Just Me And My Telephone for two other, three albums for three different labels.

Born Harrison Nelson Jr, Peppermint Harris first recorded in Houston, as Peppermint Nelson, in the late 1940s, accompanied by his friend Lightnin' Hopkins. He then made further recordings including Raining In My Heart for a label run by Bob Shad - who allegedly forgot Nelson's name and released them as by Peppermint Harris. In 1951 he moved to Modern Records in Los Angeles, and had his biggest hit with I Got Loaded.

In The Cool, Cool, Cool Of The Evening was written for the 1951 movie Here Comes the Groom and won the Academy Award for Best Song. Jane Wyman, born Sarah Jane Mayfield, was the first Oscar winner to earn the award without speaking a line of dialogue in the sound era in Johnny Belinda (1948). She was married to Ronald Reagan for eight years. She had a liking for musical comedies and chose to work with Bing and Frank Capra on Here Comes the Groom. This was Bing Crosby's fourth academy award winning song.

Signed with Imperial Records and at relatively poor health, T-Bone Walker became a mostly studio musician, cutting about 12 sides a year for his new label, consolidating his reputation as the foremost blues singer of the time and continuing to maintain the highest standards of the mordern idiom.

While other performers continue to cover his songs, Mississippi-born blues singer/songwriter/guitarist Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's last chart record - I'm Gonna Dig Myself A Hole, issued by RCA Victor - enters the R&B survey. He continues touring throughout the country, specifically Black establshments in the South, with Sonny Boy Williamson II and Elmore James. He also recorded under the names Elmer James and Percy Lee Crudup.

Wynonie "Mr. Blues" Harris was an American blues shouter and rhythm and blues singer. His lyrics were adult, sexually suggestive and aimed at an urban adult audience and his vocal style was intimate and relaxed. Harris had hits in the rhythm and blues market in the early 1950's, yet a few years later he was virtually invisible to the rock and roll market. His songs contained sexually explicit references and double entendres. Lovin' Machine could not be cleaned up and still make sense. Harris made a major contribution to the birth of rock and roll in 1948 when he covered Good Rocking Tonight, written and originally recorded by Roy Brown. Brown's version was a jump blues with a jazz rhythm section. Harris's cover version was much more frantic and played with a much stronger back beat. In effect, Harris, a black artist, had done what many white artists were to do later. He had turned blues into rock and roll and made one of the first rock and roll records. The song was later covered by Elvis Presley.

Alton and Rabon Delmore, were country music pioneers and stars of the Grand Ole Opry in the 1930s. The Delmores blended gospel-style harmonies with the quicker guitar-work of traditional folk music and the blues to help create the still-emerging genre of country. In addition to the regular six-string acoustic guitar, the duo was one of the few to use the rare tenor guitar, a four-string instrument that had primarily been used previously in vaudeville shows. Their vocal harmonies and low down feeling make me all warm inside.

Born Elmore Brooks in Richland, Mississippi, Elmore James began playing as a teen, under the names Cleanhead and Joe Willie James, alongside musicians such as the first Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin' Wolf, and Robert Johnson. He began recording with Trumpet Records in 1951, first as sideman to the second Sonny Boy Williamson and others, then debuting as a session leader in August with what became his signature song, Dust My Broom. The slide guitar riff from Dust My Broom is one of the best-known openings in all of blues. It is essentially the same riff that appears in the recording of the same song by Robert Johnson, but James plays that riff with electric slide guitar.

Although practically deaf, and often performing wearing a mauve hearing aid, Johnnie Ray's uniquely tortured style of balladry and frenzied antics set off riots among female admirers during his heyday, and he quickly became the biggest teen idol since Frank Sinatra almost ten years earlier. Ray has been cited as the historical link between Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley in the development of popular music. Ray's unorthodox performing style included many theatrics later associated with rock 'n' roll, including beating up his piano, writhing on the floor and, most famously, crying. His shows (many of which were largely black R&B stages before he graduated to the Copacabana) were often compared to religious revival meetings with the singer and audience both reaching an emotional frenzy. Ray quickly earned a plethora of nicknames including "The Atomic Ray," "Mr. Emotion," "The Nabob of Sob," "The Cry Guy," "The Prince of Wails" and "Howling Success." The Little White Cloud That Cried was the #2 song to the #1 single, and most well known Johnnie Ray song, Cry.

Born Otis Dewey Whitman, Jr., Slim Whitman is one of the best-selling and most influential artists in country music history and yet at the same time is one of the most unrecognized by the American public at large. The sound of the guitar on this recording was unique at the time, created during an accident when steel guitarist Hoot Rains' hand slipped on the steel bar. Slim asked to recreate the sound, and they later called it Shooting Arrows. The public responded calling Slim the Man with the Singing Guitar, and demanding his records. The sound is featured almost as much as Slim's vocals on Love Song Of The Waterfall.

Like velvet on sandpaper, the two distinct styles of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong played together surprisingly well. Louis Daniel Armstrong was a charismatic, innovative performer whose musical skills and bright personality transformed jazz from a rough regional dance music into a popular art form. One of the most famous jazz musicians of the 20th century, he first achieved fame as a trumpeter, but was also known as a vocalist and was one of the most influential jazz singers.

1952

Night Train - Jimmy Forrest / Released Mar, Recorded Nov 27 '51 / (Jimmy Forrest)
My Landlady - Lord Kitchener / Recorded Jan 16 / (Aldwyn Roberts)
Sweet Sixteen - Big Joe Turner / Recorded Jan 20 / (Ahmet Ertegun)
Coffee Blues - Lightnin' Hopkins / Released Mar, Recorded '51 / (Sam Hopkins)
Goin' Home - Fats Domino / Released Mar / (Fats Domino / Alvin E. Young)
How Far Am I From Canaan? - The Soul Stirrers / Recorded Feb 22 / (C Brewster)
Goody Goody - Ella Fitzgerald / Recorded Feb 25 / (Matt Malneck / Johnny Mercer)
These Foolish Things - Billie Holiday / Recorded Mar 26 / (Jack Strachey / Harry Link / Holt Marvell / Eric Maschwitz)
Ting-A-Ling - The Clovers / Recorded Mar 18 / (Ahmet Ertegun)
Rock The Joint - Bill Haley + The Saddlemen / Released Apr, Recorded Apr / (Harry Crafton / Don (Wendell) Keene / Doc (Hank) Bagby)
Mr. Highway Man - Howlin' Wolf / Released Apr, Recorded Jan 23
Lawdy Miss Clawdy - Lloyd Price / Released May, Recorded Mar 13 / (Lloyd Price)
Indian Love Call - Slim Whitman / Released May or Jul / (Rudolf Friml / Otto Harbach / Oscar Hammerstein II)
Mix Up Matrimony - Lord Beginner / Recorded Apr 27 / (Egbert Moore)
It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels - Kitty Wells / Released Jun / (J.D. Miller)
Muddy Water - The Delmore Brothers / Recorded May 21
I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive - Hank Williams / Released Nov 1, Recorded Jun 13 / (Hank WIlilams / Fred Rose)
Sittin' Here Drinking - Christine Kittrell / Released Jul / (Christine Joygena Kittrell)
Daddy Daddy - Ruth Brown / Recorded Jul 2 / (Rudy Toombs)
Back Street Affair - Webb Pierce / Released Aug, Recorded Jul 29 / (Billy Wallace)
Roll With My Baby - Ray Charles / Released Sep, Recorded Sep 11
Standin' Around Cryin' - Muddy Waters / Released Nov, Recorded Sep 17 / (McKinley Morganfield)
I Don't Know - Willie Mabon / Released Nov, Recorded Oct / (Willie Mabon)
Mean Old World - Little Walter / Released Nov, Recorded Oct / (Walter Jacobs)
Booted - Rosco Gordon / Released Dec, Recorded Aug / (Tommy Courtney / Richard Henry)
You Know I Love You - B.B. King / Released Sep / (Riley B. King / Jules Bihari)
Delicado - The Percy Faith Orchestra / (Valdir Azevedo)

Selected Notes and biographies:
Jimmy Forrest was born in Saint Louis on January 24, 1920. In high school he was already performing in the local bands. He first made his mark in the jazz world in big bands during 1938-39. Later he would play with Jay McShann, Andy Kirk, and Duke Ellington. Night Train is, in fact, lifted from a 1946 composition by the Duke titled Happy Go Lucky Local. In 1951 Leonard Allen and Lew Simpkins found Forrest honking the Night Train riff in a St. Louis club and the rest is history. Forrest had given it a dirty name, so (as often happened in those days) United reconfigured the title to something more radio-friendly. United's second national hit lasted twenty weeks on the Billboard R&B chart and rose to #1 in early 1952. The record, one of the most memorable instrumentals in the history of rhythm and blues, became a jukebox standard for the next couple of decades.

Kitchener began singing professionally in 1938. Calypso was shaped in Trinidad, where its blend of Latin American and African rhythms has long been a hugely popular vehicle for social and political commentary, witty insult, sexual innuendo and - as "the people's newspaper" - a way of analysing topical events. Kitchener's first weeks in England were spent singing to bemused audiences in pubs, but within six months he had broken into the London nightclub circuit with his own band. His style, concentrating on humour, double entendre and the quirks of everyday life, was sometimes criticised for its frivolity.

Known variously as The Boss of the Blues, and Big Joe Turner (due to his 6'2", 250+ lbs stature), Turner was born in Kansas City and first discovered his love of music through involvement in the church. He began singing on street corners for money, leaving school at the age of fourteen to begin working in Kansas City's club scene, first as a cook, and later as a singing bartender. Turner's career as a performer began in the 1920s. In 1951, while performing with the Count Basie Orchestra at Harlem's Apollo Theater, he was spotted by Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegün, who signed him to their new recording company, Atlantic Records.

Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins was born in Centerville, Texas. He learned the blues when young in Buffalo, Texas from Blind Lemon Jefferson and his older cousin, country-blues singer Alger "Texas" Alexander. When Hopkins and Alexander were playing in Houston in 1946, he was discovered by Lola Anne Cullum of Los Angeles', Aladdin Records. He settled in Houston in 1952 and gained much attention. Give Me Central 209 and Coffee Blues were national Billboard R&B chart entries in 1952.

Fats' music borrowed from the rich musical backdrop of the city-cajun blues and zydeco, the creole accent in the vocal style and the overriding French influence, still a dominant force in the music culture of the region. Goin' Home became the first of nine #1 hits for Fats Domino on the R&B chart.

In 1952, The Soul Stirrer's producer Art Rupe hears a new, beat-heavy sound on the horizon. A month after this Stirrers's session, he'll go to New Orleans and cut Lawdy Miss Clawdy, a run-away #1 R&B hit by Lloyd Price that sells to both white and black fans. Here, Rupe approaches from the gospel end, adding drums to the Stirrers's usual mix. Sam Cook has clearly matured in a year, and Rupe puts his voice way forward, capitalizing on the young singer's knack for intimacy. This, the Specialty Records owner seems to be arguing, is the future.

Pop luminaries such as Ella Fitzgerald, and more especially their labels (Decca in this case) searched for hit songs in the early fifties, amidst the growth and changing of the music in the era. Novelty songs were easy, catchy, and generally pretty reliable hit makers. Fitzgerald especially enjoyed ballads, but was open to any form, and the label had a basic formula: duets with other black stars, scat and swing numbers, the odd show tunes, and pop throw aways. This is one of the hits that stayed with her for her entire career.

In 1952, Billie Holiday married Louis McKay, a Mafia "enforcer." McKay, like most of the men in her life, was abusive, but did try to get her off drugs. She had left Decca and her recording career was ripening into music of incredible poignancy as she recorded almost exclusively with Norman Granz for his Clef and Verve labels during the 1950s. There is within each of her songs in this later period, a powerful elegance that is both meditative and intoxicating. This is one of many slow love songs, more relaxed than ever before, with magical turns of phrasing that rise above the band like smoke in the air.

The first R&B/rock 'n' roll group on the Atlantic label, the Clovers started in high school in Washington, DC. John "Buddy" Bailey, lead; Matthew McQuater, tenor; Harold Lucas, baritone; Harold Winley, bass; and Bill Harris on guitar. One of the most popular groups of it's type, a type that was still being birthed in the 1950's. Their big hit this year, and for many years afterwards was One Mint Julip.

