50 Fun Facts About 1940s Music

What record does Bing Crosby's 'White Christmas' hold?

Estimated sales top 50 million physical copies. He recorded it for Decca in 1942 in about eighteen minutes.

Which songwriter wrote 'White Christmas' for the 1942 film Holiday Inn?

It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, and the industry realised for the first time that Christmas was a market of its own.

Glenn Miller received the first ever gold record in 1942 for a song about a train to which city?

RCA Victor presented it for 1.2 million sales. The song was the number one record in America on the day Pearl Harbor was attacked.

Which tune was Glenn Miller's theme song?

He wrote it himself. His band's other hits included In the Mood, Chattanooga Choo Choo and Pennsylvania 6-5000.

Glenn Miller went missing in December 1944 when his plane vanished over which body of water?

He was flying from England to France for a USO show in a small Norseman aircraft. An inquiry blamed weather, mechanical failure and human error.

Glenn Miller's 'In the Mood' was based on which earlier composition by Wingy Manone?

Miller's 1939 recording was later put in the Grammy Hall of Fame and named one of NPR's 100 most important American musical works.

Frank Sinatra left Harry James's band in November 1939 to sing with which bandleader?

He replaced Jack Leonard as lead singer, and their 'I'll Never Smile Again' spent 12 weeks at number one in 1940.

What were the teenage girls who mobbed Frank Sinatra in the early 1940s called?

They revealed a whole new youth market for pop music, making Sinatra arguably the first teen idol.

What is the chaos of 35,000 Sinatra fans locked outside New York's Paramount Theatre in October 1944 called?

Only 250 people left after the first show, so the crowd outside could not get in. He was nicknamed 'Swoonatra' and 'The Voice'.

What nickname, also the title of his 1946 debut album, was Sinatra given in the 1940s?

The Voice of Frank Sinatra reached number one on the Billboard chart. 'Chairman of the Board' and 'Ol' Blue Eyes' came later.

Bing Crosby won the Academy Award for Best Actor for which 1944 film?

He played a young priest, and 'Swinging on a Star' from the film won Best Original Song too.

How many Academy Award-winning songs did Bing Crosby introduce over his career?

They were 'Sweet Leilani', 'White Christmas', 'Swinging on a Star' and 'In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening'.

How many Andrews Sisters were there?

LaVerne, Maxene and Patty. Their first big hit was 'Bei Mir Bist Du Schön' in 1937.

The Andrews Sisters introduced 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy' in which 1941 Abbott and Costello film?

It reached number six on the pop chart. Bette Midler's 1973 cover and Christina Aguilera's 'Candyman' both pay tribute to it.

'Rum and Coca-Cola', a 1945 Andrews Sisters hit, was originally a calypso with lyrics by which Trinidadian?

American comedian Morey Amsterdam copyrighted it in the US as his own, which ended in a lawsuit.

In August 1942 the American Federation of Musicians struck against record companies over what?

Union boss James Petrillo banned members from commercial recording for over two years, which is why so many 1943 hits are sung a cappella.

'Sentimental Journey' (1944), with Les Brown's band, launched which singer?

It became an unofficial homecoming anthem for troops in 1945. She went on to be Hollywood's top box-office star in the early 1960s.

Which vocal group took the nonsense song 'Mairzy Doats' to number one in March 1944?

It was Decca's best-selling record of the year. The words are a garbling of 'mares eat oats'.

Which clarinetist was known as the 'King of Swing'?

His 1938 Carnegie Hall concert is often called jazz's coming-out party to the world of respectable music.

The 'Sentimental Gentleman of Swing', who employed the young Sinatra, was known for playing which instrument?

His biggest hit, 'I'll Never Smile Again', spent 12 weeks at number one in 1940 with Sinatra on vocals.

Which Cole Porter song was Artie Shaw's breakthrough 1938 recording and best-known hit?

Before it his band had languished for two years; after it he was a major star, and briefly married to both Lana Turner and Ava Gardner.

Woody Herman's bands were known collectively by what name?

His first hit was 'Woodchopper's Ball' in 1939, and Stravinsky wrote the Ebony Concerto for the band in 1945.

Kay Kyser's popular NBC radio show of 1939-49 combined big band music with what?

It was called Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge, and Kyser played the 'Ol' Professor' in cap and gown.

'Take the A Train', which became Duke Ellington's theme in 1941, was written by which composer?

He was originally hired as a lyricist in 1939. The title came from directions Ellington gave him to get to Harlem.

Which drummer-bandleader's orchestra gave Ella Fitzgerald her start with "A-Tisket, A-Tasket"?

They were the house band at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom. She led the band herself after his death in 1939.

