Member-only story
Plethora of Pop’s Rate-A-Record
Three Songs From the Year of My Birth
Rating the different charts
I don’t know if you’ll find this funny or not. In 1956, my beloved birth year, the # 1 song on both the Billboard Pop and Country charts was…
“Heartbreak Hotel” by Elvis Presley.
The #1 song on the R&B charts was…
“Singing The Blues” by Guy Mitchell.
Maybe that’s not the funny part. The # 2 song on Pop and Country was “Don’t be Cruel,” also by Elvis, of course. On R&B, it was “The Great Pretender” by The Platters.
And the #3 song was…well let’s wait a bit so I can explain.
I thought that it would be a twist on our also beloved Rate-A-Record series to listen to the #1 songs on these three charts, starting with my birth year and moving on up (to the east side), and see which luxury apartment we can get to. I had to look several times, though when the Pop and Country charts showed the same songs for both #1 and #2. I thought,
“Well, we could just pretend and rate those #1 Elvis hits as if they are Pop and Country distinctly.”
And then, before I discovered the truth of Guy Mitchell, I wondered if “Heartbreak Hotel” could possibly top the R&B chart? Well, no…