Throwing back to the week of August 21, 1954, we find The Crew Cuts still on top of the charts with ‘Sh-Boom,‘ a doo-wop classic.
In the second spot that week was Rosemary Clooney’s ‘Hey There,’ a show tune from the musical The Pajama Game. Clooney stayed in the #2 spot behind ‘Sh-Boom’ for a month before grabbing #1 for six straight weeks. This was the third of four #1 hits for Clooney, all in the first four years of the 1950s.
Throwing back to the week of July 31, 1954, we find a classic doo-wop song topping Billboard’s singles chart. ‘Sh-Boom,’ or ‘Life Could Be a Dream’ as it is sometimes titled, is so good it showed up twice in the top ten simultaneously by two different artists.
The track was first recorded by New York R&B group The Chords. That version eventually made it to #2 on the R&B charts and #9 on the pop chart. It was also recorded by Canadian doo-wop group The Crew Cuts, and their version made it to #1, where it stayed for seven straight weeks. No surprise that the white guys had the bigger hit with the Black guys’ song.
Throwing back to the week of July 10, 1954, we find Kitty Kallen still dominating the charts with ‘Little Things Mean a Lot,’ at #1 for the seventh of nine straight weeks.
In the #2 spot that week was Archie Bleyer’s recording of ‘Hernando’s Hideaway,’ a song from the musical The Pajama Game, written by Jerry Ross and Richard Adler. The song was recorded by several artists, but Bleyer’s was the most successful.
Throwing back to the week of June 19, 1954, we find Kitty Kallen still topping the charts with ‘Little Things Mean a Lot,’ in the middle of its nine-week run at #1.
In the second spot was pop quartet The Four Aces with ‘Three Coins in the Fountain.’ This was the group’s first #1 hit. Their second would come a year later with ‘Love is a Many Splendored Thing.’ Interestingly, both tunes won the Best Song Academy Award for movies that share their titles.
Throwing back to the week of May 29, 1954, we find Kitty Kallen atop the Billboard charts with ‘Little Things Mean a Lot,’ a song written by Edith Lindeman and Carl Stutz. Kallen’s version was the most popular of several recordings of this song.
It was so popular, in fact, that it claimed the title as the #1 song for all of 1954. This week was the first of nine straight it would spend atop the chart.
