LoveSong1950s

The Story Behind the Song · The Orioles, 1953 The Orioles in an early press photo by James J. Kriegsmann, taken before 1954 · Shaw Artists Corporation, published without copyright notice, public domain In the summer of 1953 a Baltimore vocal group recorded a song that a Texas songwriter had written for his own son to sing. Artie Glenn wrote "Crying in the Chapel" and first cut it with his son Darrell on the family's small Valley label. The Orioles taped their version on June 30, 1953, and Jubilee Records had it in stores in July. What happened next is the part worth remembering. By the Billboard issue dated September 5, 1953, the Orioles' record stood at No. 1 on both of the magazine's rhythm-and-blues charts at once — National Best Sellers and Most Played in Juke Boxes. A week later it was No. 11 on the pop Best Selling Singles chart. And it was not alone there: on a single page of that September 12 issue, four different versions of the same song were cha...

Story Behind the Song · Postcard Heart , Track 7 ▶ The player starts right at this track (21:50). Let it keep playing for the full album. The traffic light turns green like a curtain going up. He is walking to the corner where they agreed to meet, skyscrapers pressing their shoulders against an endless blue, and the whole downtown seems freshly rinsed for the occasion. City of Dreams is the album at its most wide-angle — the couple small against the skyline, and somehow larger than it. With her hand in his, the chorus says, the world feels wide instead of intimidating; the spirit of youth is listed, quite correctly, as a side they have got. It is an anthem for anyone who has ever loved a person and a city at the same time and stopped being able to tell the difference. Oh, in this city of dreams, everything shines Like a melody written between the lines With your hand in mine, the world feels so wide We’ve got the spirit of youth on our side It’s a brand new day, and ...

Today in 1950 · Tuesday, August 22, 1950 Marathon swimmer Greta Andersen at Atlantic City in a 1958 press photo — the 1948 Olympic champion became the outstanding woman of the Daily Mail's cross-Channel race series that launched this day in 1950 · UPI press photo, 1958, published without copyright notice, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons On this day in 1950, Egyptian marathon swimmer Hassan Abdel Rehim climbed out of the surf on the English coast having crossed the Channel from France in about ten hours and fifty minutes — winning the first Daily Mail Cross-Channel Race at the age of 41 and breaking the crossing record. It was no beginner's triumph. Abdel Rehim had crossed the Channel in 1948 in 17 hours 38 minutes and again in 1949 in 15 hours 58 minutes; on his third crossing he cut nearly five hours off his own best. The Daily Mail's newly organized international race — with swimmers from several nations plunging in together off the French coast — turned Chan...

Story Behind the Song · Postcard Heart , Track 6 ▶ The player starts right at this track (18:23). Let it keep playing for the full album. Some love songs are about the person; this one is about the walking-to-meet-them part. The sun plays peek-a-boo between awnings, every shop window hands back a little more light, and a spring gets into the step of a man who knows someone is waiting at the end of the block. The chorus turns two heartbeats into a rhythm section — a clap of the hands, a skip in the stride, sunshine officially on their side. It is the most openly joyful cut on the album, doo-wop as a weather system. Play it on a morning commute and it will quietly argue that you, too, are on your way to meet somebody wonderful, even if it is only the day itself. Oh, it’s the rhythm of our hearts, beating like a work of art Building up a melody, just for you and just for me With a clap of our hands and a skip in our stride We’ve got the sunshine on our side Yeah, it’s t...

Today in 1950 · Monday, August 21, 1950 Tennis champion Althea Gibson, 1956 · Fred Palumbo, New York World-Telegram & Sun collection, Library of Congress, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons On this day in 1950, the United States Lawn Tennis Association accepted Althea Gibson's entry into the US National Championships at Forest Hills — making the 23-year-old from Harlem the first African-American player ever admitted to the tournament. The door had been pushed open a month earlier by an unlikely ally. Alice Marble, a white four-time national champion, had published a blistering letter in American Lawn Tennis magazine attacking the sport's exclusion of Gibson: 'it's only fair,' she wrote, 'that they meet this challenge on the courts.' After Marble's editorial, Gibson was invited to a New Jersey qualifying event, earned her results, and the USLTA accepted her entry. A week later she would win her first-round match at Forest Hills 6-2, 6-2, th...

