February 10, 1942: For the 1st time, a song is awarded a gold record. It's the recording of "Chattanooga Choo Choo" (no hyphen in the title) by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra. The award is by RCA Victor Records, for achieving the sale of 1 million copies.
The music was composed by Harry Warren. The lyrics were written by Mack Gordon, and they're a little troubling today, due to the retroactively obvious racism. It begins with a traveler at New York's Pennsylvania Station talking to a shoe-shine man, and men in that profession were nearly always black:
Traveler: Pardon me, boy: Is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo?
Shine man: Yes, yes, Track 29!
Traveler: Boy, you can give me a shine.
Shine man: Can you afford to board the Chattanooga Choo Choo?
Traveler: I've got my fare, and just a trifle to spare.
At the time, there were 3 trains that ran from Penn Station to Chattanooga. The Southern Railway's Birmingham Special, as its name suggests, went on to Birmingham, Alabama. The Tennessean went on to Memphis. The Pelican went past Birmingham to New Orleans, and remains in operation on Amtrak today, under the name of the Crescent.
Supposedly, Gordon and Warren rode the Birmingham Special together, and were inspired to write the song. But they took some artistic license. "Track 29" may rhyme with "shine," but Penn Station only had 21 tracks at the time. The Birmingham Special didn't "leave the Pennsylvania Station 'bout a quarter to four," 3:45 PM, unless it was seriously delayed: It left at 12:30. And all 3 of those trains went through western Virginia into East Tennessee, roughly parallel to U.S. Route 11, and eventually Interstate 81. So, if you had ham and eggs for breakfast on the train, it could be in the Great Smoky Mountains, but it would be in Tennessee, not in North or South Carolina.
Miller and His Orchestra recorded the song on May 7, 1941. Saxophonist Gordon "Tex" Beneke (so nicknamed because he came from Fort Worth, Texas) sang lead, and Paula Kelly and The Four Modernaires sang backup. It was released on RCA's Bluebird Records subsidiary on July 25, was included in the film Sun Valley Serenade that premiered on August 21, and hit Number 1 on November 29.
Tex Beneke, the biggest-selling singer you've
(probably) never heard of, until now.
For years, I was under the incorrect impression that the lead singer on the original version was Ray McKinley, a.k.a. "Eight Beat Mack," Miller's drummer. While he sing lead on some Miller recordings, including a later version of this song, he did not on the original recording.
Glenn Miller disappeared during a flight over the English Channel in 1944, his plane probably crashing. Alex Gordon died in 1959, Harry Warren in 1981, Ray McKinley in 1995, Tex Benecke in 2000.
Built in 1909, Chattanooga's Terminal Station closed in 1970, with the Birmingham Special canceled, due to the bankruptcy of the Southern Railway. The station was converted into a train-themed hotel in 1973. Although "Chattanooga Choo Choo" remains America's most popular train-themed song -- ahead of "The Ballad of Casey Jones," "The Orange Blossom Special," "M.T.A." and "The City of New Orleans" -- since its incorporation in 1971, Amtrak has never provided service to Chattanooga.
There's an old joke about "singing cowboy" Roy Rogers having a brand new pair of boots. After camping out all night, he hears a noise outside his tent. A mountain lion is chewing up his boots. Roy shoots it, and brings it home. When he gets home, his wife and co-star, Dale Evans, sees the dead lion and the chewed-up boots, and says, "Pardon me Roy, is that the cat that chewed your new shoes?"
And in 2007, Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, a Republican known for his pro-gun and anti-gay crusades, was arrested in a rest room at the airport in Minneapolis, having tapped shoes with the man in the stall next to him, a signal from one gay man to (potentially) another that he's interested. The man in the next stall was a cop, and Craig was arrested, and the joke was, "Pardon me, boy: Is that the chap that tapped your new shoe?"
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The first "precious metal" record was a silver record, awarded by Regal Zonophone to British singer George Formby, in 1937, for selling 100,000 copies of his song "The Window Cleaner." RCA Victor copied this by waiting until "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" sold over a million.
In 1958, the Recording Industry Association of America decided to make it official, introducing the gold record award for any record, whether a single or an album, that sold at least one million copies domestically. Foreign sales were not included. Under this system, the 1st single to receive a gold record was "Catch a Falling Star" by Perry Como, and the 1st album to get one was the soundtrack to the film version of the musical Oklahoma!
In 1976, the RIAA introduced the platinum record, for 1 million albums and 2 million singles, downgrading the gold record to 500,000 albums, while keeping 1 million as the standard for singles. This time, an album crossed the threshold first, Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) by The Eagles, followed by the 1st single, "Disco Lady" by Johnnie Taylor.
In 1999, by which point the gold record threshold for singles had also been dropped to half a million, the RIAA introduced the diamond record, for 10 million units. The 1st single so certified was the new version of "Candle in the Wind" that Elton John sang for Princess Diana.
For albums, they went retroactive: The 1st one certified diamond was The Wall by Pink Floyd, even though, as of February 10, 2022, several albums have sold more, including Pink Floyd's own Dark Side of the Moon, with Michael Jackson's Thriller topping them all with over 51 million sales certified, and probably a lot more than that which can't be certified.
The RIAA has never stopped record companies from taking matters into their own hands. In 2017, Universal Music Group gave Luis Fonsi a plutonium disc for the sales of "Despacito." It's sold 36 million digital copies -- not physical units like records or compact discs.
Bing Crosby's original 1942 version of "White Christmas" remains the biggest-selling single record ever, with over 50 million in sales, while Elton's 1997 version of "Candle in the Wind" is a distant 2nd, at 33 million. With 41 million sales, the best-selling song digitally is Ed Sheeran's 2017 "Shape of You."
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February 10, 1942 was a Tuesday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were 2 games played in the NHL. The New York Rangers lost to the Chicago Black Hawks, 5-2 at the old Madison Square Garden. And the Boston Bruins beat the Montreal Canadiens, 8-1 at the Boston Garden.
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