Pick a Day

Music History Events: Charts

May 18, 1963 "If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife..." Jimmy Soul's marriage advice anthem hits #1 in America.

May 8, 1963 The Beatles land their first #1 hit when "From Me to You" tops the UK chart. The song goes nowhere in America, where word of The Beatles is still just a whisper.

November 17, 1962 The Four Seasons' "Big Girls Don't Cry" hits #1 in the US. It holds the top spot for five weeks.

October 31, 1962 The "Monster Mash" rules the airwaves, becoming the most popular Halloween song of all time.More

October 20, 1962 "Monster Mash" by Bobby Pickett & the Crypt-Kickers hits #1 on its way to becoming the most famous Halloween song of all time. Pickett's vocals are his impression of Boris Karloff, who was known for his role as Frankenstein's monster.

June 23, 1962 Ray Charles' landmark album Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music hits #1 in America.

January 24, 1962 "The Twist" craze peaks, with a re-released version of Chubby Checker's song at #1 for the last time.

January 20, 1962 Dick Dale's guitar instrumental "Let's Go Trippin'" hits #60, becoming the first Surf Rock song to chart. Many groups, including The Beach Boys, subsequently cover the song.More

December 18, 1961 "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," with a chorus in poorly translated Zulu, tops the Hot 100 for The Tokens.More

December 11, 1961 Motown Records scores their first #1 on the Hot 100 when The Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman" tops the chart.

October 23, 1961 Dion's "Runaround Sue" hits #1 for the first of two weeks. Dion pulled the name Sue out of thin air, but when he later marries a woman named Sue, she tells everyone the song is about her - even though she knows it isn't.

November 28, 1960 Elvis Presley's "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" a song written in 1926 that has been covered by a number of artists, hits #1 in America for the first of six weeks.

November 14, 1960 Ray Charles' version of "Georgia On My Mind," written in 1930 by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell, hits #1 in America.

September 19, 1960 Chubby Checker's version of "The Twist" goes to #1 in America, while the original version by Hank Ballard & The Midnighters reaches its peak chart position of #28. Checker's version tops the chart again in 1962.

June 27, 1960 Connie Francis becomes the first solo female act with a Hot 100 #1 hit when "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" tops the chart.

February 29, 1960 Bobby Darin's "Beyond The Sea" reaches its chart peak of #6 in America. The song is an English translation of "La Mer," a French song from the 1940s.

October 5, 1959 Bobby Darin's swinging version of "Mack the Knife," a song about a killer from The Threepenny Opera, hits #1 on the Hot 100 and stays there for an astonishing nine weeks. Darin, who is known for lighter fare like "Splish Splash," gains a more adult following, putting him on par with Frank Sinatra.More

December 22, 1958 The Chipmunks hit #1 on the Hot 100 with the squeaky-clean festive favorite "The Chipmunk Song." It's the last Christmas song to top the chart until "All I Want For Christmas Is You" 61 years later in 2019.More

August 4, 1958 Billboard combines its unwieldy system of five separate sales, jukebox, and DJ charts to make one master chart, the Billboard Hot 100. The first #1 is Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool."

August 4, 1958 Bobby Darin has his first hit as "Splish Splash" reaches #3 in America. The song is later used on Sesame Street as a way to encourage kids to get in the tub.

March 17, 1958 "Tequila" by The Champs hits #1 in America, becoming one of the most popular saxophone instrumentals of all time.More

March 17, 1958 The first "Greatest Hits" compilation is released, and it's by Johnny Mathis. It's a huge hit, and the format catches on quickly. The Mathis album stays in the Billboard 200 album chart for over nine years, a record not broken until Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon.More

January 30, 1958 Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock" enters the UK chart at #1, the first single ever to do so.

October 21, 1957 "Jailhouse Rock" by Elvis Presley goes to #1 in America. A couple weeks later, Presley plays a convict-turned-singing sensation in the movie of the same name.

July 22, 1956 The Official UK Albums chart is published for the first time. The first #1 album on the survey is Frank Sinatra's Songs For Swingin' Lovers, featuring the pop standards "I've Got You Under My Skin" and "You Make Me Feel So Young."

January 7, 1956 Dean Martin's "Memories Are Made of This" hits #1 in America for the first of six weeks, proving there's still room for crooners in the rock era.

September 17, 1955 Pat Boone banks his first #1 on the US Pop charts when "Ain't That A Shame" hits the top spot. Some folks think it's a shame that his sterilized version is far more popular than Fats Domino's original, but Boone's cover draws lots of attention to Domino and earns the New Orleans singer substantial royalties.

July 9, 1955 Bill Haley & His Comets' "Rock Around The Clock" becomes the first Rock song to hit #1 on the Billboard Pop chart, where it stays for eight weeks. The song was originally released as a the B-side of "Thirteen Women," but became a massive hit after it appeared in the film Blackboard Jungle.More

May 14, 1955 Les Baxter's "Unchained Melody" hits #1 in America, the first of many renditions of the song to chart. The most enduring version is by The Righteous Brothers, which goes to #4 in 1965 and then to #13 in 1990 after featuring in the movie Ghost.

March 16, 1945 The #1 song in America is "Rum and Coca-Cola" by The Andrews Sisters. It's a sanitized cover of a calypso song about American servicemen in Trinidad who get drunk and solicit prostitutes.