As reported April 2, 2023, Seymour Stein, Sire Records co-founder who signed Madonna, The Ramones & different legendary artists, died at age 80. Stein started his storied profession in the music trade as a young person at Billboard, the place, as an intern after college, he contributed to the founding of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The following interview was carried out and initially revealed in 2015.
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“I look at my schooling as, in part, my early years at Billboard.”
That’s how Sire Records co-founder and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame enshrinee Seymour Stein, who in January 2021 oversaw the relaunch of the Blue Horizon label in partnership with Fat Possum, recalled his trade schooling.
That upbringing included the unveiling of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the journal’s Aug. 4, 1958, challenge. At the time, Stein was a highschool pupil desirous to be taught, and assist form, the music enterprise, absorbing info firsthand from inside Billboard’s workplaces.
The Hot 100’s scorching shot debut wasn’t front-page information, nevertheless it did make web page two, in an editorial succinctly headlined “The Billboard Hot 100”: “On pages 36 and 37 of this issue, we are proud to present The Billboard Hot 100, the fastest, most complete and most sensitive index to the popularity of recorded music in America. This new chart feature, which each week will list the 100 most popular recorded sides, is a guide to potential, as well as the current hits.”
When the rating premiered, dominated by Ricky Nelson’s “Poor Little Fool,” it encompassed “such factors as [radio] disc jockey plays, jukebox activity and record sales.” Today, airplay continues to be amongst the Hot 100’s knowledge combine, with downloads persevering with the type of file gross sales. Streaming is basically a modern-era, digital jukebox, with clicks of a mouse having changed the clicks of a mechanical arm choosing and dropping a forty five completely into place.
At the coronary heart of the Hot 100’s launch was then-head of charts Tom Noonan, together with music-radio-TV editor Paul Ackerman and Stein. “Tom and Paul were great mentors to me,” says Stein. “It was such an honor when Tom asked me to help start the Hot 100.”
Similar to at the moment, as Billboard wrote in its story unwrapping the first Hot 100, “Data is obtained and tabulated right up to deadline time” (with Luminate knowledge figures having fueled the chart since 1991, and a number of streaming sources having joined lately). “Weighted factors in the carefully-designed formula result [in] the fastest and most complete guide to the national popularity of records.”
While the Hot 100 marks over six many years as the chronicle of American hits, Stein’s legacy has likewise turn into legendary. Sire’s first signee? Steven Tallarico. Then in a band known as Chain Reaction, he’d change his title to Steven Tyler as frontman for Aerosmith. In 1975, Sire signed the Ramones and Talking Heads. The Pretenders adopted in 1980 and Madonna in 1982. (“I realized, ‘This woman is smarter than all of us. Just get out of her way,’” Stein stated of Madonna in 2012.) Other acts Sire signed in that formative period: Depeche Mode, The Cure, The Smiths and Ice-T.
In 2005, Stein was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in its lifetime-achievement class. In 2012, he was honored as Billboard’s first Icon Award recipient, offered to him at the annual MIDEM trade gathering in Cannes, France.
Here, in Stein’s phrases (from an interview first revealed in 2015), is his recollection of how the Hot 100 originated, the way it helped velocity up the measurement of hits, due to the inclusion of radio airplay knowledge, and the story of how the chart’s title was (probably) chosen.
On the want for a then-new chart: “Back in the day, earlier than the Hot 100, there have been many various charts in Billboard reflecting the success of singles in the market [including] Best-Selling Pop Singles in Stores, Jukebox Favorites, Most-Heard on the Radio and Sheet Music.
“Then, there was an total chart which was known as the Honor Roll of Hits. This was a [composition, not singles] chart, as a result of again in these days, there have been a number of variations of nearly each tune. Sometimes three or 4 or extra had been profitable, like in the case of ‘Unchained Melody.’ To present the power of the tune, the Honor Roll of Hits would listing the factors of all variations to acquire a place.
“Back then, jukebox gross sales had been monumental. If a scorching artist, like Perry Como, Patti Page or Nat ‘King’ Cole, with a profitable monitor file put out a brand new single, file shops knew the way to order based mostly on their current gross sales. But, in the case of recent artists, and there have been a number of them in these early days of rock & roll, shops had no approach of being guided. More urgently, jukebox operators wanted to know rapidly to get these new information into their machines.
“It was the jukeboxes, particularly, that first instigated the want for a quicker approach of constructing the charts. Fortunately, this was round the identical time as the daybreak of prime 40 radio, and the Hot 100 used radio playlists from throughout the nation weighted by the measurement of the market to assist compile this new chart.
“It wasn’t entirely error-free or 100 percent accurate; remember, this was [1958]. I was just 16, working at Billboard after school. From the time I was 9 years old, I knew I wanted to be in the music business.”
On Billboard’s editorial affect: “As vital as the charts had been, the Billboard evaluate classes that picked highlight winners of the week had been much more vital. If a file was accorded a highlight evaluate, it may stir the gross sales upwards of 75,000 copies by jukebox operators alone in the first week. Before the Hot 100, the charts had been so gradual, the jukebox operators couldn’t look ahead to these information to show themselves and needed to go by the opinions in Billboard.
“Paul Ackerman invited me to attend these music review sessions on Wednesday nights and even provided me with a due-bill to stay at one of the hotels close to the Billboard offices and that way I could get up and take the subway to Lafayette High School in Brooklyn. It was at these sessions that I met people like Syd Nathan of King Records, Leonard Chess, George Goldner, Lew Chudd of Imperial, Herman Lubinksy of Savoy, Don Pierce of Starday and publishers like Freddy Bienstock and Al Gallico, to name a few.”
As for the title Hot 100? “I can solely think about that what the trade was searching for was a warmer, faster approach of getting chart info. Tom [Noonan] may have give you the title. I definitely didn’t. It may need been considered one of the reporters, or Paul Ackerman. I simply don’t keep in mind. Then we added star performers to point out fast motion upward, aka, bullets.
“Reaction was, after all, optimistic from each nook of the music enterprise. These had been nonetheless the early days of rock & roll. Mitch Miller and Hugo Winterhalter had been nonetheless the heads of A&R of Columbia and RCA Victor, the two main majors, and rooting for rock & roll to not occur. Milt Gabler over at Decca was the first of the majors to embrace rock & roll and it was Steve Sholes at RCA who organized to purchase Elvis Presley’s contract from Sun; however not with out first taking the recommendation of Paul Ackerman.
“Record shops definitely reacted favorably and radio stations, too.
“Through the success of the chart, more execs were drawn up to the Billboard offices, often with their artists in tow, whether it was for a story or just to say thanks for acknowledging their No. 1 position.”
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