Which song held the number-one spot for the longest in the 1950s?
The dawn of modern, popular music began in the 1950s. While continuing the rich heritage of American art forms that came before it, country, jazz, blues, gospel and R&B—all foundational musical elements that would endure across the decades to this day—the business as we understand it today was eternally burnished in rock and roll’s big bang.
The explosion of electric guitars, a new breed of celebrity rock DJ, and a surrounding industry with big flashing dollar signs in their eyes pushed the likes of Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Bill Haley & His Comets to deified icons of the era and beyond.
Essential to rock and roll’s meteoric impact was the teenager. With the shadow of the Second World War finally starting to fade, a new generation of Baby Boomers entered a sunlit economic upland with a level of disposable income and financial security unseen in modern history. While the UK kids were still mired in post-war austerity, Stateside teens had money to spend. Cue a slew of pop-cultural trends targeted at a new profitable demographic across Hollywood pictures, fashion stores, and, crucially, music.
While the LP had existed for years as an incidental means to hold soundtracks, big band jazz numbers or crooner collections, the 7″ was primarily useful for early jukeboxes. Rock and roll cemented the holy 45 record, establishing the single as any artist’s premier pop offering that stands to this day. The single became such a cultural frenzy that the Billboard chart magazine consolidated several other charts into the Hot 100 national standard, with the first number one under the new rebrand being The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet star, Ricky Nelson’s, ‘Poor Little Fool’ in June 1958.
This potent infancy of popular music would beam across the world to the envy of kids across every corner of the West. Rock and roll gripped a generation of budding musicians to start bands, with the UK being no exception. Combined with a fascination for the blues, the future British invasion that would dominate both Billboard’s Hot 100 and 200 albums charts in the 1960s all cut their teeth on the American giants of the day—The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks, filling their early sets and records with rock and roll covers.
Yet, long before genre’s lightning bolt strike, the pop charts were an infinitely more pedestrian landscape. Spending 13 weeks at number one was The Weavers and arranger Gordon Jenkins’ rendition of the 19th-century traditional, ‘Goodnight, Irene’. First recorded by Lead Belly in 1933, his coarser interpretation of the lyrics was dialled down for The Weavers’ definitive 1950 version, shifting the song’s lyrical pangs of failed romance to a more wistful plane.
So, which song held the number one spot the longest in the 1950s?
Over in the UK, the longest-held single of the 1950s still stands as the unbroken record. Released in 1953, Italian-American star Frankie Laine enjoyed a whopping 18 weeks at the top of the UK Singles Chart with ‘I Believe’. Written by Ervin Drake, Irvin Abraham, Jack Mendelsohn, and Al Stillman, ‘I Believe’ was debuted on The Jane Froman Show, as a response to the Korean War’s impact on national morale, the first ever song to be premiered on TV.
Yet it’s Laine’s version, backed by Frank Weston’s orchestra, that’s endured as the definitive one. Its earnest reach for hope and light in troubled times struck the British audience deeply in an age of having faced rationing and carrying war trauma. Everybody from Elvis, Tom Jones, Louis Armstrong, and Robson & Jerome was drawn to this simple paean of universal humanism.
