I’m a paleontologist listening to all of the Billboard top 100s so I can learn something about popular music and history. Here are my previous years : 1941, 1942, 1943.

The fourth year of my run through the history of pop music, 1944, is also affected by the musicians strike that ran from August 1942 to 1944. As I mentioned in the 1943 chart, the strike was for musicians and not singers, so it brought about the end of the Big Band Era and meant that only 40 tunes charted in 1944.

As I go through the songs each year, I note the race and gender of the artists, so I can track how representation changes over the years. You might expect 50% of tunes to be performed by women if they were a random sample of the population (although that was not the case in 1941, 1942, or 1943). Based on the racial mix of the USA in the 1940s, you would expect about four of the top 40 tunes to be by a Black artist or artists and maybe one by another non-White racial group. Similarly, you would expect one song by Latinx artists.

As before, I’m going to go through the songs in reverse order so I can count down to the big hits.

TL;DR notes:

1. No Glenn Miller on the chart this year. He died in December 1944 in an airplane accident over the English Channel while serving in the Army. That was a major loss to American music, but he wasn’t on the charts because he was focused on his role in the army, where he was the leader of a modernized army band that served to improve troop morale. He was flying to Paris to prepare to move his band there, after the Allied army had retaken it in summer to fall of 1944 when his plane was lost over the English Channel.
2. The 1944 chart was dominated by Bing Crosby, with six of the 40 tunes. There were eight artists with two tunes on the charts and 18 with only one tune, so tunes were relatively evenly distributed this year.
3. Black artists were 8 of the 27 artists on the 1944 charts, so 29%. When you go by tracks, Black folks are on 11 out of 40, so 28%. The expected rate for the 1940s would be 10%, so either way that’s an overrepresentation.
4. There are no Latinx artists on the 1944 charts, but Latinx folks were about 1.5% of the US at the time, so 0 out of 40 isn’t unlikely. Still, it’s disappointing because the charts are missing that Latin sound that was there in 1941.
5. Women are in 11 of the 27 named artists (39%), and 15 of the 40 tracks (38%). You would, of course, expect them to be in half of the groups on average (maybe more: no reason you couldn’t have all the groups have men and women, after all), so women are underrepresented. Even so, that’s up from about six per year in 1941-1943, so representation is improving. Could this be a “Rosie the Riveter” effect? I don’t know, but Glenn Miller had left the “workforce” for the army at least, so perhaps other male artists were similarly caught up in the war effort, opening spaces for women to chart.
6. Notable songs include: “A Hot Time in the Town of Berlin”, “Hamp’s Boogie Woogie”, “G.I. Jive”, “Mairzy Doates”, and “Swingin’ on a Star.” My favorite is “G.I. Jive.” I gave 24 (60%) tracks a heart this year. Compare that to 25/40 (63%) in 1943, 45/100 in 1942, and 33/80 (41%) in 1941.

The 1944 Charts:

1. It Could Happen to You – Jo Stafford – Starts with sad strings and sad piano, building to intro the singer. No long intro here. She’s singing about how you should be careful with your heart because “it” could happen to you. It’s a sad-sounding song, but I think she’s singing about falling in love. Her voice is great, but this song just isn’t for me: I’m not in for these sappy love songs. White female artist.
2. Is You Is or Is You Ain’t – The Andrews Sisters – I like this tune and this group, so I anticipate liking this track. Sassy muted trumpet to start: a good start. A male voice sings the first part, and Spotify says it’s Bing Crosby! This is a very slow version, but it’s great because all of the voices are great, and they sound emotionally invested in the song. OK, at 1:00 it picks up to the standard pace of this song. It’s a great cut of it, and I’m going to give it a heart. Wow, at 2:00 there’s another modality change to a more swing, percussion-heavy sound. So good. White female artists.
3. I Couldn’t Sleep A Wink Last Night – Frank Sinatra – clarinet playing around to set a pastoral mood. Now we’re into Frank’s singing and he’s filling the space with his voice. He’s sorry for something and maybe that’s why he can’t sleep? It’s pretty good for a slow tune: it’s not doing the “mooooon in juuuune” thing of crooning songs. Still, not for me. White male artist.