Story Behind the Song · Postcard Heart , Track 5 ▶ The player starts right at this track (13:55). Let it keep playing for the full album. The final bell rings, and the whole year compresses into one hallway moment: sunlight in her hair by the lockers, magic loose in the air, a heart trying to act casual and failing on every beat. Summer School Crush is pure first-crush physics — the happy flutter when someone walks by, the melody of sunshine that follows them out the school doors and into June. The vocal keeps tripping over its own steadiness, which is exactly right; nobody is steady at seventeen in the first hour of summer. It is written in the sky, the chorus says, and the whole arrangement believes it: handclaps like sneakers on gym floors, harmonies like friends egging you on to just go say hello. Oh, you’re my summer crush, written in the sky With a little happy flutter whenever you walk by Like a melody of sunshine, a sweet and simple tune I’m dreaming of the da...

Today in 1950 · Sunday, August 20, 1950 Republic of Korea soldiers march toward the front during the Pusan Perimeter fighting, August 1950 · U.S. Army photo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons On this day in 1950, two weeks of desperate fighting on the Pusan Perimeter reached a turning point: the battles of P'ohang-dong and Taegu ended in United Nations victories. In the mountainous eastern corridor, South Korean forces advanced two miles north of Kigye and re-entered the port town of P'ohang-dong, driving the North Korean 5th Division north. The official US Army history records how close-run it had been — and why the attackers finally broke. The North Korean 12th Division, which had ordered its units to withdraw north through Kigye on the night of August 17, was reduced to roughly 5,000 men and reorganized short of artillery and food. As historian Roy Appleman put it, 'the North Korean system of logistics simply could not supply these troops in the Kigye-P'oh...

Today in 1950 · Saturday, August 19, 1950 An American family watching television at home in the 1950s · Evert F. Baumgardner, National Archives, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons On this Saturday morning in 1950, American children woke up to something new. ABC became the first US network to broadcast Saturday-morning television programming made for kids — the opening act of what would become one of the great rituals of American childhood. Two live shows premiered that morning. 'Animal Clinic' brought real animals into the studio with facts about their care; 'Acrobat Ranch,' broadcast live from ABC's Chicago operation, was a circus-themed variety show hosted by Jack Stilwell as 'Uncle Jim,' featuring two young tumblers billed as Tumbling Tim and Flying Flo, with children from the audience competing in games and stunts. Neither show is remembered today, but the idea they carried — that Saturday morning belonged to children — became a US broadcasting institut...

Story Behind the Song · Postcard Heart , Track 4 ▶ The player starts right at this track (09:21). Let it keep playing for the full album. The song opens with nothing but voices — doo-wah, shoo-bop, breath and starlight — the way real promises start with nothing but two people. It was a warm July night; she wore a little ribbon that seemed dressed in moonlight, and the jukebox inside was playing their favorite tune through a screen door. No fancy words, no diamonds. Just a hand reaching softly into another hand, and the sudden understanding that forever had already started without a ceremony. This is the album's slow-dance centerpiece, the one to play at the end of an evening when nobody wants to say the word "goodnight." Every little promise made under those summer stars, the chorus insists, still lives exactly where it was left. Doo-wah, you're my only melody Shoo-bop, you're the sweetest memory Every heartbeat sings your name Darlin', no...

