Monday, February 9, 2015

50 Year Flashback: February 9, 1965

Exactly one month ago today The Beatles made their historic first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.  It is believed that as many as 72 million viewers tuned in to see The Fab Four perform six of their latest hits.  (Last year CBS Television commemorated the event as "The Night That Changed America" ... and even reunited the two surviving Beatles on stage, Ringo and Paul performing "live" for the very first time in decades.)

We find a full year later that The Beatles still have a strong presence on the pop charts ... their latest hit "I Feel Fine" / "She's A Woman" just vacated the #1 spot a few weeks earlier ... and a follow up single "Eight Days A Week" / "I Don't Want To Spoil The Party" will premier in about two weeks.  In between, The Fab Four placed an incredible THIRTY SONGS on The Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles Chart in a span of just 13 months ... an unheard of feat before or since (unless you count the weekly tracks from "Glee" that would show up and stay on the chart for a week beginning in 2009.  Want to hear some incredible stats?  Between June of 2009 and October of 2012, The Glee Cast placed 279 tracks on Billboard's Hot 100 Singles Chart.  Perhaps even more amazing:  all but 35 of those last exactly ONE WEEK on the chart!  Pretty hard to rank them "ahead of The Beatles" when all the facts are taken into consideration!)

This Chicagoland Chart (The Top Tunes Of Greater Chicago) replaced the WJJD Weekly Survey when 'JJD went all country.  Since WCFL wouldn't officially switch over to their Top 40 format for another nine months or so, this chart became the "balance" against the WLS Silver Dollar Survey, ranking not only the 40 Biggest Hits in Chicago but another 20 Up 'n' Comers, The Top 10 Albums and even The Top Ten R&B Hits!

While The Temptations' monster hit "My Girl" never climbed higher than #19 on our local Pop Charts, it sits at #1 on the R&B Chart this week.   (You'll find it at #35 on The Top Tunes Chart.)

A couple of local favorites are doing pretty well this week ... "Kiss And Run" by Bobby Skel sits at #8 this week ... it never even made Billboard's Chart.  Another VERY popular record here locally was the novelty hit "The Crusher" by The Novas ... it ultimately peaked at #6 on The WLS Silver Dollar Survey.

The top debut this week belongs to The Zombies with "Tell Her No" ... it premiers at #25 ... while the biggest movers include Adam Faith's "It's All-Right" (up from #21 to #10) and "Laugh Laugh" by The Beau Brummels, which jumps 18 places from #32 to #14!  The Newbeats climb 14 places from #36 to #22 with their latest, "Break Away (From That Boy)".