60 Actors Who Have Played Leading Roles on the Hot 100
60 Years of Actors on the Charts
Every artist who has appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 has played a part in the history of popular music, but some leading men and women have had special roles on the singles chart. Dozens of actors who sing have found berths on the Hot 100, from Tab Hunter and Debbie Reynolds in the ’50s to Donald Glover and Bradley Cooper in this millennium. There are also singers who act – think Whitney Houston, Justin Timberlake, Diana Ross and Tim McGraw – but that’s a different story. While determining who is an actor who sings and who is a singer who acts is a subjective act, Billboard looked at the entirety of an artist’s career. Which field came first was not a deciding factor – for example, Mark Wahlberg was recording artist Marky Mark before pursuing an acting career, but it is clear he is primarily thought of as an actor today. Here are profiles of 60 artists best known for their acting who have graced the Hot 100 during the chart’s 60-year history.
Ann-Margret
Before ABBA, Roxette and Ace of Base, there was this Swedish artist on the Hot 100. Born in Stockholm and raised in the northern town of Valsjöbyn, Ann-Margret Olsson and her mother sailed to the U.S. in 1946 to join the family’s patriarch, who had already moved to Illinois for work. As a child, Ann-Margret took dance classes and when she was 14 won a talent contest on a local Chicago TV show, singing “Make Love to Me.” In college, she joined a quartet called the Suttletones. Gigs in Chicago and Newport Beach, Calif., led to work in Las Vegas. As a solo artist, Ann-Margret won a role in George Burns’ Christmas show in Vegas.
Appearances on TV followed, notably on Jack Benny’s weekly series. In 1961 she signed with the RCA label and was cast in the film State Fair opposite Pat Boone and Bobby Darin. Ann-Margret had already cut 23 tracks for RCA at various sessions when the label sent her to Nashville in May 1963. That’s where she recorded “I Just Don’t Understand.” It was her first single to appear on the Hot 100, peaking at No. 17 in September 1961. She starred in more films, notably the big screen adaptation of Broadway’s Bye Bye Birdie in 1963 and Viva Las Vegas with Elvis Presley in 1964. She stayed with RCA through 1966 and then only returned to the recording studio sporadically, concentrating instead on motion pictures and live shows.
Kristen Bell
Long before she voiced Princess Anna in Disney’s Frozen, Kristin Bell nearly finished a degree in musical theater from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and starred as Becky Thatcher in a Broadway musical adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. “I didn't know how great a singer she was," her Frozen co-star Idina Menzel told Yahoo Movies. "I quickly found out and needed to constantly tell her because she doesn't tell anybody else. She's always playing it down."
“Music has been a very big part of my life for a long, long time. I grew up studying opera and sang in solo and ensemble competitions instead of playing a sport,” Bell explained to Yahoo. “I studied music in college and it's kind of what brought me to acting. I realized I liked music so much and when you could be a storyteller while you were singing, that was the best of both worlds.”
Bell had many non-musical roles before Frozen, including the TV series Veronica Mars and Heroes. In 2008, she starred in the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Three of her songs from the Frozen soundtrack charted on the Hot 100: “Love Is an Open Door” (No. 49), “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” (No. 51) and “For the First Time in Forever” (No. 57).
The Blues Brothers
The time: November 1973. The place: the 505 Club in Toronto. Comedian Dan Aykroyd is the owner and he shows up around 1 am, after work at Second City. Earlier that night he had met John Belushi at the show. “We had heard of each other,” Aykroyd said in Vanity Fair. “We took one look at each other. It was love at first sight.” Belushi walks in the door of the 505 and offers Aykroyd a job with The National Lampoon Radio Hour. Aykroyd declines and the conversation turns to music. Aykroyd, a devoted fan of the blues, plays an album by a Canadian group, the Downchild Blues Band, for Belushi, who becomes an instant fan of the genre.
In 1975, Aykroyd and Belushi are signed as part of the inaugural cast of NBC’s Saturday Night Live. On Jan. 16, 1976, the two comedians are dressed as bees in a skit with musical director Howard Shore and his all-bee band. Aykroyd plays the harmonica and Belushi sings Slim Harpo’s “I’m a King Bee.” Shore suggests they call themselves the Blues Brothers.
