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Monday, February 21, 2011

Chartsweep: Snippets of Billboard's Chart Toppers, 1956-1992

Here is something different: recognizable snippets from each of Billboard's chart topping singles from 1956 (Dean Martin's "Memories are Made of This") through 1992 (Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You").

Follow this link (http://bit.ly/ChartSweep) to find ready-to-play MP3 files.  Chartsweep, Part 1 covers 1956 to 1981 in 46 minutes of sound bites. Chartsweep, Part 2 is shorter at 28 minutes. I believe Hugo Keesing considers himself an archivist, but the way these songs are woven together is artful, in my opinion!

I learned about more about this from Jon Nelson's blog entry about his interview with archivist and teacher Hugo Keesing (HERE). I think Keesing's idea of playing these songs as a form of audio history is brilliant. In the interview, Keesing describes the slideshow of images he would play over the soundtrack so his students would get a fuller appreciation for the times in which these songs were atop the Billboard charts.

Enjoy!

1 comment:

  1. Forty-six minutes of wonderful music! I bet there were only about a handful of songs that I was not familiar with and the rest I could have sang the entire songs. Great stuff! Thanks for sharing!!!

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