The Gavin Report 1958-2000
Printed From: Top 40 Music on CD
Category: Top 40 Music On Compact Disc
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Topic: The Gavin Report 1958-2000
Posted By: Paul Haney
Subject: The Gavin Report 1958-2000
Date Posted: 15 September 2022 at 3:43am
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We are proud to introduce our very first all-new publication since the passing of Joel Whitburn:
https://www.recordresearch.com/books/the-gavin-report-1958-2000/ - The Gavin Report 1958-2000 Order now and save $15! |
Replies:
Posted By: RoknRobnLoxley
Date Posted: 15 September 2022 at 5:49am
| Fab news Paul, eye can't wait !! Makes a great Christmas present to myself, ha... |
Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 15 September 2022 at 11:24am
+1 on that!! Of the non-Billboard chart books, this one interests me the most. In its day (50s thru early 70s) the Gavin Report was a respected chart, especially when it came to what got played in markets outside the top 20 or so. Unfortunately, as time went on they opened reporting status to pretty much anyone who could afford the subscription and by the late 80s or so had become almost irrelvant. |
RoknRobnLoxley wrote:Posted By: C J Brown
Date Posted: 15 September 2022 at 3:36pm
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Does anyone know of a source for the pre–Gavin Report Lucky
Lager Dance Time weekly charts? I have a couple from KNBR and a couple of other places, but they seem pretty rare. |
Posted By: Chartman
Date Posted: 15 September 2022 at 5:40pm
Just out of curiosity, were you able to obtain a copy of every chart during those 43 years? These seem more difficult to find than Music Vendor charts and I know you didn’t have all of those charts for those books. |
Posted By: Brian W.
Date Posted: 16 September 2022 at 2:38am
| Already pre-ordered! |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 16 September 2022 at 3:11am
I'd love to know this too! |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 16 September 2022 at 3:14am
We have a complete collection from March 1981 until the end. For the charts prior to 1981, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has a near-complete collection and a couple of private collectors stepped up with a few that the Hall of Fame was missing. But overall, yes they are tough to find these days! |
Posted By: Brian W.
Date Posted: 16 September 2022 at 12:27pm
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So interesting to see in the sample pages the Beatles album tracks that were big airplay hits -- Michelle and Till There Was You. I raise an eyebrow at "All My Loving" being #1,
because I would think it would have charted a lot higher on the Hot 100 if the airplay was that high. But I did find an old thread on the Steve Hoffman board on this topic, with several people, including Steve, recalling that Beatles album tracks got played on Top 40 radio a lot. One person recalled "Michelle" being played so much on his local Top 40 station that he assumed it was the follow-up single to "Nowhere Man." |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 16 September 2022 at 1:06pm
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Yes, I also found some of the peak positions to be a bit strange too, but we just report what was published. The
week "All My Loving" was listed at #1, Gavin showed the entire Top 10 as Beatles songs! I hope you also noticed the lines I put under The Beatles artist heading about Gavin showing "The Beatles" as #1 for a few weeks, showing just how red-hot they were in early 1964! Because Gavin was pretty much a "one-man show" back then, he does have some quirky chart listings. |
Posted By: C J Brown
Date Posted: 16 September 2022 at 3:44pm
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While "All My Loving" got tons of airplay back then I think
sales may have been hindered by being a Capitol Canada release here in the USA. Availability may have been limited in the USA due to this. |
Posted By: Paul C
Date Posted: 17 September 2022 at 9:55am
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Piers Hemmingsen estimates in The Beatles In Canada -
The Origins Of Beatlemania! that Capitol of Canada exported approximately 350,000 copies of the "All My Loving"/"This Boy" single to American distributors. Capitol of Canada reported to EMI in the UK that the single had sold 208,251 copies in Canada (whose population at the time was less than 20 million.) By comparison, "Can't Buy Me Love" had sold only 91,369. My guess as to why the song did not chart higher on the Hot 100 is that many US radio stations and retailers likely did not include the single in the data they reported to the trades, because not only was Capitol US not promoting the song at all, they were none too pleased with Capitol of Canada's practice of releasing its own Beatles records. By mid-spring of 1964, Capitol US demanded that Capitol of Canada replace its versions of the Beatles albums with the American versions and only release Beatles records identical to the US releases. (The Canadian Beatles records were subsequently deleted, although a few years later Capitol of Canada quietly added them back to their catalogue.) Capitol of Canada released the "All My Loving"/"This Boy" single on March 9, 1964, after The Beatles had performed both songs on The Ed Sullivan Show. It is the same reason that Vee-Jay had issued "Twist And Shout" as a single on its Tollie label on March 2. Capitol of Canada would follow Vee-Jay's example and issue a "Twist And Shout"/"There's A Place" single on March 16. It would sell 97,405 copies. |
Posted By: AndrewChouffi
Date Posted: 18 September 2022 at 5:03am
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Please keep in mind that "All My Loving" was getting major
airplay from US album 'Meet the Beatles' but couldn't chart on the Hot 100 because there was no single issued (The Hot 100 then was quite sales-based). When Capitol Of Canada 45s started leaking in and being reported by select sales reporters, Billboard started to allow it to chart. Andy |