Bill Haley continues exploring a mix of country and rhythm & blues with a cover of Jimmy Preston and His Prestonians' Rock The Joint. The groundwork is being laid here for furture Haley hits, especially Rock Around The Clock, which has the same guitar solo. During the Labor Day weekend in 1952, The Saddlemen were renamed Bill Haley with Haley's Comets.

Sam Philips at Sun records continues recording Howlin Wolf and selling half the sides to Chess and half to RPM. Howlin also records with Ike Turner for Modern Records. A contractual agreement was finally reached in the fall of 1952 Wolf settled down in Chicago, where he recorded exclusively for Chess for the remainder of his career. He would proudly relate years later, "I had a 4,000 dollar car and 3,900 dollars in my pocket. I'm the onliest one drove out of the South like a gentleman."

Growing up in Kenner, a suburb of New Orleans, Lloyd Price was exposed to seminal sides by Louis Jordan, the Liggins brothers, Roy Milton, and Amos Milburn through the jukebox in his mother's little fish-fry joint. At his very first Specialty date in 1952, Price sang his classic eight-bar blues Lawdy Miss Clawdy (its rolling piano intro courtesy of a moonlighting Fats Domino). It topped the R&B charts for an extended period, making Price a legitimate star before he was old enough to vote.

Slim Whitman's 1952 single, Indian Love Call, is his most successful yet, making him a star and going to the No.2 position, and actually saving the world in the 1996 movie Mars Attacks!, where it proves fatal to the invading Martians. A yodeler, Whitman avoided the "down on yer luck-buried in booze" songs, preferring instead to sing laid-back romantic melodies about simple life and love.

Born Egbert Moore, Lord Beginner was a popular exponent of the Caribbean musical form Calypso, helping to spark a renaissance of the genre in the 1940s and '50s. Hailing from Port of Spain in Trinidad, Beginner recorded and toured in New York with other leading members of Trinidad's "Old Brigade" of calypsonians, before emigrating to England with fellow calypsonian Lord Kitchener in 1948. Mix Up Matrimony could be the most upbeat paean to interracial romance ever recorded.

Wells was born Ellen Muriel Deason in Nashville, Tennessee in 1919, long before Nashville earned its reputation as "Music City U.S.A.". She was also one of the few Country singers born in Nashville. In her teens, Wells debuted on WSIX, a Nashville-area radio station. An answer to Hank Thompson's The Wild Side of Life, It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels was one of the most controversial songs ever recorded at the time. It was almost unheard of a woman to record a song from a feminist stance. The song, a million-seller overnight, was soon banned from being on the Grand Ole Opry. Record producers all over the country were trying to find female singers to match the success Wells had, she became the first female solo artist to score a No. 1 hit on the Billboard magazine country charts. It made her the most popular female country singer up to that time and forever changed how women were seen, both in song and professionally. Wells continued to have great success on the Country Music charts for the rst of the 1950s and even into the 1960s, becoming one of the most successful Country singers of the era.

As influential as the Delmore Brothers' twenty years of sides may have been on the future of American pop, the Delmores themselves would not be able to capitalize on that future. By the early '50s, their commercial success was fading. After the death of his young daughter, Alton drank heavily; worse, Rabon died of lung cancer on December 4, 1952. Alton retired from performing, and moved to Huntsville, AL., where he worked for the post office and taught guitar.

The life of Hank Williams continued its downward spiral. Even though he enjoyed several major hits, his drug and alcohol problems ruined his marriage to Audrey (the divorce was finalized during the year), and in October, he was fired from the Grand Ole Opry. Hank married Billie Jean Jones Eshliman in October in New Orleans, Louisiana, and rejoined the Louisiana Hayride about that same time. On December 31st, Williams hired a chauffeur and was injected with B12 and morphine. He then left in a Cadillac for a concert the next day in Canton, Ohio. The following morning, when the seventeen year-old chauffeur Charles Carr pulled over at an all-night service station in Oak Hill, West Virginia, he discovered that Hank Williams was dead. The only items found in the backseat of Hank's car were a few cans of beer and the hand-written lyrics to an unrecorded song-Then Came That Fateful Day. Williams' final single was ominously titled I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive.

Christine Kittrell was born on August 11, 1929, into a musical family in Nashville, and decided that singing would be her life's work after singing in church, and listening to records by Vela Johnson, Dinah Washington, Billie Holliday and Bessie Smith. During the summer of 1952, a little independent label based in Nashville called Tennessee Records released a blues recording called Sittin' Here Drinkin'. The local record distributor claimed sales in excess of ten thousand in the first week which made a lot of people sit up and take notice. Band leader Paul Williams signed up Kittrell for a series of one nighters across the south, but as he saw the great reaction to her and her songs, he signed her to an exclusive deal with the band.

With Daddy Daddy a hit, and 5-10-15 Hours another, Ruth Brown is established as the top female vocalist in rhythm & blues. She also became known as Little Miss Rhythm and the girl with the teardrop in her voice. She became Atlantic's most popular artist, earning Atlantic records the proper name of "The House that Ruth Built."

Born Webb Michael Pierce in West Monroe, Louisiana, he became a star performer on the Louisiana Hayride and one of country music's most popular honky tonk songsters. For most of the general public, Pierce -- with his lavish, flamboyant Nudie suits -- became the most recognizable face of country music, as well as all of its excesses; after all, he boasted about his pair of convertibles lined with silver dollars and his guitar-shaped swimming pool.

By 1952 Swingtime was on its last gasp and Ray was available. Atlantic snapped him for about $2500, substantial considering his minor hit-making performance up to that time. With his first four tracks cut in the studio that September, he can already be seen moving away from his previous style.

Willie Mabon was born in 1925 in Tennessee and as a teenager started fooling around on the piano. By the time he moved north to Chicago in the early forties he was a self taught pianist and blues styled vocalist. In the late 1940s with Earl Dranes, Mabon formed a group called The Blues Rockers and played in various clubs in the Chicago and Gary Indiana areas. As a solo artist on the Chess label, Willie got a chance to record some tracks and I Don't Know was released.

Marion Walter Jacobs, influenced by the likes of Sonny Boy Williamson and Louis Jordan and his jump saxophone arrangements, revolutionized the blues harmonica technique when he showed up at Chicago's famed Maxwell Street market in 1947. His big break came in 1951 when the Chess brothers, Leonard and Phil, hired him to back Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers. By 1952 he was assigned to the Checker subsidiary, and by that September he literally burst into prominence when the instrumental Juke streaked to # 1 R&B and remained there for eight solid weeks. The single for Mean Old World was billed to Little Walter and His Night Cats.

Rosco Gordon was born in Memphis, Tennessee, he was one of the "Beale Streeters", a Memphis, TN-based group that helped develop the style known as Memphis Blues. Gordon created a style of piano playing known as "The Rosco Rhythm". The basic elements of this sound were further developed after Jamaican musicians got a hold of 45s Gordon recorded in the early '50s -- which were not available to Jamaicans until 1959 -- and created ska, which took its name for the sound of this particular shuffle as it sounded being played on an electric guitar (ska-ska-ska). Sam Phillips sold the master of Booted to two competing labels, Chess and RPM, both of whom released it as a single. This "mix-up" did not, however, prevent the song from hitting number one on the R&B chart in 1952.

Percy Faith was a band-leader, orchestrator and composer, known for his arrangements of standard tunes with lush string sections and female chorus vocal and wordless. He played violin and piano as a child, and played in theatres and at Massey Hall. After an injury in a fire, he turned to conducting, and his live orchestras utilized the new medium of radio broadcasting.

1953

Hound Dog - Big Mama Thornton / Released Jan, Recorded Aug 13 '52 / (Jerry Leiber / Mike Stoller)
The Sun's Gonna Shine Again - Ray Charles / Released Jan, Recorded Sep 11 '52 / (Sam Sweet)
(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean - Ruth Brown / Released Jan, Recorded Dec 19 '52 / (Charles Singleton / Johnny Wallace / Herbert J. Lance)
Let Me Go Home, Whiskey - Amos Milburn / Released Feb, Recorded Dec 18 '52 / (John "Shifty" Henry)
I'm Beggin' You - Lightnin' Hopkins / Recorded '52 / (Robert Ellen)
Going To The River - Fats Domino / Released May, Recorded Jan / (Antoine Domino / Dave Bartholomew)
Gee - The Crows / Released Mar, Recorded Feb / (William Davis / Viola Watkings)
Blue Lou - Ella Fitzgerald / Recorded Feb 13 / (Irving Mills / Edgar Sampson)
Crazy, Man, Crazy - Bill Haley + His Comets / Released Apr, Recorded Apr / (Bill Haley / Marshall Lytle)
Baby Please Don't Go - Muddy Waters / Released May, Recorded May 4 / (McKinley Morganfield)
Baby, It's You - The Spaniels / Released Jul, Recorded May 5 / (James Hudson / Gerald Gregory / James Bracken)
Just Walkin' In The Rain - The Prisonaires / Released Jul 8, Recorded Jun 1 / (Johnny Bragg / Robert S. Riley)
Crying In The Chapel - The Orioles / Released Jul, Recorded Jun 30 / (Artie Glenn)
Honey Hush - Big Joe Turner Released Aug, Recorded May 12 / (Lou Willie Turner)
My Man - Billie Holiday / Recorded Jul 27 '52 / (Jacques Charles / Albert Willemetz / Maurice Yvain / English lyrics Channing Pollack)
There Stands The Glass - Webb Pierce / Released Sep, Recorded Mar 25 / (Russ Hull / Mary Jean Shurtz / Autry Grisham)
Money Honey - Clyde McPhatter + The Drifters / Released Sep, Recorded Aug 9 / (Jesse Stone)
That's Amore - Dean Martin / Recorded Aug 13 / (Harry Warren / Jack Brooks)
North Wind - Slim Whitman / Released Sep, Recorded Jun 15 / (Rodney Morris)
Ricochet (Rick-O-Shay) - Teresa Brewster / Released Sep, Recorded Jul 10 / (Larry Coleman / Joe Darion / Norman Gimbel)
Saxophone No. 2 - Lord Kitchener / Recorded Sep / (Aldwyn Roberts)
Istanbul (Not Constantinople) - The Four Lads / Released Oct, Recorded Aug 12 / (Jimmy Kennedy / Nat Simon)
Mystery Train - Little Junior's Blue Flames / Released Nov, Recorded Sep/Oct / (Herman Parker)
Won't You Sit Down (Sit Down Servant) - The Staple Singers / Released Dec, Recorded Sep / (Tradintional Arranged by Roebuck Staples)
Things I Used To Do - Guitar Slim / Recorded Oct 27 / (Eddie Jones)
Calypso Be - Young Tiger / (George Brown)
Little Richard's Boogie - Little Richard / (Richard Penniman)
Bearcat - Rufus Thomas / (Rufus Thomas)

Selected Notes and biographies:
Willa Mae Thornton was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1926. She got interested in music from the influence of her parents both of whom were with the local church, her father as a minister and her mother a choir singer. In April, 1952, Johnny Otis goes on tour with her. With them, she recorded Hound Dog, which became such a big seller that Peacock Records had three new pressing plants running full time to try and keep up with demand. The writers of the tune, two twenty year old former college students, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, had their mothers as legal guardians to their financial rewards from the hit tune.

Still recording in his crooning method, but now with a powerful emotion unseen on previous sides, in '53 Ray Charles gets to know and work with Eddie Jones, also known as Guitar Slim, in New Orleans, and is introduced to his powerful blues preaching style. Ray hears the sounds of his childhood in Slim, the sounds of gospel and the church.

Ruth Brown is so busy these days with TV and stage appearances that it would be a disservice to state that she is "still active." Atlantic's First Lady of Song has thousands of adoring fans all over the world and the most requested song at her personal appearances is Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean. Atlantic had to put the single out twice to answer the demand.