Aykroyd and Belushi first appear as Jake and Elwood Blues on the April 22, 1978 broadcast of SNL. They are the evening’s musical guests, opening the show with a cover of Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man” and returning later to sing “Hey Bartender.” Host Steve Martin invites the Blues Brothers to open for him at the Universal Amphitheatre at Universal Studios Hollywood on Sept. 9, 1978. The duo’s performance is recorded for an album, released two months later on Atlantic. The first single, “Soul Man,” peaks at No. 14 on the Hot 100. The follow-up, “Rubber Biscuit,” reaches No. 37. The LP, Briefcase Full of Blues, strongly influenced by the Downchild Blues Band, soars to No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
Walter Brennan
Born in 1894, Walter Brennan was 30 years old when he started doing extra work in Hollywood-produced silent films. That led to small roles in movies and eventually, larger roles. By 1941, he had been nominated for four Academy Awards, winning three times. He continued to work in films in the 1950s while also appearing in various TV series. In 1957, he began a six-season run in the sitcom The Real McCoys, about a poor Appalachian family that inherits a farm in California’s San Fernando Valley. While Brennan was starring as Grandpa Amos McCoy, he made his Hot 100 debut in 1960 with a single on the Dot label, “Dutchman’s Gold.” Two years later, Brennan had the biggest hit of his career, when “Old Rivers” peaked at No. 5. Songwriter Cliff Crofford based the lyrics on a real person he had known as a boy while growing up in Rochester, Texas. Producer Snuff Garrett played the song for Tennessee Ernie Ford and Johnny Cash, but both turned it down. A music publisher suggested Garrett reach out to Brennan to record the song.
George Burns
Comedian George Burns had a career in vaudeville, radio, film and television that stretched over seven decades before he charted on the Hot 100 with “I Wish I Was Eighteen Again.” The single entered the chart one day before Burns’ 84th birthday, making him the oldest person to appear on the Hot 100 (a record later broken by Tony Bennett at 85 and then by widower Fred Stobaugh, who was 96 when he charted with a song about his late wife).
Best known for his TV series The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and films like The Big Broadcast, The Sunshine Boys and Oh, God!, Burns often made jokes about his singing ability. But that’s where he started his career, working as a street singer when he was a child. “At seven years old I fell in love with show business,” he told the Washington Post. “I wanted to sing. I wasn't very good at it, but I thought I was.” Sonny Throckmorton wrote “I Wish I Was Eighteen Again.” Jerry Lee Lewis recorded it in 1979 when he was signed to the Elektra label. As the B-side of “Rockin’ My Life Away,” it tagged along to a No. 18 slot on Billboard’s country singles chart. A year later, Burns’ remake peaked at No. 49 on the Hot 100 and No. 12 on Hot Country Songs. In 1988, Burns starred with Charlie Schlatter in a film titled 18 Again!, about an 81-year-old grandfather who switches bodies with his 18-year-old grandson.
Edd Byrnes
Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. and Roger Smith starred as private eyes on the Warner Bros.-produced series 77 Sunset Strip, which premiered on ABC on Oct. 10, 1958. But the two leading men were almost eclipsed by supporting actor Edd Byrnes, who played the hip and cool Gerald Lloyd Kookson III, better known as Kookie, the parking lot attendant at Dino’s, the Sunset Strip restaurant next door to the detectives’ office. Byrnes was young and good-looking and his character used the word “ginchiest” instead of saying something was the “greatest.” He quickly became a fan favorite.
The native New Yorker got his first acting break working in summer stock in Connecticut. In 1956, he drove cross-country to find work in Hollywood. He secured an agent, who sent him up for the pilot of 77 Sunset Strip. After singing a tune about combing his hair in one episode, the record label arm of Warner Bros. signed Byrnes. He was paired with another Warner Bros. actor, Connie Stevens, on “Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb).” Thanks to Byrnes’ popularity on television, the single soared to No. 4 on the Hot 100. The follow-up, which saw Byrnes teamed with Warner Bros. recording artist Joanie Sommers, was “Like I Love You,” which had to settle for peaking at No. 42 (Sommers was credited as “and friend”). Byrnes recorded an album and continued to release singles, but never returned to the Hot 100.
