::start transcript::

Welcome to the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. Every week on Chartcrush, we do a deep dive into a year in Pop music and count down the top ten songs according to our recap of the weekly Pop charts published at the time in the music industry’s ultimate chart authority, Billboard magazine.

This week on Chartcrush, we’re turning back the clock to 1961, the first year of the Kennedy Administration, which, JFK himself famously touted as a passing of the torch to a new generation of Americans—the generation Tom Brokaw later dubbed “The Greatest Generation:” the GIs and Rosie Riveters who weathered the Depression and beat fascism. Richard Nixon, the guy Kennedy barely beat in 1960, just four years older than JFK and also a Navy vet—so both parties, looking to pass that torch.

But in Pop? Not so much! Once the Payola scandal threw a wet rag over Top 40 radio in ’59 and ’60, the days of wild DJs taking under-the-table bribes from indie record labels—for better or worse—were over, and Pop reverted back right to the era before Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and “Rock Around the Clock.”

Mean streets, gangs and hoodlums—out. Suburbia, students and middle-class angst—in. Raw R&B and Rockabilly? Swept aside for squeaky-clean Teen Idols, professional Brill Building Songwriters and smooth Arranger-Producers doubling as label A&R execs. It was melody over beat; puppy love over sex; fitting in over bustin’ loose.

And albums over singles—even with Teens, as Billboard announced in June. That was new! And also good for business. Single sales, circling the drain post-Payola.

Meanwhile grownups had something new too: stereo—and the increasingly affordable hi-fi consoles to play the records on in their swanky, mid-century livingrooms.

So in ’61 you had this weird, sanitized holding-pattern year: the charts packed chock-full of instrumentals, film themes, prep-school Folk Groups and polished, “Nashville Sound” Country—all very middle-of-the-road and very pre-rock ‘n Roll. And right on cue, Billboard launched a new chart in ’61 called Middle Road—at first just cherry picking all the grownup stuff off the Hot 100, but later evolving into Easy Listening and eventually Adult Contemporary.

But right in the middle of this massive cultural clean-up, the grassroots are rebelling! Suddenly, “The Twist” is crossing over to adults as society elites are showing up in gossip columns slumming it and twisting the night away at the Peppermint Lounge, a tiny New York dive that by December has lines around the block and NYPD barricades for crowd control. In January ’62 “The Twist” became the only record ever to hit #1 in two separate chart runs—the first in 1960 after Chubby Checker did it on American Bandstand.

But sandwiched in between, ’61 had its own chart milestone. For two weeks in June, with young Freedom Riders all over the news taking buses South to fight segregation, White kids are desegregating their record collections too, driving a record eight hits by Black Artists into the top ten simultaneously. Talkin’ Ben E. King, Dee Clark, Gary U.S. Bonds, Brook Benton, Adam Wade, Gladys Knight & The Pips and a chart newcomer with what turned out to be 1961’s biggest hit we’ll hear later. Eight out of ten had never happened before, and wouldn’t again until 1972.

But that’s not all. To top it all off, Art Laboe‘s Oldies but Goodies radio show and album series are fueling a nostalgia boom for mid-’50s vocal harmony: Teens looking backward for the first time in the Rock Era. The genre descriptor “Doo Wop” first appeared in print in ’61 and the movement even spawned a new hit by the eighth of that eight of ten Black Artists, L.A.’s Little Caesar & The Romans, with their homage to vintage Doo Wop “Those Oldies but Goodies (Remind Me of You).”

Cold War jitters fed the nostalgia wave too—the link between widespread anxiety and nostalgia—well documented. In this case, Teens raised on fallout shelters and “Duck and Cover” drills in school retreating to the warm, human harmonies of the mid-’50s as news of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the Berlin Wall flooded the zone.

Others, especially college students, turned to Folk, singin’ and-a stummin’ in coffeehouses to sooth their frayed nerves. And as you’ll hear this hour, all of it broke through on the charts.

So the lesson for wannabe top-down Culture Czars in all Pop eras? Go ahead, build your dam; you can’t control the river.

#10 (Billboard #46) Dion – Runaround Sue

And with that, let’s dive in: the biggest hits of 1961 here on the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, kicking off with the year’s top Doo Wop record at #10, by an Italian Singer a year into his solo career after parting ways with his group The Belmonts, named after Belmont Avenue in the Bronx!