Born in Houston, one of thirteen children, by the age of five Amos Milburn was playing tunes on the piano. He enlisted in the United States Navy when he was fifteen and earned thirteen battle stars in the Philippines, before returning to Houston and organizing a sixteen-piece band playing in Houston clubs, and mixing with the Houston jazz and blues scene. Among his best known songs was One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer. In 1950 Milburn's Bad, Bad, Whiskey reached the top of the R&B charts and began a string of successful drinking songs.

Sam Hopkins style was born from spending many hours playing informally without a backing band. His distinctive style often included playing, in effect, bass, rhythm, lead, percussion, and vocals, all at the same time. His musical phrasing would often include a long low note at the beginning, the rhythm played in the middle range, then the lead in the high range. By playing this quickly - with occasional slaps of the guitar - the effect of bass, rhythm, percussion and lead would be created.

Fats Domino's songs continue to succeed as hits on the R&B charts (Going To The River hits #2) and million-sellers. However, he still has trouble crossing over to the much desired pop mainstream charts.

The Crows formed in 1951 as a typical street corner doo-wop group and were discovered at Apollo Theater's Wednesday night talent show by talent agent Cliff Martinez, and brought to independent producer George Goldner who had just set up tiny new indepent Rama Records label. The song Gee was the third song recorded during the first recording session. The song was put together in a few minutes by two of the group's members. It was written and recorded so crudely, that when released it sounded like it had been actually recorded on a street corner. Although the song was a huge hit, the Crows broke up a few months after Gee dropped off the Hit Parade. It was the first 1950s doo-wop record to sell over one million records and one of the first such R&B records to crossover to the wider pop market.

The advent of bebop in the 40s caused a major change in Ella Fitzgerald's vocal style, influenced by her work with Dizzy Gillespie's big band. It was in this period that Fitzgerald started including scat singing as a major part of her performance repertoire. While singing with Gillespie, Fitzgerald recalled, "I just tried to do with my voice what I heard the horns in the band doing." But she hadn't had a hit song in years, "I had gotten to the point where I was only singing be-bop. I thought be-bop was 'it', and that all I had to do was go someplace and sing bop. But it finally got to the point where I had no place to sing. I realized then that there was more to music than bop." She signs with jazz impresario Norman Granz, as her manager, Granz feels that she is given unsuitable material to record during this period by Decca.

Unlike any record to dent the pop chart to this point, Crazy, Man, Crazy wasn't r&b, it wasn't country, it wasn't pop, yet it unified all three, and was unabashedly slanted at kids. Haley had given up playing at beer joints, to play high school hops, despite the lower pay. He had a fully realized concept, and he was on the charts with it before anybody else.

Muddy's band, now complete, featuring Little Walter on harp, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Ernest "Big" Crawford on bass, and Elgin Evans on drums, possibly the tightest blues band in history, records a couple of sides for Chess. The lineup would not last much longer, with their popularity, Little Walter and Jimmy Rogers would seek solo careers.

The Spaniels were an American R&B doo-wop group, from Gary, Indiana. Lead James Hudson and bass Gerald Gregory were an undeniable one-two punch. They were the first act to record for Vee-Jay records, the first large, independent Afro-American owned record label. Baby It's You makes an immediate impact, and marks the first step by a tiny independent label that - within three years - will become the most successful black-owned record company in the US.

Tenor singer Johnny Bragg formed the Prisonaires vocal group while serving time at Nashville's strictly segregated Tennessee State Penitentiary on rape convictions that were later cleared. The group was championed as a success in a prison reform program. With one guard and a driver, the Prisonaires traveled to memphis in 1953 to record for Sun. The session lasted over ten hours, giving the men a temporary respite from prison.

The cover record - the rerecording of a new song by a handful of artists at the same time - was standard in the pop record industry in 1953. For years, the maxim of the industry was that the song was everything, the performer a mere utility. But few black performers touched anything from the country field. The Orioles had already made music history by being the first black vocal group to record for a black audience, rather then the usual white pop audience and pop sensibilities. Sonny Til became a teen idol in the black community. Til's soulful vocals expressed feelings of deep, honest human emotion absent from the stylings of prior white and black pop singers alike. The Oriole's cover of Crying In The Chapel placed high on the national, pop, white top 20. It signifies the first real rhythm & blues crossover record, competing successfully against many white versions of the song.

Big Joe Turner had been spending all his time out on the road, while Atlantic's Ahmet Ertegun was getting nervous that his backlog of Turner recordings was running low. When Turner was near New Orleans, Ertegun insisted he record. Atlantic's New Orleans recording studio was booked up, so Turner recorded some sides in the studio of a radio station, WSDU. He did not have his own band but was able to round up raucous trombonist Pluma Davis and his band, The Rockers, as well as the wild boogie rhythm pianist James Tolliver. Like the session, this song is largely adlibbed, and he assigned the rights to his wife, Lou Willie Brown.

Originally recorded by Billie in 1948, this new recording of My Man is just as spooky, just as strange. One of my favorite Billie Holiday songs. Now signed with Verve, she is in complete control of the music she records.

After Hank Williams' death, Pierce became the most popular singer in country music. For the next four years, every single he released hit the Top Ten, with a total of ten reaching number one, including There Stands the Glass, his biggest song. It is regarded as one of country's all-time classic drinking songs, though at the time, its explicit exploration of booze stirred controversy.

Clyde Lensey McPhatter was a major factor in the success of Billy Ward and The Dominoes' Records, but he received no recognition. When he was fired from the Dominoes in early 1953, Ahmet Ertegun quickly signed him to Atlantic. Clyde assembled his own group, and called it the Drifters. During their second session (and already their second lineup) the band, with Andrew Thrasher, tenor; Gerhart Thrasher, baritone; Bill Pinkney, bass and tenor; and Willie Ferbie, bass; the band recorded the Jesse Stone tune Money Honey. The song, billed to Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters, hit the r&b charts and remained at #1 for eleven weeks.

Martin did not attempt to deliver the lyrics of That's Amore in an authentic Italian accent, but used the accent of an American trying to mimic Italian pronunciation. On November 7th, Martin's record of the song peaked at #2 on the Billboard charts. The song remains closely identified with Dean Martin.

Now signed to Imperial, Slim Whitman, the self taught left handed guitarist (due to the accident that lost almost all of the second finger on his left hand) continues to churn out the hits with his spooky sound. He is quickly becoming one of the biggest selling country artists, especially in the UK.

Teresa Brewer appeared as a dancer at age 5 and later toured with the Major Bowes Amateur Hour. She was only 18 years old in 1949, when she made a record of a song called Copenhagen. Sales of the record began to build and when it peaked in 1950, they had a million-seller on their hands — but it was the B-side Music! Music! Music! that became the hit, racking up countless plays on jukeboxes. Her voice was a little different — clear as a bell, with a kewpie-doll sound that was very appealing to listeners. Throughout the 1950's, tunes such as Ricochet, Gonna Get Along Without You Now, and Till I Waltz Again With You sold well and kept her popular and successful.

The Four Lads were a Canadian singing group. They grew up together in Toronto, Ontario, and were members of St. Michael's Choir School, where they learned to sing. The founding members were Corrado "Connie" Codarini, bass; John Bernard "Bernie" Toorish, lead; James F. "Jimmy" Arnold, first tenor; and Frank Busseri, baritone and group manager. In 1950 they began to sing in local clubs and soon were noticed by scouts. Recruited to go to New York, they were noticed by Mitch Miller, who asked them to do backup for some of the artists he recorded. One unknown artist Johnnie Ray, became a major hit with Cry and The Little White Cloud that Cried with the Four Lads behind him. This made them well known. In 1953 they made their own first gold record, Istanbul (Not Constantinople), which launched them to stardom and kept them busy throughout the 50s and 60s in the USA and Canada.

Herman Parker Jr. was born in West Memphis in 1932, just across the river from the future site of Sun Records. He began playing in Memphis in the late '40s, and took years to shake off the influence of Roy Brown and Sonny Boy Williamson (II). He also began playing with the Beale Streeters, a sort of Memphis supergroup that on occasion featured Johnny Ace, Rosco Gordon and Bobby Bland. Parker formed the Blue Flames out of a faction of Howlin' Wolf's old band. In '53, Parker recorded a handful of tracks for Sam Phillips, Mystery Train didn't do well as far as sales went, prompting a frustrated Parker to leave Sun.

I've been trying to get more gospel into these proceedings, just to hint at the impact it's power and emotionality (did I just make up a word?) had on rhythm & blues and rock and roll, but finding early recordings of the artists I know is difficult. Hence, no Mahalia Jackson as of yet. Equally impressive to me, is the Staple Singers, incredible performers. The Staple Singers were a gospel, soul, and R&B singing group. Roebuck "Pops" Staples, the patriarch of the family, formed the group with his children Cleotha (born 1934), Pervis (b. 1935), Yvonne (b. 1936), and Mavis (b. 1940). The family began appearing in Chicago-area churches in 1948, and signed their first professional contract in 1952. Check out live video recordings if you can.

Eddie Jones was born in Greenwood, Mississippi. The single mother who gave birth to him died when he was five, so his grandmother raised him and he spent his teen years in the cotton fields. After returning from World War II military service, he started playing clubs around New Orleans, Louisiana. Bandleader Willie Warren had introduced him to the guitar, and he was particularly influenced by T-Bone Walker. About 1950 he adopted the stage name Guitar Slim and started becoming known for his wild stage act. He wore bright-colored suits and dyed his hair to match them, had an assistant follow him around the audience with up to 350 feet of cord between amplifier and guitar, and would occasionally get up on his assistant's shoulders, or even take his guitar outside the club and bring traffic to a stop. His sound was just as unusual — he was playing with distorted guitar more than a decade before rock guitarists did the same, and his gospel-influenced vocals were easily identifiable. Ray Charles played piano on Things I Used To Do, a hit for Slim in '54.

George Brown (born 1920), known as the Young Tiger, is a Trinidadian calypso musician. He became a musician in the UK and toured the country with different bands. He inherited the name Young Tiger from the calypsonian Growling Tiger when he recorded a cover version of his song Single Man. His most popular song was I Was There (At The Coronation) from this year. This song is another song about jazz and bebop, taken from the opposite angle of Kitch's Bebop Calypso in 1951.

Richard Wayne Penniman grew up in a spiritual family, amid poverty and prejudice, and it was singing that made his family feel closer to God. When he was as young as ten, he would go around as a healer, singing Gospel songs and touching people, who would testify that they felt better after he ministered to them. Nearly all of Richard Penniman's dramatic phrasing and swift vocal turns are derived from Black Gospel artists of the 1930's and 1940's. He referred to Sister Rosetta Tharpe as his favourite singer when he was a child. He was heavily influenced in appearance (hair, clothing, shoes, makeup, etc.) and sound by late 1940s gospel-style, jump blues shouter Billy Wright, who was known as the Prince of the Blues. Little Richard's early material, recorded for Peacock, sold poorly and had little success. In 1952, Penniman's father was murdered. After this, he returned to Macon and performed blues and boogie-woogie music at the Tick Tock Club in the evening, whilst also washing dishes at the cafeteria of a Greyhound Lines bus station during the day.

Born a sharecropper's son in the rural community of Cayce, Mississippi, Rufus Thomas moved to Memphis with his family at age 2. He started at WDIA in 1951, where he hosted an afternoon show and Hoot and Holler. WDIA, featuring an African-American format, was known as "the mother station of the Negroes" and became an important source of blues and R&B music for a generation, its audience consisting of white as well as black listeners. He become one of the station's most popular DJs. His celebrity was such that in 1953 he recorded an "answer record" to Big Mama Thornton's hit, Hound Dog called Bear Cat and released on Sun Records. Although the song was the label's first hit, a copyright-infringement suit ensued and nearly bankrupted Sam Phillips' record label.

