Saturday, January 30, 1965: Billboard R&B charts

Billboard magazine resumes its listing of the nation's top rhythm-and-blues songs and also introduces a chart of the top R&B albums.

From the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: "The Billboard R&B chart was eliminated for 14 months between November 30, 1963 and January 23, 1965 owing to the regular crossover of titles between the R&B and pop singles charts. Billboard deemed the lists too similar to print both."

From the book "Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop" (Bob Stanley, 2013): "From November 30th 1963 to January 23 1965 there was no Billboard R&B singles chart. No reason was given, but the prevailing wisdom was that the chart methodology was in question, as Caucasian acts were scoring big hits. However, Cashbox, Billboard's main rival, continued to print R&B charts during 1964, and each of their number ones was by a black act.

From the book "Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-Garde" (Bernard Gendron, 2002): "Before the British Invasion, the pop and R&B charts had come to overlap so much that Billboard in December 1963 stopped publishing the R&B charts. White musicians were crossing over into the R&B charts apparently as frequently as black musicians into the pop charts. ... After the British Invasion -- the Beatles interestingly never crossed over -- the R&B charts were reconstituted by Billboard (January 1965), as black music went on separate trajectories from white rock music.

-- Image from January 30, 1965, issue of Billboard. Link (R&B charts on page 14): @ 

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