Nine top40s singing lead with them from ’58 to ’60, including the top10s “A Teenager in Love” in ’59 and “Where or When” in ’60, but this was his first solo chart topper, for two weeks in October. At #10 it’s Dion with “Runaround Sue.”

Fun fact: Dion DiMucci’s wife’s name is Susan. So is “Runaround Sue” about her? Well according to his 1988 autobiography, no. That’s what you’d expect, right? I mean, the Sue in the song runs around with every guy in town and never settles down. But on Oprah in 1990 the two of them sat together, happily married since 1963 with three grown daughters, and admitted that yep, before they got hitched, she was “Runaround Sue.”

Now, not so fun fact: Dion was on the bill in Clear Lake, Iowa the night Buddy Holly chartered a small plane to fly him and two of the other headliners to Minnesota for the next gig on their Winter Dance Party package tour, and Dion won the coin toss for the second seat. But $36? Nah, that was his parents’ monthly rent back in the Bronx—not paying that. So Ritchie Valens took the second seat and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson got the third.

All three, of course, killed when the plane crashed after takeoff—immortalized as “The Day the Music Died” in Don McLean’s early-’70s opus, “American Pie.”

Now, despite spending most of the 1960s treating his survivors guilt with drugs and alcohol, Dion in ’61 was by far the biggest chart beneficiary of that grassroots Doo Wop resurgence I mentioned; that is, until The 4 Seasons’ explosive debut in ’62.

Just missing our top ten for ’61 at #12 is The Marcels’ update of Rodgers & Hart’s “Blue Moon” from 1934—the year’s biggest hit by a Doo Wop Group.

#9 (Billboard #11) Lawrence Welk and His Orchestra – Calcutta

Now speaking of the post-Payola sanitizing of Pop, at #9 we have the first of three examples in our 1961 Chartcrush Countdown of how successful that was.

As a genre, the Easy Listening instrumental had had a chart heyday in the early-to-mid-50s during the first wave of hi-fi mania, but after Les Baxter’s “The Poor People of Paris” got nudged out of the #1 spot by Elvis Presley’s first hit “Heartbreak Hotel” in 1956, no other such record got to #1—until peak Payola hysteria in early 1960, when Percy Faith’s “Theme from ‘A Summer Place’” spent nine weeks on top, the record known to later generations as TV’s default “technical difficulties” music and the only instrumental in our 1960 top ten.

But for 1961 we have three and here’s the first of ’em. #1 for two weeks in February, it’s Lawrence Welk and Orchestra, “Calcutta.”

For risk-averse radio programmers trying to avoid the Payola spotlight, a record like Lawrence Welk’s “Calcutta” was a no-brainer. And once it cracked the top 40, adults in the millions went out and bought the Calcutta album, driving it to #1 for an 11-week run on Billboard‘s Stereo Albums chart, and Welk helped by simulcasting his TV show in stereo on FM radio.

Stereo sound on TV wasn’t a thing ’til the ’80s. So that put him on the cutting edge of hi-fi right as stereo was penetrating downmarket to middle-class consumers.

#8 (Billboard #16) The Shirelles – Will You Love Me Tomorrow?

Well, we are counting down the biggest hits of 1961 here on this week’s Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, and at #8 we have one of the most important top ten debuts in Rock history. That’s for a couple reasons. First, it launched a whole genre: the Early ’60s Girl Group.

Oh, there’d been chart-topping Girl Groups before like The McGuire Sisters and Chordettes in the mid-’50s, and Black Girl Groups like The Bobbettes and Chantels had scored hits as recently as ’58, but this was the first #1 hit by a Black Girl Group. And dozens followed: Chiffons, Crystals, Cookies, Exciters, Ronettes, and Solo Acts like Dee Dee Sharp and Little Eva co-opting the sound, and of course Motown’s Marvelettes and, later on, The Supremes.

But—here’s the other reason it was an important debut—it was the very first chart hit for husband-wife Brill Building Songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King. They went on to notch over 50 Hot 100 hits in the ’60s, and then Carole got another 20-plus in the ’70s and ’80s including her four top10s as a Solo Act.

