Cash Box magazine was a weekly music industry newspaper / magazine. Publication ceased in 1996.
In the early days, Cash Box published both Juke Box and Best Sellers singles charts. This site concentrates exclusively on the latter, since they were more extensive.
The best-seller charts of the ’40s had no fixed number of positions and didn’t specify which versions of songs were the hit versions. With the issue dated October 6, 1951, the chart stabilized at 50 positions under the banner “The Nation’s Top 50 Best Selling Records.” At this point, the charts still listed artist and label info for every version currently in release, alphabetized by label, with no indication of which versions were the most popular. With the issue dated October 25, 1952, Cash Box began designating the hit version(s) of each song by placing a star next to the artists’ names. We’ve chosen this date as the logical starting point for our posted charts.
During the summer of 1956, the banner was changed to read “The Cash Box Top 50 Best Selling Tunes on Record.” The chart was expanded to 60 positions the week of April 13, 1957; to 75 positions the week of June 21, 1958; and finally to the Top 100 the week of September 13, 1958. The Cash Box Top 100 continued to be a sales-based chart until the late ’70s, when airplay data was first incorporated.
In the early ’50s, the best-seller charts included columns showing the sales per 1000 singles sold for the current week and the previous week for each title on the chart. In 1955, that information was replaced by columns showing each title’s chart positions for the previous two weeks. It wasn’t until 1976 that Cash Box added a weeks-on-the-chart column. The format for the charts posted here is a hybrid of the mid-’60s Cash Box and Billboard charts: columns to the right of the artist’s name show the three previous weeks’ chart positions and the total weeks on the chart.
We are looking for additional chart data (Juke Box and Best Selling Singles) from the following issues of the magazine, which are missing from the Library of Congress collection: 1/7/50, 2/11/50, 12/22/51, 5/24/52, 6/14/52, 6/21/52 and 4/21/56. Please email Randy if you can help close the gaps.
These charts are provided for entertainment and academic purposes only. No ownership of the data is claimed or implied.
Randy now has his own site for the Cash Box Charts. Tell him Paul says "Hi"!
