Editorial by Tommy James in Cash Box

I didn't even know Cashbox still existed. Some of his facts were a bit off though.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in late 1967 and opened the floodgates to a new era in the rock and roll industry.

Actually, Sgt. Pepper was released in June. Hardly "late" '67.

'll never forget going out on the Hubert Humphrey Presidential Campaign in August of 1968. When we left New York, the voices on the radio were 'The Rascals," "The Association," "The Turtles," "Gary Puckett," and "Tommy James and the Shondells." When we got back ninety days later, It was "Crosby, Stills, and Nash," "Led Zeppelin," "Blood, Sweat, and Tears," "Joe Cocker," and "Neil Young." All album acts.

While music certainly did change in 1968, it was hardly that dramatic. CS & N's first album didn't come out until mid-1969, and Led Zep didn't really hit the radio until late '69. I don't know what station(s) he was listening to, but there was still plenty of pop music on the air. It would be a couple of years before the "free-form" FM rock stations had much of an impact.

I once heard Cash Box described as "The Best Charts Money Can Buy".

That really referred to the later years when "The Letter" by Wayne Newton managed to hit number one. Really? Number One? I've never even heard it!

Then there's the year end charts with numbers missing.

Also a rumour that Billboard once put a bogus song at the bottom of the Top 100 to see if it showed up on Cashbox. The rumour says it did.

Of course Cash Box is the only magazine I know where somebody was convicted of MURDER over chart fixing.

I still treasure my out of print Cashbox chart book that Pat put out. I saw it on eBay recently for something like a hundred dollars!

I think Cashbox was reasonably accurate until the mid 80's until all charts went to hell as the 45 died.

Bill

torcan wrote: in looking at the rankings of the songs they weren't that much different from Billboard - so I guess they were pretty accurate at that time.

Mm, they were very similar, but there could be pretty big differences. Mr. Jaws made it to #1 in Cash Box, for example, as well as Record World.

What I like about Cash Box historically is that, according to Randy Price who compiled their archives online, it was completely sales based until sometime in the 1970s. Randy says that there was a note on each chart indicating this until at least early 1968. He speculates that they first started including airplay in the late '70s, since that's when their weekly "Greatest Gainer Airplay" award began.

I've combed '70s issues of the magazine at the library, looking for evidence of when they started incorporating airplay, but the only thing I could find is that their year-end charts continued to say they were "compiled from the Cash Box Top 100 Bestselling Singles chart" up through the 1974 year-end chart. Beginning in 1975, that was changed to simply, "the Cash Box Top 100 Singles chart."