Joel Whitbourne, whose chart research books have been a staple on the bookshelves of anyone with an interest in the history or work of pop music for decades, died Tuesday at the age of 82.
The cause of death was not immediately revealed, although Whitbourne was in poor health for some time.
The Wisconsin native Record Research has been publishing books based on Billboard charts going back to 1970, with a volume number of 122 a little less than a decade ago.
Amid all the books for a particular genre of books he published, Whitbourne’s “flagship” and bestselling book was Top Pop Singles. Covering everything that was a hit from 1955 onwards, Whitbourne threw in three years the equivalent of mid-1950s stats from a chart before the start of the 20th century in 1958 because he “wanted to include the history of early rock ‘n’ roll….” But he was never under the illusion that music began with Elvis Presley, as evidenced by his publication of a book called Pop Memories: 1890-1954.
Its completion wasn’t limited to pure data: Whitburn’s home in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin has had an underground vault containing every chart ever on the Billboard Hot 100 since it began in 1958 (on 7-inch vinyl records for the first few decades, official or burned CDs). for subsequent years).
you talk With the former Billboard bureau chief in 2013, Whitbourne estimated he had over 200,000 45-rpm singles in his vault (including an estimated 18,000 with photo sleeves), and claimed to have a copy of every pop album charted in the magazine dating back To 1945, too.
The name Whitburn was also familiar to fans of Old Man through a series of CDs released by Rhino Records.
in 2014 Q&A Made to celebrate Billboard’s 120th anniversary, Whitbourne recalled becoming the undisputed king of the chart in a world filled with record experts who would have been fighting for the crown had it not been clear to him.
After coming across a weekly version of Billboard at a bus stop in the early 1950s, when he was twelve, Whitbourne became fascinated by the full-page advertisements for recordings he was excited to hear on the radio, as well as the massive reviews of new singles (something he scrapped Billboard modern decades ago). “I started signing up for Billboard in 1953,” he told the Gary Trust. “It was $10 a year… which I had to beg my dad for. So, he sends a $10 bill.”
Whitbourne kept each issue, a practice that lasted for enough years that he was even able to indulge in nostalgia by looking at the old copies. “One September day in 1965—I remember it was rainy—I had a problem from 1958, the year the Hot 100 started. I thought it was just a cool chart. I collected everything on one page, and occupied two magazine pages. I thought, ” I’ll start from there.” He began writing dates and numbers on the cards, starting with Ricky Nelson’s “Poor Little Fool,” number 1 on the first Hot 100 chart. “I wrote ‘No. 1, history’ [Aug. 4, 1958] and Imperial, the record company. Then, I followed her chart history, when I went to No. 4, then to No. 6. … I was just doing it as a hobby.”
He went on to work for RCA Records, and compiled his chart research on nights and weekends over the next five years. At his day job in the late 1960s, “I was working in the music industry,” Whitbourne told LeBlanc. “Charlie Pride would come into town and go out to lunch with him. I met John Gary, Chet Atkins, and Henry Mancini. This was from ’68 to early ’70.” . In the Midwest, “I was setting up 8-track strip sections all over the place. Everyone was going into 8-track bars, including gas stations.”
He quit his job and started publishing books in 1970. “When I was abroad [RCA] Over the roads talking to radio stations, they all said it would be a blessing from God to have this information at their fingertips, because nothing was available. I remember calling Billboard, and all they had was a list of the top 1,000 hits, on copy sheets, that sold for $50. I bought that, but I thought it would be cool to have something specific for the artists, and full recordings. So, I decided to post what I had.”
Whitbourne was glad he had gone rogue and self-published before Billboard came into the picture, after seeing ads for his first book. “I just published my book” when the first call came, he remembers. “I was lucky because if I asked Billboard, they probably would have answered no.”
Instead of claiming copyright infringement, Billboard publisher Hal Cook invited Whitbourne and his wife Fran to Los Angeles and helped forge an agreement under which Billboard would earn royalties in exchange for the exclusive license of its data on the elderly to the enterprising young man. “I ended up with a 26-page license agreement with a lot of legal wording. I didn’t even read it because I just wanted to sign it and move on. I wanted to do the album charts as well as country, and I wanted to do an R&B book.”
At the time, he told Wisconsin’s Patch in an interview, “They were also contracting Casey Kasem to do ‘American Top 40.’ They gave me the publishing agreement and they gave Casey the broadcast agreement, so we started together.”
Looking back to his teenage years. Whitbourne thought the timing was right for him to become a music geek in the mid-1950s, although his interest was earlier in rock ‘n’ roll, where he also liked singers. “I was at the perfect age, 14 or 15, when rock and roll broke out,” he told LeBlanc. “I was able to go down once a week and buy a record. I had to make this awful decision about which record to buy this week, and what records to leave until next week. Sam Cooke was my favorite. Jackie Wilson came in second. When I was in College, Jackie Wilson had the song To Be Loved (1958). I thought this was the greatest song ever at the time.”
Whitbourne’s collected research has made the practice of lying about strokes more difficult than it used to be. he is Tell A local Wisconsin newspaper: “If James Darren came into town and they interviewed him because he’d be at the state fair and if he said, ‘All my first four records were first hits,’ they would go along with that even though he only had a record. One reached No. 3.”
He used to have trucks ferry up to 5,000 books at a time to his home in Wisconsin, when he was personally responsible for mail-order sales. “The postman was very excited about it, and there were orders coming in from all over the world,” Whitbourne said. “So we got all these foreign stamps and my wife was all excited and saved stamps from all of these countries. I get calls from KRLA in Los Angeles, WABC in New York, all these big radio stations are calling and saying, ‘I need the book, the whole history.'”
When artists came to Milwaukee to do shows, Whitbourne was there to provide copies of his books behind the scenes, from Paul McCartney to Sting. When Elton John came along… well, you can probably guess the final sentence. “I was going to give Elton John a book, and he said, ‘I have all your books. “
Eventually, e-books took up more of his work, allowing music buffs to free up some shelf space previously reserved for over 200 volumes…although many still preferred to keep hard copies of the most important titles, for easy flipping.
Asked if he has a radical interest in newcomers and what makes him so top, Whitbourne said: “I would say about 60 per cent are music fans, and 40 per cent is ‘chart world’.
“I’m just a huge fan of music and love the charts. I enjoy following artists’ success. There’s just so much fun in that. It’s weekly fun. And there are millions like me all over the world.”
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