The song that went to number one before it was even recorded
The counterculture revolution didn’t just arise out of nowhere. It wasn’t thrust into place by Elvis Presley’s hips, nor Chuck Berry’s duck walking, nor Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s searing guitar. Sure, rock ‘n’ roll might have been the chosen medium of the cultural frenzy, but it was newfangled technology that helped to propel it at an unprecedented pace.
Undoubtedly, there had been plenty of performers with star potential in the years prior to pop culture’s bold explosion, but how did the Jimi Hendrix of his day go beyond his own small rural community without the necessary means to do so? In New Orleans, there are near-mythical tales of Buddy Bolden’s talents, but without any recordings, his legacy is purely written in local lore.
It wasn’t until 1948 that Columbia unleashed the first vinyl LP. Prior to that, flimsy shellac discs had made listening to music at home more of a hobbyist pursuit. But sensing they had cracked it with the luscious new long play that allowed for 22 minutes of recorded music on each side, Columbia ramped up production and suddenly music became affordable for all.
Now, we take listening to music on demand for granted. But pretty much until the late 1920s, when home radios became affordable for the first time in the West, the only way to listen to a new song at home was to buy the sheet music and hope that someone in your family could play it on a second-hand, out of tune, piano.
What was the first ever number one song in America?
Nevertheless, even in the days of sheet music, the capitalist ways of America mingled with the production of art. In the summer of 1913, Billboard first posted a list with the catchy title of: ‘Last Week’s Ten Best Sellers Among the Popular Songs’. It compiled the best-selling sheet music from the previous seven days, making it the world’s inaugural music chart as we know it today.
Topping that debut list back in July 1913 was Al Jolson’s ‘You Made Me Love You’. However, this fact comes with a plethora of caveats. First, as the headline suggests, he hadn’t even recorded the song at the point it topped the Billboard list. But perhaps most startlingly of all, he hadn’t even written it. So, how can an unrecorded cover version end up with Jolson taking the crown for the first number one song in human history?
Well, back in the sheet music age, songs were often transcribed by performers long before they were expensively etched as recordings. The latter was a luxurious afterthought given that the market for physical etchings scarcely existed. Enrico Curusco might have proven that the times were changing when his recordings went on to sell in the millions in the late 1910s, but it wasn’t until around 1925 – things were certainly moving quickly – that studio sessions began to eclipse sheet music.
So, that explains how an unrecorded song could rise to number one, but why does Al Jolson get the credit for it if he didn’t write it? Interestingly, in the sheet music age, accreditation was a curious beast. That debut Billboard chart didn’t even cite the authors of ‘You Made Me Love You’ on the published list.
The music was written by James V Monaco, and the lyrics were penned by Joseph McCarthy. However, it was in the style of Al Jolson. Indeed, it was written with Jolson in mind. He was the star of the day, and the first time the track was heard was when he introduced it in the Broadway revue of The Honeymoon Express, performed the same year the sheet music was published.
The problematic footnote of the first Billboard hit
Even though Harry MacDonough might have recorded a popular version prior to Jolson, in the public’s view, it was the latter who ‘owned’ the song. So, in a prickly paradigm of the popularity contest that still dominates the discourse of modern culture, Al Jolson became credited with the first number one ever written, despite the fact that he neither wrote it, recorded it, nor released it.
Beyond the quirks of the sheet music age, there’s a darker issue at play with the accreditation, too. Jolson’s fame was tied to his flagrantly racist blackface performances. While some might argue that the practice wasn’t widely viewed as problematic at the time, there was certainly an undercurrent of an agenda to have the ‘all-American’ Jolson plonked on the top of popular culture’s pedestal. So, to some degree, he might have been the benefactor of the public’s belief that he ‘owned’ the song, but equally, that also suited the unfortunate prevalence of who had artistic power, and who was denied it.
