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Bubbling Under the American Charts, 1959-1963
Compiled by Austin Powell (The Forgotten 45s, the American Music Library series), Bubbling Under the American Charts 1959-1963 is a 90-track 3 CD collection of singles that accrued enough sales and/or airplay to register in the American Billboard magazine's Bubbling Under chart, but then failed to climb into the Pop Hot 100. These recordings are of considerable interest to collectors and chart-watchers alike. In the forties Billboard magazine ran several charts, including Songs with Most Radio Plugs, National and Regional Top 10s of the bestselling recordings of the day as well as the National and Regional Sheet Music Best Sellers. These eventually became the Top 20s or Top 40s that we now readily recognize. Of course, no matter whether it was a Top 10, Top 20 or even, after 1955 when Billboard started printing a Top 100, there would have been a record that was number 11, 21 or 101. The record was there, but no-one knew about it. In June 1959 Billboard started printing a Bubbling Under the Hot 100 list, first containing 15 songs and later 35. These records were the ones that were selling sufficiently well, and being played on radio enough regionally, to have the potential to make the main Hot 100 chart. In this 3 CD package we re bringing together some of the most interesting records from all musical genres to have graced the Bubbling Under chart but failed to progress into the Hot 100, between 1959 and 1963. As you would expect, there are plenty of recordings by relatively obscure artists, but also a surprising number by familiar names, perhaps close to the start of their hit-making careers, or experiencing a temporary dip in their fortunes, or suffering from sales split across both sides of a disc, or even at the tail-end of their hit-making career. Big names featured include Ray Charles, Neil Sedaka, Sam Cooke, Bobby Vee, Conway Twitty, Ike & Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder and Johnny Cash, but we rather suspect that it is those artists that failed to make any other impact on the charts that will quicken the pulses of inveterate collectors. The illustrated 16pp booklet carries Austin's track-by-track annotation, including US catalogue number, date charted, peak position and equivalent UK catalogue number where relevant.