Hit Parade Anomalies

Some time ago--the early Jurassic period--one of your correspondent's weekly duties was scripting "Your Hit Parade" and "Your Western Hit Parade."  And I wish to assure you that the top songs of that day were every bit as banal as today's hits.

But there were rare exceptions, anomalies on the hit parade chart.  Three that ruled the number one spot for weeks and weeks and weeks were Aram Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance," Anton Karas's "Third Man Theme," and Irving Berlin's "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm" as performed by Les Brown and his Band of Renown.

Khachaturian was probably astonished that his "Sabre Dance" hit the top of the charts (as we old deejays say).  He never had another piece on the hit parade, although the adagio or love theme from his ballet "Spartacus" could have been turned into a pop ballad.

Anton Karas was a zither player whose theme for "The Third Man," the memorable Graham Greene-Carol Reed film, was another unexpected chart-topper--after which Karas returned, presumably, to the smoky haze of Viennese coffee houses.

Les Brown, who began his career at Duke University leading the Duke Blue Devils, was the only one of the three really in the pop music biz.  He had a number of big band hits ("Sentimental Journey," "A Good Man is Hard to Find") as well as many tasty jazz originals ("Leapfrog," "High on a Windy Trumpet") with such soloists as Ted Nash and Jimmy Zito, but it was a wonderful surprise to find his very tight arrangement of the Berlin song riding the hit parade for much of 1948, at a time when the usual hit parade material was treacly stuff like "Near You" and "Rumors are Flying."

And one more surprise:  all three of these hit parade anomalies are as listenable today as they were then. 

This is the aging deejay signing off.  Back soon--same time, same blog spot.