1940s – Greatest Recording Artists

Music Lovers Special

December 8th, 2025

Music Lovers Special

With the holiday season here, I hope you will consider gifting my book, MUSIC TITANS – 250 GREATEST RECORDING ARTISTS OF THE PAST 100 YEARS, to the music lovers in your life. MUSIC TITANS ranks and profiles the most consequential recording artists of the past century using a clearly explained algorithm based on popularity (records sold, concert attraction, longevity), musical and cultural influence, and major awards won. You will find artists of all genres included – from Rock to Country, Jazz to Pop, R&B to Hip-Hop, Blues to Folk, Classical to Electronica, and more.

MUSIC TITANS has been lauded by music industry insiders – music publisher Peter Burke called it “an absolute masterpiece!”; Grammy winning producer Jeffrey Weber wrote, “I love this Book!”; while producer Bill Bentley said, “Steve Williams…comes through with flying colors.” Reviewers have used words like “comprehensive,” “accessible,” “insightful,” “immersive,” “entertaining,” “perceptive,” and “fun” in describing it.

MUSIC TITANS is available (and at discount prices) at Amazon, BookBaby Bookshop (my publisher), and at several other online sites. Thank you! – Steve

1940s – 5 Classic Records

June 1st, 2023

The Andrews Sisters, the most successful female vocal group of the first half of the 20th century, may have had bigger hits- “Rum and Coca Cola” and “Don’t Fence Me In”, to name two- but none more iconic than their 1941 release of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”, an upbeat, “jump blues” style, World War II-era number that was voted #6 on the RIAA‘s “Songs of the Century” poll. Bette Midler reprised it as a hit in 1973.

One of the decade’s biggest sellers was “Paper Doll”, originally released as a B-side (“I’ll Be Around” was expected to be the hit) in 1942 by The Mills Brothers, an African-American jazz/pop barbershop-style quartet. The singer(s) has obviously been hurt in love and now seeks to shield himself from further pain. By late “43 and into 1944, the song dominated the pop charts.

In the mid-’40s, radical folk singer Woody Guthrie recorded his now classic “This land Is Your Land”. He claimed he was tired of hearing Kate Smith’s “God Bless America”, and wanted to sing a rejoinder that celebrated All Americans, rich or poor. Today Guthrie’s anthem is sung by schoolchildren, by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, even at presidential inaugurations.

It’s nearly impossible to choose one Hank Williams number, but his 1949 cover version of a 1920s show tune, “Lovesick Blues”, came to dominate country & western charts at the end of the decade and showcases Hank’s inimitable vocal style, replete with yodels, joy, and pathos.

No list of ’40s’ classics would be complete without Bing Crosby’s 1942 recording of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”. It is still reputedly the best-selling single of all-time, is ranked #2 on the RIAA Songs of the Century list, and is included on the National Recording Registry.

-Steve Williams (6/1/23) – Greatest Recording Artists Blog Post #15

Hank Williams (1923 – 1953)

May 29th, 2023

Hiram “Hank” Williams was born poor in rural Alabama, saw little of his father growing up, and learned to play guitar while still a child from a black bluesman who played on the street. By 13 Williams was playing his songs and hosting a regular weekly Montgomery radio show and soon dropped out of school to form a band, the Drifting Cowboys. In 1944 Hank married an aspiring singer, Audrey, who encouraged Williams in his musical ambitions. 1947 brought Hank his first recorded success, “Move It On Over”, an early rockabilly number. In 1949 his cover of “Lovesick Blues” was a national sensation and Hank was on his way.

For the next four years, Williams dominated the country & western charts with such soon to be classics as “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”; “Cold, Cold Heart”; “Hey Good Lookin’; “Jambalaya”; “Your Cheatin’ Heart”, and more. The media began referring to him as country music’s first superstar and the “Hillbilly Shakespeare,” but Williams, who had drank heavily since his youth, had begun to go into a tailspin by late ’51. He’d taken a nasty fall, aggravating an already bad back, tried an unsuccessful medical procedure to address the problem, and then turned to morphine and other painkillers on top of the alcohol to numb the pain. He began missing shows or turned up to perform drunk.

On December 30, 1952 he got in the back seat of his powder blue Cadillac to drive through an ice storm to a show in West Virginia. Coping with his pain, he was drinking, using chloral hydrate and morphine. Before dawn on January 1, his hired driver realized he was dead- his heart had simply given out at the tender age of 29. Partly because of his sad and lonely demise, Williams is today a tragic mythic figure, but still it his music, above all, that makes him an immortal.

-Steve Williams (5/29/23) – Greatest Recording Artists Blog Post #14

Billie Holiday (1915 – 1959)

May 25th, 2023

She was born Eleanora Fagan in Philadelphia; raised in Baltimore, she may have been raped as a child, spent time in a reform school, worked with her mom in a brothel, and began singing in Harlem while still a teenager. Famed record producer John Hammond, who would later help sign Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen, heard her in 1933 and helped her cut her first record with the young Benny Goodman. Inspired by Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, and working with such artists as pianist Teddy Wilson, saxophonist Lester Young, and big band leaders Count Basie and Artie Shaw, Billie refined her distinctive vocal style, often singing offbeat with a bluesy, emotive, usually sad feel.

