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TV Sets Hatch New Song Hits
troduced on the Mickey Mouse Club, Disney selected six for exploitation. College bands already are tramping to “The Mickey Mouse March.”
Until recently, the publisher me
ing “exposure” on the air for a new record would arrange to leave a copy with an all-night disc jockey’s librarian. Today, TV has converted air-wave song-plugging into a complex and delicate art. A whole script was written around record piracy on Mr. District Attorney in order to introduce, on 189 syndicated TV stations, “Someone You Love.” It is now Nat “King” Cole’s big one at the record shops. Rin Tin Tin producers, impressed with “White Buffalo,” a tune James Brown (Lt. Rip Masters in the series) recorded for M-G-M, had a plot written around it. “Let Me Go, Lover” turned Joan Weber into a top-selling singer (1,000,000 records) via Studio One. Your Hit Parade’s Gisele MacKenzie starred in a Justice drama about song sharks, incidentally singing “Hard To Get” twice as the plot unfolded. Result: Gisele’s first hit record. “Hard To Get” was in the top
6
seven tunes for many weeks during the summer.
On TV, however, you don’t have to get involved with a dramatic script to sell records. Five months after My Little Margie was dropped as a network entry, Margie, alias Gale Storm, cut her first one—“I Hear You Knockin’.” Five weeks later, the record was listed by a trade paper as “This Week’s Best Buy.” Sales of 20,000 per week doubled to 40,000 after she plugged the tune on The Perry Como Show and What’s My Line?
When a contestant.on The $64,000 Question chose jazz as his category, Columbia Records filled music store shelves with a new album: “$64,000 Jazz,” Capitol stocked dealers with “Miss Show Business” two days before Judy Garland bowed in the first Ford Star Jubilee. In three weeks, dealer re-orders exceeded the supply.
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen has written words to the theme that introduces his TV show, and no publisher remembering “I Believe,” heavily plugged on TV by Jane Froman, would turn it down. George Reeves, a singer before he became Superman, is the author of a “Superman” ballad. These may be whims, but they reflect TV’s insatiable appetite for songs. This demand has resulted in at least one new “standard,” the Jay Livingston-Ray Evans “Alley Oop!”, written at the request of producers who complained that TV had worn out standard stage and radio opening numbers like “Great Day” and “Hallelujah.”
The juke box was never actually the maker and breaker of hits. Since radio consolidated the music industry, that role has belonged to the Nation’s 2500 disc jockeys. But nowadays what you watch on TV largely determines what you'll hear wherever records spin, sheet music sells or bands appear.—Robert E. Johnson