50 Fun Facts About 1940s Music

What record does Bing Crosby's 'White Christmas' hold?

Best-selling single of all time, at an estimated 50 million copies: the 1942 master was so damaged by heavy use that Crosby had to re-record the song in 1947, and that remake is the version usually heard today.

Which songwriter wrote 'White Christmas' for the 1942 film Holiday Inn?

Irving Berlin was presenting the Best Song Oscar at the 1943 ceremony when he opened the envelope and had to read out his own name as the winner.

Glenn Miller received the first ever gold record in 1942 for a song about a train to which city?

Chattanooga Choo Choo had sold about 1.2 million copies, so in February 1942 Miller's record label marked the feat by handing him a gold copy of the disc during a broadcast.

Which tune was Glenn Miller's theme song?

Moonlight Serenade was a tune Miller composed while studying with the music theorist Joseph Schillinger, and his band was using it as its theme before it even had that title.

Glenn Miller went missing in December 1944 when his plane vanished over which body of water?

The English Channel was where an Army inquiry concluded his small plane went down, blaming weather, mechanical failure and human error; Miller was flying to Paris ahead of his Army band, and no wreckage was ever found.

Which Glenn Miller hit took its famous riff from 'Tar Paper Stomp', a 1930 record by trumpeter Wingy Manone?

In the Mood was arranged by Joe Garland around the riff; because Manone had never written his tune down and registered it, copyright law of the day left other musicians free to borrow it.

Frank Sinatra left Harry James's band after less than a year to sing with which bandleader?

Tommy Dorsey kept him for two years, and the pair cut some eighty records together before Sinatra walked out in 1942 to go solo.

What were the teenage girls who mobbed Frank Sinatra in the early 1940s called?

Bobby soxers showed the music business that teenagers were a market of their own; until then pop records had been made mainly for adults.

What name was given to the chaos when thousands of Sinatra fans were shut out of the Paramount Theatre in October 1944?

The Columbus Day Riot took its name from the public holiday on 12 October 1944: with schools closed, girls began queuing at midnight and thousands more swarmed Times Square.

Which nickname of Frank Sinatra's is in the title of his 1946 debut album?

The Voice of Frank Sinatra topped the album chart; he retired in the early 1970s but came back in 1973 with an album titled Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back.

Bing Crosby won the Academy Award for Best Actor for which 1944 film?

Going My Way also made Oscar history: co-star Barry Fitzgerald was nominated as both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for the same role, and the Academy changed its rules so that could not happen again.

Which Bing Crosby hit began as a Montana poet's verse?

Don't Fence Me In began as a poem by Robert Fletcher, a Montana engineer; Cole Porter bought it in 1934 and was credited alone when it became a hit ten years later, and Fletcher's name was added only afterwards.

The Andrews Sisters sang 'Don't Sit Under' which tree?

The apple tree stood for a promise: the lyric is a pledge between two lovers to stay faithful while one is away at war, and the sisters sang it on screen in a 1942 film.

The Andrews Sisters introduced 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy' in which 1941 Abbott and Costello film?

Buck Privates earned the song an Oscar nomination, and three decades later Bette Midler's cover carried it back into the American top ten.

Which 1945 Andrews Sisters number one began as a Trinidadian calypso with lyrics by Lord Invader?

Rum and Coca-Cola was credited in the US to comedian Morey Amsterdam, who had visited Trinidad while it was a local hit; Lord Invader sued and won damages, though Amsterdam kept the copyright.

In August 1942 the American Federation of Musicians struck against record companies over what?

Royalty payments were the union's demand: its boss James Petrillo barred members from making records, so labels cut their 1943 hits with singers backed only by vocal groups.

'Sentimental Journey', a wartime hit with Les Brown's band, launched which singer?

Doris Day's first number one came out just as the war in Europe was ending, and it became an unofficial homecoming anthem for returning servicemen.

Which wartime nonsense song gave the vocal group the Merry Macs a number one hit in 1944?

