At 12:55 PM 4/28/99 EDT, Bill wrote:
>yep, at least in the top 40. "ration blues," #1 for three weeks; "deacon
>jones," the b-side (#7); and is you is or is you ain't (ma' baby), #1 for 5
>weeks. all charted in 1944.
Which was the first year of Billboard's country chart and the same year
that nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald charted high on the country charts.
After this year, though, I haven't found any such apparent r&b/jazz genre
crossing, not a one. Does anyone know if this was due to some initial
charting procedural error that was later rectified, or were Nat and Ella
and Louis actually being played back to back with Rex Griffin, Ernest Tubb
and Red Foley on "country" stations, a programming choice that ended the
very next year?
I also think this would have been before the widespread notion of
one-format-based radio stations, which makes it all even more confusing...
--david cantwell
