DUELING POP CHARTS existed during most of the heyday of rock & roll music. Due to the weird ways in which the various magazines compiled their charts, there were often major differences in where a record found itself on any given week. Records reached #1 on one chart but pooped out at #3 on the others. And because of the way these charts were compiled, both sides of the same record could be hits independent of one another!
The percentage of chart record that became double-sided hits was relatively small. Still, there were enough to make them a topic of interest to some historians and especially to Elvis fans. Why? Because, like so many other fields of investigation, he dominates the figures.
Throughout the rock & roll years, four magazines gave pop music fans four different opinions on the state of the music! And the opinions did differ: Records made the Top 10 on one survey but failed to reach the Top 20 on others. Each publication had titles that reached #1 on their chart but didn’t top the other magazines’ charts.
Elvis had more double-sided hit singles on the pop charts than any other artist.
A double-sided hit single is a single (78 or 45 rpm) where both sides reached the charts separately from the other side as an individual hit. For example, the A‑side of Elvis’s third RCA Victor single, Hound Dog, peaked at #2 on the Billboard Top 100 in 1956.
It was kept from the top position by its flip-side, Don’t Be Cruel, which passed Hound Dog out and reached #1, where it stayed for eleven weeks! This was neither the first nor the last double-sided hit on the charts, but it is the most famous.
To announce their new acquisition, RCA Victor placed this full-page ad in the trade papers in December 1955. Calling him “the most talked-about new personality in the last 10 years of recorded music,” they were promoting his first Victor release, I Forgot To Remember To Forget / Mystery Train. This was a reissue of his fifth single for Sun Records and RCA was able to assist both sides to #1 on Billboard’s Country & Western chart in February 1956. Oddly, neither side even dented the national Top 100 pop charts.
The national charts
This competing data was due to the sources used by each magazine and how each magazine tallied the information gleaned from those sources. Here are the Big 4:
Billboard
This magazine published a weekly survey titled the Top 100 until 1958 when its title was changed to the Hot 100. Founded in 1894 as The Billboard, it is still a presence in the industry today.
Cash Box
This magazine published a weekly survey titled the Top 100 that was reputedly based on sales alone. It ran from 1942 to 1996.
Music Vendor
This magazine published a weekly survey titled the 100 Top Pops starting in 1954. It ran from 1946 to 1964, then changed its name to Record World and lasted until 1982.
Variety
This magazine is usually associated with theater in New York and movies in Hollywood but also published a weekly chart for years. Founded in 1905, it is still published today.
Regular readers of my articles know that I prefer the Cash Box survey as it was the one considered to have been based on actual sales. But for this article, I will be using the Billboard pop chart.
As this full-page ad from 1959 indicates, RCA Victor intended the hard-rocking I Need Your Love Tonight as the designated A‑side but it was the jauntier A Fool Such As I that was the winner on the charts. This is one of the better Elvis picture sleeves of the ’50s, with Presley looking serious and sexy in a still from Jailhouse Rock.
Sales jukes and jocks
During the early years of rock & roll, Billboard maintained four major charts that surveyed the action of singles. These charts were:
Best Sellers in Stores
This chart tabulated the sales of records at the retail level. It ran from January 1, 1955, to October 13, 1958.
Most Played by Jockeys
This chart kept track of what records were played the most on the radio. It ran from January 1, 1955, to July 28, 1958.
Most Played in Juke Boxes
This chart tallied all the nickels dropped into jukeboxes and the titles selected. It ran from January 1, 1955, to June 17, 1957.
Top 100/Hot 100
This chart combined the results of the three charts above and ranked each record on a combination of airplay (which was free), jukebox play (each play a fraction of the cost of a record), and, lo and behold, the actual sales of the records. The exact formula for the rankings is as secret as the recipes for Coca-Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was launched on November 12, 1955, and continues to the present.
It is the Billboard Top 100/Hot 100 that I use below. The reason for that is the use of jukebox and radio play dramatically affected the rankings of records on this survey. This is not only true for the designated A‑sides of each record but also for the flip-sides, especially for bigger artists like Elvis and the Beatles.
This full-page ad from 1963 was for the follow-up to the One Broken Heart For Sale, the first new Presley single that failed to make the Billboard Top 10. Despite being a reasonably strong B‑side, Please Don’t Drag That String Around was the first flip-side not to make the Top 100.
King of the whole wide world
When it comes to double-sided hit singles, there is one undisputed king, Elvis Presley. From early 1956 through late 1968, Presley saw both sides of his singles reach the Billboard Top 100 as individual hits 39 times! No other artist comes close, as the list below shows.
Here are three lists: the first has every artist with ten or more double-sided hits in the Top 100 between 1956 and 1968. The second has those same artists’ double-sided hits that made the Top 40. The third, those same artists’ double-sided hits that made it to the Top 10.
Top 100
Elvis Presley 39
Beatles 24
Fats Domino 24
Pat Boone 21
Nat King Cole 21
Ricky Nelson 19
Brenda Lee 16
Ray Charles 16
Perry Como 14
Connie Francis 13
Everly Brothers 12
Jackie Wilson 10
Top 40
Elvis Presley 25
Beatles 13
Ricky Nelson 11
Pat Boone 10
Fats Domino 8
Perry Como 7
Everly Brothers 7
Connie Francis 6
Nat King Cole 5
Brenda Lee 5
Ray Charles 4
Jackie Wilson 4
Top 10
Elvis Presley 5
Ricky Nelson 4
Beatles 4
Perry Como 3
Everly Brothers 2
Nat King Cole 1
Connie Francis 1
Brenda Lee 1
Fats Domino 0
Pat Boone 0
Ray Charles 0
Jackie Wilson 0
For those readers who wonder where certain artists rank, the Beach Boys had seven double-sided hits, Chuck Berry and the Four Seasons only had four each. Even Frank Sinatra didn’t have ten double-sided hits!