And it all started here—four High School friends from Passaic, New Jersey. At #8 it’s The Shirelles with “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”

Shirelles at #8 on our 1961 edition of The Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show—actually their fourth chart entry; they’d been notching minor hits since 1958, but nothing like the explosive success of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” and its two weeks at #1 in January and February.

Their two immediate follow-ups also made the top ten in the Spring: “Dedicated to the One I Love” (a reissue of a 1959 record that’d flopped the first time around) and “Mama Said“—and then in ’62 a second #1 with “Soldier Boy.”

But that Girl Group lane got very crowded very fast, and The Shirelles’ waned on the charts after “Foolish Little Girl,” their last top10 in ’63.

#7 (Billboard #7) Chubby Checker – Pony Time

So what do you do after you’re plucked from the obscurity of Jersey Shore boardwalk venues as a last-minute stand-in for a touring Hank Ballard to do his song on American Bandstand, and your version of it sparks a national dance craze and rockets straight to #1? Well, you strike while the iron’s hot, right? Put out more songs about the dance. Or maybe try and start a whole new dance craze.

Well, in 1961, Chubby Checker did both and scored three more top10s. One, from the latter category, even became his second #1 and held the top spot for three weeks. “The Twist” had only managed one week in its first run in 1960. At #7, it’s Chubby Checker’s “Pony Time.”

“Pony Time,” the first of Chubby Checker’s three top tens sandwiched between “The Twist’s” historic two #1 runs on the Hot 100, #7 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 1961’s biggest hits.

Next was “Let’s Twist Again” in the Summer followed by “The Fly” in the Fall. But as dance crazes go, the Pony and the Fly were forgotten as soon as the records were off the charts, unlike “The Twist” after it hit #1 that second time in early ’62 to become the first Rock ‘n Roll record (and dance fad) to cross over to Adults—a true cultural watershed.

#6 (Billboard #5) Del Shannon – Runaway

Now at #6, another Act—like Dion with “Runaround Sue”—who scored big with a self-penned song: definitely the exception, not the rule, for chart hits pre-Beatles and Bob Dylan. And with the music biz pushing safe, sanitized Pop, its brooding, dark intensity really stood out.

Still does—even with Boomer Rock historians who consider the period between Elvis and The Beatles a dull, schmaltzy wasteland.

The record came out in February and was already rocketing up the charts when the Singer did it on American Bandstand in April, and from there it shot to #1 and stayed four weeks into May, selling 80,000 a day at its peak. At #6 it’s Del Shannon’s “Runaway.”

Del Shannon’s “Runaway” at #6 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 1961’s top ten hits. Big shout-out on that to co-writer Max Crook, Del’s friend from back in Battle Creek, Michigan—the inventor of The Musitron, the futuristic-sounding proto-synth he even got to play on the record alongside the veteran studio men hired to play everything else. That after arriving in New York for the session with the instrument in a padlocked case like top-secret military gear.

Would “Runaway” have still been a #1 smash without Max Crook and the Musitron? Well that’s debatable, but one guy who probably didn’t think so was U.K. Producer Joe Meek, out in ’62 with the futuristic-keyboard instrumental “Telstar,” credited to his Studio Band The Tornados—which was also a #1 hit.

As for Del and Max, their follow-up “Hats Off to Larry” made it to #5 later in ’61, also featuring Max Crook on the Musitron.

#5 (Billboard #17) Ferrante and Teicher – Exodus

At #5 is the second of the three instrumentals in our 1961 countdown, and like Lawrence Welk’s “Calcutta,” it probably wouldn’t have climbed as high as it did on the Hot 100 without radio’s post-Payola jitters and the hi-fi stereo boom. Yet it got to #2 in late January and hung around in the top ten for 11 weeks. It even won Song of the Year at the Grammy’s, the only instrumental ever.

It’s the title theme of Otto Preminger’s three-and-a-half hour cinematic epic about the founding of Israel, starring Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint, but it’s not the version in the movie. This one’s by a Duo of middle-aged pianists who resigned their faculty posts at Juilliard in the late ’40s to hit the road as a Twin Pianos Act, and in the ’50s they were right there with Les Baxter and Martin Denny pioneering Exotica and Space-Age Pop.

