Pop Top 40: week ending 9/21/44

80 years ago, these were the records selling and spinning during wartime

This first chart was one of several “pop” charts, including Most Played Juke Box Records and a couple which surveyed songs overall - not version-specific (there were a lot of songs getting multiple versions done simultaneously in this era) -  Songs with Most Radio Plugs and Best Selling Sheet Music. The latter two were the progenitors of what we’d now know as the Country and R&B charts. There weren’t generally “weeks on chart” columns, and most weirdly, these charts allowed for ties, which is why there are three songs which had been #1 on the Folk chart one week prior. 

The playlist below actually includes all of these! (Streaming is often not great about pre-rock stuff.)

Best Selling Retail Records
1 1 SWING ON A STAR - Bing Crosby - This utterly ridiculous song won an Oscar. It beat, among others, “I’ll Walk Alone” (see #2 and #6, below) and “The Trolley Song” (aka Judy Garland’s “Clang! Clang! Clang! Went the trolley,” etc.) - not shocking, but definitely appalling. What I can say for this is that Crosby sings it gorgeously - I mean, he couldn’t help that, could he?
2 3 I’LL WALK ALONE - Dinah Shore - The ‘40s in pop music were an era of pure, crystalline voices, and boy did Shore sure have one. This melodramatic love song works on me, for whatever reason.
3 2 YOU ALWAYS HURT THE ONE YOU LOVE - Mills Brothers - They were a perfectly fine, largely unexciting Black harmony quartet often featuring acoustic guitar accompaniment. White America embraced them, surprising at the time - but they were definitely the kind of Black music that America would find acceptable in the ‘40s, as there’s nothing too “offensive” to be found here. At least this gets an up/tempo shift that adds some life.
4 9 IT HAD TO BE YOU - Dick Haymes and Helen Forrest - Gen Xers like myself mostly learned this standard thanks to Harry Connick, Jr.’s version recorded for the When Harry Met Sally soundtrack; it was written and first recorded 100 years ago, in 1924. 20 years later it got this revival thanks to the Eddie Cantor film Show Business; Haymes goes crooner-y and Forrest goes sweet, and this just kinda sits there. However…
5 10 IT HAD TO BE YOU - Betty Hutton - …this take is more to my liking, as Hutton seems to better understand what she’s singing, using nuance and showing breadth and depth. Featured in her 1945 film (talk about an early release) with the brilliant name  Incendiary Blonde.
6 6 I’LL WALK ALONE - Martha Tilton - Pretty, but feels a bit more staid than Shore’s version (#2, above).
7 4 IS YOU IS OR IS YOU AIN’T? - Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters - Well, re what I said above, Crosby actually sings the first plodding verse of this oddly; once the tempo picks up, so does he. And the Andrews Sisters were always and forever his best sidekicks. 
8 - TILL THEN - Mills Brothers - Can a record be somnambulistic? 
9 - IS YOU IS OR IS YOU AIN’T? - Louis Jordan - Jordan himself wrote this, and his version is of course the best; his version of pretty much anything is always the best. The biggest R&B star of the 1940s - he had an astounding 17 #1s on the R&B chart in the decade, compared to just one pop (this record’s flip, “G.I. Jive”) - even in downtempo mode, his records just oozed with personality (that voice! And the way he could use it!). His Tympany Five certainly helped; what a combo.  
10 -  IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU - Jo Stafford - She’s one of my favorite pop singers of the ‘40s and ‘50s - such tone! - but the song, as oft-covered as it is, lets her down a bit. I recommend her take on “It Happened in Sun Valley” from her superb holiday comp Happy Holidays - I Love the Winter Weather (‘tis almost the season!). 

Most Played Juke Box Folk Records
1 1 SMOKE ON THE WATER - Red Foley - A really gross pro-war song about making “a graveyard of Japan,” made worse by its carefree jauntiness - basically it’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” 60 years earlier.
2 1 SOLDIER’S LAST LETTER - Ernest Tubb - Not just a maudlin story song (again, about WWII), but a dull one, whose final line is “dear God, keep America free.”
3 1 SO LONG, PAL - Al Dexter - The accordion adds a nice touch to this, essentially, goodbye polka which spent 13 weeks atop the Juke Box Folk chart in ‘44.  
4 3 BORN TO LOSE - Ted Daffan - A light Western swing which has become some kind of country standard, even though I’m not exactly sure why. It’s perfectly fine, and that’s all.
5 - THERE’S A BLUE STAR SHINING BRIGHT - Red Foley - Yet another jingoistic Foley pro-war song. 

“Harlem” Hit Parade
1 5 I’M LOST - Benny Carter - A big, brassy, crooner-y ballad that works in large part thanks to its brassiness, and also thanks to Dick Gray’s big vocal.
2 1 HAMP’S BOOGIE-WOOGIE - Lionel Hampton - Rollicking, piano-forward instrumental boogie woogie (truth in advertising!), endlessly likeable.
3 4 I STAY IN THE MOOD FOR YOU - Billy Eckstine - Again, what helped make a lot of R&B ballads - I mean, I guess this is a ballad? - superior to their pop kin is the brassiness of the big bands playing them. This is no exception. Endlessly classy but never stuffy. And that trumpet solo!
4 2 TILL THEN - Mills Brothers - See #8, Best Selling Retail Records, above.
5 8 MY LITTLE BROWN BOOK - Duke Ellington - I really don’t like his vocal on this: too nice.