Your Hit Parade

Your Hit Parade was an American radio and television music program that was broadcast from 1935 to 1953 on radio, and seen from 1950 to 1959 on television. It was sponsored by American Tobacco’s Lucky Strike cigarettes.

During its 24-year run, the show had 19 orchestra leaders and 52 singers or groups. When the show debuted, there was no agreement on its title, with the press referring to it by several names, including “Hit Parade”, “The Hit Parade”, “The Lucky Strike Hit Parade”, and “The Lucky Strike Parade”. The program title officially became “Your Hit Parade” on November 9, 1935.

Every Saturday evening, the program offered the most popular and bestselling songs of the week. The earliest format involved a presentation of the top 15 songs, with a countdown leading to the number one song for the finale. Occasional performances of standards and other favorite songs from the past were known as “Lucky Strike Extras”.

Listeners were informed that the Your Hit Parade survey checked the best sellers on sheet music and phonograph records, the songs most heard on the air and most played on the automatic coin machines, providing an “accurate, authentic tabulation of America’s taste in popular music”.

However, the exact procedure of this “authentic tabulation” remained a secret, and some believe song choices were often arbitrary due to various performance and production factors.

The Stars

The show featured a stable of vocalists that went uncredited in the early years, earning $100 per episode (equal to $2,222 in 2023).

Over the years, the regular singers included Buddy Clark, Lanny Ross, Kay Thompson, Bea Wain, Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Dorothy Collins, Snooky Lanson, Gisèle MacKenzie, Russell Arms, Eileen Wilson, Sue Bennett, June Valli, Alan Copeland, Jill Corey, Johnny Desmond, Virginia Gibson, and Tommy Leonetti.

Key Dates

• Your Hit Parade began on NBC radio on April 20, 1935 as a 60-minute program.
• In 1936-37, it was carried on both NBC and CBS.
• The show returned to NBC in 1947 after being hugely popular on CBS through the WWII years.
• The radio program aired its final episode on January 16, 1953, with Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians as the host.

Other Information

The show’s opening theme, “This Is Your Lucky Day”, was from the 1926 musical revue George White’s Scandals.

Over the years, the orchestra leaders included Al Goodman, Lennie Hayton, Abe Lyman, Leo Reisman, Harry Salter, Ray Sinatra, Harry Sosnik, Axel Stordahl, Peter Van Steeden, Mark Warnow, and Raymond Scott (1949–1957). The chorus was led by musical director Lyn Murray.

The television version of Your Hit Parade debuted on NBC in the summer of 1950, with André Baruch as the announcer. It continued on NBC until 1958, when it moved to CBS for its final season, ending in the spring of 1959.

The show featured two tobacco auctioneers, Lee Aubrey “Speed” Riggs and F.E. Boone, who provided colorful commentary. In the early 1980s, André Baruch and Bea Wain hosted a syndicated radio version of Your Hit Parade, reconstructing the list of hits of selected weeks in the 1940s and playing the original recordings.

While Your Hit Parade was unable to deal with the rock and roll revolution, the show’s imaginative production concepts had an obvious influence on the wave of music videos that began in the decade that followed.

CBS also brought it back for a brief summer revival in 1974 and 1975.