1954

Lovey Dovey - The Clovers / Released Jan, Recorded Sep 24 '53 / (Memphis Curtis / Ahmet Ertegun)
My Funny Valentine - Frank Sinatra / Released Jan, Recorded Nov '53 / (Richard Rodgers / Lorenz Hart)
Goodnite Sweetheart, Goodnite - The Spaniels / Released Mar / (Calvin Carter / James Hudson)
Any Day Now - The Soul Stirrers / Recorded Mar 2 / (Faidest Wagoner / Jean Butler)
Work With Me Annie - The Midnighters / Released Apr, Recorded Jan 14 / (Hank Ballard)
Shake, Rattle And Roll - Big Joe Turner / Released Apr, Recorded Feb 15 / (Jesse "Charles Calhoun" Stone)
Sh-Boom - The Chords / Released Apr, Recorded Mar 15 / (Jimmy Keyes / Carl Feaster / Claude Feaster / Floyd McRae / William Edwards)
Eisenhower Blues - J.B. Lenoir / Released Apr, Recorded Mar / (J.B. Lenoir)
My Heart Belongs To Daddy - Ella Fitzgerald / Recorded Mar 30 / (Cole Porter)
Sho Nuff I Do - Elmore James / Released May, Recorded Mar / (Elmore James)
(We're Gonna) Rock Around The Clock - Bill Haley + His Comets / Released May 10, Recorded Apr 12 / (James Myers / Max Freedman)
I Just Want To Make Love To You - Muddy Waters / Released May, Recorded Apr 13 / (Willie Dixon)
Riot In Cell Block #9 - The Robins / Released Jun, Recorded Mar / (Jerry Leiber / Mike Stoller)
Sway - Dean Martin / Recorded Apr 22 / (Pablo Beltrán Ruiz / Norman Gimbel)
That's All Right - Elvis Presley / Released Jul 19, Recorded Jul 6 / (Arthur Crudup)
Big Long Slidin' Thing - Dinah Washington / Released Jul / (Maimie Thomas / Leroy Kirkland)
Hearts Of Stone - The Jewels / Released Aug / (Rudy Jackson / Eddy Ray)
Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine) - The Penguins / Released Sep, Recorded Sep / (Jesse Belvin / Curtis Williams / Gaynel Hodge)
I Thought About You - Billie Holiday / Recorded Sep 3 / (Jimmy Van Heusen / Johnny Mercer)
Ling, Ting, Tong - The Five Keys / Recorded Sep / (Mabel Godwin)
Sincerely - The Moonglows / Released Oct, Recorded Oct / (Harvey Fuqua)
Mellow Down Easy - Little Walter / Released Nov, Recorded Oct 5 / (Willie Dixon)
I've Got A Woman - Ray Charles / Released Dec, Recorded Nov 18 / (Ray Charles / Renald Richard)
In The Jailhouse Now - Webb Pierce / Released Dec / (Jimmie Rodgers)
I Talk To The Waves - Slim Whitman / Recorded Nov 11
Walk Over God's Heaven - Mahalia Jackson / Recorded Nov 22 / (Traditional)
Gerrard Street - King Timothy / (Al Timothy)
Baby, Let's Play House - Arthur Gunter / Recorded Nov / (Arthur Gunter)

Selected Notes and biographies:
With Buddy Bailey drafted, the Clovers went through several lineup changes in 1952 through the end of 1953. The group continued recording with Atlantic, without as much success as they'd previously seen. On May 1st however, the Clovers would be the headline act for Alan "Moondog" Freed's first stage show in the East in Newark, New Jersey, where his radio show was heard transcribed on station WNJR. The Moondog Coronation Ball was indeed held in Newark, to a wildly enthusiastic sell out crowd of more than 10,000. The Clovers headed the bill, and interested reporters noted that about 20 per cent of the audience was White.

I love the way My Funny Valentine's melody twists unexpectedly when Frank croons, you make me smiiiile with my heart. That's makes the song for me. Soon after his Oscar-winning appearance in From Here To Eternity, Sinatra made a comeback as a recording artist. He had been recording for Columbia, where he fell out of step when changes were made to the company's musical policy, and in 1953 he was signed by Capitol Records. The results of his partnership with arranger Nelson Riddle set Sinatra's singing career firmly in the spotlight.

The first artists to record for Chicago's Vee Jay label (and allegedly the reason for its formation), The Spaniels got their name when the wife of one of their members tolds them they sounded like a bunch of dogs. "Pooky" Hudson's lead vocals were made for crooners like this, and coupled with an unforgettable opening run of nonsense syllables and a lazy, brushes-not-sticks-on-the-drum beat, the group created one of the most romantic ballads of the doo wop era.

The smooth ballad Any Day Now seems designed to show off the twenty-three year old Sam Cook. You can imagine the church girls rushing forward on this number--and imagine how Cook must have begun thinking that, with the right song, the same thing might just happen outside of church.

Hank Ballard had been a fan of Sixty Minute Man recorded by The Dominoes, a song so explicitly dirty that only a rhythm and blues label would take it. When he got the chance he wrote his own bawdy tune. The FCC immediately opposed it due to its overtly sexual lyrics, lyrics that had crossed over and were now being listened to by a white teenage audience. Because the record was in such demand and received so much publicity, attempts to restrict it failed and the record shot to number one on the R&B charts and remained there for seven weeks. With its strong melody and distinctive rhythm, the song's structure anticipated the style of rock and roll and was flexible enough that later it could be used with entirely different words. It would inspire a number of answer songs and follow ups.

A cover version of Shake, Rattle And Roll by Bill Haley and His Comets this same year becomes the first internationally popular rock and roll recording. Although the cover version of the song, with the risqué lyrics incompletely cleaned up (leaving in the line 'I'm like a one eyed cat, peeping in a seafood store'), was a bigger hit, many listeners sought out Turner's version and were introduced thereby to the whole world of rhythm and blues.

Recorded by Bronx based R&B quintet the Chords, a vocal group discovered singing in a subway, Sh-Boom is their only commercially successful disc, and the infectious song is immediately covered in a low key version to even wider sales success by the Crew Cuts, an all-white male vocal quartet. This "white pop" revision of an essentially "black R&B" song is an early example of what will be become common practice. The Crew Cuts will repeat it next year with their second million-selling single--their version of the Penguins' hit from this year, Earth Angel. The Chords version of the song is the first black vocal group record to reach the top 10 on the pop chart and is cited in some circles as the first rock 'n' roll record.

J. B. Lenoir, a guitarist known for his high-pitched singing, was born in Monticello, Mississippi, on March 5, 1929, and arrived in Chicago in the late 1940s. His first recording session was done in December 1950 for Joe Brown, but all four sides were immediately sold to the Chess label, which put them out in 1951. Lenoir's 1952 recordings were released on Brown's own JOB label. Rather unusually for a bluesman, J. B. became known for topical, even protest songs. Indeed, his first session for Parrot was one of the most topical of his career. Not long after Eisenhower Blues was released, Benson rushed Lenoir back to the studio to remake the piece as Tax Paying Blues, with all references to Eisenhower deleted.

With Norman Granz now officially Ella Fitzgerald's manager, having a handshake agreement between them, allowing either party to walk away without legal consequences, Granz was now figuring out how to get Decca, her label and a major recording giant, to release her from contract so that she might sign with his own fledgling label, Verve.

Rock Around the Clock is released as the b-side to Thirteen Women (And Only One Man In Town). The song is only a moderate success until it is featured in the film Blackboard Jungle the next year. It is the first recording to be universally acknowledged as a rock and roll record. It is considered by many to be the song that put rock and roll on the map in America and around the world.

Muddy records Hoochie Coochie Man this year, with one of the most identifiable, definitive blues riffs of all time. It becomes Water's biggest hit at the time. However, I Just Want To Make Love To You is also a classic Muddy tune, preferred by me over the other, as one of the definitive songs of the Muddy Waters identity.

The Robins were a vocal group that started back in 1947 in Los Angeles and played as a backup group to Johnny Otis and Little Esther in the early 50's. They embarked on a career of their own that landed them on the Spark label operation run by songsmiths Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller who had developed an art form that they called "playlets in song".

This is easily my favorite Dean Martin song, and among my votes for the sexiest song ever written. Reni bought a record player that was sold with this Dean Martin album already on it. It played beautifully in the store, and when she got it home, we quickly discovered that the reason the album was sold with the player was because the player would only play that one album. So we listened to Sway over and over and over on that little record player. There may have been other songs on the album as well, but I don't think we ever listened to them. But Sway, boy we listened to that one.

Elvis Presley came to the Memphis Recording Service a couple times to record songs onto a private record for a small fee. The second time, this year in January, Sam Philips takes down his address and phone number and promises to contact him. Seven months later, Elvis was recording with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black. The legend has it, the three were playing, recording, not really getting anywhere interesting, recording standarads by Leon Payne and Bing Crosby. During a break, Elvis fools around with an uptempo romp through Arthur Crudup's blues number, That's All Right, and is joined first by Black, and then by Moore, in an impromptu jam session. Philips, hearing in Elvis the particular "something" for which he has been seaching in vain for three years, has them repeat it with tapes running. He will couple a version of Bill Monroe's county bluegrass song Blue Moon of Kentucky with That's Alright as the first Elvis single. This combination of blues and country music is right along the lines of what has been building up as rock n roll over the past few years. Elvis, Scotty and Bill begin to play shows as the Blue Moon Boys, to swelling and increasingly excited crowds. They play two performances on a bill headlined by Slim Whitman in Memphis, where Elvis initially plays two country ballads to a vaguely interested crowd. Upon playing the more uptempt material for the later show, he adds rhythmic leg and body movements. The sensual performance drives the audience wild. Elvis exits bewildered by screams and shouts that all but drown the music and is pushed back onstage to a similarly wild reception. Established country artist Webb Pierce, waiting to follow his, stands stunned and uncomprehending. Later billings will establish the band as Elvis Presley, the Hillbilly Cat, & His Blue Moon Boys.

Born Ruth Lee Jones in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, her family moved to Chicago while she was still a child. As a child in Chicago she played piano and directed her church choir. There was a period when she both performed in clubs as Dinah Washington while singing and playing piano in Sallie Martin's gospel choir as Ruth Jones. Before joining Martin, the young singer had copped first prize at a Regal Theater amateur contest. While making extraordinary recordings in jazz, blues, R&B and light pop contexts, Washington refused to record gospel music despite her obvious talent in singing it. She believed it wrong to mix the secular and spiritual, and after she had entered the non-religious professional music world she refused to include gospel in her repertoire. Washington began performing in 1942 and soon joined Lionel Hampton's band.

The Jewels one hit wonder is one of the rare instances where a black group, in the this case Otis Williams + The Charms, covered another black group, in this case the Jewels and their hit Hearts of Stone, and had even greater success with it (and improved distribution to be sure), bringing it to #1 on the R&B charts, and effectively removing the Jewels and their version of the number from history. But alas, here it is, in it's original 'no, no, no' greatness.

The Penguins came together at Fremont High School in Los Angeles. Recording Earth Angel for the Dootone lable, this final take that has become one of the most popular oldies of all time, is actually a demo, that was intended for an instrumental overdubbing later. However, the song got passed around and heard by the public, and suddenly there was a demand to own it, and so Dootone president Dootsie Williams was forced to manufacture the single as quickly as possible, eschewing any instrumental overdubbing. That's rock 'n' roll folks.

Billie Holiday first toured Europe in 1954, as part of a Leonard Feather package that also included Buddy DeFranco and Red Norvo, a major accomplishment for any artist, especially a black artist of the segregated period of American history.

The Five Keys had recorded a series of releases for the Aladdin label, but outside of The Glory of Love had failed to realize any significant chart (and sales) success. When their contract expired in 1954 - with the group in semichaos thanks to unexpected personnel changes by the way of the draft - their manager got them a deal with Capital Records, and from there their career just took off. Their first single for Capitol, the novelty item Ling Ting Tong, was a sensation, actually breaking the pop market before the black market. With a mix of pop, R&B, and rock 'n' roll, all surrounded by some quasi-Oriental nonsense syllables, the song established the group nationally.

The Moonglows were a professional, career-oriented singing group comprised of young adults. The core of the group was lead singer Bobby Lester and baritone Harvey Fuqua, both of who had arrived in Cleveland from Louisville, Kentucky where they first began singing together. They formed the Crazy Sounds in 1952, and after negotiating several (sometimes unpaying) labels, a few cities, and a namechange, they ended up on Chess, in Chicago, as the Moonglows. Here they recorded Sincerely, their trademark song.