But in 1960, signed to United Artists, they made their bid for the mainstream. Their version of the theme from Billy Wilder’s The Apartment in 1960 grazed the top 10, but this set them up as the undisputed movie-theme darlings of the Easy Listening era. At #5 it’s Arthur Ferrante and Louis Teicher, Ferrante & Teicher—their biggest career hit, “Exodus.”

In the waning days of Tin-Pan Alley in the ’40s and Early ’50s, Billboard‘s flagship chart wasn’t a ranking of individual records; it was their “Honor Roll of Hits,” which charted the overall popularity of songs—all the versions out on records combined, plus sheet music sales. Well, with Top 40 radio, Rock ‘n Roll and hundred-disc jukeboxes in the ’50s, records eclipsed songs, but Billboard kept on compiling and publishing that weekly Honor Roll of Hits chart until 1963. They just didn’t bother doing a year-end recap for 1961.

Had they, though, “Exodus” would’ve easily been the year’s top song. Besides Ferrante & Teicher’s we just heard at #5, British Conductor Mantovani’s version with lush strings charted, Pat Boone wrote lyrics and cut one with vocals, and Saxophonist Eddie Harris’s Jazz version even crossed over.

#4 (Billboard #72) Bert Kaempfert and His Orchestra – Wonderland by Night

And our instrumental hit at #4 also had multiple versions out, and would’ve been #2 on that year-end ’61 Honor Roll had Billboard done one. It’s another Hot 100 debut that was in the top ten same time as “Exodus,” January to March, but unlike “Exodus,” it did get to #1—for three weeks.

Written and first recorded for a German film, but the movie flopped so the Songwriter took it to Polydor Records’ House Arranger/Conductor, who waxed this version with a studio orchestra. At first, Polydor declined to release it in Germany, but Decca saw a chance peak Payola chill, Top 40 radio on the hunt for the next “Theme from ‘A Summer Place,'” and put it out Stateside. And it made the charts.

Rising steadily over the holidays, it became 1961’s first #1 on the calendar, shaking out at #4 on the year by our ranking here on the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. The third of the three instrumentals in our countdown. That German Arranger/Conductor was Bert Kaempfert. His first of many Easy Listening smashes throughout the ’60s, “Wonderland by Night.”

Talk about turning back the clock, huh? If it wasn’t for the hi-fi production, you could easily mistake that for the Big Band era: “Wonderland by Night” at #4. Bert Kaempfert’s arrangement with the call-and-response saxes and trombones, muted brass and polite swing shuffle—all classic Big Band tropes.

And how about that trumpet? Austrian Charly Tabor channeling Harry James—although James himself, still very much alive and in the game in ’61, re-recording his hits in stereo as all the pre-hi-fi ’40s stars were doing. Gotta wonder what he thought when “Wonderland by Night” came on the radio!

Now, as for Bert Kaempfert, besides emerging as one of the ’60s top Easy Listening Acts cranking out three, four, even five albums a year for Decca and co-writing Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night” and other hits, later in ’61 he was the first to sign and record a certain Group from Liverpool, England during their grueling three-month stint at Hamburg’s Top Ten Club. Beatlemania, still a couple years off in ’61!

#3 (Billboard #87) Jimmy Dean – Big Bad John

Well that does it for the instrumentals in our 1961 Chartcrush countdown! Down to the top three, leading off with the closest thing to a Folk hit in our top ten.

Folk and Country, distinct genres by ’61 defined by their audiences. Folk, geared to academic and/or urban audiences; Country-Western, by and for rural listeners—or so the experts had decided from on high.

But Nashville in ’61: desperately trying to shake off those old Country stereotypes. So when our Country Singer at #3 arrived for a session with what sounded like a long-lost Folk song straight out of the hills of Appalachia, Country Mogul Don Law knew the College Folkies would eat it up. Never mind that the song was dreamt up by the Singer at 30,000 feet on his two-hour flight to the session.

Now, we’re gonna go ahead and spin the uncensored version of this song, but see if you can spot the controversial line that forced the Singer to go back and re-cut his vocal. At #3, it’s Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John.”

Jimmy Dean—not to be confused with James Dean, the Actor—”Big Bad John,” #1 for five weeks in November and December and #3 on our 1961 edition of Chartcrush.

