WE WELCOME THOSE WITH A GENUINE INTEREST IN BING CROSBY. YOU WILL BE ASKED THREE QUESTIONS WHEN YOU REGISTER. DEPENDING ON YOUR ANSWERS, WE WILL EITHER APPROVE OR NOT APPROVE YOUR MEMBERSHIP. This requirement arises from misuse of the forum by a few.
KEEP AN EYE ON:-
Jon Oye keeps adding images to his site Contemplations on Classic Movies and Music
David Lobosco has continual additions to his site The Bing Crosby News Archive
Tony Mead adds photos and other interesting material Bing's Photos
NOTE: If you are having trouble logging in, please contact David Lobosco at davidlobosco@yahoo.com.
1 of 1- Richard Baker
- Moderator
Offline 
- From: Kenilworth, Warwickshire, Engl
- Registered: 20/11/2010
- Posts: 1,542
British Hit Singles of the 1940s
There is an interesting 4 CD set to be released later this month, in conjunction with a book which attempts to recreate the British charts for the 1940s. There were no "official" charts in Britain at that time.
Bing, of course, features very prominently. There has even been a complaint on another discussion board that he features too prominently! But if that's what some honest research produces, who can gainsay the result?
In addition to Bing there is quite a lot of other interesting content.
A link to a pdf file with full listing here
.
- Richard Baker
- Moderator
Offline
- From: Kenilworth, Warwickshire, Engl
- Registered: 20/11/2010
- Posts: 1,542
Re: British Hit Singles of the 1940s
This is a listing of Bing's songs in the set.
CD1
3 CONNIE BOSWELL & BING CROSBY An Apple For The Teacher
4. ANDREWS SISTERS & BING CROSBY Ciribiribin
6. BING CROSBY If I Had My Way
7. CONNIE BOSWELL & BING CROSBY Between 18th And 19th On Chestnut Street
9. BING CROSBY Maybe
11. BING CROSBY April Played The Fiddle
12. BING CROSBY Meet The Sun Halfway
16. BING CROSBY Only Forever
21. BING CROSBY & JOHNNY MERCER Mr. Meadow Lark
23. BING CROSBY Dolores
25. BING CROSBY You And I
26. BING CROSBY & JACK TEAGARDEN & MARY MARTIN The Waiter And The Porter And The Upstairs Maid.
CD2
1 BING CROSBY Do You Care?
2. BING CROSBY & MURIEL LANE The Whistler’s Mother-In-Law
3. BING CROSBY You Are My Sunshine
5. BING CROSBY Deep In The Heart Of Texas
6. BING CROSBY Humpty Dumpty Heart
8. BING CROSBY Be Careful It’s My Heart
10. BING CROSBY Moonlight Becomes You
13. BING CROSBY I’m Thinking Tonight Of My Blue Eyes
14. BING CROSBY Be Honest With Me
17. BING CROSBY If I Had My Way
19. BING CROSBY Sunday, Monday, Or Always
20. BING CROSBY AND THE ANDREWS SISTERS Pistol Packin’ Mama
26. BING CROSBY San Fernando Valley.
CD3
1 BING CROSBY I’ll Be Seeing You
2. BING CROSBY Long Ago And Far Away
4. BING CROSBY Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ra! (That’s An Irish Lullaby)
5. BING CROSBY & THE ANDREWS SISTERS Don’t Fence Me In
8. BING CROSBY & THE ANDREWS SISTERS Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive
11. BING CROSBY More And More
12. BING CROSBY You Belong To My Heart
15. BING CROSBY June Comes Around Every Year
18. BING CROSBY On The Atchison, Topeka And The Santa Fe
19. BING CROSBY It’s Been A Long Long Time
22. BING CROSBY Sioux City Sue
23. BING CROSBY Day By Day
25. BING CROSBY McNamara’s Band
CD4
2. BING CROSBY Temptation
11. BING CROSBY Galway Bay
24. BING CROSBY The Last Mile Home
Frank, The Inkspots and the Andrews Sisters are trailing far, far back, but even I have to admit to some surprise.
- •
Thread Starter- Kevin
- Sustaining Member
Offline
- Registered: 16/4/2013
- Posts: 65
Re: British Hit Singles of the 1940s
Quite interesting reading...does reflect the impact of American music (and Bing) on Britain in general in the 1940's though......almost like a Bing and Friends compilation.
On a personal note...also glad to see Al Jolson creeping back in again towards the end of the 40's.
- Steve Fay
- Senior Member
Offline
- From: Fulton County, Illinois, USA
- Registered: 26/5/2011
- Posts: 359
Re: British Hit Singles of the 1940s
Anyone who gets a look at the companion book, please post your impressions of how it describes and accounts for Bing's absolute dominance of 1940's UK record buyers' attentions.