In 1954 Ray Charles formed his first band, all jazz players voiced to sound like a full orchestra. With I've Got A Woman, Charles took a sanctified series of 16-bar gospel chord progressions and fashioned them into an R&B song, transforming the sacred into the secular. The result was something of a scandal-and an unprecedented commercial success, as Ray's first certified smash hit.

Slowly by Webb Pierce becomes the first No. 1 song on Billboard magazine's country charts to feature the pedal steel guitar. Soon, many of country music's great songs would feature the pedal steel guitar.

Slim Whitman's success in the U.S. has been marginal compared to his international reception, especially in Great Britian. In May, Whitman released Rose Marie. It went straight to number one on the U.K. pop chart where it remained for 11 weeks. The song was not released in the U. S.

When Mahalia Jackson was born, she suffered from a condition known as “physiologic genu varum” or what is commonly called “bowed legs.” The doctors wanted to perform surgery by breaking Halies legs, but one of the resident aunts would not hear of it. So Halies mother would rub her legs down with greasy dishwater. It never stopped young Halie from performing her dance steps for the white woman her mother and Aunt Bell cleaned house for. When Mahalia was six, her mother Charity died. In 1927, Jackson moved from the South to Chicago, Illinois, in the midst of the Great Migration. There she would sing with The Johnson Brothers, one of the earliest professional gospel groups. Mahalia refused to sing secular music, a pledge she would keep throughout her professional life despite enormous financial inducements to do otherwise. Mahalia began her solo career in 1937. Through her recording of God's Gonna Separate the Wheat from the Tares, she became a popular concert draw. In 1948 she recorded Move on Up a Little Higher, a recording so popular that stores could not stock enough copies of it to meet demand. In 1954, Mahalia signed with Columbia records. With Columbia's broad distribution channels, Mahalia soon became a star not only within the US (black and white comunity), but over the whole world. She is widely regarded as the best American gospel singer in the history of the genre.

Arthur Gunter, an American blues guitarist, was a musician from an early age; as a child, he was in a gospel group with his brothers and cousins called the Gunter Brothers Quartet. In the early 1950s he played in various blues groups around Nashville, and began recording for Excello Records in 1954. Baby Let's Play House became a local hit.

1955

The Ballad Of Davy Crockett - Fess Parker / Released Feb / (George Bruns / Thomas W. Blackburn)
(Will You) Come Back My Love - The Wrens / Released Feb, Recorded Nov 21 '54 / (Bobby Mansfield / Viola Watkins)
The Door Is Still Open - The Cardinals / Released Feb, Recorded Jan 18 / (Chuck Willis)
My Babe - Little Walter / Released Feb, Recorded Jan 25 / (Willie Dixon)
Be With Me Jesus - The Soul Stirrers / Recorded Feb 16 / (Sam Cooke)
Baby, Let's Play House - Elvis Presley / Released Apr 1, Recorded Feb / (Arthur Gunter)
Who Will Be Next - Howlin' Wolf / Released Apr, Recorded Feb 3 / ()
Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley / Released Jun, Recorded Mar 2 / (Ellas McDaniel)
That Old Black Magic - Sammy Davis Jr. / Recorded Mar 10 / (Harold Arlen / John Mercer)
Rollin' Stone - The Marigolds / (Robert S. Riley)
Ain't It A Shame - Fats Domino / Released Jun, Recorded Mar 15 / (Dave Bartholomew / Fats Domino)
This Little Girl Of Mine - Ray Charles / Released Jun, Recorded Apr 23 / (Ray Charles)
Lover Come Back To Me - Ella Fitzgerald / Recorded Apr 27 / (Oscar Hammerstein II / Sigmund Romberg)
Mannish Boy - Muddy Waters / Released Jun, Recorded May 24 / (McKinley Morganfield / Mel London / Ellas McDaniel)
I'll Never Stop Loving You - Slim Whitman / Released Jun, Recorded May / (Nicholas Brodszky / Sammy Cahn)
Moanin' Blues - Lightnin' Hopkins / Released Jun / (John Lee Hoooker)
Maybellene - Chuck Berry / Released Jul, Recorded May 21 / (Chuck Berry)
Walkin' The Blues - Willie Dixon / Released Jul, Recorded Jun / (Willie Dixon)
Don't Start Me To Talkin' - Sonny Boy Williamson / Released Sep, Recorded Aug 12 / (Sonny Boy Williamson)
What's New? - Billie Holiday / Recorded Aug 25 / (Bob Haggart / Johnny Burke)
Seventh Son - Willie Mabon / Released Oct, Recorded Jun 1 / (Willie Dixon)
Smokey Joe's Cafe - The Robins / Released Oct, Recorded Sep 28 / (Jerry Leiber / Mike Stoller)
Speedoo - The Cadillacs / Released Oct / (Esther Navarro)
Tutti-Frutti - Little Richard / Released Nov, Recorded Sep 14 / (Richard Penniman / Dorothy LaBostrie / Joe Lubin / Bumps Blackwell)
The Great Pretender - The Platters / Released Nov / (Buck Ram)
Why Baby Why - Webb Pierce / Released Nov, Recorded Oct 27 / (George Jones)
Folsom Prison Blues - Johnny Cash / Released Dec 15, Recorded Jul 30 / (Gordon Jenkins / John Cash)
Blue Suede Shoes - Carl Perkins - Released Jan 1 '56, Recorded Dec 19 / (Carl Perkins)
Devil Or Angel - The Clovers / Released Dec, Recorded Nov 10 / (Blanche Carter)
Why Do Fools Fall In Love - The Teenagers, featuring Frankie Lymon / Released Dec, Recorded Dec 5 / (Frank Lymon / Herman Santiago / George Goldner)

Selected Notes and biographies:
The Wrens began in the Morrisania section of the Bronx in 1950. Francis "Frenchie" Concepcion was determined to make the band last, and through changing rosters, the band eventually won a contest in 1954, that resulted in Freddy Johnson becoming their manager, and George Goldner, owner of Rama Records, recording them in Nov of '54. There they cut tenor Bobby Mansfield's 'Come Back My Love', the hit song that they became best known for.

While recording a cover of Arthur Gunter's 'Baby Let's Play House', Elvis Presley creates a hiccuping, rockabilly vocal style - which many later impersonators will exaggerate. This year, Elvis comes to the attention of Col. Tom Parker, talent entrepreneur and manager of Hank Snow. Elvis' gigs start to have increased attendance, with a show in Jacksonville, Florida attended by 14,000 fans. This particular show, on May 13th, involves the first audience riot at an Elvis show. Much of his clothing is ripped off, but he escapes uninjured. By November, Col. Parker has taken up negotiating power granted him by Elvis' parents, and has worked out a deal with RCA records to purchase Elvis' contract for $35,000 to Sun records and Sam Phillips, and $5000 to Elvis to buy out his royalties on existing Sun singles.

Ellas Otha Bates was born in McComb, Mississippi, and raised by his mother's cousin. The family moved to Chicago at the age of seven, and it was there that he was inspired to become at guitarist after seeing John Lee Hooker. In 1951, he went from playing street corners to a regular gig at the 708 club, with a repetoire influenced by Hooker, Lois Jordan, and Muddy Waters. It was here that he adopted the stage name Bo Diddley. In 1955, 26 year old Bo Diddley is signed by Chess Records, and records 'Bo Diddley', 'I'm A Man', and 'You Don't Love Me' on March 2nd. The 'Bo Diddley' single, backed with 'I'm A Man', hits R&B #1 on June 25. His songs are primarly known for their beats and rhythms, as they often have no chord changes on the guitar. The song 'Bo Diddley' for example, has a basic beat (similar to a style used by street performers called hambone) that has become known as the Bo Diddley beat.

Samuel Davis Jr. was born in Harlem, NY to vaudevillian parents. When his parents split up at the age of three, his father took him on tour with him. Here he learned to dance, and played on stage with his father and uncle as a trio. He joined the army in during World War II, where he would also perform for an entertainment special services unit. Upon returning from the war, he began cutting albums and a full career as an entertainer.

Fats Dominos's 'Ain't It A Shame' hits #1 on the R&B chart and #10 on the Pop chart. When Pat Boone records his version, he retitles it 'Ain't That A Shame'.

Ray Charles finally hits the top spot on the R&B chart with 'I Got A Woman' on May 7th of this year.

Ella Fitzgerald leaves Decca this year, and her manager Norman Granz, creats Verve records around her. They begin producing and recording Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, which marks a stylistic change and accomplishment in her career.

Mannish Boy is a rearrangement, and an answer song to Bo Diddley's 'I'm a Man', which in turn took it's riff and melody from Muddy Water's own 'Hoochie Coochie Man'.

Born in Centerville, Texas, Sam Hopkins love for the blues was sparked at the age of 8 when he met Blind Lemon Jefferson. While attempting to break into the music scene in Houston in 1946, he was discovered by Lola Anne Cullum for Aladdin Records, who convinced him to travel to L.A. With pianist Wilson Smith he recorded twelve tracks. An Aladdin Records executive decided the pair needed more dynamism in their names and dubbed Hopkins "Lightnin'" and Wilson "Thunder". By the mid to late 50s Hopkin's output of quality recordings had gained him a following among African Americans and blues aficianados.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Charles Berry was the third child in a family of six. His middle class upbringing allowed him to pursue his interest in music from an early age and he made his first public performance while still at High School. In 1944 he was arrested and convicted of armed robbery after taking a joy ride with his friends to Kansas City, Missouri. Berry was released from the Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men on his 21st birthday in 1947. By early 1953 Berry was performing with the Johnnie Johnson Trio, using riffs and grandstanding done earlier by jump blues player T. Bone Walker. In May 1955, Chuck Berry travels to Chicago where he is recommended to Chess Records by Muddy Waters. He is signed, with Berry believing they would be most interested in his blues material, but suprised to find Leonard Chess particularly impressed with the singer's interpretation of the old country and western song 'Ida Red', now recast by Berry as 'Maybellene'. It sells over a million copies, becoming #1 on the R&B charts and #5 on the Hot 100. Berry's unique style - uptempo blues-based with a country rockabilly infusion, driven by an insistent guitar rhythm - become legendary.

Wille Dixon was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi on July 1, 1915. He was first introduced to the blues when he served time on prison farms in Mississippi as a teenager. He learned how to sing harmony and sang bass in Leo Phelps' group, The Jubilee Singers. Dixon began apadpting poems he was writing into songs, and even sold some to local music groups. In 1936, he left for Chicago, where he took up boxing, and won the Illinois State Golden Gloves Heavyweight Championship (Novice Division) in 1937. Dixon performed in several vocal groups in Chicago, but it wasn't until he met and worked with fellow boxer Leonard "Baby Doo" Caston that he started taking it seriously. Dixon signed to Chess Records as a recording artist in the late 40s, but began performing less and became more involved with the label. By 1951, he was a full time employee at Chess where he acted as producer, A&R talent scout, session musician, and staff songwriter. 'Walking The Blues' will be his only chart appearance as an artist (No. 6 on the R&B charts), despite writing and producing hits for Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Richard, and Sonny Boy Williamson. He appears on many of Chuck Berry's early recordings as bass player, further proving his linkage between the blues and the birth of rock and roll.

Aleck "Rice" Miller was born on the Sara Jones Plantation near Glendora, Mississippi. Miller lived and worked with his father and mother until the early 30s. Then he traveled and began playing with blues players around Mississippi and Arkansas. Willie Dixon recalled seeing Robert Junior Lockwood and Miller in the 30s, captivating audiences with an amplified harmonica and tricks such as holding his harmonica between his top lip and nose and playing with no hands. He taught Howling Wolf to play harmonica. In 1941 Miller was hired to play the King Biscuit Time show on the radio with Lockwood. The radio program's sponser began billing Miller as Sonny Boy Williamson, apparently in an attempt to capitalize on the fame of the well known Chicago based harmonica player and singer John Lee Williamson (also known as Sonny Boy Williamson). He began recording in 1951 with his band, the King Biscuit Boys for Trumpet Records. When Trumpet goes bankrupt in 1955, Sonny Boy's recording contract was yielded to its creditors, who sold it to Chess Records in Chicago. He already had a following in Chicago from appearing in Elmore James's band in 1953. It is here that he begins to enjoy his greatest successes.