Keith Carradine
The Carradine acting dynasty includes father John and his sons David, Robert, Bruce and Keith. The only member of that clan to win an Academy Award is Keith. His song “I’m Easy,” which his character sang in Robert Altman’s 1975 film Nashville, was named Best Original Song, taking home the movie’s only Oscar, despite five nominations. The song also won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song (Motion Picture).
Altman asked many of the film’s stars, including Carradine as well as Karen Black and Ronee Blakely, to write their own songs for the soundtrack. Carradine offered the director “I’m Easy,” a song he had written in 1969 while starring in a national tour of Hair. Carradne’s character, Tom Frank, was a womanizer and when he sings “I’m Easy” at Nashville’s Exit/In, a number of women in the audience think he is singing only to them.
The soundtrack version of the song, recorded as an acoustic guitar ballad with accompaniment by cello, was released on the ABC label. The single peaked at No. 17 on the Hot 100 and marks Carradine’s only appearance on the chart. He recorded a more uptempo version with percussion, keyboards and synthesizer for his debut album on Asylum Records.
Richard Chamberlain
Richard Chamberlain starred as a young intern in the NBC series Dr. Kildare, which premiered in the fall of 1961. The theme was composed by Jerry Goldsmith and lyrics were later added by songwriters Pete Rugolo and Hal Winn. The series was an MGM production and Chamberlain recorded the vocal version of the theme as a single for the MGM label. “Theme from Dr. Kildare (Three Stars Will Shine Tonight)” was released in 1962 and peaked on the Hot 100 at No. 10 in August. Chamberlain followed that hit with cover versions of Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender” (No. 21) and the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream” (No. 14). The actor’s final two chart singles were both written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. “Blue Guitar” peaked at No. 42 in 1963 but was more notable for its B-side, “They Long to Be Close to You.” Seven years later that Bacharach-David song was a No. 1 hit for the Carpenters. In 1964, Chamberlain peaked at No. 99 with “Rome Will Never Leave You,” written by Bacharach and David for a three-part episode of Dr. Kildare.
Chamberlain starred in two hot TV properties after Dr. Kildare: the mini-series Shogun in 1980 and The Thorn Birds in 1983.
Cheech & Chong
Five years before comedians Cheech & Chong made their Hot 100 debut with “Basketball Jones” in 1973, Tommy Chong made his first appearance on the chart as the guitarist for Motown group Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers. Chong co-wrote their first single, “Does Your Mama Know About Me,” which peaked at No. 29 in May 1968.
Cheech & Chong signed to Lou Adler’s Ode label. Adler, a fan of the Los Angeles Lakers, produced “Basketball Jones featuring Tyrone Shoelaces,” a parody of “Love Jones” by a young vocal quintet from Chicago, Brighter Side of Darkness. The Cheech & Chong single peaked at No. 15 in October 1973, eclipsing the No. 16 placement of the original earlier in the year.
“It was just stupid enough," Cheech Marin told the Los Angeles Times. “Everybody kind of knew the song 'Love Jones,' and that was stupid. It was like a very hip stupidity because it was a takeoff on a funny, dimwit song, and that made it smart.”
"It was just a good song that hit at the right time,” Chong added. “It had nothing to do with dope and everything to do with basketball, and especially the obsessions of the players. Tyrone Shoelaces was a good example: a guy who loved the game so much that he slept with his basketball.”
Cheech & Chong came up with the parody while riding with Jack Nicholson to a Lakers game. They were running late and Nicholson was speeding. Marin, in the back seat, started singing “Basketball Jones” to the tune of “Love Jones.” Adler borrowed some superstar musicians from another studio while recording the track, which is why George Harrison is playing guitar. Also on the recording: Carole King and Billy Preston. Backing vocals are by Darlene Love and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. And what did Brighter Side of Darkness think of the funny remake? “[They] were a little mad because we took a serious love song and turned it into comedy,” Chong told the L.A. Times.
A year after “Basketball Jones,” the duo had an even bigger hit with “Earache My Eye,” which went to No. 9. The song’s frequently sampled guitar riff was written by Gaye Delorme, a Canadian guitarist who was a friend of Cheech & Chong. “The only lyrics he had was ‘Mama talking to me,’ so I took it and wrote the rest of the lyrics for the song,” Chong told Rolling Stone. “Then we went in the studio with some great musicians. We had Airto Moreira, who was a percussionist with Miles Davis for a long time, on drums and then Gaye was on guitar. The chord changes were very intelligent with a little mixture of jazz and rock, so it wasn’t just full-on heavy thrash metal. That’s why it was so popular.”
