Your Hit Parade – Phantom Dancer 9 June 2020

Your Hit Parade is this week’s Phantom Dancer feature of the week.

The Phantom Dancer has been produced and presented by 1920s-30s singer and actor Greg Poppleton since 1985. It can be heard online from 12:04pm AEST Tuesday 9 June at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/

The finyl hour is vinyl.

YOUR HIT PARADE

Your Hit Parade wass a US radio and TV music program broadcast 1935 – 1953 on radio and seen on TV between 1950 – 59. During the show’s 24-year run it had 19 orchestra leaders and 52 singers or groups.

Every Saturday evening, the program offered the most popular and bestselling songs of the week. The earliest format involved a presentation of the top 15 songs. Later, a countdown with fanfares led to the top three finalists, with the number one song for the finale. Occasional performances of standards and other favorite songs from the past were known as ‘Lucky Strike Extras.’

Listeners were informed that the “Your Hit Parade survey checks the best sellers on sheet music and phonograph records, the songs most heard on the air and most played on the automatic coin machines, an accurate, authentic tabulation of America’s taste in popular music.” However, the exact procedure of this ‘authentic tabulation’ remained a secret.

ALAN JAY LERNER

Your Hit Parade began on NBC 20 April 1935, as a 60-minute program with 15 songs played in a random format. Initially, the songs were more important than the singers, so a stable of vocalists went uncredited and were paid only $100 per episode, equal to $1900 today. In 1936-37, it was carried on both NBC and CBS. Script continuity in the late 1930s and early 1940s was written by Alan Jay Lerner before he found fame as a lyricist. The first number one song on the first episode was ‘Soon’ by Bing Crosby.

SINATRA

Some years passed before the countdown format was introduced, with the number of songs varying from seven to 15. Vocalists in the 1930s included Buddy Clark, Lanny Ross, Kay Thompson and Bea Wain (1939–1944), who was married to the show’s announcer, French-born André Baruch. Frank Sinatra joined the show in 1943, and was fired for messing up the No. 1 song, ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ by interjecting a mumble to the effect that the song had too many words and missing a cue. An AFRS transcription survives of this show. One source says his contract was not renewed due to demanding a raise and the show being moved to the West Coast. He returned to show at a low point in his career (1947-49), when Doris Day was also singing on the show, paying the $2000 (1949 money) weekly studio costs to call in his songs from Los Angeles asthe show was transcribed in New York City.

The first half of a  Your Hit Parade TV show in 1958…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3KuOD8pbK8

LUCKY DAY

Hugely popular on CBS through the WWII years, Your Hit Parade returned to NBC in 1947. The show’s opening theme, from the musical revue George White’s Scandals of 1926, was ‘This Is Your Lucky Day’.

Orchestra leaders over the years included Al Goodman, Lennie Hayton, Abe Lyman, Leo Reisman, Harry Salter, Ray Sinatra, Harry Sosnik, Axel Stordahl, Peter Van Steeden, Mark Warnow and Raymond Scott (1949–1957). The chorus was led by musical director Lyn Murray.

Dozens of singers appeared on the radio program, including “Wee” Bonnie Baker, Dorothy Collins, Beryl Davis, Gogo DeLys, Joan Edwards (1941–1946), Georgia Gibbs, Dick Haymes, Snooky Lanson, Gisèle MacKenzie, Johnny Mercer, Andy Russell, Dinah Shore, Ginny Simms, Lawrence Tibbett, Martha Tilton, Eileen Wilson, Barry Wood, and occasional guest vocalists. The show featured two tobacco auctioneers, Lee Aubrey “Speed” Riggs of Goldsboro, North Carolina and F.E. Boone of Lexington, Kentucky.

On this week’s Phantom Dancer you’ll hear Tommy Leonetti (singer of ‘My City of Sydney’) singing the Number 1 Song, ‘Dream, Dream, Dream’, on a 1958 Your Hit Parade. (It’s at the end of this clip)

1950s RADIO SERIES

From the summer of 1950 to the start of summer of 1951 (the first year of the Hit Parade television show), the stars of the TV show—Eileen Wilson, Snooky Lanson, and Dorothy Collins—also starred on the Hit Parade radio show. (Wilson had sung on the radio show since 1948.) Beginning in the fall of 1950, the radio show and the TV show both aired on Saturdays; the radio program was heard from 9:00-9:30 p.m., Eastern time, and the TV show was seen from 10:30-11:00 p.m., Eastern time. Both shows featured the Lucky Strike Orchestra, led by Raymond Scott.