4. Do Nothin’ Till You Hear From Me – Duke Ellington – Tinkly piano to start out. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard this one before. Now into sassy muted trumpet, backed by the saxophones. It’s making sure you know it’s a jazz tune. And on to muted trombones taking up the melody. We get vocals at 1:00, so it’s more typical of the 1941-1942 modality of a long introduction. The vocals are great, too. Looking on Wikipedia, it’s clear that Duke is the pianist and one of several singers could be the vocalist. I’ll give it a heart. Black male artist. Look at this Jazzfuel article for more on Duke.
5. Shoo-Shoo Baby – The Andrews Sisters – Ella Mae Morse charted with this one in 1943. One of the remaining B-17 bombers on display at the Smithsonian is the Shoo-Shoo Baby. Builds to the opening vocals, a single female voice, singing about how “she” is sad because “he” is going away in the navy, I think? He’s telling her “shoo-shoo-shoo baby” because “papa’s off to the seven seas.” So that settles it. It’s OK, and I like the Andrews Sisters’ harmony and arrangements, so I’ll give it a heart. White female artists.
6. Time Waits For No One – Helen Forrest – YouTube to the rescue. Fast pace, speeding up through the crescendo of the introduction. Now we have Helen Forrest’s strong vocals, but this recording isn’t great, unfortunately. This song is sweet, but is isn’t really musically interesting. White female artist.
7. It Had To Be You – Dick Haymes and Helen Forrest – I’ve heard this song before, and it’s likely you have, too. It’s a classic, and not for no reason. Dick Haymes has a good sound, and he carries the song because the instrumentation is only there to complement his singing. We get Helen Forrest singing her part halfway through. I’ll give it a heart. White male and female artists.
8. A Hot Time In the Town of Berlin – Bing Crosby & the Andrews Sisters – starts with a strong New Orleans Jazz sound, then straight into Bing singing about how the American soldiers are going to take Berlin apart when they get there. It’s a nice, fast-paced song about punching Nazis, so I’ll give it a heart. Plus the Andrews Sisters and Bing Crosby together: two of my favorite acts from this time period. White male and female artists.
9. Don’t Sweetheart Me – Lawrence Welk – Starts strong with horns and a solid four. Into the vocalist by 10 seconds in. It’s a pretty standard jazzy Big Band tune, with a simple love song as the basis: he wants his lady to go steady with him. It’s overall a decent piece of music, but it isn’t outstanding. I’ll give it a heart because it’s got a good pace and is orchestrated the way I like tunes. White male artist.
10. San Fernando Valley – Bing Crosby – Straight into a New Orleans jazz feel. He’s packing up and moving to California. It’s a nice, fast-paced, happy tune all about how you can leave your problems behind when you move to central California. It has a feel halfway between jazz and country and western. I’ll give it a heart. White male artist.
11. Hamp’s Boogie Woogie – Lionel Hampton – Rollicking piano to open: this tune is going somewhere. Now we have a chorus singing with the piano, but they’re mixed in so low it sounds like there’s one microphone on the piano and it’s just picking up these fellas in the background. This is excellent piano playing and I’m amazed I’ve never heard it before or heard of Lionel Hampton, who may be one of my favorite musicians if the rest of his opus is like this. Wow. Apparently, Hampton was in one of the first integrated jazz groups to perform live. I’ll give it a heart. Black male artist.
12. Shoo-Shoo Baby – Andrews Sisters – Is this another cut of the same tune? I’m not sure why it’s on the charts twice. I listened to a different cut just to keep up the process, and it was great, too. So I give it a heart also. White female artists.
