Acrobat’s popular series devoted to the biggest chart records of each calendar year continues with a look at 1949.

With 103 tracks, this compilation includes just about every record which peaked in the Top 15 of the Billboard Best Sellers and Cash Box charts.

For reasons of space, it excludes some records were still in the chart at the start of the year, but which peaked in the Top 15 in 1948, and so will be included in the forthcoming 1948 collection.

It was a big year for solo vocalists, who were now dominating as television offered an ideal means of exposure and the big swing bands declined in the era of post-war austerity, although the “sweet” orchestras with their featured singers continued to hold sway, and the year had its customary smattering of novelty songs, often in jazzy R&B or country styles.

Only eight different records made No.1 in the chart, some with very long stays at the top:

A Little Bird Told Me - Evelyn Knight & Stardusters (seven weeks)
Cruising Down The River - Blue Barron (two weeks)
Cruising Down The River - Russ Morgan & The Skylarks (seven weeks)
Riders In The Sky - Vaughn Monroe (11 weeks)
Some Enchanted Evening - Perry Como (five weeks)
You're Breaking My Heart - Vic Damone (four weeks)
That Lucky Old Sun - Frankie Laine (eight weeks)
Mule Train - Frankie Laine & The Muleskinners (six weeks)

As usual, there were also quite a number of highly collectable records by some artists we don’t hear too much about these days. It makes for an intriguing and very entertaining musical snapshot of the music scene as the war receded in people’s minds and a momentous new decade in music approached. It includes a 15,000+ word booklet with a commentary on every track.

REVIEWS

This is the penultimate set in this mammoth series as after this only 1948 remains to be issued, which will then complete every year from 1940-1962. Quite an achievement… These sets have long been indispensable to serious collectors of this period of popular music and it has been vastly enjoyable to anticipate these sets on a regular basis. Now it is nearly at an end we are all going to miss these regular visits down memory lane, and start to get withdrawal symptoms, unless of course Acrobat have something similar up their sleeve. - Gerry Stonestreet (In Tune Issue 354)

TRACKS