Before getting into the 1915 #1 hits, I should note how the charts were compiled per Joel Whitburn’s A Century of Pop Music. Talking Machine World published monthly lists of the best-selling records as provided by the major record companies from 1914 to 1921. Billboard offered a weekly list of the most popular songs in vaudeville from 1913 to 1918. ASCAP published a selected list of the most popular songs in its history.
Other information about top sheet music was from record company publications, led by Victor, Columbia, and Edison, plus other lists by Roger Kinkle, Jim Walsh, and Murrells.
It’s A Long, Long Way To Tipperary – John McCormick (Victor), eight weeks at #1. It was also a #1 hit for the American Quartet for seven weeks in 1914.
They Didn’t Believe Me – Harry McDonald and Alice Green (Victor), seven weeks at #1. A Herbert Reynolds/Jerome Kern song from the musical The Girl From Utah.
Hello, Frisco! (I Called You Up To Say “Hello!”) – Alice Green and Edward Hamilton, orchestra conducted by Walter B. Rogers (Victor), six weeks at #1, from the Ziegfeld production “The Follies of 1915.” The singers were also known as Olive Kline and Reinald Werrenrath
A Little Bit of Heaven (Shure, They Call It Ireland) -George McFarlane (Victor), five weeks at #1. I could not find it on YouTube, only via the Discography of American Historical Recordings.
The FBI!
Carry Me Back To Old Virginny (Plantation Melody)- Alma Gluck (Victor), five weeks at #1, gold record. Written by James Bland. The singer was “born Reba Feinsohn in Romania and moved at an early age to the U.S. The opera and concert soprano was married (2nd husband) to violinist-composer-conductor Efrem Zimbalist and was the mother of actor Efrem Zimbalist Jr.”
I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier – Peerless Quartet (Columbia), four weeks at #1. “Popular anti-war song adopted by the pacifist movement prior to the U.S. entry into WWI. Henry Burr (lead), Albert Campbell, Arthur Collins, and John H. Meyer were probably the Peerless personnel at the time of this recording.”
My Bird of Paradise – Peerless Quartet (Victor), four weeks at #1
I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier – Morton Harvey (Victor), three weeks at #1
Close To My Heart – Henry Burr and Albert Campbell (Columbia), two weeks at #1 [not a great recording]
My Little Dream Girl – James F. Harrison and James Reed (Victor), two weeks at #1. Their real names were Reed Miller & Frederick J. Wheeler
Chinatown, My Chinatown – American Quartet (Victor), two weeks at #1. Unsurprisingly, it’s a dollop of racialized ick.
Home, Sweet Home – Alice Nielsen (Columbia), two weeks at #1. There are a lot of versions of this song, but I can’t find this recording. Here’s a version from 1913 by Elsie Baker.