“One hell of a man” at the end. That’s the line that sent the censors into a tizzy in ’61; and unlike most censored lyrics in Pop history, a lot of fans actually prefer the radio-approved line, “big, big man.”

Country Singer Dottie West didn’t waste any time putting out a sequel. “My Big John” tells the story from the point of view of the Cajun Queen, pregnant with John’s son, who goes looking for him, only to learn of his tragic death in the mine collapse. It actually hit stores before “Big Bad John” was even off the charts!

Then Dean’s own sequel “The Cajun Queen” in ’62 has Queenie rescuing John and marrying him—a happy ending.

Sequels and charts aside, though, Jimmy Dean the entertainer was just getting started—first guest host after Johnny Carson took over the Tonight Show; hosted his own prime-time variety show on ABC from ’63-’66 where Jim Henson got his first break in TV with his first Muppet, Rolff the Dog.

And then in ’69 Jimmy Dean launched Jimmy Dean Sausage, which he sold to Sara Lee in the ’80s for a cool $80 million—and got to keep doing the commercials for the next 20 years.

#2 (Billboard #96) Elvis Presley – Are You Lonesome To-night?

And just like that, we’re down to #2. No tease for this one; it’s Elvis Presley’s last big hit before he permanently hung up his gold lamé jacket, walked away from the stage, and surrendered to Hollywood.

Now, technically, his touring days had already ended in late 1957, before he got his draft notice. His only live performances after he got out of the Army in 1960? Polite charity events. But the last of those happened in March of ’61, and after that, Elvis didn’t play a real concert for seven years.

Much has been made of this—Critics Greil Marcus and Peter Guralnick both pinpointing it as the watershed moment Elvis stopped being culturally relevant. As if he had a choice.

Easy Listening Instrumentals and manufactured Teen Idols on the charts were definite points on the board for the post-Payola cleanup crew, but an environment where the only sensible move for The King of Rock ‘n Roll was to abdicate and retreat to the safety of Hollywood movie sets? Well that was ballgame.

At #2, an old Pop standard from 1926 that Elvis only cut because his Manager’s wife liked it. His last major hit before the Hollywood pivot—how fitting? “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”

Elvis Presley, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” at #2 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 1961’s biggest hits.

Now, what if Elvis had turned to face the top-down cultural headwinds and re-engaged with his Rock ‘n Roll roots in ’61—instead of seven years later in 1968 on his NBC Comeback Special, which still netted 42% of the TV audience the night it aired even though he hadn’t scored a top ten hit in over three years?

Well, who knows? A lot changed between ’61 and ’68 so it’s hard to imagine how he might’ve fit in or affected things, if at all. Not many ’50s or Early ’60s stars weathered Beatlemania, The British Invasion, Bob Dylan and Folk Rock in the mid-’60s.

As it was, we have Blue Hawaii, Girls! Girls! Girls!, Fun in Acapulco, Viva Las Vegas, Harum Scarum and over a dozen other ’60s movies whose box office receipts and soundtrack sales gradually dwindled as times changed—and by ’68, TV ratings and his still-intact talent and undeniable charm and charisma notwithstanding, Elvis was an anachronism.

#1 (Billboard #1) Bobby Lewis – Tossin’ and Turnin’

But as they say, nature abhors a vacuum, and so does pop culture. The Early ’60s—not the only time that reactionary, self-appointed culture Czars tried to dictate public taste. Compare to the early 2010’s, for example, when a wave of viral, internet-driven hits sent industry gatekeepers into an absolute panic.

Well as I teased at the top of the show, the #1 song of 1961 was a milestone: one of the historic eight records by Black Artists that were in the top ten simultaneously in June, which had never happened before and didn’t again ’til 1972.

The jukebox in ’61 was youth culture’s ultimate end run around the gatekeepers—like the internet in the streaming era: how fans could land a song of their choosing on the Hot 100 and make it not just safe but mandatory, even for the most paranoid Top 40 radio programmers.

Now, post-Payola, the only way they were even looking at a frantic R&B Shouter like this—especially on an indie label—was if it had a bullet or star next to it on the charts.

At #1, here’s our 1961 countdown’s happy ending, Bobby Lewis’s “Tossin’ and Turnin’.”