Posted By: bitman
Date Posted: 22 September 2022 at 12:26am
| Any plans for an e-book version? |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 22 September 2022 at 3:45am
Not at this time. Our e-book versions don't sell much at all. |
Posted By: Scanner
Date Posted: 24 September 2022 at 7:01pm
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I imagine the potential for future Gavin books of its other
charts will depend on the success of this book. If the AC book ever gets updated, I hope it will also include chart data from the AC charts published by Gavin as well as R&R and Record World. How did you access the Gavin charts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Do they have a library available to any researcher? |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 25 September 2022 at 4:14am
First we had to get permission, then we could either go ourselves or (in this case) hire someone to scan the charts for us. We've built a relationship with the library staff over the years. I'm not sure what their overall policy is, but I imagine you have to set up some sort of appointment to access research materials. |
Posted By: Scanner
Date Posted: 28 September 2022 at 6:54pm
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Thanks for the feedback, Paul. I never realized the RRHOF
had a research facility available to the public. It does not seem as accessible or comprehensive as other libraries (Lincoln Center, Library of Congress) where I have done chart research, but could be something worth exploring someday. |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 24 October 2022 at 9:19am
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I just approved the proofs from the printer this morning,
so this book appears to be right on schedule! |
Posted By: PopArchivist
Date Posted: 25 October 2022 at 1:04pm
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What about Vol 2 of the Top Pop Singles book (1990-2021) isn't that supposed to come soon? ------------- Favorite two expressions to live by on this board: "You can't download vinyl" and "Not everything is available on CD." |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 25 October 2022 at 1:19pm
Just started working on it. We want to go thru the entire year of 2022, so it should be out sometime next spring (2023). |
Posted By: Scanner
Date Posted: 01 November 2022 at 7:56am
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How did you document the peak position for songs that
were still climbing on the final published Gavin charts? I recall that for other charts (Record World, Cashbox), Record Research would note the highest position the song reached, but would not indicate that it was still rising. For example, "Ebony And Ivory" debuted on the last Record World pop chart at # 40. This is listed as the song's peak in the Record Research "Hit Records 1954-1982" book. Clearly, this song would have peaked much higher had Record World continued to publish. I always thought songs such as these should have had an indicator such as an upward arrow next to it so that a reader would realize the song's final position was not truly representative of its success. |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 01 November 2022 at 10:42am
We simply show the position. |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 10 November 2022 at 1:02pm
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Update: The books are due to arrive at our offices by
Monday, so all pre-orders will be shipping by next week! |
Posted By: Archives Guy
Date Posted: 11 November 2022 at 2:31pm
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Congratulations!! I am really looking forward to seeing this
book arrive in the mail! |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 18 November 2022 at 2:19pm
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I just received this book today. Just took a brief look through it but it's great.
This is a question for Paul, but maybe someone else knows, too. For the '70s, everything that has a peak between 21 and 40 ("Gaining well in several markets"), is a complete guess. What has a 21 peak might have really been 40th in popularity. And vice versa. And the assumption is that what's near the top of the "Gaining well" list was organized in some order of popularity and these were getting more plays than the ones near the bottom. Did the Gavin report ever report about this? Does anyone know if the songs were just listed randomly or with the more popular ones listed near the top (where we're assuming 21, 22, 23...)? |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 18 November 2022 at 2:54pm
If you followed the charts week-to-week (which I did while researching), there did appear to be a logical order to the #21-40 songs (although they weren't officially numbered). I guess you could quibble that songs dropping off the chart from inside the Top 20 could still be popular enough to be in the Top 40, but if we would've just done a Top 20 for all those years, we wouldn't have been able to include all of the songs that we did. Obviously an editorial decision on our part, but I feel that the way we did it made the most sense (and Joel agreed on this point before he passed away). |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 18 November 2022 at 4:29pm
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Thanks Paul. If week-to-week they had a logical climb within that section, then
it makes sense that those were pretty close to their peak positions and not just random positions each week. And while you're right about the top 20 songs not dropping below 20 on their way down, we could say it was equivalent to later when Billboard dropped songs off their top 100 once they fell below 50 (basically) so sorta the same thing :) |
Posted By: Brian W.
