hit parade

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The hit parade is a list of tunes - songs and instrumentals - that are most popular at any given time. The term originated in the late 1930s and has also been used for broadcast programs featuring hit tunes, such as Your Hit Parade, which was broadcast on radio and television in the United States for many years.

Hit tunes were originally published in sheet music format, so many artists were encouraged to introduce or promote the tune in their different styles, formats or areas of popularity. Through the late 1940s, the term Hit Parade was definitely a list of tunes, not a list of records. In those times, when a tune became a hit, it was typically recorded by several different artists. Each record company often promoted its own product through the airtime it purchased on commercial stations, as in Europe's Radio Luxembourg. Most non-commercial stations, like the BBC, were required by national regulations to promote local talent, and were also limited in the amount of needle-time given to recorded popular music. In later years, such re-recording of a tune originally introduced or popularised by a certain artist or artists was called covering a song, and often rejected by fans of the particular artists because it produced unfair competition to their favourite version. Covering a tune, was therefore, not offering an alternative rendition, but of producing a copy as a direct alternative to compete for airtime, sales and placement on the hit parade charts.

As rock and roll became popular, it was more difficult for generic singers to cover the tunes. It is said that Your Hit Parade was nearly cancelled after many weeks of unsuccessful attempts by big band singer Snooky Lanson to perform Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" in 1956. The program finally ended in 1959.

The term is still used, as in the title of the popular magazine, Hit Parader and the Canadian record label Hit Parade Records. The British indie band The Hit Parade has taken it's name from the US TV show.

The title Hit Parade also became familiar during the late 1960s and early 1970s through a popular automated music format produced by the legendary Drake-Chenault Co. and featured on hundreds of radio stations. Originally called Hit Parade '68, then Hit Parade '69, '70 and finally as simply Hit Parade.

Further reading

• Durkee, Rob. American Top 40: The Countdown of the Century, Schriner Books, New York City, 1999.
• Battistini, Pete, American Top 40 with Casey Kasem The 1970s, Authorhouse.com, January 31, 2005. ISBN 1-4184-1070-5.

See also

• Top 40

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