Joel Carver Whitburn (born November 29, 1939; Wauwatosa, Wisconsin) is an American author and music historian.

Whitburn founded Record Research Inc. in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, in 1970, and put together a team of researchers to examine in detail all of Billboard's music and video charts. Record Research publishes reference books based on data from the various popular music charts and to date has published 112 books, 50 of which are currently in the Record Research catalog. His flagship publication is Top Pop Singles which covers the history of Billboard's popular music charts. Featuring each recording's peak position, date charted, weeks charted, label and information, and trivia on recordings and artists, Whitburn's books are used extensively by the entertainment industry (especially radio DJs) and music fans worldwide. His research extends from 1890 to the present and covers many genres. Whitburn is also the author of the "Top 40 Hits" series of books published by Billboard Books.

Not all of Whitburn's extensive calculations are universally accepted. Billboard has frequently altered its methodology and archival standards. At one point. the magazine retroactively decertifed "double credit" for two-sided chart hits, in each case favoring the song that was deemed to have been most prominent. Most noticeably, this eliminated recognition of the chart-topping Hound Dog, thus reducing Elvis Presley's career total of #1 hits from 18 to 17 by Billboard's count. However, Whitburn continues to rely on his preexisting research.

Whitburn has been criticized for his research standard in compiling his pre-rock Pop Memories: 1890-1954 volume. In 1988, music historian Tim Brooks wrote:

"You didn't know there were any popular charts in 1890- You are right. Whitburn simply made them up. This is a pretty gross deception and it deserves some discussion... His introduction cites all sorts of pre-1940 sources for the “charts” indexed in this book. The wording is somewhat evasive (sources were “not in precise chart or rank form,” were “far from definitive,” etc.) however the clear impression is left of extensive research which turned up a great deal of reasonably accurate data, allowing Whitburn to reconstruct national rankings of the best selling cylinders and discs, week by week... Moreover with no mass media to keep changing listeners’ tastes and promote “this week’s hit” (as radio does today) song hits lasted for a very long time. Read the Columbia cylinder catalogs of the 1890s and you will see the same titles featured issue after issue, year after year. If there had been a “chart” in the 1890s the U.S. Marine Band’s “Semper Fidelis” would probably have been the number-one seller for five straight years. But Whitburn, conforming his book to the practice of the rock era (with which he is most familiar), shows cylinders moving up and down the charts with today’s rapidity... As history, this is absolute rubbish... The great danger is that Whitburn’s apparently precise data, with its impressive looking sources, will be reprinted and enshrined as historical fact by others."^[1]

Whitburn objected point by point to most of Brooks' arguments, writing, "This is the reason why the charts in Pop Memories were compiled from many sources—the imperfections could be filtered out! ...There is one criticism by Mr. Brooks that has some validity, namely that we created a misleading impression that record popularity was as ephemeral as it is today; however we had to translate the reality of the “slow and steady” sellers of the 1890s record industry into 20th century terms."^[1]

Whitburn is an avid collector of phonograph records with one of the world's largest collections in his underground vault. His collection includes a copy of nearly every 78 rpm record, 45 rpm single, LP, and compact disc to appear on the Billboard charts.

In collaboration with Rhino Records, Whitburn has produced over 150 CD compilations of various songs, which are typically compiled based on Billboard chart performance.

References

External links

• Record Research Inc. website

This article about an American writer is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e