Bradley Cooper
From the first announcement that Bradley Cooper would star in a remake of A Star Is Born, it was inevitable that the actor would make his debut on the Hot 100. The Oscar-worthy film opened in theaters on Oct. 5, 2018, and less than one week later, “Shallow,” one of five duets by Cooper and Lady Gaga on the soundtrack, entered the pop singles chart at No. 28. It eventually hit No. 5 on the Hot 100 (dated Oct. 20).
Unlike many actors who had brushes with music before appearing on the Hot 100, Cooper was really known only for his acting, from his role in the TV series Alias through films like The Hangover, Limitless, Silver Linings Playbook and American Sniper.
Johnny Crawford
Johnny Crawford was 11 when he filmed the pilot for the TV western series The Rifleman. But the child actor, who had appeared in the first season of Disney’s The Mickey Mouse Club, also had a strong interest in music. His paternal grandfather was a music publisher who left Crawford his collection of sheet music and recordings. His maternal grandfather was a violinist who worked with Philharmonic orchestras in New York and Los Angeles. Crawford’s mother was a classically trained pianist. “My parents bought a record player for my brother [actor Bobby Crawford] and me, for our room, and I grew up playing these dance band records – Eileen Stanley recordings, Paul Whiteman. I just loved ’em,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle’s news website.
Bob Keane, founder of the L.A.-based Del-Fi label, asked Crawford’s father for permission to sign the young star to a recording deal. While the actor’s first three singles failed to break into the top 40 portion of the Hot 100, he had a legitimate hit in 1962 with “Cindy’s Birthday,” which peaked at No. 8. Three more hits followed: “Your Nose Is Gonna Grow” (No. 14), “Rumors” (No. 12) and “Proud” (No. 29).
In 1992, Crawford turned his love of early 20th century music into the Johnny Crawford Orchestra, playing live gigs all over the country. The band released an album, Sweepin’ the Clouds Away, in 2012.
Michael Damian
Born in San Diego, Calif., Michael Damian Weir was six when his mother, a classically trained pianist, started giving him piano lessons at home. With his siblings, he formed a progressive rock group called the Weirz. Damian played a B-3 Hammond organ and sang backing vocals, but his brothers and sisters quickly realized the screams coming from the young girls in the audience were for Michael. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1978 and Michael was promoted to lead singer.
It didn’t take very long for the teenager to break away and become a solo artist. His cover of Eric Carmen’s “She Did It” crawled up the Hot 100 to No. 69. That got Damian an invitation to perform the song on American Bandstand. “Dick Clark provided me with a great opportunity,” Damian said in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. “The song really wasn’t a hit.”
The producers of The Young and the Restless were watching the show the day it aired. “They saw me on American Bandstand, auditioned me and then wrote this whole character around a struggling young singer who is a waiter by day. It was funny because that’s exactly what was happening to me in real life, so I went into the role playing myself.”
Damian wrote many of the songs he performed on the show in his role of Danny Romalotti. CBS Records in Canada signed him to a deal but no U.S. label would take a chance on him. He recorded a remake of David Essex’s 1974 hit “Rock On” but it remained unreleased for nine months as no label was interested. Then film director Mark Rocco asked Michael’s brothers Tom and Larry to write some music for the soundtrack of his Dream a Little Dream. Tom and Larry wrote original music but they also played Michael’s “Rock On” for Rocco, who decided on the spot to include the recording in his film.
Damian’s “Rock On” went to No. 1 on the Hot 100 in June 1989. Essex was in Los Angeles sometime after. “Michael Damian’s version is a lot more poppy than the way I originally recorded it,” Essex said in BAM. “And when we met for the first time, he was very nervous. But once he realized I liked the way he did the song, we got on fine.”
James Darren
“The first time I heard ‘Goodbye Cruel World,’ my producer, Stu Phillips, played it for me. I didn’t like it,” James Darren confesses to Billboard. “I did not want to record it but Stu talked me into it. Thank you, Stu. The session was nothing but fun. Stu and I have always had a great working relationship and everlasting friendship. I never thought ‘Goodbye Cruel World’ would be a hit, but again, Stu said it was a sure hit. Thanks again, Stu.”