Billie Holiday's anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit" was released in 1939 on which label?

Columbia refused to record it. The song was written by a Bronx schoolteacher, Abel Meeropol, under the name Lewis Allan.

Who gave Billie Holiday her nickname 'Lady Day'?

She called him 'Prez' in return. The saxophonist was her closest musical partner.

Nat King Cole's group, the top-selling act on Capitol Records in the 1940s, was what size of ensemble?

He started as a jazz pianist. 'Straighten Up and Fly Right' topped the charts in 1944, before he became a solo balladeer.

According to Mel Tormé, 'The Christmas Song' was written in July 1945 during what?

He and Robert Wells were trying to think cool. The Nat King Cole Trio first recorded it in June 1946.

Which sax player, nicknamed 'Bird', was the leading figure of bebop?

His recordings with Dizzy Gillespie in 1945, once the recording ban lifted, changed jazz for good.

Dizzy Gillespie wrote 'A Night in Tunisia' in 1942 while playing in whose band?

Its syncopated bass line was years ahead of its time. His trumpet's famous upturned bell was an accident at a party in 1953.

What did Louis Jordan call his band, regardless of how many musicians were in it?

From July 1946 to May 1947 he had five straight number ones, holding the top spot for 44 consecutive weeks.

Which 1922 song did Hank Williams cover for his 1949 breakthrough hit that took him to the Opry?

He got six encores at his Opry debut on 11 June 1949. The flip side was 'I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry'.

Which pair joined Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys in December 1945, creating the classic bluegrass sound?

Monroe is called the Father of Bluegrass; the genre is named after his band. Flatt and Scruggs left to form their own group in 1948.

Woody Guthrie wrote 'This Land Is Your Land' in 1940 as a critical response to which song?

He was sick of hearing Kate Smith sing it on the radio and first titled his answer 'God Blessed America for Me'.

'Ghost Riders in the Sky' was a 1949 number one hit for which bandleader-singer?

Jones said he heard the legend from an old Native American man near Douglas, Arizona when he was twelve.

Whose recording of 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' hit number one the week of Christmas 1949?

Johnny Marks wrote it from a 1939 Montgomery Ward promotional storybook. Autry had recorded it in June as a children's record.

'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah', which won an Oscar in 1947, came from which Disney film?

James Baskett sang it. Disney has distanced itself from the song since 2020 because of the film's racial controversy.

British wartime singer Vera Lynn was known by what nickname?

Servicemen voted her their favourite performer in a Daily Express poll during the Phoney War. She lived to 103.

Oklahoma! opened on Broadway on 31 March 1943 and ran for how many performances?

It was based on Lynn Riggs's play Green Grow the Lilacs and earned the pair a special Pulitzer Prize in 1944.

Which record company introduced the 33 1/3 rpm long-playing record in 1948?

It was unveiled at the Waldorf-Astoria with 25 minutes of music per side. RCA answered with the 45 rpm single the next year.

What was 'The Log', built by Les Paul in the early 1940s?

He built it after hours at the Epiphone factory in New York from a 4x4 post, and it inspired the Gibson Les Paul.

Muddy Waters first recorded in Chicago in 1946 for Aristocrat Records, run by which brothers?

Leonard and Phil renamed the label Chess in 1950. His 'Rollin' Stone' that year later named a British band.

Which songwriter co-founded Capitol Records in 1942 with Buddy DeSylva and Glenn Wallichs?

Capitol was the first West Coast label of note, and Mercer himself was among its earliest recording artists.

Which Ella Mae Morse recording became Capitol Records' first gold single in 1942?

She cut it with Freddie Slack's orchestra on 21 May 1942, only weeks after the label's very first session.

Which 1943 Peggy Lee recording with Benny Goodman sold over a million copies and made her famous?

That same year she married Goodman's guitarist Dave Barbour, with whom she later co-wrote hits.

Which record, sung by Sinatra and the Pied Pipers, topped Billboard's first national chart in 1940?

Ruth Lowe's ballad held the top spot for 12 weeks; Glenn Miller had actually recorded it first.

Which company released the 7-inch 45 rpm single in March 1949?

The 45 rpm speed was chosen so a 7-inch disc could hold about five and a half minutes of music.

Which Bing Crosby song by Van Heusen and Burke won the Academy Award for Best Original Song of 1944?

It beat Judy Garland's The Trolley Song and later placed 37th in AFI's list of top movie songs.

In April 1946, Perry Como's Chesterfield Supper Club made radio history by broadcasting from where?

Como, Jo Stafford and the whole crew flew at 20,000 feet for the first complete radio show presented from an aircraft.