Date Posted: 18 November 2022 at 6:45pm
I didn't, and I live in the L.A. area too! >:( |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 19 November 2022 at 3:37am
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In my brief looking through the book, I was pretty amazed at how Gavin peaks
for some artists, like Barry Manilow, lined up pretty well with Billboard Hot 100 peaks. Makes me wonder if Billboard (back in the day) actually was pretty accurate. Sometimes Cashbox and Record World were quite different peaks for various songs. With Radio & Records, comparing would be like apples to oranges, because despite the magazine/chart name, their chart was all about "radio" and not "records" (airplay, not sales) |
Posted By: Yah Shure
Date Posted: 19 November 2022 at 10:32pm
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Got mine yesterday, too. Thanks, Paul!
In just skimming through for a couple minutes, I noticed that "I Think We're Alone Now" by Tommy James & The Shondells didn't chart at all in Gavin! How on earth did Bill miss that one, considering "Mirage" went to #3? |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 20 November 2022 at 4:32am
We did make note of this in the introduction near the bottom of Page 4. Gavin had the (unfortunate) policy of "banning" certain songs due to content. "I Think Were Alone Now" and "Honky Tonk Women" were the two most notable examples. But hey, his publication, his rules! |
Posted By: Brian W.
Date Posted: 20 November 2022 at 2:25pm
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Got mine yesterday. It's a great book. At first I was
really puzzled by Ricky Nelson "One Minute to One" / "Half Breed". I thought, "Oh, come on... a single in the top ten in Gavin that didn't even make the top 100 in Billboard, Cash Box, or Record World?" Turns out those two songs are from the four-track EP "Songs by Ricky" and were not issued as a two-track single, so they probably weren't eligible to place on the other charts. Fascinating book, Paul. I stayed up way too late last night thumbing through it. Though I was kind of hoping that "Isn't She Lovely" would have charted in Gavin somewhere, but apparently not. |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 20 November 2022 at 3:31pm
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Brian, glad you like the book.
I don't even recall seeing a mention of "Isn't She Lovely" which is a shame. |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 20 November 2022 at 5:18pm
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I, too, stayed up most of last night taking a more detailed look through the
book. Fascinating book and I highly recommend it to everyone here. Ironically, though I'd heard of "The Gavin Report" for years, I never knew there was a pop chart associated with it, in print every week. So after getting all the other books like Cashbox, Record World, R&R, and the Billboard ones, this was like icing on a cake I didn't even know was baked. :) When I have more time to write I want to mention 2 particular things/trends I noticed. Also, it was quite interesting to see some peaks that were so different than Billboard's. |
Posted By: RoknRobnLoxley
Date Posted: 21 November 2022 at 10:14am
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Yes, kudos Paul for another excellent book, in the arsenal of chart books !!