13. Cherry – Harry James – Starts with clarinets setting a steamy scene, punctuated by trumpet blasts. Here comes Harry on the lead trumpet, showing off his chops. He’s great, and the tune is great, as it sets it’s slow-dance tempo to telling a musical story. It’s a sassy story with some sad notes and some happy notes. I don’t think there will be any vocals: I think he’s singing the song with his trumpet. Now, at almost two minutes, the saxophone comes in to take over the melody from the trumpet. And then on to the muted trombone. It’s like a conversation between the sections. I’ll give it a heart: this is great music. White male artist.
14. And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine – Stan Kenton – Starts strong with the horns, straight into great female vocals. She’s singing in a jazzy way about a cad of a husband who spends money on himself, his mother, and other girls, but not on his wife, and when she asks what he got her, he hits her! So it’s a song about spousal abuse, I guess? It’s overall a great, jazzy Big Band tune and I like it, and it sounds like one of his lovers killed him at the end, so it’s OK, I guess? Oh, no insurance for the wife, so she has a reason to cry after all. So sad. I’ll give it a heart. White male artist.
15. Long Ago – Jo Stafford – Swelling strings set a saccharine picture to start. It’s going to be maudlin, I can tell. Straight into the Jo Stafford’s excellent vocals. She’s singing about how her dream is finally coming true: you’re here at last. It makes sense folks would be thinking this way by 1944. It’s not for me, though. White female artist.
16. Amor – Bing Crosby – Island-sounding guitar. Bing’s voice is great. He’s sung “Amor” three times to start. The song is _about_ the word, I think. It’s sort of a sideways love song. It’s otherwise not very interesting. It’s uninteresting from a musical perspective, at least in my opinion. White male artist.
17. Cow-Cow Boogie -(Cuma-Ti-Yi-Yi-Ay) – Ink Spots with Ella Fitzgerald – I liked this song the first time (Freddie Slack in 1942), and maybe Ella and the Ink Spots can make it even better. OK, from the start it’s better. Ella is so great, and the Ink Spots don’t disappoint, taking this “western” song and making it jazzy and cool. This is soooo good. I’ll give it a heart. Black male and female artists.
18. Main Stem – Duke Ellington – Piano and hi-hat to start. Sparse, but wonderful. Jazzy and happy and running along. This tune has motion. Now we’ve added a string bass, and it’s still running forward in a sparse, jazzy way. Big band comes in at about 50 seconds, and it really fills up the room with the sound, following the melody already set. This is a great tune. Duke Ellington tunes are mostly like clinics, I think. I’ll gladly give this tune a heart. Black male artist.
19. I’m Lost – Benny Carter – YouTube to the rescue. Starts with a wall of Big Band sound. Then it’s into a croony-sounding male vocalist, hitting the vowels hard. He’s lost without you: like a heart without its beat, like an army in defeat, etc. etc. It’s all analogies for how lost he is. It’s OK, but it doesn’t get me excited. Black male artist.
20. Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall – Ella Fitzgerald & Ink Spots – Starts with piano on melody and strings going oom-pah. Then into a male vocalist singing about how too much rain is falling in his life. It’s very square and I expect it’s setting up a contrast with Ella in the second section. I was right. She comes in at 1:12, and she changes the tone of the song from square to jazzy. She’s so great. I’m so glad to have come up with an excuse to listen to so much good music. In the final section, we have a great bass voice speaking over Ella scat-singing and the band keeping up, then back into call-and-response between Ella and the first male vocalist. Great. I’ll give this one a heart. Black male and female artists.
21. Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week – Frank Sinatra – Big trumpets to start, and it doesn’t sound like a sad song. Frank’s singing in a not-sad way, too, but he’s singing about how Saturday is sad because it used to be his dancing night with his lady, and it’s implied that she’s gone now. She’s not left him, and she’s not dead: he’s waiting for her to return from somewhere (maybe military service? – That would explain the tone). It’s a good song, and I’ll give it a heart. White male artist.
22. Long Ago – Bing Crosby – Whiny violins to start set us up for a sad song. Bing is singing in a sad voice about “Long ago and far away I dreamed a dream that one day..” Right. This is the same song that Jo Stafford had at #26: a sad song that is actually about a happy subject. Here we have a man singing the same song: so it’s really just about a person being happy that their love is with them now after a long absence. It’s sweet, and surprising that it sounds sad to me. White male artist.