Story Behind the Song · Postcard Heart , Track 3 ▶ The player starts right at this track (07:15). Let it keep playing for the full album. Most doo-wop swings on a backbeat, but every album needs one song that sways instead. Sweet Summer Waltz is the moment the couple leaves the avenue and finds a quiet lane — a hand held loosely, a breeze across the fields, a sky too blue to hurry under. The waltz feel does something sneaky here: it turns walking into dancing without either of them noticing. "My heart dances light and free," the chorus admits, and the melody really does lift on the count of three, like a skirt hem catching the wind. It is the shortest kind of love story — no conflict, no goodbye, just an afternoon that fits entirely inside a smile. Sometimes that is exactly the episode a summer needs. Oh, my heart dances light and free Just like a dream for you and me With every step, a gentle beat Our love is sweet, our love is neat — from “Sweet Summer Wal...

Today in 1950 · Friday, August 18, 1950 Whiz Kids Robin Roberts, manager Eddie Sawyer and Dick Sisler in October 1950, the season Philadelphia's young team took the National League pennant · Los Angeles Daily News, 1950, published without copyright notice, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons On this Friday in 1950, the National League pennant race came to Coogan's Bluff, and New York got the better of it. At the Polo Grounds, Leo Durocher's Giants beat the league-leading Philadelphia Phillies 7-4 — a rare bad evening for the 'Whiz Kids,' the youngest team in baseball, whose kid pitchers and Richie Ashburn's legs had carried them to the top of the standings all summer. Across the East River the same evening, the Brooklyn Dodgers — the defending league champions still chasing Philadelphia — beat the Boston Braves 8-3 at Ebbets Field. Two ballparks, two home wins, one city: the everyday rhythm of a summer when New York had three major-league teams and the ...

Today in 1950 · Thursday, August 17, 1950 President Sukarno of Indonesia in Washington, D.C., 1956 · U.S. News & World Report collection, Library of Congress, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons On this day in 1950, Indonesia dissolved its federal structure and proclaimed itself a single, unitary republic. The federal state — the Republic of the United States of Indonesia — had existed for less than eight months, created when the Netherlands transferred sovereignty on December 27, 1949 after four years of independence struggle. The date was no accident. August 17 was the fifth anniversary of the 1945 independence proclamation, and President Sukarno — the man who had read that proclamation — now led the new unitary state. In the days before, on August 15 and 16, he had formally declared the dissolution of the federal framework the Dutch had built between 1945 and 1949, consolidating authority in Jakarta under a new provisional constitution. For a world just entering the se...

Story Behind the Song · Postcard Heart , Track 2 ▶ The player starts right at this track (03:27). Let it keep playing for the full album. Sunset Avenue at golden hour: amber light on chrome bumpers, palm trees leaning into the last warm wind of the day. She was smiling by the door, and that was the only invitation the evening needed. This track is the album's first proper dance — not in a ballroom but right down the sidewalk, hand in hand under the shop lights as they flicker on one by one. The shoo-bop backing vocals act like passing headlights, sweeping through the mix in time with every step. It is a song about how a city softens when you walk it beside the right person, how every crosswalk becomes a little stage. Put it on while the sun goes down and see if your own street does not turn into Sunset Avenue for three and a half minutes. Dancing down Sunset Avenue, Every dream feels bright and new. Hand in hand beneath the lights, Turning moments into nights. Do...

Story Behind the Song · Postcard Heart , Track 1 ▶ The player starts right at this track (00:00). Let it keep playing for the full album. He only meant to buy a postcard. Blue sky, a little red canoe — the kind you send to someone far away with a line like "wish you were here." He was still writing it in his neatest hand when she walked past the postcard stand, and suddenly there was no faraway town worth wishing about. That is the whole heart of this song, and of the album that takes its name from it. The doo-wah harmonies bounce like a stamped envelope skipping across a mail sorter, while the lead vocal keeps one hand on the counter, half in love already. By the second verse they are taking the long way past the square, and a small heart drawn next to a name has quietly re-addressed his whole life. If you have ever mailed your feelings to the wrong distance, this opener sets them straight: the only address that matters is standing right in front of you. I...