Mairzy Doats only sounds like gibberish: sung slowly the title becomes 'mares eat oats', and co-writer Milton Drake said his small daughter's garbled nursery rhyme gave him the idea.

Which clarinetist was known as the 'King of Swing'?

Benny Goodman won the crown after a 1935 tour that had been flopping: at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles the crowd went wild for his hot arrangements, a night often called the start of the swing era.

Tommy Dorsey, billed as the 'Sentimental Gentleman of Swing', was famous for playing which instrument?

Trombone: his smooth tone on it earned him the nickname, though he had started out on trumpet, taught by his bandleader father, before switching.

Which Cole Porter song was Artie Shaw's breakthrough 1938 recording and best-known hit?

Begin the Beguine was issued as a B-side because his label doubted so long a tune would sell; instead it lifted Shaw's band out of two years of obscurity and made him a star.

Woody Herman's bands were known collectively by what name?

The Herd commissioned a piece from Igor Stravinsky: his Ebony Concerto, which the band premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1946 even though Herman found his own solo part frighteningly hard.

Kay Kyser's hit NBC radio show of the 1940s combined big band music with what?

A quiz: the Kollege of Musical Knowledge made Kyser a star, but after entertaining troops in the war he resolved to give up performing for money, and in 1950 he walked away from show business for good.

'Take the A Train', which became Duke Ellington's theme in 1941, was written by which composer?

Billy Strayhorn took the title from the subway directions Ellington sent him for reaching his Harlem home, then threw his draft away; Ellington's son recalled fishing it out of the bin.

Which drummer-bandleader's orchestra gave Ella Fitzgerald her start with "A-Tisket, A-Tasket"?

Chick Webb's orchestra was the house band at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom, and when he died in 1939 Fitzgerald took over as its leader for three years.

Which Billie Holiday protest song did her own label decline to record?

Strange Fruit went instead to the tiny Commodore label, which her friend Milt Gabler ran from his Manhattan record shop; Holiday called it her biggest-selling record.

Who gave Billie Holiday her nickname 'Lady Day'?

Lester Young got a title in return: Holiday called him 'Prez', her president of the saxophone, and for a while he lodged with her and her mother.

Nat King Cole first found fame in the 1940s leading what size of group from the piano?

A trio of piano, guitar and bass: its 1944 hit 'Straighten Up and Fly Right' retold a folk tale that Cole's preacher father had used in a sermon.

Which holiday standard, first recorded by Nat King Cole, did Mel Tormé co-write during a 1945 summer heatwave?

The Christmas Song began, by Tormé's account, as four wintry lines his partner Bob Wells jotted down to cool himself off; Tormé spotted them on the piano and about forty minutes later the song was done.

Which sax player, nicknamed 'Bird', was the leading figure of bebop?

Charlie Parker and his fellow modernists worked the style out in after-hours Harlem jam sessions during the 1942-44 recording ban, so the birth of bebop went largely unrecorded.

Which trumpeter wrote the bebop standard 'A Night in Tunisia' in the early 1940s?

Dizzy Gillespie's upturned trumpet came later and by accident: the bell got bent at a party in 1953, and he liked the new sound so much that he had his horns built that way from then on.

What did Louis Jordan call his band, regardless of how many musicians were in it?

The Tympany Five often had two or three extra players, and guitarist Carl Hogan's intro to its 1946 hit 'Ain't That Just Like a Woman' resurfaced as the opening riff of Chuck Berry's 'Johnny B. Goode'.

Which 1922 song did Hank Williams cover for his 1949 breakthrough hit that took him to the Opry?

Lovesick Blues was an old show tune that his producer Fred Rose and his own band did not want to record; it went to number one and earned Williams six encores at his Grand Ole Opry debut in June 1949.

Which pair joined Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys in 1945, creating the classic bluegrass sound?

Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs added driving rhythm guitar and three-finger banjo picking to Monroe's Blue Grass Boys, the band from which the whole genre later took its name.

