Your Hit Parade
Your Hit Parade was an American radio and television music program that was broadcast from 1935 to 1953 on radio, and seen from 1950 to 1959 on television. It was sponsored by American Tobacco's Lucky Strike cigarettes. During its 24-year run, the show had 19 orchestra leaders and 52 singers or groups.
Your Hit Parade
Norman Jewison (1958-59)
United States
English
Don Lounsbery, Ted Fetter
25 minutes
July 10, 1950 –
April 27, 1959
When the show debuted, there was no agreement on its title. The press referred to it by several names, with the most common being "Hit Parade", "The Hit Parade", "The Lucky Strike Hit Parade",[1] and "The Lucky Strike Parade".[2] The program title officially became "Your Hit Parade" on November 9, 1935.[3]
Every Saturday evening, the program offered the most popular and bestselling songs of the week. The earliest format involved a presentation of the top 15 songs. Later, a countdown with fanfares led to the top three finalists, with the number one song for the finale. Occasional performances of standards and other favorite songs from the past were known as "Lucky Strike Extras".
Listeners were informed that the "Your Hit Parade survey checks the best sellers on sheet music and phonograph records, the songs most heard on the air and most played on the automatic coin machines, an accurate, authentic tabulation of America's taste in popular music." However, the exact procedure of this "authentic tabulation" remained a secret. Some believe song choices were often arbitrary due to various performance and production factors. The show's ad agencies—initially Lord and Thomas and later Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne—never revealed the specific sources or the methods that were used to determine top hits. They made a general statement that it was based mainly on "readings of radio requests, sheet music sales, dance-hall favorites and jukebox tabulations"; Radio Guide claimed "an endless popularity poll on a nationwide scale."[4]
Radio[edit]
Lucky Strike's first radio endeavors[edit]
The origins of the format can be traced back to the Lucky Strike Saturday Night Dance Party[4] sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes.[5] Led by Benjamin A. Rolfe, the show was heard on the NBC Red network Saturdays between 10 and 11 pm beginning in September 1928. The program was devised by American Tobacco's George W. Hill, an attempt to popularize the consumption of tobacco products, which were increasingly used by young people and women. For the latter demographic group, the company also launched the slogan "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet" at the same time. In a cross-promotion, Rolfe made recordings for Edison Records credited as "B.A. Rolfe and his Lucky Strike Orchestra".
Beginning in April 1930, the show became known as The Lucky Strike Dance Hour, as a second hour-long show began airing Wednesday nights on the NBC Blue network (9:30 to 10:30 pm). During the fall, the Wednesday show was replaced by Tuesday and Thursday night broadcasts, also on NBC Red.[6][7][8][9]
During its first three years, the show featured Rolfe's band playing popular songs and novelty tunes interspersed with plugs for Lucky Strikes by the announcer, whose other role was introducing each number. During the fall of 1931, the program was revamped as The Lucky Strike Magic Carpet Show, a variety show hosted by Walter O'Keefe featuring the orchestras of Rolfe, Anson Weeks, Jack Denny, George Olsen, Abe Lyman, Phil Harris and others supplied exclusively by Jules Stein's Music Corporation of America, and the bands were picked up from diverse points across the US instead of originating entirely from New York, which was a novelty at the time. The "variety" segments included dramatizations of cases from the New York Police Department, society gossip by Walter Winchell (then a gossip columnist for Hearst's tabloid New York Daily Mirror, featuring a style different from the one Winchell is more remembered for), and comedy by Bert Lahr[10] and Jack Pearl. During the spring and summer of 1933, the Tuesday and Thursday broadcasts were phased out and the show reverted to the original Lucky Strike Saturday Night Dance Party format with Rolfe's orchestra and the Men About Town trio, running until early 1934.