There has been over 200 autobiographies or reflections of 'Seventh Sons' down through history, and it is also linked with musical scores performed by various artists starting with the blues great 'Willie Dixon' whom wrote the original lyrics that was taken from Benjamin Elijah May's 'A Black Man's God as reflected in his thinking' that Johnny Rivers rerecorded in his anthology of 1965.

In 1947, discharged Air Force boxing champion Ulysses B. "Bobby" Nunn becomes a member of the A-Sharp Trio with Billy Richards, Roy Richards, and Ty Terrell, and they eventually become the Robins. Under the songwriting and production guidance of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller The Robins record 'Smokey Joe's Cafe' and 'Riot In Cell Block Number Nine' for Leiber and Stoller's Spark label, which licenses the cuts to Atco Records. Later this year, Nunn and Carl Gardner split from The Robins to become The Coasters with Leon Hughes and Billy Guy to record directly for Atco.

A Little Richard & the Upsetters show is seen by Lloyd Price, who suggests Richard send a demo to his label boss, Art Rupe of Specialty Records. After initially rejecting Richard, they sign sign him and he starts recording for them in September of this year. Out of this session comes 'Tutti-Frutti' which will be identified directly with Little Richard as a reference to his style and antics.

The Platters formed in Los Angeles in 1953. They found little success before meeting music entrepreneur and songwriter Buck Ram. Ram made changes to the lineup, adding lead vocalist Tony Williams and female vocalist Zola Taylor. Ram had the group incorporate, thus insuring their future financial stability. Their first success in 1955 was a rerecording of the song 'Only You'. 'The Great Pretender' exceeded that singles success and became the Platters' first national #1 hit and R&B #1 hit.

Johnny Cash was born J.R. Cash in Kingland, Arkansas, reportedly given the name J.R. because his parents couldn't agree on a name, only initials. One of seven children, by age five J.R. was working in the cotton fields, singing along with his family as they worked. His family's economic and personal struggles during the Depression inspired many of his songs. In 1944, his brother Jack, who he was very close to, was pulled into a table saw in the mill where he worked and cut nearly in two. J.R. began playing guitar and writing songs as a young boy. When he enlisted in the United States Air Force, the military would not except initials as his name, so he adopted John R. Cash as his legal name. In 1955, he takes Johnny Cash as his stage name. Last year, in 1954, he and his wife Vivian Liberto moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he d appliances while studying to be a radio announcer. At night he played with guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant. He auditioned by Sam Phillips, where the only track strong enough for release is 'Hey Porter'. Needing an A-side, Phillips instructs Cash to go away and write a hit. He returns in March with 'Cry, Cry, Cry' which will become Cash's first release on Sun. 'Folsom Prison Blues' is Cash's reworking of the 1952 song 'Crescent City Blues' by Gordon Jenkins.

Carl Perkins was the son of poor sharescroppers near Tiptonville, Tennessee. He grew up hearing Southern gospel music sung by whites in church and by black field workers when he started working in the cotton fields at age six. Listening to the Grand Ole Opry, he was inspired by Roy Acuff's broadcast performances to ask his parents for a guitar. His father Buck was able to purchase a used one from a neighbor for a couple dollars. Carl taught himself to play it via listening to the radio and from a African American fellow field worker named John Westbrook who befriended him. In late 1946, the Perkins Brothers, Carl and Jay, begin playing in a honky tonk, also the scene of frequent fights, and gained a reputation as fighters. By the end of the 40s, the Perkins Brothers, now with brother Clayton on bass fiddle, are the best known band in the Jackson area. In 1953, when his job at the bakery is cut to part time, his wife, Valda Crider (they married that same year), convinced Carl to work the honky tonks full time. In 1954, with the release of Elvis Presley's 'Blue Moon of Kentucky', Perkins decided he needed to go see Sam Phillips, as someone who understood the music he was making. He was soon signed to Sun records and began a string of hits, while touring with Elvis and Johnny Cash. In late 1955 Carl Perkins and his band record his composition 'Blue Suede Shoes' (written at Johnny Cash's suggestion and based on an actual incident spotted in a honky-tonk audience). Sam Phillips rush-releases it on Sun with heavy promotion.

Frankie Lymon was born in Harlem, New York to a truck driver father and a domestic mother. Lymon's father also sang in a gospel group known as the Harlemaires, Frankie and his brothers would eventually start a group called the Harlemaire Juniors. At the age of ten Lymon began working as a grocery boy, augmenting his income with proceeds gained from hustling prostitutes. A few years later, Lymon joined a local doo wap group and began writing songs with its lead singer, Herman Santiago. 'Why Do Fools Fall In Love' came about when a neighbor gave the group, now the Premiers, soon to rename the Teenagers, several love letters that had been written to him by his girlfriend, with the hope that they would provide inspiration for the boys. One of the letter was adapted into the song 'Why Do Birds Sing So Gay' which Lymon changed to 'Why Do Fools Fall In Love'. In 1955, the Teenagers got their first shot at fame after impressing Richard Barrett, a singer with the Valentines. Barrett got the group an audition with record producer George Goldner. Santiago sang lead on 'Why Do Fools Fall In Love', but Goldner noticed Frankie's voice and asked him to perform lead. With this arrangement, Goldner signed the quintet to Gee Records and 'Why Do Fools Fall In Love' became their first single, reaching #6 on the pop charts and #1 on the R&B charts in 1956.

1956

Heartbreak Hotel - Elvis Presley / Released Jan 27, Recorded Jan 10 / (Thomas Durden / Mae Boren Axton)
Please, Please, Please - James Brown / Released Feb, Recorded Feb 4 / (James Brown / Johnny Terry)
I Want You To Be My Girl - Frankie Lymon + The Teenagers / Released Mar, Recorded Feb 16 / (George Goldner / Richard Barrett)
In The Still Of The Nite - The Five Satins / Released Mar, Recorded Feb 26 / (Fred Parris)
Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby - Carl Perkins / Released Mar / (Carl Perkins)
Touch The Hem Of His Garment - The Soul Stirrers / Recorded Mar 2 / (Sam Cooke)
Blue Days - Buddy Holly / Released Apr 16, Recorded Jan 26 / (Ben Hall)
I Need A Man - Barbara Pittman / Recorded Apr / (Stanley Kesler / Barbara Gutt)
Hallelujah, I Love Her So - Ray Charles / Released May, Recorded Nov 30 '55 / (Ray Charles)
Roll Over Beethoven - Chuck Berry / Released May / (Chuck Berry)
Duck Tail - Joe Clay / Released May / (Rudy Grayzell)
Ooby Dooby - Roy Orbison + The Teen Kings / Released May / (Wade Moore / Dick Penner)
I Walk The Line - Johnny Cash / Released May / (Johnny Cash)
Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera) - Doris Day / Released Jun / (Ray Evans / Jay Livingston)
Be-Bop-A-Lula - Gene Vincent + His Blue Caps / Released Jun / (Tex Davis / Gene Vincent)
Stranded In The Jungle - The Cadets / Released Jun / (Ernestine Smith / James Johnson)
Lady Sings The Blues - Billie Holiday / Recorded Jun 6 / (Billie Holiday / Herbie Nichols)
Long Tall Sally - Little Richard / Recorded Jul 30 / (Robert Blackwell / Enotris Johnson / Richard Penniman)
My Boy Elvis - Janis Martin / Released Sep, Recorded May / (Virginia Fitting / Aaron Schroeder)
The Train Kept A-Rollin' - The Johnny Burnette Trio / Released Sep / (Tiny Bradshaw / Howie Kay / Syd Nathan)
Rubber Biscuit - The Chips / Released Sep / (Charlie Johnson / Nathaniel Epps / Shedrick Lincoln / Sam Strain / Paul Fulton)
Blueberry Hill - Fats Domino / Released Sep, Recorded Jun 27 / (Vincent Rose / Al Lewis / Larry Stock)
Jump, Jive An' Wail - Louis Prima Featuring Kelly Smith With Sam Butera + The Witnesses / Released Oct / (Louis Prima)
I Feel Good - Shirley + Lee / Released Oct / (Leonard Lee)
Little Demon - Screamin' Jay Hawkins / Released Nov / (Jay Hawkins / Irving Nathan)
Crazy Arms - Jerry Lee Lewis / Released Dec 1, Recorded Nov 14 / (Ray Price)
Come Go With Me - The Dell-Vikings / Released Dec / (Clarence Quick)
Who Do You Love? - Bo Diddley / Released Mar '57 / (Bo Diddley)
I Can't Quit You Baby - Otis Rush / (Willie Dixon)
Banana Boat (Day-O) - Harry Belafonte / (Traditional)

1957

Flyin' Saucers Rock & Roll - Billy Riley + His Little Green Men / Released Jan / (Ray Scott)
Little Darlin' - The Gladiolas / Released Jan, Recorded Dec 28 '56 / (Maurice Williams)
Lucille - Little Richard / Released Feb / (Albert Collins / Little Richards)
I'm Walkin' - Fats Domino / Released Feb / (Fats Domino / Dave Bartholomew)
Matchbox - Carl Perkins / Released Feb 16, Recorded Jan / (Carl Perkins)
Cat Man - Gene Vincent + His Blue Caps / Released Mar, Recorded Oct '56 / (Gene Vincent / Bill Davis)
School Day - Chuck Berry / Released Mar, Recorded Jan 21 / (Chuck Berry)
Cumberland Gap - Lonnie Donegan / Released Mar, Recorded Feb 25 / (Traditional)
Young Blood - The Coasters / Released Apr, Recorded Feb 15 / (Jerry Leiber / Mike Stoller / Doc Pomus)
Bye Bye Love - The Everly Brothers / Released Apr / (Boudleaux Bryant / Felice Bryant)
Hey! Bo-Diddley - Bo Diddley / Released Oct / (Ellas McDaniel)
Susie-Q - Dale Hawkins / Released May 6, Recorded '56 / (Dale Hawkins / James Burton)
Mr. Lee - The Bobbettes / Released May / (Emma Pought / Heather Dixon / Laura Webb / Janice Pought / Helen Gathers)
Frenzy - Screamin' Jay Hawkins / Released Jun / (David Hess / Augustus Stevenson)
Black Slacks - Joe Bennett + The Sparkletones / Released Jul / (Joe Bennett / Jimmy Denton)
I'm A King Bee - Slim Harpo / Released before Aug, Recorded Mar / (James Moore)
Walkin' After Midnight - Patsy Cline / Released before Aug / (Alan Block / Don Hecht)
Give My Love To Rose - Johnny Cash / Released Aug 19, Recorded Jul / (Johnny Cash)
Reet Petite (The Finest Girl You Ever Want To Meet) - Jackie Wilson / Released Oct / (Carlo / Gordy)
At The Hop - Danny + The Juniors / Released fall / (John L Medora / Arthur Singer / David White)
I'll Come Running Back To You - Sam Cooke / Released Sep 7, Recorded Dec 12 '56 / (Bill Cook)
Little Bitty Pretty One - Thurston Harris / Released Oct / (Robert Byrd)
Jailhouse Rock - Elvis Presley / Released Sep 24, Recorded Apr 30 / (Jerry Leiber / Mike Stoller)
Born Blind - Sonny Boy Williamson / Recorded Sep 1 / (Sonny Boy Williamson)
Bony Maronie - Larry Williams / Released Oct / (Larry Williams)
Oh, Boy! - The Crickets / Released Oct 27, Recorded Jun/Jul / (Norman Petty / Bill Tilghman / Sonny West)
Love Bug Crawl - Jimmy Edwards / Released Oct 27 / (Jim Bullington / Jack Foshee)
Book Of Love - The Monotones / Released Nov, Recorded Sep 26 / (Charles Patrick / Warren Davis / George Malone)
Great Balls Of Fire - Jerry Lee Lewis / Released Nov / (Otis Blackwell / Jack Hammer)
Henrietta - Jimmie Dee + The Offbeats / Released Nov / (Jimmy Dee Fore / Larry Hitzfield)
Rock Billy Boogie - Johnny Burnette + The Rock 'n Roll Trio / Released Dec, Recorded Jul '56 / (Johnny Burnette / Dorsey Burnette / George Harkins / Henry Jerome)
Fujiyama Mama - Wanda Jackson / Released Dec, Recorded Sep 17 / (Earl Burrows)
Love Is Strange - Mickey + Sylvia / (Bo Diddley / Ethel Smith / Jody Williams / Mickey Baker / Sylvia Vanderpool)