Darren already had a couple of songs on the Hot 100 before “Goodbye Cruel World” peaked at No. 3, starting with the title song from the 1959 film Gidget, which starred Sandra Dee and Darren. The follow-up to “Goodbye Cruel World” was a Carole King-Gerry Goffin song, “Her Royal Majesty,” which reached No. 6. Then came “Conscience,” a Barry Mann-Cynthia Weil composition that went to No. 11.
Darren still sings “Gidget” today in his live performances, but not his run of pop hits from 1961-62. He’s more interested in the Great American Songbook and the kind of songs he performed in his role of holographic crooner Vic Fontaine on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. “Being part of Star Trek is like nothing else. The [show has the] most dedicated and wonderful fans. I am happy to be part of this legendary franchise and I owe it to one person, executive producer Ira Steven Behr, who believed in me and gave me the shot.”
Patty Duke
“I wanted to sing so much, but when I hear what I did, it sounds awful,” Patty Duke wrote in her autobiography, Call Me Anna. “Whether you could actually sing or not didn’t matter; the technology was getting so good that if you could get out three notes in a row, the record people could splice a performance together. And, note by note, that’s exactly what they did with me.”
Duke starred on Broadway as Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker and went on to win an Academy Award for the 1962 film adaptation. One year later she was starring in her own TV series, playing identical cousins Patty and Cathy Lane in The Patty Duke Show. During the show’s second season’s reruns in late spring of 1965, Duke’s single “Don’t Just Stand There” entered the Hot 100, eventually peaking at No. 8. Talking about her recording career with the Los Angeles Times, Duke said, "It was part of the marketing for the show. I had delusions I could sing. I was beyond excited until I got into the studio. I felt about an inch and a half tall. I just was frozen. So they had to put a person in the booth with me so they could point to me when it was time to sing.”
Zac Efron
Disney’s High School Musical was an instant hit when it aired on Jan. 20, 2006. With a viewership of 7.7 million people, it was not a surprise when the song “Breaking Free” by Zac Efron and Vanessa Anne Hudgens debuted on the Hot 100 the week of Feb. 4 at No. 86 and “Get’cha Head in the Game” by Efron opened at No. 100. The following week, “Breaking Free” set a record for the biggest jump on the Hot 100 to that date, by leaping 82 spots to No. 4 and “Get’cha Head in the Game” soared 100-23. On that Feb. 11 chart, seven more songs from the TV soundtrack debuted, including “Start of Something New” and “What I’ve Been Looking For,” both duets by Efron and Hudgens.
But a week later the artists’ credits were changed. Songwriter and vocalist Drew Seeley, billed as Andrew Seeley, was added to some songs and replaced Efron’s name on “Get’cha Head in the Game.” The story was that Seeley’s voice was blended with Efron’s on some tracks and that he outright sang on others.
A year later, when High School Musical 2 was broadcast, Efron explained in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, “In the first movie, after everything was recorded, my voice was not on [the tracks]. I was not really given an explanation. It just kind of happened that way. Unfortunately, it put me in an awkward position. It's not something I expected to be addressed. Then High School Musical blew up. I'm very fortunate that Drew has gotten proper credit and also that I've gotten the opportunity to come back and try it again with my own voice.”
When the High School Musical 2 song “You Are the Music in Me” by Efron and Hudgens debuted on the Hot 100 dated Sept. 1, 2007, it was genuine Efron charting. The actor returned to the chart in January 2018 with two songs from the soundtrack to The Greatest Showman. “Rewrite the Stars,” a duet by Efron and Zendaya, peaked at No. 70 and “The Greatest Show,” an ensemble number credited to Hugh Jackman, Keala Settle, Efron and Zendaya, reached No. 88. The film and the soundtrack both earned massive popularity. In May 2018, the album became the first soundtrack in four years to sell over 1 million copies.
