Joel Whitburn, who has relentlessly mined Billboard’s music charts to fill a reference book that tells the statistical story of pop, rock, country, R & B, hip-hop, and dance hits since 1940, was on Tuesday in Menomo, Wisconsin. He died at his home in Menomonee Falls. 82.
His death was confirmed by Paul Haney, a longtime researcher and editor of Record Research, Whitburn’s publisher. He did not identify the cause.
Whitburn is a music lover and his personal collection has been meticulously curated in the basement and later in the vault, for a total of 20 including all records for creating billboard charts. Over 10,000 cases.
“I go to the library alone-all these records-and it seems they are all my old friends,” he said in an interview with Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1986.
Whitburn has published nearly 300 books (counting updated editions), most of which are hit records and a very detailed chart history of albums. He began cataloging index card records and turned the project into his first volume, “Top Pop Singles,” published in 1970. The computer is much later.
Disc jockeys and record collectors were one of his first customers. However, his book has also become an important addition to the library of other music fans. Almost everything used Billboard charts, but Whitburn also delved into charts published by trade magazines Cash Box, Record World, and Radio & Records.
“He had a huge impact on the music industry as a whole,” Billboard’s Senior Vice President of Charts and Data Development, Silvio Pietro Luongo, said in a telephone interview. “He was the first person to catalog the history of chart music, and by doing so it became the de facto history of recorded music.”
He added, “Joel’s record of the Hot 100 has given him great national approval.”
His book covered a vast musical domain with a list of common titles and alphabetical by artist or group: “Top R & B Singles, 1942-2016”, “Hit Country Records, 1954”. From 1982 “,” Beyond the Charts: The 1960s “.
The 9th edition of “The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits” (2010) lists 52 Beatles songs, dated when each song was in the Top 40 from the beginning (“I want to hug you” and “I want to hug you”. I saw her standing. “” January 25, 1964) Until the end (“Real Love” made by The Beatles who survived the demo cut by John Lennon on March 23, 1996). Their peak chart position. The time the song stayed on the chart. The period during which they stayed in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place. Information Nugget (like the fact that the band’s fourth Top 40 hit, “Please Please Me,” was recorded in 1962). And record labels (usually the Capitol, later Apple, but some other early ones).
He also published a book containing a given 10-year chart.
In a review of “Top Pop Singles, 1955-2006” (2007), Los Angeles Times pop music critic Robert Hillburn said Whitburn reinforced the book’s updates with new elements. “This time, I borrow a page from the batting average of baseball and assign a” hit average “to the recording artist. “He writes.
In an interview with the magazine in 2014, Whitburn explained his appeal to Billboard charts and why his venture was so successful.
“I’m just a music fan and I love charts,” he said. “I enjoy following the success of the artist. It’s just a joy. It’s a weekly thrill. And there are millions of things like me all over the world.”
Joel Carver Whitburn was born on November 29, 1939 in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. His father, Russell, worked for a local power company. His mother, Ruth (bird) Whitburn, was a housewife.
Joel was already a music lover when he saw a copy of the billboard for sale at the Millwalky bus stop at the age of twelve. His mother gave him a quarter to buy it, and while reading it at his house, he was fascinated by the information it provided.
“Suddenly I knew what the best song in the country was,” he said in a 2009 interview with music journalist Larry LeBlanc on the entertainment website Celebrity Access. “I never thought there was a chart showing that information.”
He later became a subscriber and he held all the issues.
Whitburn attended Elmhurst University (now the University) in Illinois and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, but did not graduate. Before he was hired to represent RCA Records, he was engaged in several jobs, telling the distributors of Milwalky’s company how much he liked music. He was informed about a new venture featuring 8-track tapes and got a job to set up an 8-track division in stores in Wisconsin and Illinois. While working at RCA, he met artists like Chet Atkins and Charley Pride.
By then, he was deeply involved in billboard research as a hobby, using a stack of magazines he had collected since 1954. He focused on the Hot 100 chart, which began in 1958, wrote down the artist’s name and recorded the information in the index. card.
“The first card I wrote,” he told LeBlanc, “Nelson, Ricky,” Poor Little Fool. “
He quit his job at RCA in 1970 and devoted himself to books full-time.
When the first edition of “Top Pop Singles” was completed in 1970, he put up a small ad on Billboard that promised buyers the history of the Hot 100. The magazine’s publisher, Halck, found the ad and called Whitburn.
“You can’t use the Hot 100 in your ads,” Whitburn recalled in a 2014 interview with Cook telling him. “Not without our permission.” Instead of threatening Whitburn in a proceeding, Cook asked him to look at the book.
Two weeks later, Whitburn said Cook called. “He said:’Joel, we got the book. Wow. We love it.” And he said Billboard’s attempt to develop a similar book failed. I admitted. He paid Mr. Whitburn and his wife Fran to come to Los Angeles.
Three days later, Whitburn returned home with a 26-page license agreement, giving him the exclusive right to use Billboard charts in his books in exchange for royalties paid to Billboard.
With that permission, Whitburn has created a unique musical research empire.
He is survived by his wife Francis (Madget) Whitburn. His daughter, Kim Brocksdorf, vice president of record research. His sisters Joyce Lille and Julie Ray Neilmeier. His brothers, Charles and David. Two grandchildren. And two great-grandchildren.
Scott Shannon, a veteran disc jockey currently listening to WCBS-FM in New York, said he bought the first copy of the “top pop single” while working for a radio station in Mobile, Alabama in the early 1970s. Told. Since then, he has purchased several updates, keeping one at the station and the other at his home.
“There was no other place to get information about the artist. We wanted to be the authority on the music we were playing at the time,” Shannon said in a telephone interview. “When used properly, it sounds smarter than the listener and sharper than the next jock.”