Woody Guthrie wrote 'This Land Is Your Land' in 1940 as a critical response to which song?

God Bless America, sung by Kate Smith, was on the radio so often that an irritated Guthrie wrote a reply, which he first sarcastically called 'God Blessed America for Me'.

Which park ranger's song gave Vaughn Monroe a 1949 number one?

Ghost Riders in the Sky was written by Stan Jones, who said he first heard the legend as a boy of twelve; he based the melody on an old Civil War tune.

Whose recording of 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' hit number one the week of Christmas 1949?

Gene Autry at first rejected the song and is said to have recorded it only after his wife talked him round; issued as a children's record, it became the biggest hit of his career.

'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah', an Oscar winner for 1947, came from which Disney film?

Song of the South earned singer James Baskett an honorary Oscar, but criticism of its rosy picture of plantation life means Disney has never released it on home video in the US or put it on Disney+.

British wartime singer Vera Lynn was known by what nickname?

The Forces' Sweetheart won the title in a wartime popularity poll among the forces, and her radio show Sincerely Yours then carried messages between troops abroad and their families at home.

Which Rodgers and Hammerstein musical opened in 1943 and ran for 2,212 performances?

Oklahoma also changed the record business: Decca took the original Broadway cast into a studio, and the album's success set the pattern for cast recordings of later shows.

Which record company introduced the 33 1/3 rpm long-playing record in 1948?

Columbia's long-player put on one disc what had needed a bound album of several 78s; work on it began in 1939, stalled during the war, and ended with a press launch at New York's Waldorf-Astoria in June 1948.

What was 'The Log', built by Les Paul in the early 1940s?

A solid-body electric guitar built around a length of 4x4 timber, after hours at the Epiphone factory: Gibson turned the design down in the 1940s, then launched its own solid-body under Paul's name in 1952.

Muddy Waters cut his first hits in the late 1940s for Chicago's Aristocrat Records, soon renamed after which brothers?

Chess Records took the brothers' name in 1950, the year Waters cut 'Rollin' Stone' for them, the song from which a young British band later borrowed its name.

Which songwriter co-founded Capitol Records in 1942 with Buddy DeSylva and Glenn Wallichs?

Johnny Mercer did more than lend his name: he signed Nat King Cole's group to the new label and produced its 1944 breakthrough, 'Straighten Up and Fly Right', himself.

Which 1942 film turned 'As Time Goes By', a modest hit from 1931, into a standard?

Casablanca's Dooley Wilson could not record the song himself because of the musicians' strike, so Rudy Vallée's 1931 disc was reissued instead and went to number one.

Which song, Peggy Lee's breakthrough hit of 1943, did Jessica Rabbit later sing in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Why Don't You Do Right? was a Lil Green blues record that Lee, by her own account, played over and over in her dressing room until her bandleader suggested she sing it herself.

Which record, sung by Sinatra and the Pied Pipers, topped Billboard's first national chart in 1940?

I'll Never Smile Again was written by the Canadian songwriter Ruth Lowe shortly after the death of her husband; it stayed at number one for 12 weeks and made Sinatra a star.

Which company released the 7-inch 45 rpm single in March 1949?

RCA Victor pressed its first 45s in a different colour of vinyl for each kind of music, green for country and yellow for children's records, but the scheme complicated production and was soon dropped.

Which Bing Crosby song by Van Heusen and Burke won the Academy Award for Best Original Song of 1944?

Swinging on a Star grew out of a dinner at Crosby's house: when one of his sons grumbled about school, Bing told him he might grow up to be a mule, and composer Jimmy Van Heusen heard a song in it.

In April 1946, Perry Como's Chesterfield Supper Club made radio history by broadcasting from where?

An airplane in flight: Como, Jo Stafford and the whole crew went up 20,000 feet twice that evening, once for each coast, in what is believed to be the first complete radio show broadcast from the air.