1958

Lend Me Your Comb - Carl Perkins / Released Jan 6, Recorded Dec '57 / (Twomey / Wiseman / Wise)
Oh Lonesome Me - Don Gibson / Released Jan, Recorded Dec 3 '57 / (Don Gibson)
Good Golly, Miss Molly - Little Richard / Released Jan / (Robert Blackwell / John Marascalco)
Tequila - The Champs / Released Feb / (Chuck Rio)
Slow Down - Larry Williams / Released Mar / (Larry Williams)
Rumble - Link Wray + His Ray Men / Released Mar / (Milton Grant / Link Wray)
Rave On - Buddy Holly / Released Apr / (Norman Petty / Bill Tilghman / Sonny West)
Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry / Released Apr / (Chuck Berry)
Claudette - The Everly Brothers / Released Apr / (Roy Orbison)
Yakety Yak - The Coasters / Released Apr, Recorded Mar 17 / (Jerry Leiber / Mike Stoller)
Splish Splash - Bobby Darin / Released May / (Bobby Darin / Murray Kaufman)
Willie And The Hand Jive - Johnny Otis Show / Released May / (Johnny Otis)
Let's Have A Party - Wanda Jackson / Released Jul, Recorded Apr / (Jessie Mae Robinson)
Little Girl - John + Jackie / Released Jul 21, Recorded May / (Gene Maltais)
Chantilly Lace - The Big Bopper / Released Jul / (J.P. Richardson)
Summertime Blues - Eddie Cochran / Released Jul / (Jerry Capeheart / Eddie Cochran)
Fever - Peggy Lee / Released Jul / (John Davenport / Eddie Cooley / Peggy Lee)
Whistle Bait - Lorrie + Larry Collins / Released Aug / (Lorrie Collins / Larry Collins / Hazel Collins / Lawrence Collins)
Bang Bang - Janis Martin + Her Boyfriends / Released Aug / (Clavelle Isnard)
Move It - Cliff Richard / Released Aug / (Ian Samwell)
Win Your Love For Me - Sam Cooke / Released Aug 25, Recorded Jun 22 / (Sam Cooke)
Peter Gunn - Henry Mancini / Released Sep 22, Recorded Aug / (Henry Mancini)
One Night - Elvis Presley / Released Oct 21, Recorded Feb 23 '57 / (Dave Bartholomew / Pearl King / Anita Steiman)
A Lover's Question - Clyde McPhatter / Released Oct, Recorded Aug 7 / (Brook Benton / Jimmy T. Williams)
Try Me (single version) - James Brown / Released Nov, Recorded Sep 18 / (James Brown)
La Bamba - Ritchie Valens / Released Oct / (Ritchie Valens)
Rockin' Robin - Bobby Day / Released Oct / (Leon Rene)
Lonely Teardrops - Jackie Wilson / Released Nov, Recorded Oct 15 / (Berry Gordy / Tyran Carlo / Gwen Gordy)
(Night Time Is) The Right Time - Ray Charles / Released Nov, Recorded Oct 28 / (Napoleon Brown / Ozzie Cadena / Lew Herman)
She's My Witch - Kip Tyler / Released Nov / (Kip Tyler)
Don't Take Your Guns To Town - Johnny Cash / Released Dec, Recorded Aug 13/ (Johnny Cash)
Sea Cruise - Frankie Ford with Huey "Piano" Smith / Released Dec / (Huey Smith)
Since I Don't Have You - The Skyliners / Released Dec / (Joe Rock / Jimmy Beaumont / Lenny Martin / Janet Vogel)

1959

Raw-Hide - Link Wray + The Wraymen / Released Jan / (Milton Grant / Link Wray)
The Twist - Hank Ballard + The Midnighters / Released Jan / (Hank Ballard)
It Doesn't Matter Anymore - Buddy Holly / Released Jan 5, Recorded Oct '58 / (Paul Anka)
Charlie Brown - The Coasters / Released Jan, Recorded Dec 11 '58 / (Jerry Leiber / Mike Stoller)
Everybody Loves To Cha Cha Cha - Sam Cooke / Released Mar, Recorded Jan 7 / (Sam Cooke)
Fan It - Lightnin' Hopkins / Recorded Jan 16 / (Sam Hopkins)
A Teenager In Love - Dion + The Belmonts / Released Mar / (Doc Pomus / Mort Shuman)
Don't Worry 'Bout Me - Billie Holiday / Recorded Mar 4 / (Rube Bloom / Ted Koehler)
Three Stars - Tommy Dee with Carol Kay + The Teen-Aires / Recorded Mar / (Tommy Donaldson)
I Only Have Eyes For You - The Flamingos / Released Apr, Recorded Oct 31 '58 / (Harry Warren / Al Dubin)
The Battle Of New Orleans - Johnny Horton / Released Apr 6, Recorded Jan 27 / (Jimmie Driftwood)
Memphis, Tennessee - Chuck Berry / Released Jun, Recorded Jul '58 / (Chuck Berry)
A Big Hunk O' Love - Elvis Presley / Released Jun 23, Recorded Jun 10 '58 / (Aaron Schroeder / Sid Wyche)
Sleep Walk - Santo + Johnny / Released Jun, Recorded Feb / (Santo Farina / Johnny Farina)
What'd I Say - Ray Charles / Released Jun, Recorded Feb 18 / (Ray Charles)
There Goes My Baby - The Drifters / Released Jun, Recorded Mar 6 / (Benjamin Earl Nelson / George Treadwell / Lover Patterson)
Sea Of Love - Phil Phillips + The Twilights / Released Jun?, Recorded May? / (Phil Phillips / George Khoury)
Love Potion No. 9 - The Clovers / Released Jul / (Mike Stoller / Jerry Leiber)
The Hippy Hippy Shake - Chan Romero / Released Jul / (Chan Romero)
I Want To Walk You Home - Fats Domino / Released Jul / (Fats Domino)
Living Doll - Cliff Richard / Released Jul / (Lionel Bart)
Mack The Knife - Bobby Darin / Released Aug, Recorded Dec 19 '58 / (Kurt Weill / Bertolt Brecht / Marc Blitzstein)
Woo-Hoo - Rock-A-Teens / Released Aug / (George McGraw)
Money (That's What I Want) - Barrett Strong / Released Aug, Recorded Jul / (Janie Bradford / Berry Gordy)
Shout - The Isley Brothers / Released Sep 21, Recorded Jul 29 / (Rudolph Isley / Ronald Isley / O'Kelly Isley, Jr.)
Sweet Nothin's - Brenda Lee / Released Sep 28d / (Ronnie Self)
El Paso - Marty Robbins / Released Oct 26, Recorded Apr 7 / (Marty Robbins)
Shimmy, Shimmy Ko-Ko-Bop - The Imperials / Released Nov, Recorded Sep 29 / (Bob Smith)
Harlem Nocturne - The Viscounts / Released Dec / (Dick Rodgers / Earl Hagen)

1960

Theme From 'A Summer Place' - Percy Faith / Released Jan / (Max Steiner)
Bewildered - James Brown / Released Feb, Recorded Jan 30 '59 / (Teddy Powell / Leonard Whitcup)
Doggin' Around - Jackie Wilson / Released Mar / (Paul Tarnopol / Lena Agree)
I'm A Honky Tonk Girl - Loretta Lynn / Released Mar, Recorded Mar / (Loretta Lynn)
Love Me - Phantom / Released Apr, Recorded '58 / (Marty Lott)
Road Runner - Bo Diddley / Released Apr, Recorded Sept '59 / (Ellas McDaniel)
I'm Shakin' - Little Willie John / Released Apr / (Rudy Toombs)
(What A) Wonderful World - Sam Cooke / Released May, Recorded Mar 2 '59 / (Sam Cooke / Herb Alpert / Lou Adler)
Only The Lonely - Roy Orbison / Released May / (Roy Orbison / Joe Melson)
When Will I Be Loved - The Everly Brothers / Released May / (Phil Everly)
I'm Sorry - Brenda Lee / Released May 30 / (Ronnie Self / Dub Allbritten)
Shakin' All Over - Johnny Kidd + The Pirates / Released Jun 10, Recorded May 13 / (Johnny Kidd)
Walk, Don't Run - The Ventures / Released Jun / (Johnny Smith)
I Need Some Money - John Lee Hooker / Released Jun, Recorded Feb 9 / (John Lee Hooker)
Walking To New Orleans - Fats Domino / Released Jun / (Bobby Charles / Fats Domino / Dave Bartholomew)
Itsy Bitsy Teenie-Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini - Brian Hyland / Released Jun / (Paul Vance / Lee Pockriss)
Please Don't Tease - Cliff Richard / Released Jun 24, Recorded Mar 25 / (Bruce Welch / Peter Chester)
A Mess Of Blues - Elvis Presley / Released Jul 5, Recorded Mar 20 / (Doc Pomus / Mort Shuman)
The Twist - Chubby Checker / Released Jul / (Hank Ballard)
Blues Hangover - Slim Harpo / Recorded Jun / (James Moore / Jerry West)
Let's Think About Living - Bob Luman / Released Aug 15 / (Boudleaux Bryant)
Save The Last Dance For Me - The Drifters / Released Aug?, Recorded May 19th / (Doc Pomus / Mort Shuman)
Stay - Maurice Williams + The Zodiacs / Released Aug / (Maurice Williams)
Georgia On My Mind - Ray Charles / Released Sep, Recorded Mar / (Hoagy Carmichael / Stuart Gorrell)
Bye Bye Baby - Mary Wells / Released Sep / (Mary Wells)
Shop Around - The Miracles / Released Sep 27 / (Berry Gordy / William 'Smokey' Robinson)
Will You Love Me Tomorrow? - The Shirelles / Released Nov / (Gerry Goffin / Carole King)
At Last - Etta James / Released Nov 15, Recorded Oct / (Mack Gordon / Harry Warren)
Spanish Harlem - Ben E. King / Released Dec, Recorded Oct 27 / (Jerry Leiber / Phil Spector)
Fool I Am - Pat Ferguson / Released Dec / (Pat Ferguson / Jerrel Ferguson)
I Idolize You - Ike + Tina Turner / Released Dec / (Ike Turner)