While Crying In The Chapel was still in the Top 10, RCA Victor released a new Presley single, this time to help plug and exploit the latest Elvis movie, Tickle Me. As the full-page ad from 1965 above indicates, the designated A‑side was the scorching torch song It Feels So Right. But fans preferred the playful Easy Question and made it the hit side.
All of Elvis’ double-sided hits
Here is a list of every Presley single that saw both sides chart separately on the Billboard pop charts. The designated A‑side is listed first and parts of song titles in parentheses have been omitted:
1956
Heartbreak Hotel 1
I Was The One 23
I Want You, I Need You, I Love You 3
My Baby Left Me 31
Hound Dog 2
Don’t Be Cruel 1
Love Me Tender 1
Any Way You Want Me 27
1957
Playing For Keeps 34
Too Much 2
All Shook Up 1
That’s When Your Heartaches Begin 58
Teddy Bear 1
Loving You 28
Jailhouse Rock 1
Treat Me Nice 27
1958
Don’t 1
I Beg Of You 8
Wear My Ring Around Your Neck 3
Doncha’ Think It’s Time 21
Hard Headed Woman 2
Don’t Ask Me Why 28
I Got Stung 8
One Night 4
1959
I Need Your Love Tonight 4
A Fool Such As I 2
A Big Hunk O’ Love 1
My Wish Came True 12
1960
Stuck On You 1
Fame And Fortune 17
It’s Now Or Never 1
A Mess Of Blues 32
Are You Lonesome To-night? 1
I Gotta Know 20
1961
Surrender 1
Lonely Man 32
Wild In The Country 26
I Feel So Bad 5
Little Sister 5
His Latest Flame 4
Can’t Help Falling In Love 4
Rock-A-Hula Baby 23
1962
Good Luck Charm 1
Anything That’s Part Of You 31
She’s Not You 5
Just Tell Her Jim Said Hello 55
Return To Sender 2
Where Do You Come From? 99
1963
One Broken Heart For Sale 11
They Remind Me Too Much Of You 53
Bossa Nova Baby 8
Witchcraft 32
1964
Kissin’ Cousins 12
It Hurts Me 29
Viva Las Vegas 29
What’d I Say 21
Ain’t That Loving You Baby 16
Ask Me 12
1965
It Feels So Right 55
Easy Question 11
1966
Tell Me Why 33
Blue River 95
Frankie And Johnny 25
Please Don’t Stop Loving Me 45
Spinout 40
All That I Am 41
1967
Long Legged Girl 63
That’s Someone You Never Forget 92
There’s Always Me 56
Judy 78
Big Boss Man 38
You Don’t Know Me 44
1968
Stay Away 67
U.S. Male 28
Your Time Hasn’t Come Yet Baby 72
Let Yourself Go 71
Almost In Love 95
A Little Less Conversation 69
Released in September 1968, Almost In Love / A Little Less Conversation was Elvis’s last double-sided hit before Billboard changed its ranking system for ranking hits. In 1969, the Hot 100 chart stopped listing the two sides of singles separately.
Elvis continued to have double-sided hits until the day he died, but they weren’t the same kind of double-sided hits as he enjoyed through 1968. Since Billboard kept using a formula that included spins on radio, changing the system didn’t make a whole lotta sense.
And the change made Billboard a lot less fun to follow for chart-watchers and Elvis fans alike.
Elvis was the undisputed king of double-sided hit singles on the national pop charts! Click To Tweet
FEATURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page is a publicity still from the movie Tickle Me. Elvis is posing with his gorgeous co-star Jocelyn Lane. She was born as Jocelyn Olga Bolton in Vienna, Austria in 1937. By the time she was 18 years old, Lane had established herself as a popular model in the UK. After starring in Tickle Me, she was featured in the September 1966 issue of Playboy. In 1973, she married Spanish Prince Alfonso and retired from modeling and acting.
Mystically liberal Virgo enjoys long walks alone in the city at night in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig who strives to live by the maxim, “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a college dropout (twice!). Occupationally, I have been a bartender, jewelry engraver, bouncer, landscape artist, and FEMA crew chief following the Great Flood of ’72 (and that was a job that I should never, ever have left).
I am also the final author of the original O’Sullivan Woodside price guides for record collectors and the original author of the Goldmine price guides for record collectors. As such, I was often referred to as the Price Guide Guru, and—as everyone should know—it behooves one to heed the words of a guru. (Unless, of course, you’re the Beatles.)
“It Hurts Me” as the B‑Side of “Kissin’ Cousins”....In the face of Beatlemania. That one still kills me.
D
No argument there.
All three of the sides he recorded in January 1964 should have been A‑sides: It Hurts Me, Ask Me, and Memphis Tennessee.
Another big boner: All That I Am should have been the side they pushed, not the ridiculous Spinout. In the UK, All That I Am was a Top 20 hit.
N
My all-time favorite double-A-side is “Little Sister” / “His Latest Flame.” Runner up is “Can’t Help Falling In Love” / “Rock-a-Hula Baby.”
“Little Sister” is in my Top 10 Elvis vocals. Pure genius.
D
As “Hound Dog” is my #! Super-Duper Faverave All-Time Record, then “Hound Dog” / “Don’t Be Cruel” is my fave double-sided hit.
Non-Elvisly, the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” / “God Only Knows” is also right up there.
N