Your Hit Parade (TV)
Your Hit Parade was a prominent music television program that originated from a successful radio show, first airing in 1935. The television version debuted in 1950 and featured a countdown of the top seven songs of the week, culminating in the presentation of the number one song. Despite the lack of transparency regarding how songs were selected, audiences embraced the show as a genuine representation of popular music sales. A cast of four main singers, including notable performers Snooky Lanson and Dorothy Collins, delivered these hits through various entertaining and inventive performances, often accompanied by a larger group of singers and dancers.
The program included segments known as "Lucky Strike Extras," which showcased classic musical standards for older viewers. However, as rock and roll music began to dominate the cultural landscape by the late 1950s, Your Hit Parade struggled to connect with younger audiences who sought a distinct musical identity separate from the traditional styles represented on the show. This shift ultimately contributed to the show's cancellation in 1959. Despite its decline, Your Hit Parade left a lasting impact on the music industry, influencing formats like music videos and Top 40 radio, and remains an important part of television history.
Your Hit Parade (TV)
Identification Weekly television program that featured the previous week’s most popular songs
Your Hit Parade promoted and reflected a consensus culture and set a precedent for “countdown” programs of subsequent decades.
Date Aired from 1950 to 1959
Producers Dan Lounsberry and Ted Fetter
Key Figures
Dan Lounsberry , television producerTed Fetter (1907-1996), television producer
Originally a radio program that began in 1935, Your Hit Parade became a weekly network television program in 1950. The television version consisted of the top seven songs of the week, in a reverse-order countdown that presented the number one song at the end of the show. The method by which the top seven songs were chosen was never revealed, but audiences accepted the show’s claim to be an authentic tabulation of record and sheet music sales.
The show featured four singers, two men and two women, who changed from time to time but always included original cast members Snooky Lanson, a southern charmer, and Dorothy Collins, a sunny blonde. A large, regular supplementary cast of perky singers and dancers backed the four featured singers in performing the week’s hit tunes in various dramatic or comic scenarios. Often the same song would be heard over many weeks as it moved up and down the chart, requiring considerable ingenuity in the presentation of the material and the use of either a different vocalist or a variety of imaginative, elaborate, and sometimes quirky production numbers. Performing the hit songs over and over again in ever new and inventive ways was not only a challenge to the producers but a source of fascination to the audience as well. More than anything else, viewing audiences enjoyed speculating about which songs would climb to the top-three tier. The show also always included “Lucky Strike Extras,” segments that featured musical standards familiar to the older generation and named for the longtime sponsor of the show, Lucky Strike cigarettes.
By the end of the decade, however, rock-and-roll music had replaced the popular music of the decade, which had largely carried on the style of music of the previous two decades. With the onset of rock music, the family-style show lost touch with the emerging generation of young people, who found it important to draw a clear distinction between their new rock and roll and their more countercultural lifestyles and the conservative music and the more conventional lives of their parents. Rock music was also less about the song itself and more about the individual style of the performing artist, the instrumentation, and a musical sound that was more insistent and percussive. The rise of rock star Elvis Presley was a particular blow to the more decorous Hit Parade singers, and although it tried to keep up with the changes in America’s popular music, the show ended its run in the spring of 1959.
Impact
In the wake of rock and roll, Your Hit Parade acquired a retrograde image and became an exemplary casualty of the decade’s growing generation gap . However, Your Hit Parade proved to be a popular televised format which influenced later phenomena such as music videos and Top 40 radio formats.
Bibliography
Durkee, Rob. American Top Forty: The Countdown of the Century. New York: Schirmer Books, 1999. First chapter examines Your Hit Parade as the forerunner of trendsetting countdown formats on radio, especially Casey Kasem’s American Top Forty radio program.
Morath, Max, and Michael Feinstein. The NPR Curious Listener’s Guide to Popular Standards. New York: Perigee, 2002. Discusses Your Hit Parade in the context of larger dynamics of American popular music, especially the music and musical styles of the 1930’s and 1940’s.