Most interesting to read in the intro that Gavin sometimes produced 2 issues for a given week. Did he produce 2 charts for a given week as well? Did Record Research include those sometimes 2 charts per week in all the data analysis in the book? Cheers n chips !! |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 21 November 2022 at 10:41am
It was just mainly that first year (1958) where he did more than one issue per week. There wasn't always an extra chart involved, but if there was we researched it. |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 23 November 2022 at 3:46am
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One observation about the Gavin charts -- I keep a database of peaks of songs
I like a lot or love. It already had Billboard, Cashbox, Record World, R&R. So in the 1st 24 hours of having this book, I added the Gavin peaks. And I noticed it seemed like starting in early 1980 and maybe into 1981, the Gavin peaks matched the R&R peaks (at least for my favorite songs). Did both magazines use the same source for their charts during this brief period of time? Or were both owned by the same company? Maybe it was just all the particular songs I logged but I kept noticing the pattern. |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 23 November 2022 at 3:54am
Not totally surprising as both publications were based strictly on airplay. While they may have shared some of the same reporting stations, Gavin tended to use more small market stations over the years. They were totally separate (and competing) entities. |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 23 November 2022 at 4:09am
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Oh and a 2nd observation about the book. This one isn't about the early
'80s but the late '90s. Somewhere around '98-ish, I noticed a BIG divergence in the peaks of the more "pure pop" songs when it came to Billboard vs. Gavin Report and R&R. (The Gavin & R&R peaks were very close to each other, and Billboard was far away from either). Examples: Order of peaks: BB Gavin R&R Peach Union - On My Own 39 11 17 Keith Lisa - Better Than You 36 7 12 Tuesdays - It's Up to You 55 19 21 New Radicals - You Get What You Give 36 10 12 Mulberry Lane - Harmless 99 27 32 McCain Edwin - I Could Not Ask for More 37 19 17 She Moves - Breaking All the Rules 32 14 15 Vitamin C - Graduation 38 11 12 Notice the difference between the 1st number (Billboard) & the other 2 (that are so close to each other). So my 1st thought was that Gavin Report really got the popularity of these songs wrong - because the Billboard peaks show another story. But then the R&R numbers were so close to Gavin's - and far away from BB. I think Billboard changed the way it compiled the hot 100 somewhere around '98. (They also did a major change in '92 right around when Height's "How Do You Talk to An Angel" was #1. That was due to using actual sales and (BDS?) airplay. The '98 change was due to incorporating a lot of other charts besides CHR, at least IIRC.) I listened to pop radio a lot back then and heard these songs a lot. But is it 'accurate' to consider the New Radicals and Lisa Keith songs as top 10 hits? And those others as top 15 and 20 hits (Edwin McCain, Vitamin C, She Moves, Peach Union...)? Sure, most of these songs didn't pass the test of time. But in the mid-70s, "Run Joey Run" didn't pass the test of time but still peaked at #4. Putting this another way, if Billboard didn't make the Hot 100 an all- encompassing chart starting in '98, would these songs peaks be closer to the higher peaks on R&R and Gavin (granted the sales would have to be on a par with airplay to do that)? |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 23 November 2022 at 6:59am
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I guess the quickest answer would be that both Radio & Records and Gavin were compiling the charts from
Mainstream Top 40 stations only, whereas Billboard's scope ranged beyond that to include other formats. The R&R and Gavin numbers certainly jibe closer to my recollections as far as Mainstream Top 40 airplay is concerned during that era. Which set of numbers you choose to subscribe to is totally up to you! |
Posted By: RoknRobnLoxley
Date Posted: 27 November 2022 at 1:12pm
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I've always thought what Billboard did to the Hot 100 then was a shame, and a terrible thing. Swapping out the pop/rock/mainstream radio component of the Hot 100 for a "combo of all radio genres under the sun" : pop + R&B + country + hard rock + rap + dance + punk + jazz + classical + you-name-it. Plus also being heavily influenced by sales of non-pop/rock records with little to no airplay. In my humble opinion, Billboard should have kept the Hot 100 as is, pop/rock/mainstream based, and then created a new separate super-chart for their "everything including the kitchen sink" chart.
As we know, this also futzed with the stations who were carrying AT40, and Casey's post-split spinoff, causing both to go looking for a better pop chart than the Hot 100. In a similar vein, even Record Research abandoned the similarly modified country chart for its country singles book, and instead went with the country radio airplay chart. Question: which chart do all of yall consider as the best successor to the previous pop/rock/mainstream based Hot 100 after it went schizoid for a "combo of every radio genre" and "including sales with little to no airplay"? a. Radio & Records b. Billboard Hot 100 airplay c. Billboard mainstream Top 40 d. some adult contemporary chart e. anything else |
Posted By: jebsib
Date Posted: 27 November 2022 at 9:48pm
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e. The Billboard Hot 100.
