These would be combined into different genre-specific charts first, and those genres would be based on what the radio stations were playing. As well as charts for record sales, they had (or have) charts for jukebox plays, for radio plays, and various other things. While the UK’s singles charts are based only on record sales (and, these days, streams, but that doesn’t really apply to this pre-digital era), the Billboard charts have always been an industry-specific thing rather than aimed at the public, and so they were based on many different metrics. “Sh-Boom”, the Chords’ only hit, was the first rhythm and blues record by a black artist or group to make the top ten in the Billboard pop charts, so I suppose this is as good a time as any to talk about how the Billboard charts work, and how they differ from charts in the UK and some other countries. Amazingly, they seem to have handled it far better than most. There are a lot of one-hit wonders in the world of rock and roll, and a lot of people who end up unlucky, but few have been as unlucky as the Chords, who wrote and recorded one of the biggest hits of all time, but who through a combination of bad luck in choosing a name, and more than a little racism, never managed to have a follow-up. There are people out there who’ve spent thirty or forty years of their life chasing a second hit, who will never be truly happy because they expected more from their brief success than it brought them. Sometimes they take it well and it just becomes a story to tell the grandkids, but other times it messes up everyone’s life. What initially looked like it might be a massive career turns into a fluke. And for those people, as the song goes, “a taste of honey’s worse than none at all”. There are musicians to this day who can go out and perform in front of a crowd of a few thousand people, every night, who’ve come there just to hear that one song they recorded nearly sixty years ago - and if the musician is good enough they can get that crowd enjoying their other songs as well.īut there are other musicians who can never capitalise on that one record, and who never get another shot. And depending on how big the hit is and how good it is, that one hit might be enough to keep them going through a whole career. After all, a one-hit wonder has had a hit, which is more than the vast majority of musicians ever do. One-hit wonders have an unusual place in the realm of music history, and one which it’s never easy to decide whether to envy or to pity. Let’s talk about one-hit wonders for a while. This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. The Chords’ music has never been anthologised on CD that I can find out, but almost any good doo-wop compilation should have “Sh-Boom”. My main resources are, as with last week Honkers & Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues by Arnold Shaw, one of the most important books on early 50s rhythm and blues, The Sound of the City by Charlie Gillett, and Marv Goldberg’s website. I am not going to share that song anywhere, given its lyrical content. In this case, I have missed out one track that’s used in the podcast – I use approximately seven seconds of the intro to “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke, without any of the lyrics, in the podcast. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.Īs always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of almost all the songs in the episode. Today we’re looking at “Sh-Boom” by the Chords. Welcome to episode eighteen of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Download file | Play in new window | Recorded on February 4, 2019
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