#1 for seven weeks in mid-Summer and the #1 song of 1961, Bobby Lewis’s “Tossin’ and Turnin’.” It was #1 on Billboard‘s year-end ranking too. Lewis had never scored a hit before, and after his top ten follow-up later in the year, he never did again.

By the way, the only notice in Billboard of eight of their top ten records on the Hot100 being by Black Aartists: a piece in the July 3rd issue about how smaller R&B stations and DJs were being wined and dined by labels now that the big Pop stations were under the Payola microscope. Pop culture abhors a vacuum, indeed!

Bonus

So Billboard‘s year-end Hot 100 recap for 1961 has “Tossin’ and Turnin'” at #1 too. It also has Del Shannon’s “Runaway” and Chubby Checker’s “Pony Time” in the top ten. But those are the only three in common between our top ten for 1961 and Billboard‘s.

Now like Billboard‘s until the early ’90s, our Chartcrush rankings are completely based on how songs did on Billboard‘s weekly charts. But unlike Billboard, our formula and ranking methodology is the same for every year, while Billboard constantly tweaked theirs year-to-year.

And for ’61, the differences are, to say the least, striking. Seven songs (count ’em seven!) in Billboard‘s published top ten for the year that didn’t make our Chartcrush Top Ten—in some cases not even close! But since Billboard‘s rankings are what you’ll see practically everywhere else you look, in the time that we have left, let’s zoom in and take a closer look at those seven songs.

#29 (Billboard #10) Joe Dowell – Wooden Heart

We’ll take them in countdown order according to where Billboard ranked them, and for each I’ll do my best to explain the discrepancy, kicking off with the song Billboard ranked #10. It’s a version of a German Folk Song by an unknown Singer from Indiana, from his first-ever recording session: Joe Dowell’s “Wooden Heart.”

In late August, Joe Dowell’s “Wooden Heart” ended Bobby Lewis’s seven-week reign atop the Hot 100 with “Tossin’ and Turnin’,” but after its one week at #1 it dropped like a rock—just three more weeks in the top ten.

On our Chartcrush ranking of 1961’s hits we counted down the top ten from earlier in the show, it shakes out at #29.

Over in the U.K., a different version of “Wooden Heart” topped the charts, and for six weeks no less! Elvis Presley’s, from the soundtrack to G.I. Blues. In the movie, Elvis sings it to a puppet!

#27 (Billboard #9) Dee Clark – Raindrops

Now Elvis wasn’t the only ’50s Rocker to clean up his act for the post-Payola ’60s. Little Richard quit the whole game to become a Preacher—in 1958! He didn’t want to leave his Band in the lurch, though, or forfeit bookings, so he brought in a replacement. And in 1961 the replacement, Dee Clark, scored the only career top10 between both of them with a song he wrote himself. #9 on Billboard‘s 1961 ranking, it’s “Raindrops.”

One of the historic eight songs by Black Artists that dominated the top 10 for two weeks after the Freedom Rides in the Spring of ’61, Dee Clark’s “Raindrops,” Billboard‘s #9 song of 1961 even though it only got as high as #2 on the weekly Hot 100. Our Chartcrush ranking has it at #27 on the year.

#34 (Billboard #8) The String-a-Longs – Wheels

Next up in our bonus segment countdown of the records that made Billboard‘s year-end top ten for 1961, but not our Chartcrush Top Ten we counted down earlier, at #8, Billboard had yet another instrumental. It’s The String-a-Longs’ “Wheels.”

String-Alongs, an instrumental group from Texas recorded by Buddy Holly’s Producer Norman Petty at his studio in Clovis, New Mexico. “Wheels,” Billboard‘s #8 song of 1961, but it only got to #3. We have it at #34 on the year in our Chartcrush ranking for 1961.

#47 (Billboard #6) The Jive Five – My True Story

Now at #7, Billboard had Chubby Checker’s “Pony Time,” which aligns perfectly with our Chartcrush ranking we counted down earlier, so let’s skip ahead to Billboard‘s #6 song in our bonus countdown of the songs that made Billboard‘s year-end top ten for 1961 but not ours. It’s a Doo Wop classic out of Brooklyn, New York—The Jive Five’s “My True Story.”

