It’s back to work in January 2022, so let’s escape back to 1955 to hear what the November charts have to offer….
The songs of November, 1955
“Ain’t That A Shame” – Pat Boone
“At My Front Door” – Eldorados
“At My Front Door” – Pat Boone
“Autumn Leaves” – Roger Williams
“Black Denim Trousers” – Cheers
“Croce Di Oro” – Patti Page*
“Daddy-O” – Fontane Sisters*
“He” – Al Hibbler
“He” – Mcguire Sisters
“I Hear You Knocking” – Gale Storm
“It’s Almost Tomorrow” – Dreamweavers*
“Love And Marriage” – Frank Sinatra*
“Love Is A Many Splendored Thing” – Four Aces
“Moments To Remember” – Four Lads
“My Bonnie Lassie” – Ames Brothers
“Only You” – Hilltoppers*
“Only You” – Platters
“Pepper-Hot Baby” – Jaye P. Morgan*
“Seventeen” – Boyd Bennett
“Seventeen” – Fontane Sisters
“Sixteen Tons” – Tennessee Ernie Ford*
“Someone You Love” – Nat King Cole
“Suddenly There’s A Valley” – Gogi Grant
“Suddenly There’s A Valley” – Jo Stafford
“The Bible Tells Me So” – Don Cornell
“The Longest Walk” – Jaye P. Morgan
“The Shifting Whispering Sands” – Billy Vaughn
“The Shifting Whispering Sands” – Randy Draper
“The Yellow Rose Of Texas” – Johnny Desmond
“The Yellow Rose Of Texas” – Mitch Miller
“Tina Marie” – Perry Como
“Wake The Town And Tell The People” – Les Baxter
“You Are My Love” – Joni James
“Young Abe Lincoln” – Don Cornell*
* = New to the chart this week.
We’ll supplement the fairly limited number of new songs with a top 10 R&B chart from the month:
You can listen to the full playlist on Youtube via this link or embedded below:
This month in history
Not a great start to the month, with November 1 being the “official” start date of the Vietnam war. It will be a number of years before we can trace its impact through music and popular culture here.
My original picture of the 50s came from “Happy Days”, a ’70s TV show take on life in the decade. Another impactful imagining of it came from the ’80s film “Back to the Future”. According to that film on November 5, 1955, “Dr. Emmett Lathrop Brown, a physics professor at Hill Valley University, was standing on his toilet seat attempting to hang a clock in his bathroom, when he slipped and slammed his head on the side of the sink. Upon regaining consciousness Brown reported having ‘a revelation, a picture, a picture in my head.'” …yes he fictionally invented the time machine at the centre of that film.
Fittingly the film transports the central character back to the ’50s where he plays Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” 3 years before its release in 1958. I’m no Marty McFly so we’ll have to wait a year in real time for it to appear in our charts.
Back in the real 1955… we heard he recorded his first single a few months ago and now on the 22nd Colonel Tom Parker signs Elvis Presley to RCA Records.
What’d Sadie think?
It’s a split month at the top of the charts with “Autumn Leaves” by Roger Williams there for a week before “Love Is A Many Splendored Thing” by the Four Aces taking it out for the remainder.
Love it
“Love And Marriage” – Frank Sinatra. Couldn’t have told you Sinatra’s was the original but there you go and what a great version and song it is.
“Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford seems to be the version I recall being played when I was a young lad. It’s not the first version, that was fro 1947, but its apparently the most famous. Such a great sing-a-long.
Like it
“Croce Di Oro” – Patti Page
“Only You” – Hilltoppers
“Pepper-Hot Baby” – Jaye P. Morgan
“Young Abe Lincoln” – Don Cornell
Thirty Days – Chuck Berry
Feel So Good – Shirley & Lee
Don’t stat me talkin’ – Sonny Boy Williamson
All Around the World – Little Willie John
Everyday – Count Basie
“Daddy-O” – Fontane Sisters
Greenbacks – Ray Charles
Lose it
“It’s Almost Tomorrow” – Dreamweavers
I hear you Knockin’ – Smily Lewis
Hands Off – J McShann
Now go listen to the full playlist on Youtube via this link.