23. G.I. Jive – Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five – Raunchy trumpet to start. Great, jazzy version of this tune. It has a good, scat-ty sound. It’s a litany of the things that a G.I. has to do in his unsung role as the core of the US Army. “If you brush the LT, the MP makes you KP on the QT.” “Chunk all your junk back in your trunk… fall on your bunk… clunk!” It gets a heart. Black male artist.
24. Amor – Andy Russell – Oh, no. I don’t see how this could be better than the Bing Crosby version I didn’t like already. Let’s see. Screechy violins descend the scale to introduce the song. Straight into Andy Russell, who has a higher, sweeter voice than Bing. It’s still not a great song. I’m sure it’s great for some folks, but it’s not for me. White male artist.
25. Long Ago – Dick Haymes and Helen Forrest – Sigh. Another cover of this song. I didn’t like either of the previous ones, but I’ll give it a go. Piping woodwinds paint a swirling picture to start us out. Now Helen Forrest begins singing. Her voice is great, but this song isn’t my favorite. I’ll give this version one point: it sounds happy, as befits this song’s subject. She’s really happy that her love is beside her, I can tell. Eventually, we get the male vocalist singing the verse. Overall, this is the best version of the three. White male and female artists.
26. I’ll Get By – Harry James – Saxophones jazzy to start, then call-and response with the trumpets. Now we get the male vocalist singing in a crooning way about how “you” are the thing that helps him get by. This song makes sense in the context of the dark days of 1944, as the USA slogged away in Africa and Italy as well as the Pacific Theater. Honestly, I can connect with it now in the Global ‘Rona Pandemic. So I’ll give it a heart. Also, it’s musically very good (despite the crooning) and has a good use of the various sections of the big band. White male artist.
27. Til Then – Mills Brothers – The chart listing seems to have the wrong artist. It lists the Ames Brothers, but this was a Mills Brothers hit in 1944. Happy guitar leads straight into four-part harmony singing about how they would like you to wait ‘til then. It’s another song about waiting for someone until the world is free: this is a relevant topic for 1944, but, again, seems relevant today. I’ll give it a heart. Black male artists.
28. Straighten Up And Fly Right – The King Cole Trio – Happy, jazzy piano to introduce the tune. Then we get the vocals, leading to the band in harmony on the refrain. The refrain adds a string bass, too. This song is well known today: it’s an analogy, telling a story of a monkey riding on a buzzard. The buzzard isn’t sure he wants the monkey on his back, but the monkey tells him to “straighten up and fly right.” This is a beautiful, jazzy, sparsly instrumented version with great, precise vocals. It adds a guitar in the musical interlude, mostly a piano solo. I’ll give it a heart. Black male artists.
29. I’m Making Believe – Ella Fitzgerald & Ink Spots – Tinkly piano to start us out. The Ink Spots do a good job of having a sound that is similar to the square sound that a lot of White artists were producing at that time, but having more depth and soul, and this track exemplifies that style. The second half of the song has Ella Fitzgerald, and she really makes this song: her voice is so beautiful. I’ll gladly give it a heart. Black male and female artists.
30. I’ll Walk Alone – Dinah Shore – Oooohs from chorus to start us out. Dinah has a great voice, but it’s a bit overpowering in the mix here. It has only singing accompaniment: because of the musicians strike? Dinah’s doing a good job with this tune, but it really feels too busy because of the way they’re using the chorus to back her up. White female artist.
31. I Love You – Bing Crosby – Whiny violins to start, then Bing sings “I love you,” and I understand why this song charted so high: all of the folks sighing and imagining that Bing was singing to them. It’s a pretty standard love song, all about birds singing and the spring breeze. White male artist.