Shelley Fabares
After the second season of The Donna Reed Show, producer Tony Owen (Reed’s husband) approached young series stars Shelley Fabares and Paul Petersen about recording songs that would be written into third season scripts. Colpix, the record division of Columbia Pictures, would release the songs as 45s. Fabares, who played Mary Stone, declined, insisting she couldn’t sing. “I was adamant,” she recalled in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. “I was a very good, very sweet little girl who was not raised to say no, so it took a lot for me to say I can’t do that.” Owen wouldn’t take no for an answer. He had record producer Stu Phillips prepare demos and Fabares was convinced hers was so bad the idea would be dropped. It wasn’t. She had to go back into the studio and says she was “terrified” to record “Johnny Angel.” In April 1962, the single spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100. The follow-up, “Johnny Loves Me,” peaked at No. 21. Two more singles charted, “The Things We Did Last Summer” and “Ronnie, Call Me When You Get a Chance,” but that wasn’t the end of her recording career. In 1964, Fabares married record producer Lou Adler and was the first artist to release a single on her husband’s new record label, Dunhill. The song wasn’t a hit but the label did well with the Mamas and the Papas, Three Dog Night and the Grass Roots.
Jimmy Fallon
Jimmy Fallon first appeared on a Billboard chart in 2002 with his comedy album The Bathroom Wall, which peaked at No. 47 on the Billboard 200. Ten years later, his album Blow Your Pants Off debuted at No. 25 on the Billboard 200 and went to No. 1 on Comedy Albums. The former Saturday Night Live star had also registered 10 entries on the Comedy Digital Tracks chart. But still, he had a dream – to appear on the Hot 100.
In his first year of hosting The Tonight Show, Fallon did a series of sketches he originated on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon under the title “Ew!” The basis of the bit is that Fallon dresses up as a 15-year-old girl named Sara who talks about things that make her go “Ew!” After enrolling stars like Seth Rogan and Zac Efron to participate in “Ew!” skits, Fallon did his first musical “Ew!” with will.i.am on Oct. 6, 2014.
Fallon called in to Ryan Seacrest’s radio show to explain: “…we had will.i.am on the show about two months ago. Backstage we're talking and he goes, ‘I really like that sketch that you do, "Ew! "’… I said, 'You know, we're doing it with Taylor Swift this week, but next time you come back, I'll write you in and we'll do one.' In three days, before the writers [and I] could even write any lyrics, he sent me a full-on produced song. So then he flies to New York, I go to a recording studio, we tweak it a little, and I write some raps for myself. So this is me rapping, as well, which is sad.”
When Fallon and will.i.am did the sketch on The Tonight Show, the host said he really hoped the song would chart on the Hot 100 and he asked viewers for their support.
On the tally dated Oct. 25, 2014, “Ew!” opened at No. 26. “Oh my goodness. I'm, like, freaking out right now. This is unbelievable! No. 26? I'd be happy with 99!" Fallon told Billboard. “I don't even understand this! You don't understand how exciting this is for me. I have to print this out and frame this. I'm going to run around and tell everyone in my office, and people are just going to go nuts right now.”
Jamie Foxx
Jamie Foxx is well known for his acting career, dating back to the TV series In Living Color and his own sitcom, as well as starring roles in almost three dozen films, including Collateral, Django Unchained and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, as well as musicals like Dreamgirls and Annie, and the biopic Ray (which he won the Oscar for).
His music education started early, playing the piano at age 5. He was a choir leader at the New Hope Baptist Church in his hometown of Terrell, Texas, and had a band, Leather and Lace, while he was in high school.
His film career was already in gear when he made his first appearance on the Billboard charts in 1994 with Peep This, an album that peaked at No. 78 on the Billboard 200. In the early ’00s Foxx hosted parties where he’d invite his musical friends like JAY-Z, Missy Elliott, the Neptunes and Kanye West in hopes that someone would ask him to collaborate on a recording. Foxx ended up in a studio with West, where they fashioned the hook for “Slow Jamz.” “I’m doing all this R&B stuff ’cause
I’m old and Kanye says, ‘Uhh – don’t do that. It’s hip-hop, just follow me.’ So I’m thinking, ‘This song is wack, he’s never gonna make it.’ I do the song anyway and I leave to do a bad movie for six months. And when I come back, they say, ‘Remember that song with Kanye? It’s No. 1.’ And that’s how I got into music,” Foxx said on Power 106 radio in Los Angeles.
Foxx had his biggest hit to date in 2005 when he was featured on West’s “Gold Digger,” a single that spent 10 weeks in pole position.
