a nutshell guide to the billboard record charts of the ’50s

I SWEAR I DID NOT COME CLOSE to the Pub­lish button while working on this piece! Still, somehow man­aged to “pub­lish” this in­com­plete ar­ticle and have to deal with the fallout. And I wasn’t even plan­ning on pub­lishing this ar­ticle on this blog—I was going to move it on over to my Rather Rare Records blog. 

I cer­tainly know enough at this stage not to post an ar­ticle to the in­ternet with an un­gainly URL like this: https://www.elvis-atouchofgold.com/a-nutshell-guide-to-the-billboard-record-charts-of-the-50s! Nonethe­less, that URL is now out there and a few readers—such as you—might stumble over it.

So, in­stead of an ar­ticle about the over-hallowed Bill­board charts, you are reading this, an apology/explanation. I will finish the ar­ticle as quickly as pos­sible. It should clarify some is­sues about the mis­in­for­ma­tion about those charts that per­me­ates the in­ternet, mag­a­zines, and books.

PS: The photo of the turntable at the top of this page is the fea­tured image on the home page of Rather Rare Records.