"Your Hit Parade"
Sat., April 22, 01:25 PM
A Music of Your Life moment.
Last week, Peter Marshall began talking about “Your Hit Parade,” also known as the “Lucky Strike Hit Parade.” It was, after all, an anniversary; it began airing on the radio on April 20, 1935. Peter just loved that show. I don’t know what criteria they used to determine the hits. This was long before “official” charts, though I think it was no longer the sales of sheet music. (Oh, yes, sheet music sales used to determine whether a song was a hit. My father told me.) Later, Peter said, the show was on television, but it didn’t do as well. Huh?
I’m never sure whether Peter is reading something that someone else wrote for him, or if he is just misremembering. Or maybe I am. But I know I began watching “Your Hit Parade” in 1952, when we got our first television set, and I’m sure I watched it for a lot of years after – probably until I graduated from high school. So, being the annoying person my brother always said I was, I looked it up.
According to one web site, the television version ran from 1950 to 1959. Another source mentions that the television show was simulcast on NBC radio. That sounds to me as if it was fairly successful.
On the radio, a vocalist just steps up to the microphone and sings. Television demands more visuals; that requires writers, sets, costumes, makeup, and so forth, for chorus members as well as the lead singer.
I tried to explain to my kids what it was like. Every song was done in a little – dramatization, I guess you’d call it – so that there was a story attached. “Oh,” said my daughter, “videos.”
Indeed! A generation before MTV started playing recorded videos round the clock, “Your Hit Parade” produced seven original videos every week. On live television. Even if they went on summer hiatus, which I don’t remember, they would have produced thirty-nine shows a year. If a song was a hit for ten weeks, there were ten original videos written for it.
I doubt that these shows were ever saved on kinescope, and certainly they’re not available now. It’s a pity; if nothing else, they would have made good teaching materials.
Why did it go off the air? It wasn’t the show itself as much as the shift in the music business in general. Earlier, when the singer and the lyrics became more important than the dance music, the big bands began to disappear. By the end of the fifties, the artists had become more important than the songs. I have mentioned elsewhere that, while I enjoy rock music, I can’t sing it. I cannot image sweet Dorothy Collins, in her white blouse with alittle bow at the collar, singing “ya ain’t nuthin’ but a hound dog…” Or Gisele McKenzie singing “Dance with Me, Henry” accompanying it with a violin solo. Snooky Lanson was not an appropriate singer for Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day.” Writers were performing their own material, and fewer songs were written that could be sung by another singer. The end of the show signaled the end of an era.
Peter Marshall has his own web page and e-mail, but he doesn’t respond to questions and comments. So I’ll send him this link, but you get it first.
