Posted by Harold Groot on 12/07/06 17:01

On Wed, 06 Dec 2006 22:14:10 -0500, Gunther Anderson
<gunther@guntheranderson.com> wrote:

>Harold Groot wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 3 Dec 2006 23:35:20 +1100, "Bob" <bob_carr5@hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>Hello all
>>>I am researching a rather obscure point and am hoping there is some
>>>collective knowledge that can help me.
>>>I want to know if there are any musicians who had their first hit after the
>>>age of 50. I would prefer to know about ones who then went on to achieve
>>>more rather than to be one hit wonders.
>>>Can anyone help? If you respond, please remove the underscore in my hotmail
>>>address.
>>>Thanks in advance
>>>Bob
>>
>> Charles Randolph Grean (Sounde), born 1913, had his only appearance on
>> the Billboard Top-40 at #13 in 1969 with "Quentin's Theme" (from the
>> vampiric soap opera "Dark Shadows").
>
>Interesting - he wrote the Billboard Song ("Smoke Coca-Cola cigarettes,
>chew Wrigley's spearmint beer...") with Cy Coben, and I suspect it
>charted, if ever, well before 1963, though it would have been recorded
>by someone else. Any record of it actually charting, or was it merely a
>hit in thousands of summer camps?
>
>Gunther Anderson

It didn't make the Billboard Top-40. Only a few Novelty songs do.
Summer camps are a niche market where such things are much more
popular than with the overall population. BUT -

It looks like Homer and Jethro put out a version in the 50s, so one
might need to check the Country charts instead of Billboard. There
seem to be many versions floating around, too, and some of them seem
clearly aimed at products popular before the 50s, i.e. before
Billboard was around. So it's possible that it was a "hit" in the 30s
or 40s. But again, novelty records rarely qualified as "hits".

This underscores the fact that Billboard is a limited tool to use.
It's a good starting place, but then additional research needs to be
done.

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