In late 1951, the radio show moved to Thursday nights, and its personnel and format were changed. The show, still sponsored by Lucky Strike, now starred Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians. Vocalists from Lombardo’s orchestra sang on the new version of the radio show, which also featured a guest female vocalist each week; the guest vocalist was called the “Lucky Star of the Week.” Guy Lombardo was host of the show until January 16, 1953, when the Hit Parade radio program aired for the last time.

1950s TV SERIES

André Baruch continued as the announcer when the program arrived on NBC television in summer 1950 (Del Sharbutt succeeded him in the 1957-58 season), written by William H. Nichols, and produced, in its first years, by both Dan Lounsbery and Ted Fetter. Norman Jewison and Clark Jones (nominated for a 1955 Emmy Award) directed with associate director Bill Colleran. Tony Charmoli won a 1956 Emmy for his choreography, and the show’s other dance directors were Tom Hansen (1957–58), Peter Gennaro (1958–59) and Ernie Flatt (uncredited). Paul Barnes won an Emmy in 1957 for his art direction. In 1953, the show won a Peabody Award ‘for consistent good taste, technical perfection and unerring choice of performers.’ Here’s Dorothy Collins receiving her Peabody Award…

The seven top-rated songs of the week were presented in elaborate TV production numbers requiring constant set and costume changes. However, because the top songs sometimes stayed on the charts for many weeks, it was necessary to continually find ways of devising a new and different production number of the same song week after week. After the show was revamped in September 1957, the top songs were reduced to five, while extras were increased.

On the TV series, vocalists Dorothy Collins (1950–1957, 1958–59), Russell Arms (1952–1957), Snooky Lanson (1950–1957) and Gisèle MacKenzie (1953–1957) were top-billed during the show’s peak years. During this time, MacKenzie had her own hit record in 1955 with ‘Hard to Get’ which climbed to the #5 ranking in June 1955 and stayed on the charts for 16 weeks. She also starred in her own NBC variety program, The Gisele MacKenzie Show from 1957–1958, a series produced by her mentor, Jack Benny. Russell Arms also enjoyed a hit record during his stint on the show – ‘Cinco Robles (Five Oaks)’.

The line-up of the show’s other singers included Eileen Wilson (1950–1952), Sue Bennett (1951–52), June Valli (1952–53), Alan Copeland (1957–58), Jill Corey (1957–58), Johnny Desmond (1958–59), Virginia Gibson (1957–58), and Tommy Leonetti (1957–58). All were performers of standards, show tunes or big band numbers. Featured prominently were the Hit Parade dancers and the Hit Paraders, the program’s choral singers, who sang the opening commercial jingle (composed by Raymond Scott):

BOB FOSSE

During the 1950-1951 season Bob Fosse – dancer, musical-theatre choreographer, actor and theatre and film director – appeared as a guest dancer on several episodes, with partner Mary Ann Niles. From 1950 until 1957, the orchestra was led by well-known bandleader and musician Raymond Scott (who married Dorothy Collins in 1952); the show’s other music supervisors were Dick Jacobs (1957–58) and Harry Sosnik (1958–59). During the 1957-58 season, sponsor American Tobacco pitched Hit Parade filter cigarettes instead of Lucky Strikes. Alternate sponsors included Avco Manufacturing’s Crosley division (1951–54), Richard Hudnut hair care products (1954–57), and The Toni Company (1957–58).

See Bob Fosse with his wife Mary Ann Niles dance on Your Hit Parade in 1952…

The show faded with the rise of rock and roll when the performance became more important than the song. It is said that big band singer Snooky Lanson’s weekly attempts to perform Elvis Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’ hit in 1956 hastened the end of the series. The series went from NBC (where it became the first TV show to contain the living color peacock) to CBS in 1958 and expired the following year. While Your Hit Parade was unable to deal with dull, uninspired rock songs, the show’s imaginative production concepts had an obvious influence on the wave of music videos that began in the decade that followed.

Here’s Snooky Lanson on a 1956 ‘Your Hit Parade’ singing ‘Heartbreak Hotel’…

1970s – 80s

CBS also brought it back for a brief summer revival in 1974. That version featured Kelly Garrett, Sheralee and Chuck Woolery. The 1974 version of Your Hit Parade also featured hit songs from a designated week in the 1940s or 1950s. Milton DeLugg conducted the orchestra and Chuck Barris packaged this series.

During the early 1980s, André Baruch and Bea Wain hosted a syndicated radio version of Your Hit Parade, reconstructing the list of hits of selected weeks in the 1940s and playing the original recordings.

The show’s familiar closing theme was ‘So Long for A While’.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK

1952 TV. Dorothy Collins, Snooky Lanson, Eileen Wilson, Raymond Scott and the Lucky Strike Orchestra. Aired 1 March 1952. Bob Fosse was a featured dancer. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVCVHmVDEYc

9 JUNE PLAY LIST