As today is the 75th anniversary of VE Day I thought I'd post the charts from back then!

 

These scanned pages are taken from the book British Hit Singles 1940-1952: The Missing Charts by Steve Waters. The charts were retro compiled a number of years ago by the late Colin Brown. Colin worked in the industry in the 1940s and had amassed lots of sales figures which he used to compile these charts. Are they going to be a 100% accurate guide to what the top 30 records were at the time? Most likely not. But they will be a very good guide to what were the most popular songs at the time. I've included the charts for both 7 May and 14 May as I don't know which one will be the chart that covers 8 May but whichever chart you choose the number 1 is the same - 'Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ra (That's An Irish Lullaby)' by Bing Crosby.

 

 

The charts: https://www.dropbox.com/s/414kja6q8qf6ps6/T...201945.pdf?dl=0

Edited May 8, 20205 yr by Robbie

Oh dear. I don't like that #1 whatsoever :(

 

Issy Bonn at #3 is a decent song though

 

 

The #5 song is quite a tune

 

 

And Joe Loss My Guy's Come Back at #7 is nice and doesn't sound too dated

 

 

Drum Boogie by Gene Krupa is good at #10

 

 

The dominant musical trends then seem to have been jazz and crooning.

 

 

Edited May 8, 20205 yr by dandruff*

^

thanks for posting those clips. Out of them I only recognise 'Together' by Issy Bonn.

 

Through the book I mentioned I discovered that back then records tended to be released at the start of a month rather than each week. That explains why for the last two weeks of the month the charts consist of records just swapping places with no new entries. Record sales were very low back then, about 10 million in 1945. Singles only of course as there were no long playing records so albums were literally singles housed in an box (the box itself being the album which is where the name album as we know it comes from). Most people didn't have a record player back then so many sales were to jukebox operators. I've seen no figures but I'd be surprised if the number 1 sold more than a few thousand. 78 RPM records as they were back then were made of shellac (vinyl didn't come along until the 1950s) and there simply wasn't the manufacturing capacity to make more records because of the war effort. I'm also assuming that records were expensive and were probably only selling to older people who had the money to buy them. The teen market as we know it was still a decade away.

Edited May 8, 20205 yr by Robbie