Year by Year in Popular Song: 1930

I find the history of popular music fascinating. Recently I decided to look up the most popular songs for each year in the decade of the 1930s. I chose that decade simply because it has seemed to me to be the greatest decade for popular music. That's merely a matter of taste, of course, but it's my taste and I'll keep on tasting!

So what I thought I'd do would be to pick my favorite from each year and feature an early version of that song (a version made close to the year of its release) and a more recent version. The cumulative effect might be to produce a musical portrait of the decade.

The year is 1930. The stock market crash took place in October of '29, so people are probably still adjusting to the new normal of widescale economic dislocation. This list of the top 60 pop songs of  1930 is my starting point. Some of my favorites, in no particular order, are:

• Puttin' on the Ritz, sung by Fred Astaire, composed by Irving Berlin
• Blue Yodel #8 (aka, Mule Skinner Blues) and Blue Yodel #9 written and sung by Jimmie Rodgers
• St. Louis Blues, performed by Louis Armstrong, written by W. C. Handy
• Sunny Side of the Street, another by Louis A., written by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields
• Ring Dem Bells, by Duke Ellington
• Walk Right In, by Cannon's Jug Stompers
• Sittin' on Top of the World, by The Mississippi Sheiks
• Whatsa Matter with Your Mill, by Memphis Minnie & Kansas City Joe

Well, there are really too many to mention. It was the heyday of great bands like Cab Calloway's, Duke Ellington's, etc. It was also the heyday of great songwriters. But for my money the greatest songwriter of the era was probably Hoagy Carmichael, and the greatest song of 1930 was his classic, Georgia on my Mind.

Here's Hoagy's 1930 rendition:

Everyone is familiar of course with the Ray Charles recording from 1960, which has become the definitive version, I suppose, and deservedly so. This is Ray appearing on Midnight Special in 1976.