1961

Runaway - Del Shannon / Released Feb, Recorded Jan 21 / (Del Shannon / Max Crook)
Theme For A Dream - Cliff Richard / Released Feb / (Earl Shuman / Mort Garson)
Blue Moon - The Marcels / Released Feb, Recorded Feb 15 / (Richard Rodgers / Lorenz Hart)
Daddy's Home - Shep + The Limelights / Released Mar, Recorded Feb 1 / (James Sheppard / William Miller)
Barbara Anne - The Regents / Released Mar, Recorded 1958 / (Fred Fassert)
I Want A Guy - The Supremes / Released Mar 9, Recorded Dec '60 / (Berry Gordy Jr / Brian Holland / Freddie Gorman)
Mama Said - The Shirelles / Released Apr? / (Luther Dixon / Willie Denson)
Funnel Of Love - Wanda Jackson / Released Apr 10, Recorded Oct 28 '60 / (Charlie McCoy / Kent Westberry)
Stand By Me - Ben E. King / Released Apr, Recorded Oct 27 '60 / (Ben E. King / Jerry Leiber / Mike Stoller)
Cupid - Sam Cooke / Released May 16, Recorded Apr 14 / (Sam Cooke)
Rainin' In My Heart - Slim Harpo / Released May, Recorded Nov '60 / (James Moore / Jerry West)
Pills - Bo Diddley / Released Jun, Recorded May 2 / (Ellas McDaniel)
Shoo-Doo - Andre Williams / Released Jun / (Andre Williams / William 'Mickey' Stevenson)
Let's Twist Again - Chubby Checker / Released Jun / (Kal Mann / Dave Appell)
Who Put The Bomp (In The Bomp, Bomp, Bomp) - Barry Mann / Released Jul / (Barry Mann / Gerry Coffin)
Crying - Roy Orbison / Released Jul / (Roy Orbison / Joe Melson)
Little Sister - Elvis Presley / Released Aug 8, Recorded Jun 25 / (Doc Pomus / Mort Shuman)
Take Good Care Of My Baby - Bobby Vee / Released Aug 13 / (Carole King / Gerry Coffin)
Please Mr. Postman - The Marvelettes / Released Aug 21 / (Georgia Dobbins / William Garrett / Brian Holland / Robert Bateman / Freddie Gorman)
The Red Rooster - Howlin' Wolf / Recorded Jun / (Willie Dixon)
Baby Don't You Tear My Clothes - Lightnin' Hopkins / Recorded Jul 13 / (Sam Hopkins)
Shake Your Moneymaker - Elmore James / Released Aug? / (Elmore James)
Hit The Road Jack - Ray Charles / Released Sep / (Percy Mayfield)
Runaround Sue - Dion / Released Sep / (Ernie Maresca / Dion DiMucci)
Big Bad John - Jimmy Dean / Released Sep , Recorded Aug 18 / (Jimmy Dean)
Moon River - Audrey Hepburn / Released Oct 5 / (Johnny Mercer / Henry Mancini)
I Love You So Much (It Hurts) - Patsy Cline / Released Nov 27, Recorded Aug / (Floyd Tillman)
Crying In The Rain - The Everly Brothers / Released Dec / (Carole King / Howard Greenfield)
Duke Of Earl - Gene Chandler / Released Dec / (Bernie Williams / Eugine Dixon / Earl Edwards)
The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh) - The Tokens / Released Dec / (Solomon Linda / George David Weiss / Luigi Creatore / Hugo Peretti)

1962

Dream Baby - Roy Orbison / Released Jan / (Cindy Walker)
The Young Ones - Cliff Richard / Released Jan 11, Recorded Aug/Dec '61 / (Sid Tepper / Roy C. Bennett)
I Sold My Heart To The Junkman - The Starlets (credited to the Blue-Belles) / Released Mar / (Leon René / Otis René)
House Of The Rising Sun - Bob Dylan / Released Mar 19, Recorded Nov '61 / (traditional)
Your Heart Belongs To Me - The Supremes / Released May 8 / (William 'Smokey' Robinson)
Bring It On Home To Me - Sam Cooke / Released May, Recorded Apr 26 / (Sam Cooke)
Fortune Teller - Benny Spellman / Released May, Recorded Feb / (Allen Toussaint)
Midnight Special - Harry Belafonte / Released May, Recorded '61 / (traditional)
Miserlou - Dick Dale + The Del-Tones / Released May / (Michalis Patrinos / Nick Roubanis / Dick Dale)
Surfin' Safari - The Beach Boys / Released Jun 4, Recorded Apr 19 / (Brian Wilson / Mike Love)
The Loco-motion - Little Eva / Released Jun / (Gerry Coffin / Carole King)
Twist And Shout - The Isley Brothers / Released Jun 16 / (Phil Medley / Bert Russell)
Do You Love Me - The Contours / Released Jun 29 / (Berry Gordy)
She's Not You - Elvis Presley / Released Jul 17, Recorded Mar 19 / (Jerry Leiber / Mike Stoller / Doc Pomus)
He's A Rebel - The Crystals (Darlene Love + The Blossoms) / Released Aug / (Gene Pitney)
Green Onions - Booker T + The MGs / Released Aug / ( Booker T. Jones / Steve Cropper / Lewis Steinberg / Al Jackson, Jr.)
Anna (Go To Him) - Arthur Alexander / Released Sep 19 / (Arthur Alexander)
Babe I'm Gonna Leave You - Joan Baez / Released Sep / (Anne Bredon)
Love Me Do - The Beatles / Released Oct 5, Recorded Jun/Sep / (John Lennon / Paul McCartney)
James Bond Theme - John Barry + Orchestra / Released Oct 5 / (Monty Norman)
Tell Him - The Exciters / Released Oct / (Bert Berns)
Monster Mash - Bobby 'Boris' Pickett + The Crypt Kickers / Released Oct / (Bobby Pickett / Leonard L. Capizzi)
These Arms Of Mine - Otis Redding / Released Oct / (Otis Redding)
You've Really Got A Hold On Me - The Miracles / Released Nov 9 / (William 'Smokey' Robinson)
You Need Love - Muddy Waters / Recorded Jul/Oct 12 / (Willie Dixon)
Love's Ring Of Fire - Anita Carter / Recorded Oct 24 / (June Carter / Merle Kilgore)
La Temps De L'amour - Françoise Hardy / Released Nov / (Lucien Morisse / André Salvet / Jacques Dutronc)
I've Got Money - James Brown / Released Nov, Recorded May 21 / (James Brown)
Hitch Hike - Marvin Gaye / Released Dec 19 / (Marvin Gaye / Clarence Paul / William "Mickey" Stevenson)

1963

He's So Fine - The Chiffons / Released Jan, Recorded Dec '62 / (Ronald Mack)
Pipeline - The Chantays / Released Jan / (Bob Spickard / Brian Carman)
In Dreams - Roy Orbison / Released Feb 1 / (Roy Orbison)
Surfin' USA - The Beach Boys / Released Mar 4, Recorded Feb / (Brian Wilson / Chuck Berry)
It's My Party - Lesley Gore / Released Mar 5, Recorded '62 / (Walter Gold / John Gluck Jr. / Herb Weiner)
He's A Bad Boy - Carole King / Released Mar / (Carole King / Gerry Coffin)
I Will Follow Him - Little Peggy March / Released Mar / (Franck Pourcel / Paul Mauriat)
Puff The Magic Dragon - Peter, Paul + Mary / Released Mar, Recorded '62 / (Leonard Lipton / Peter Yarrow)
Act Naturally - Buck Owens + The Buckaroos / Released Mar 11, Recorded Feb 12 / (Johnny Russell / Voni Morrison)
Prisoner Of Love - James Brown / Released Apr, Recorded Dec 17, '62 / (Leo Robin / Russ Columbo / Clarence Gaskill)
Ring Of Fire - Johnny Cash / Released May, Recorded Mar 25 / (June Carter / Merle Kilgore)
Blowin' In The Wind - Bob Dylan / Released May 27, Recorded Jul 9, '62 / (Bob Dylan)
Come On - The Rolling Stones / Released Jun 7, Recorded May 10 / (Chuck Berry)
(You're The) Devil In Disguise - Elvis Presley / Released Jun / (Bill Giant / Bernie Baum / Florence Kaye)
Wipe Out - Surfaris / Released Jun, Recorded '62 / (Bob Berryhill / Pat Connolly / Jim Fuller / Ron Wilson)
Heat Wave - Martha + The Vandellas / Released Jul 10 / (Brian Holland / Lamont Dozier / Edward Holland, Jr.)
My Boyfriend's Back - The Angels / Released Jul / (Bob Feldman / Jerry Goldstein / Richard Gottehrer)
Jackson - Kingston Trio / Released Jul / (Billy Edd Wheeler / Jerry Leiber)
Bad To Me - Billy J Kramer + The Dakotas / Released Jul 26, Recorded Jun 26 / (John Lennon / Paul McCartney)
She Loves You - The Beatles / Released Aug, Recorded Jul 1 / (John Lennon / Paul McCartney)
Blue Velvet - Bobby Vinton / Released Aug / (Bernie Wayne / Lee Morris)
Be My Baby - The Ronettes / Released Aug / (Phil Spector / Jeff Barry / Ellie Greenwich)
Then He Kissed Me - The Crystals / Released Aug / (Phil Spector / Jeff Barry / Ellie Greenwich)
Lost And Lookin' - Sam Cooke / Released Sep, Recorded Feb 25 / (James "Woodie" Alexander / Louis Jordan)
You're No Good - Dee Dee Warwick / Released Oct / (Clint Ballard, Jr.)
When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes - The Supremes / Released Oct 31, Recorded Oct 1 / (Brian Holland / Lamont Dozier / Edward Holland, Jr.)
I Only Want To Be With You - Dusty Springfield / Released Nov / (Mike Hawker / Ivor Raymonde)
Only To Other People - The Cookies / Released Nov / (Toni Wine / Artie Kornfeld / Gerry Coffin)
Pourquoi Pas Moi - Stella / Released Nov / (Stella Zelcer / Maurice Chorenslup)
Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) - Darlene Love / Released Nov 22 / (Phil Spector / Jeff Barry / Ellie Greenwich)
Hippy Hippy Shake - The Swinging Blue Jeans / Released Dec / (Chan Romero)

1964

The Times They Are A-Changin' - Bob Dylan / Released Jan 13, Recorded Oct 24 '63 / (Bob Dylan)
The Universal Soldier - Buffy Sainte-Marie / Released Feb / (Buffy Sainte-Marie)
Bring It On Home - Sonny Boy Williamson / Released Feb, Recorded Jan 11 '63 / (Willie Dixon)
A Change Is Gonna Come - Sam Cooke / Released Mar 1, Recorded Dec 21 '63 / (Sam Cooke)
My Guy - Mary Wells / Released Mar 13 / (William "Smokey" Robinson)
The Pink Panther Theme - Henry Mancini / Released Mar 20, Recorded '63 / (Henry Mancini)
The Girl From Ipanema - Stan Getz + João Gilberto / Released Mar, Recorded Mar '63 / (Antonio Carlos Jobim / Vinicius De Moraes / Norman Gimbel)
Walk On By - Dionne Warwick / Released Apr 26, Recorded Nov '63 / (Burt Bacharach / Hal David)
I'm Into Something Good - Earl-Jean / Released May / (Gerry Goffin / Carole King)
I Get Around - The Beach Boys / Released May 11, Recorded Apr / (Brian Wilson / Mike Love)
Where Did Our Love Go? - The Supremes / Released Jun 17, Recorded Apr 8 / (Brian Holland / Lamont Dozier / Edward Holland, Jr)
As Tears Go By - Marianne Faithfull / Released Jun, Recorded May 28 '64 / (Mick Jagger / Keith Richards / Andrew Loog Oldham)
House Of The Rising Sun - The Animals / Released Jun, Recorded May 18 / (traditional)
Last Kiss - J. Frank Wilson + The Cavaliers / Released Jun / (Wayne Cochran)
Time Is On My Side - Irma Thomas / Released Jul / (Jerry Ragovoy / Jimmy Norman)
A Hard Day's Night - The Beatles / Released Jul 10, Recorded Apr 16 / (John Lennon / Paul McCartney)
Baby I Need Your Loving - The Four Tops / Released Jul 10 / (Brian Holland / Lamont Dozier / Edward Holland, Jr)
Do Wah Diddy Diddy - Manfred Mann / Released Jul 10, Recorded Jun 11 / (Jeff Barry / Ellie Greenwich)
She's Not There - The Zombies / Released Jul 24, Recorded Jun 12 / (Rod Argent)
You Really Got Me - The Kinks / Released Aug 4, Recorded Jul / (Ray Davies)
Oh, Pretty Woman - Roy Orbison / Released Aug / (Bill Dees / Roy Orbison)
How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) - Marvin Gaye / Released Sept / (Brian Holland / Lamont Dozier / Edward Holland Jr)
Leader Of The Pack - The Shangri-Las / Released Oct, Recorded Jul / (George Morton / Jeff Barry / Ellie Greenwich)
The Sounds Of Silence - Simon + Garfunkel / Released Oct 19, Recorded Mar 10 / (Simon)
Gloria - Them / Released Nov 6 / (Van Morrison)
You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' - The Righteous Brothers / Released Dec, Recorded Aug-Nov / (Phil Spector / Cynthia Weil / Barry Mann)
Heart Of Stone - The Rolling Stones / Released Dec 19, Recorded Nov 2 / (Mick Jagger / Keith Richards)
My Girl - The Temptations / Released Dec 21, Recorded Sep-Nov / (William "Smokey" Robinson / Ronald White)