I found it interesting that some of those Crosby tracks don't tend to appear on other Crosby hit compilations.
That many people today just don't realize how popular Bing was during this period proves the maxim "Hindsight is 20:20" quite false. A similar book and CD set for the US would no doubt show Bing much more popular than is now understood, too,...but it wouldn't surprise me if he was even more popular in the UK.
- Richard Baker
- Moderator
Offline
- From: Kenilworth, Warwickshire, Engl
- Registered: 20/11/2010
- Posts: 1,542
Re: British Hit Singles of the 1940s
I have been pondering on (and playing) the four CD set entitled "The British Hit Singles, January 1940 - December 1949".
I have not been able to examine the weighty (and quite expensive) book of the same name on which the issue is based, so cannot comment on the methodology used to reconstruct the charts, but I suspect that the CD issue is in fact intended to represent the best selling singles, taken cumulatively, over the period. It is not a selection of the Number One hits from any month (or week).
A set of six CDs (or rather two 3CD sets) issued several years ago employed totally different methodology and not surprisingly reached very different conclusions. It is named "Britain's First Number Ones" and attempts to cover the number ones based on weekly sheet music sales (and Radio Luxembourg air time for the later period)..
For those interested the links here will take you to Amazon's listing)
part one
and part 2
=================================================
There are several points to make about "British Hit Singles"
1 Supporting information is totally lacking - there is just a listing of title and principal artist. No writers, supporting artists, dates. Nothing (You'd presumably have to buy the book, and I'm not certain what that might give).
2 A footnote states there is no space for "White Christmas", "Warsaw Concerto", "Anniversary Song".and "London Fantasia". However the first three of these are included in the downloads (or at least they are from Amazon).
3 More effort should have been made to search out clean copies of the records. Many are noisy and "coarse grained", taken from obviously worn copies. I would suggest that Crosby fans at least could do better finding the tracks elsewhere, (including the Chronological series) and I'm sure that many of the other titles exist on better engineered CDs. (I certainly have some).
The issue "Britain's First Number Ones" has much higher production quality with informative notes, though the Crosby content is very much less (about 13 titles). In general they have also found some slightly better quality originals.
Oddly, the format of the packaging differs between the two parts - one is in foldout card, the other in traditional plastic boxes in a card slip-in sleeve.
- •
Thread Starter- Brunswick78
- Member
Offline
- Registered: 17/5/2017
- Posts: 21
Re: British Hit Singles of the 1940s
I was under the impression that the CD box set was a collection of the number one best-selling records of the period, and therefore, those tracks you listed were all number one on this chart. I think the book is now deleted, but there's more information here: I didn't buy it because a) I wasn't keen on the idea of re-creating historic charts from an unverified source, and b) it was rather expensive, as you say. Apparently the late Colin Brown had data from the record companies showing their sales returns. I think he had data going beyond 1952, which is after the NME started the "official" chart, which would be an interesting comparison to make, though the book stops in that year! It's quite possible that all those Crosby records were #1 in a given week. Many of them are rather obscure now, but then so are many "official" UK #1 hits post-1952.
The major difference between this "Missing Charts" book/CD set and "Britain's First Number Ones" is that the latter is based on contemporary published sheet music charts. I highly recommend the book "First Hits", written by Colin Morgan and Brian Henson (the latter a former member of the ICC) published by Boxtree in 1989. It covers the sheet music charts from 1946 to 1959. The sheet music charts actually go back to 1937, but data is patchy. This chart is of songs though - no performer or recording artist is given, just the song title. "Galway Bay" holds the record for most weeks at #1 on the sheet music chart, with 22 at the top. "First Hits" lists the various recordings available for each song, of which there were usually multiple artist versions. So "Galway Bay" was undoubtedly very popular in Britain at this time. Common consensus is that Bing's version was most popular and well-known. The fact it was also - according to "Missing Hits" - a record best-seller, would confirm that. The compilers of the "Britain's First Number Ones" sets used the recordings thought to have been the most popular version. With multiple versions available, it's open to interpretation, but those of a certain age will remember what was heard back then.
- STEPO
- Sustaining Member
Offline
- Registered: 19/2/2024
- Posts: 135
Re: British Hit Singles of the 1940s
Because of wartime shellac shortages and the fact there was no record charts in the United Kingdom until near the end of 1952, it's difficult to calculate how many records Bing sold in the UK but the amazing thing was in spite of those circumstances Bing sold most of his records globally during the 1940s thanks in part to his recording a broad range of material like Elvis Presley was later to do which kept their popularity in the public's mindset long after they both passed on.