Peaked at #3 for two weeks; just four weeks total in the top ten. Great record, but how is The Jive Five’s “My True Story” Billboard‘s #6 song of the year? Well, unless their ranking method for 1961 is locked away in a filing cabinet somewhere, we may never know! Our Chartcrush ranking puts it at #47.

The Jive Five charted a couple more records in the Early ’60s, but kept performing and recording even after the hits stopped, all the way into the 2000s! Those catchy a capella bumper jingles that were all over the kids channel Nickelodeon in the ’80s and ’90s? Yep: same group, The Jive Five!

#24 (Billboard #4) Roy Orbison – Crying

Now #5 on Billboard‘s 1961 ranking was Del Shannon’s “Runaway,” which we heard earlier at #6, so next up as we continue our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show bonus segment of 1961 hits that made Billboard‘s top ten but not ours, Billboard‘s #4—yet another that never got to #1, but ranked higher than songs that did; in this case, even one by the same Singer.

“Running Scared” topped the Hot100 for a week in June and this one stalled at #2 in October, but outranked it on Billboard‘s year-end list—Roy Orbison’s “Crying.”

Roy Orbison’s “Crying,” not a #1 but still Billboard‘s #4 song of 1961, and they’ve got his #1 hit “Running Scared” from earlier in the year at #13. Go figure!

Our Chartcrush ranking puts “Crying” at #24 and “Running Scared” at #22—a banner year to be sure, and right on the heels of Roy’s two top10s in 1960, “Only the Lonely” and “Blue Angel,” but going by our Chartcrush rankings, Orbison had to wait ’til “Pretty Woman” in 1964 for his first legit year-end top ten!

#13 (Billboard #3) The Highwaymen – Michael

Next in our bonus segment countdown of Billboard year-end top tens for 1961 that missed the top ten on our Chartcrush Countdown Show ranking, a Folk Record that did hit #1 for two weeks. Up against the hits we heard earlier in our top ten, though, its chart run of just 11 weeks in the top 40 was less-than-spectacular. Still, Billboard ranked it #3 on the year—The Highwaymen, “Michael.”

“Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,” a 19th century slave work song recorded in 1959 by a group of Sophomores at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, The Highwaymen—missing the top ten on our Chartcrush 1961 ranking at #13, but #3 on Billboard‘s year-end list—the record that got to carry the standard for the Folk Revival on Pop radio in 1961.

#99 (Billboard #2) Patsy Cline – I Fall to Pieces

But that’s not the biggest surprise in our bonus segment countdown of the hits that missed our Chartcrush top ten, yet made Billboard‘s—and I’m not just talking 1961 here. We’ve saved the best for last: the biggest ranking discrepancy in any year, Chartcrush vs. Billboard—#2 in Billboard; #99 on our Chartcrush ranking!

Now, granted, it did have one of the longer chart runs of 1961—20 weeks with ten in the top 40—and yes, it’s rare but sheer longevity can make the difference with these rankings. But not here: a week at #12 was as far as this one got. Three weeks in the top 20! Great song, but c’mon Billboard—what were you thinking?

Patsy Cline with Billboard‘s #2 song of 1961; #99 on our Chartcrush ranking with just three weeks in the top 20 during its Hot 100 run. Cline’s next hit with Willie Nelson’s “Crazy” later in ’61, got as high as #9 but only had 11 weeks on the chart total. Still, Patsy Cline’s star continued to rise, especially on the Country charts, until her untimely death in a plane crash in 1963.

Now thankfully, Billboard also ranked “Tossin’ and Turnin'” #1 on the year—pretty much a no-brainer—so that concludes our bonus segment countdown of the hits that made Billboard‘s frankly bizarre 1961 year-end top ten, but missed our Chartcrush top ten we counted down earlier. It also concludes our 1961 episode of The Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show.

But I want to thank you for listening! I’ve been your host Christopher Verdesi. If you’re tuning in on the radio and missed some of the show or just want to hear it again, head on over to our website chartcrush.com, where you can stream the extended podcast version, follow along with a written transcript and drill down even further with dishy extras like our full Top 100 chart and interactive line graph of the actual chart runs of the top 10 songs.

We do that for every episode, ’40s to now, and it’s all on that website, again, chartcrush.com. Thanks again for listening, and don’t forget to tune in again next week, same station and time, for another year, and another edition of Chartcrush!

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