1939’s “Strange Fruit”, the anti-lynching heartbreaking protest that she made all her own, and 1942’s “God Bless the Child”, aimed squarely at her mother who took Billie’s money without giving back (as Billie told it), are her best known tracks. As a singer she’s been extolled by the likes of Hammond who said she was “the first girl singer…who actually sang like an improvising genius,” and Frank Sinatra who said she was “the greatest single musical influence on me.”

Billie was gone by the age of 44, alcohol, hard drugs, a series of abusive relationships, and constant government harassment having taken their toll. “Lady Day”, as best friend Lester Young called her, has been honored by at least four halls of fame – the Jazz, Rock, R&B, and Women’s institutions.

-Steve Williams (5/25/23) – Greatest Recording Artists Blog Post #13

Ella Fitzgerald (1917 – 1996)

May 22nd, 2023

Ella Fitzgerald first struck gold with a children’s nursery rhyme (“A-Tisket, A-Tasket”) in 1938, became a master of scat singing, a mode of vocal improvisation such that the human voice takes on sounds like another musical instrument (listen to 1947’s “Flying Home”), became a giant with her recordings of the “Great American Songbook” (compositions by the likes of Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Rodgers & Hart, Irving Berlin, and the Gershwins), and earned the nickname “First Lady of Song”.

Blessed with a pure, clear tone and wonderful vocal control, Ella, over time, worked with all her heroes, Louis Armstrong, Ellington, Count Basie, and Frank Sinatra. A giant of jazz, swing, bebop, and pop, Fitzgerald sang 26 times at Carnegie Hall and has been honored by the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the U.S. Postal Service, and inclusion in the jazz and Women’s halls of fame; she is the recipient of 14 Grammy awards and a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

-Steve Williams (5/22/23) – Blog Post #12

Frank Sinatra (1915 – 1998)

May 18th, 2023

Francis Albert Sinatra grew up in North Jersey; his dad was a boxer and a saloonkeeper, his mom a midwife and a big shot in local Democratic politics. A high school dropout, Frank idolized Bing Crosby and parlayed his first big break, winning a radio Amateur Hour contest, into a gig singing with the Harry James band before moving on and finding huge success as lead vocalist for Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra beginning in 1940. When he left Dorsey to go “solo” in ’42, “Sinatramania”, much like “Elvismania” in the ’50s and “Beatlemania” in the ’60s was cresting. Early hits included “All or Nothing at All”, “I’ll Never Smile Again”, “Oh! What It Seemed to Be”, and “Five Minutes More”.

Sinatra’s early success, however, failed to last as divorce and reputed mob connections caused his popularity to plummet by the late ’40s. Dropped in 1952 from his record label, it took acting success to restart his faltering career, but by the mid-’50s he was back full force with the celebrated albums In the Wee Small Hours and Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!

A cultural icon by the 1960s, he continued to enjoy success despite the soaring popularity of British bands with such indelible releases as “Strangers in the Night”, “That’s Life”, and his signature song, “My Way”. Toward the end of his career Sinatra was widely recognized as one of the premier vocalists of the 20th-century as well as one of the best selling artists of all-time. A ferocious perfectionist with a brilliant way with phrasing and a knack for conversational intimacy in his vocal style, Sinatra retains his popularity and influence to this day.

-Steve Williams (5/18/23) – Blog Post #11

Music of the 1940s

May 15th, 2023

As the decade began and the U.S. soon entered World War II, swing and big band music continued to dominate the radio (still the primary means by which Americans listened to music), the concert/dance hall, and the charts. Three labels, RCA Victor, Decca, and Columbia held sway in the recording industry, but a musicians’ union strike from 1942 to 1944 against the major labels effectively curtailed the making of new records for two years. There were exceptions – records were still produced and shipped to servicemen overseas; some vocalists recorded a cappella; a few new, specialty labels, using non-union musicians, arose. Still, the strike results were long lasting- musicians gained greater compensation from record companies; big bands fell out of favor to be replaced by smaller groups; vocalists, such as Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, grew in popularity; and bebop, a new jazz style distinguished by fast tempos, complex chords and harmonies, and innovative improvisation, led by the likes of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, suddenly appeared, as if fully formed, to a bewildered audience in 1944.

Country music became a national force, with its brightest stars, Eddie Arnold and Hank Williams, rising to prominence late in the decade. Bing Crosby was once again the best-selling artist of the decade, with Glenn Miller, the Dorsey brothers, Harry James, The Andrews Sisters, The Mills Brothers, Sinatra, Perry Como, and Nat King Cole among those consistently on the charts.

-Steve Williams (5/15/23) – Blog Post #10

Category: 1940s

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