32. My Heart Tells Me – Glen Gray – Horns setting a suspenseful scene, with the hi-hat going in the background. Then a female vocalist singing about how her heart tells her that she’s just in a fling, but you tell her it’s serious. Should she believe her heart or you? The music is pretty tame, standard big band backing the strong vocals, but nothing to really note. White male artist.
33. It’s Love-Love-Love – Guy Lombardo – Quick notes tossed around by the sections leads into a light, happy, Latin-sounding melody led by muted trumpets and flutes. Takes 40 seconds to get to the vocals. It’s a mambo, with Latin-sounding lyrics, intended to invoke the cadence of Caribbean speech patterns. It’s OK, using the different sections to good effect, but it ends up sounding kinda cheesy. White male artist.
34. Twilight Time – Les Brown – Clarinets humming along to set the tone, with brushes on the snares for percussion. It’s a mellow sound and makes me feel relaxed. It crescendos into the main melody with some horns and saxophones providing additional texture. I can’t tell if it’s an instrumental or just taking a long time to get to the vocals. It’s good: I don’t usually like songs this slow, but it manages to be mellow without being lovey-dovey. Now in the second half a saxophone has taken over the melody from the clarinets. Still no vocals, so I’m sure it’s an instrumental. I’ll give it a heart. White male artist.
35. I’ll Be Seeing You – Bing Crosby – Strings swell to set the stage: what exciting thing will happen? Bing will sing about how he’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places. I think I’ve heard this song before, but not this version. It’s pretty good: Bing has a great sound. I can tell the difference between Bing and the crooners I don’t like: He hits the vowels in a subtle way and dwells more on consonants, so it’s not droning. Even so, I’m not into this song. White male artist.
36. Mairzy Doates – Merry Macs – I think I must have heard this song a bunch in cartoons or something, because it’s familiar. It’s a meta song, because the song is about the song “Mairzy Doates” which is gibberish, as far as I can tell. I’ll look it up in a minute. Wikipedia explains it. It’s catchy, and the Merry Macs have a great sound. The band is here, but only enough to properly support the vocalists’ harmony. It’s a great composition and I’ll give it a heart. It’s great the way they trade the melody among the male and female voices. White male and female artists.
37. You Always Hurt The One You Love – Mills Brothers – Spare guitar starts us out. Then a male vocalist with a harmonizing, humming chorus. It’s a slow song about how you end up hurting the folks you love the most. After 1:20, it picks up the pace and gets back to the same lyrics, but in a jazzier mode. It’s pretty in the spare, simple way it’s put together. I’ll give it a heart. Black male artists.
38. Besame Mucho – Jimmy Dorsey – Piano swells to introduce a male vocalist singing “Besame mucho” but then into English, and I’m sad because I had hoped for a Spanish-language song. It’s not really musically very complicated; it’s a love song with a big band behind the vocalist, supporting his singing but not much more. After almost two minutes, we pick up the pace and switch to a female vocalist, but she’s not elevating the song. White male artist.
39. Trolley Song – Judy Garland – From the Meet me in St. Louis soundtrack. This is the famous “Clang! Clang! Clang! Went the trolley” song. I’ve heard it before, so it’s one of the few 1944 songs that’s become part of the broader musical landscape. It’s a good song, but it doesn’t really make much use of Judy Garland’s voice: she seems to be mixed into the overall chorus here. Oh, we get Judy after 1:30 in the song, and she elevates it (as expected). It has a more Hollywood sound than the rest of the tunes on the 1944 chart. It’s not big band, it’s Hollywood, but I can’t quite find the words to explain the difference. Even with Judy, it’s not a song that I’m going to heart. White female artist.
40. Swinging On A Star – Bing Crosby – I know this song from Hudson Hawk, I’m afraid. It starts with that familiar melody and goes straight to Bing singing. This song is great and I’m not surprised that it’s the #1 song for 1944. The song also got an Academy Award for best song in 1944, because it was sung in the film Going My Way. It was also the theme song for the 1980s TV show Out of This World, about a half-alien teenager. The world is a strange place. I’ll give this song a heart: it’s great even without all this cultural baggage. White male artist.