Still alive? No. Jimmy Dorsey died on June 12, 1957
If you look at Billboard’s list of #1 hits from 1941, you get an interesting pattern.
June 7: “My Sister and I”
June 14: “Maria Elena”
June 21: “Daddy” (by Sammy Kaye)
June 28: “My Sister and I”
July 5: “Maria Elena”
July 12-August 23: "Daddy" (which breaks the logjam)
This pattern might never be seen again, where three different songs trade off at #1 for six consecutive weeks. Whereas "Daddy" had a nice long run at #1, "My Sister and I" and "Maria Elena" were there for only two weeks each.
I remember vaguely reading about the state of country music in the 1980s. The link – which points to the list of #1s in country music in 1981 – has a different song at #1 almost every single week. Even though some of those country songs would become classics, a lot more would not. There is so much movement at the #1 spot in the 1981 country music chart that one might conclude that all of the songs are more or less at the same level of quality. And I believe that the 1980s are not considered a great era for country music.
It looks like there wasn’t much going on in the summer of 1941, certainly not with popular music, unless you want to conclude that all of those songs are classics. From the viewpoint of someone in the 21st century who never listened to swing/big band music, the list above doesn’t look like a list of all-star classics.
“Maria Elena” – at least the way Jimmy Dorsey/Bob Eberly are performing it – is a lousy song. (“My Sister and I” is only interesting in its subject matter.) Bob Eberly and Helen O’Connell frequently teamed up with Eberly singing a slow tempo part of the song and O’Connell coming in to jazz it up. This worked, at least in the case of “Amapola”. But “Maria Elena” is all Bob Eberly (a good, but not great vocalist), all slow tempo, and all snoozeville.
(Note: the linked version above only has Bob Eberly – if there’s a version of “Maria Elena” with Helen O’Connell, I haven’t found it yet.)
There are many big band/swing/crooner aficionados out there who want to mark the 1940s as a Golden Age of Music. Every bygone era has its fans, from the 1940s to the 1980s who want to mark their decade as the peak of creativity in music. The problem is that this viewpoint requires some selective memory.
If you were to ask a hardcore music fan of the 21st century – someone, say, in their early 20s – who the greatest performers were and what the greatest songs were, here’s how it would probably go. Maybe fifty percent of the songs would be from the 21st century. There would probably be a big chunk of 1990s songs – maybe Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam – in the list. Then Michael Jackson and maybe a few big names from the 1970s. The better songs of The Beatles. Elvis would get a mention, although everything he did after 1960 would be omitted.
And then what? Our hypothetical fan might remember Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, but all they’ll remember is “New York, New York” and “White Christmas”. If they remember a smattering of names before this point – Al Jolson, Glenn Miller, the Andrew Sisters – they’ll probably remember hearing the name somewhere but won’t be able to recall a single song.
This illustrates the process of filtering: humans have a selective memory. For the most part, we remember only the good songs from an era and conveniently forget all the bad ones. I experienced this first hand when I (briefly) had Sirius Radio and kept my radio tuned to the 1980s channel. I heard a lot of great music that I wanted to remember – but for every good song, I heard at least three or four that should have been buried in a landfill. My selective memory of the 1980s is sort of a “Best Hits of the 1980s” and I suspect the memory of big band fans is that of “Best Hits of the 1940s” – the only difference being that they might be more generous with the definition of “best hit” than I would.
“Maria Elena” is not a “best hit”. If you’ve got a better argument, I’d love to hear it.
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