The mission statement of the Hot 100 was always to measure the hottest or most popular songs in America. In the 60s,70s and 80s that meant Mainstream Top 40 radio by and large and the 45 RPM singles that reflected radio play. After the collapse of Top 40 in 1992, the music industry fragmented so much that a Hot 100 simply counting down top 40 pop rock radio would neglect millions & millions of rhythmic, country and alternative rock listeners - formats that were niche before, but equally prominent by the mid 90s. Millions of people stream music now and by & large they don’t select what iHeart radio execs have been playing to death for the last 8 months. I personally wish the Hot 100 was still a “pure pop radio based chart” … I grew up with Casey and love pop music. But unfortunately it wouldn’t be accurate. |
Posted By: jebsib
Date Posted: 27 November 2022 at 9:49pm
| Edit: WHAT is up with the formatting on this site?!? |
Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 28 November 2022 at 5:51am
Are you referring to a relatively narrow column width on some posts? This seems to happen when a poster uses Chrome browser. You can get around this fairly easily, in the lower right corner of the text box there are a couple diagonal bars. You can "drag" the text box to a larger size by clicking on those bars. If that wasn't what you were referring to, then please elaborate. |
Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 28 November 2022 at 6:04am
While the dig at I-Heart was unnecessary, I mostly agree with your comments. If anything the older, pre-1992 charts are the ones that paint an inaccurate picture. The rise of AOR in the 1970s proved that a song didn't have to be released as a 45 and/or played on top 40 radio to be a hit. Examples abound. Doesn't it seem odd that only AC crossover country songs made the Hot 100 in the 70s & 80s? I'm sure focusing on top 40 radio made sense in the 50s & 60s when that format was (in theory) the most popular music, regardless of genre, but that became less and less true as the 70s rolled on and "top 40" became a genre into itself. Sadly, things have become so fragmented that there really aren't any true hit songs anymore, by which I mean songs that 'most everyone is at least familiar with. |
Posted By: jebsib
Date Posted: 28 November 2022 at 2:59pm
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Thanks Hykker - was referring to the fact that while my responses look fine
when typing, they often post in a disjointed way with odd line-breaks in the middle of sentences, etc. I've seen this with many other posters as well, but oddly not everyone is affected - I use Safari on my Mac, so maybe that is the culprit..? And hey, I used to work for Clear Channel (which became iHeart) so no bad blood - just a nod to the fact that a relatively few number of people control what is heard by millions - same as it ever was, of course, but so frustrating when you hear the same song 20 times a day! |
Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 29 November 2022 at 6:14am
That's something that music fans have complained about with top 40 for decades. Power songs get rotated quite heavily. You have to keep in mind that to anyone other than radio insiders, when you've reached the point when you're tired of a given song, most of the listening public is just becoming aware of it. I've even noticed it myself as I've gotten older...I'll hear a cool "new" song on the radio, only to find that it's a year and a half old!! |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 11 March 2023 at 5:36pm
Post-1992, I considered Radio & Records the best successor. Of course, it went out of business at some point. So now I consider the best successor the Billboard Mainstream Top 40. (I also wish there was a chart like this that also had a component for Mainstream sales - that would pretty much be the successor in my opinion - but since the "end of the physical single", I suppose the sales component wouldn't be that important anyway. Even digital sales don't add up to that much.) As far as Billboard changing it's "all-genres-in-one" chart back to the old way, I kept asking the editor of Billboard to do that a lot (I'm pretty sure it was Geoff Mayfield), and they did that! But for a very short time. And it wasn't quite what I was asking for. I was saying to have something like a "Pop 100", and that all-genres-in-one chart could be a smaller chart (weekly) in both size/format and perhaps chart position (like some of their other charts). But what they ended up doing was post the Pop 100 as a full page chart one week, then the "all-genre" Hot 100 the next week, and then Pop 100 the next week, and then Hot 100, etc. They alternated each week, which certainly wasn't what I was hoping for. And they stopped this after about 4 weeks; the editor told me it was too confusing for their readers, switching the charts back and forth each week. Well, duh! I could have told him that would happen. I don't know why both couldn't have existed simultaneously each week, even if they made the all-genre one a full page, like the Pop 100 that they started doing. Then a reader could pick whichever chart they preferred (or read both). Does anyone else recall the 2 or 3 pop 100 charts they printed, for that short time? (I may have the title wrong). Paul H, maybe you? You probably had to look through them when you were doing your decades books :) |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 11 March 2023 at 5:43pm
It's funny - I was wondering about this for a while. I use Safari, not Chrome, and my posts still have the narrower columns, while other people's posts go all the way from left to right. I'm going to try your suggestion now and see if I get the longer lines, left to right. But as far as some lines looking weird and being really short, I find this happens when I go back to edit a post. That's when some short lines will come up. And if I fix the short line, then the next line becomes a short line! You have to keep going through to get to the end of your paragraph, correcting this for each line, if you don't want that uneven look. |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 11 March 2023 at 5:44pm
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Hey - if you look at my last 2 posts (left to right - lengthwise), you'll see that Hyker's suggestion worked. The 2nd post goes all the way, left to right.
BUT ... it also has some uneven lines, which I thought only occurred if you go back and edit your post - and I didn't go back and do that! |