Santa's Vinyl Vault

Ho ho ho, everybody! Today is a special edition of the vinyl vault! This being Christmas Eve and all, I've randomly selected one of the handful of Christmas albums I have to listen to. This year it's the most popular Christmas album of all-time, Elvis' Christmas album!

Release date: October 15, 1957 (RCA Camden reissue: November 1970)
Singles: Santa Claus is Back in Town, Blue Christmas, Mama Liked the Roses

Ranking the #1 Songs - 1959

The first full year of the Billboard Hot 100 chart was 1959. Let's take a look at all of the songs to reach #1 in that year:

The contenders:

The Chipmunk Song	The Chipmunks With David Seville
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes	The Platters
Stagger Lee	Lloyd Price
Venus	Frankie Avalon
Come Softly To Me	The Fleetwoods
The Happy Organ	Dave 'Baby' Cortez
Kansas City	Wilbert Harrison
The Battle Of New Orleans	Johnny Horton
Lonely Boy	Paul Anka
A Big Hunk O' Love	Elvis Presley With The Jordanaires
The Three Bells	The Browns
Sleep Walk	Santo & Johnny
Mack The Knife	Bobby Darin
Mr. Blue	The Fleetwoods
Heartaches By The Number	Guy Mitchell

The year started with the previous year's Christmas hit, the "Chipmunk Song." Since we looked at it last time, we'll disqualify it for this year. The biggest hit of 1959 was Bobby Darin's "Mack the Knife," which spent a total of 9 weeks at number 1. It's a fun song, but I never quite understood all the love it gets. Some other notable songs are the Platters' "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," Lloyd Price's "Stagger Lee," and "Kansas City" by Wilbert Harrison, which I first heard on my way to Kansas City with the PIC crew.

Best song: Come Softly To Me

There were a few strong contenders for best song, including "Sleep Walk" by Santo & Johnny, the aforementioned "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" and "Stagger Lee," but I have to give it to the Fleetwoods' "Come Softly To Me." To me, it has a timeless sound.



Worst song: The Battle of New Orleans

This was a much easier choice. I don't even know what to say about "The Battle of New Orleans" by Johnny Horton. I (very briefly) tried to find a reason this song not only went to #1, but stayed there for six (6!) weeks (maybe a movie?), but came up empty.

Oakland's Vinyl Vault - Rush

Work has finally gotten less busy, so it's time once again to reach into the vault. The randomizer once again spit out an appropriate album for the occasion: it's Rush, with their self-titled debut album.

Release date: March 1, 1974
Singles: Finding My Way, In the Mood

Ranking the #1 Songs

Since August of 1958, Billboard has been coming out with its "Hot 100," a chart that attempts to determine what the most popular song in the US is at the time. Many songs have made it to #1 over the years. Most of these are because they're good songs with widespread appeal, but as we'll see, there are plenty of bad songs, too.

I have decided to listen to every #1 song in history, and hold a tournament. At one end, I will give my favorite song, and on the other, my least favorite. What will be crowned the best song in history? What will be the worst song to make it to the top of the charts?

I'll first break it down year by year, and then decade by decade. I'll start at the beginning, 1958. Since the chart started in August, I'll have fewer songs to judge this time around.

Here are the contenders (in chronological order of when they first topped the charts):

Poor Little Fool - Ricky Nelson
Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (Volare) - Domenico Modugno
Little Star - The Elegants
It's All In The Game - Tommy Edwards
 It's Only Make Believe - Conway Twitty
Tom Dooley - The Kingston Trio
To Know Him, Is To Love Him - The Teddy Bears
The Chipmunk Song - The Chipmunks With David Seville

The first ever song to top the charts was Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool." "Poor Little Fool" spent two weeks at number one before it was knocked off by "Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu (Volare)" by Domenico Modugno, an Italian song that would ultimately spend 5 weeks at #1. The only song to spend more time at #1 was Tommy Edwards' "It's All in the Game," which went 6 straight weeks as the top song in the country. The year ended with "The Chipmunk Song," at #1, which has become a Christmas classic.

The Best:

While "It's All in the Game" is a great song, listening to it today, it sounds dated. That is not the case with "Volare," and for that reason, I have to go with it for best song of 1958.



The Worst:

This one was a little trickier. None of the songs are bad, per se, but a few are rather dated. "The Chipmunk Song" is a novelty song, but it also spent 4 weeks at the top (including January 1959), and continues to be played at Christmas time to this day. "Little Star" is basically putting a rock beat behind the lullaby "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star," and "To Know Him, Is to Love Him" is just kind of boring. In the end, I think I'm going to go with "Little Star" for its lack of creativity.

Squids Fantasy Roundup - Week 13

With the fantasy season ending soon, these last couple of weeks are critical (unless you're wallowing in last place, like me. Fucking bullshit fantasy league.) So what happened last week?

Last week was, of course, Thanksgiving so I had a nice 4 day weekend in which to relax, eat, and watch football. At least, that would have been the case had it not been for the fact that I moved to a new place on Saturday (just across town, nothing exciting). So Saturday was not exactly relaxing, but the move went fairly smoothly thanks to all the help we got from family and friend, and everything was set up enough by Sunday to enjoy the morning football games. And then (one of) the reason(s) for the move showed up: three kittens. You see, my girlfriend has wanted to get a cat for a while now (and I did too, but don't tell anyone). Her mom works at a boat harbor, and there are stray cats that they for some reason feed and take care of at the harbor. One of these harbor cats had 3 kittens a couple months ago. Now, our place did not allow pets, but our lease was ending, and so we decided that we (my girlfriend and I) would adopt 1, maybe 2 of the 3 kittens and move to a new place. Unfortunately, they were all so goddamn cute that we somehow ended up taking all 3. I now live in a madhouse. The only respite is when they're all napping, which since they are cats, is pretty much all the time. So, actually, it's not that bad.

Anyway, the highest scoring player for last week was former Minnesota Golden Gopher Eric Decker! Skiiiiiii-Uuuuuuuuuu-Mahhhhhhhhhhh!!!! Our fellow alum (is he still an alum if he didn't graduate? I don't think he did) is on Crazy Pat's team, but even the man who made Adam Weber look like a competent college quarterback (and the all-time leader in passing yards and passing TDs in Gopher history, Jesus) couldn't stop the Joe-U-ggernaut. Crazy Pat lost by nearly 40 points to Joe U. What the shit.

Current Projected Winner: Joe U

Sharks by Number

We wrap up our Sharks by Number series with the seldom used 50-99 range. There are a few big names mixed in with the short term call-ups who didn't stick around long enough to get a normal number.

#51 - Brian Campbell

The Sharks picked up Campbell as a rental for the playoffs in the spring of 2008. Campbell recorded 1 goal and 6 assists in 13 playoff games that year. It was not enough.