Donald Glover
When he was 23, Donald Glover was hired to write for the TV sitcom 30 Rock. From there he landed a starring role in another sitcom, Community. Today he is the creator and star of the award-winning FX series, Atlanta, and his latest film role was playing young Lando Calrissian in Solo: A Star Wars Story. And while Glover has never appeared on the Billboard charts under his own name, he has a successful music career as Childish Gambino, a moniker that came from Wu-Tang Clan’s name generator.
Three of Gambino’s albums have appeared on the Billboard 200. He made his Hot 100 debut in 2013 with “3005,” which peaked at No. 64. In 2016 he broke through to the top 20 with “Redbone” (No. 12). Two years later, he topped the Hot 100 for the first time with “This Is America,” a single released the same day that Glover/Gambino performed it on Saturday Night Live. The video, which illustrated the song’s stance against gun violence and racism in America, was named one of the 10 greatest music videos of the 21st century in a Billboard critics’ picks feature.
Lorne Greene
It was the final season of Bonanza, the long-running western series that ruled the ratings for NBC. Filming the first episode of season 14 on location in 1972, Lorne Greene was approached by a reporter from a local California newspaper, the Modesto Bee. “So,” asked the journalist, “what part do you play?”
That reporter may have been the only person in America who didn’t know that Greene starred as Ben Cartwright, father of three sons and owner of the Ponderosa ranch.
Greene, born in Ottawa, Ontario, was only the third Canadian to top the Hot 100, after Paul Anka and Percy Faith. In 1964, with Bonanza at the peak of its popularity, a producer at RCA suggested the actors who portrayed the Cartwrights should record an album. “It wasn’t terribly good but we sold a lot of copies,” Greene said in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. Based on that album’s success, RCA signed the former Canadian Broadcasting Company news anchor known as the “Voice of Doom” for his on-air reporting during World War II to a recording contract. For a second Bonanza cast album, Welcome to the Ponderosa, Greene was asked to look at a poem with six verses. “By the end of the fourth stanza, I got chills,” Greene told Billboard. He was certain that the story of a sheriff who saves the life of a gunman named Johnny Ringo would be a big hit. After “Ringo” went to No. 1, Greene recorded seven more albums for RCA and after Bonanza he went on to star in the TV series Griff, Battlestar Galactica and Code Red.
Richard Harris
Depending on how old you are, you know Richard Harris as a) the actor who played King Arthur in the film version of the musical Camelot, b) the singer who had a No. 2 hit on Billboard’s Hot 100 with “MacArthur Park” or c) the actor who played Albus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films.
He is, of course, all three. And while most of his credits are for acting, he did sing in Camelot and had a single from that soundtrack released on Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. “How to Handle a Woman” was issued in 1968, the same year Harris signed with the Dunhill label and recorded Jimmy Webb’s seven-minute opus, written about his break-up with girlfriend Susie Horton.
“Everything in the song is real,” Webb told The Guardian. “There is a MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, near where my girlfriend worked selling life insurance. We'd meet there for lunch, and there would be old men playing checkers by the trees, like in the lyrics. I've been asked a million times, ‘What is the cake left out in the rain?’ It's something I saw – we would eat cake and leave it in the rain. But as a metaphor for losing a chapter of your life, it seemed too good to be true. When she broke up with me, I poured the hurt into the song.”
Webb wrote the song at the request of producer Bones Howe, who presented it to the Association (“Cherish,” “Windy”). The group turned it down. “I was doing music for an anti-war pageant with some Hollywood stars, including Mia Farrow and Edward G. Robinson,” Webb recalled. “Richard Harris and I started hanging out after rehearsals and drinking black velvets: 50 per cent Guinness, 50 per cent champagne. One night after a few, I said, ‘We ought to make a record’….A few weeks later, I received a telegram: ‘Dear Jimmy Webb. Come to London. Make this record. Love, Richard’….I got a flight and stayed with Richard in Belgravia. Over the course of two days, we tore through 30 or 40 of my songs. I was playing the piano and singing. He was standing there in his kaftan, waving his arms and expressing excitement at some songs, not so crazy about others. The best went into his debut album, A Tramp Shining. ‘MacArthur Park’ was at the bottom of my pile. By the time I played it, we had moved on to straight brandy, but Richard slapped the piano. ‘Oh Jimmy Webb. I love that! I'll make a hit out of that, I will.’"
Anne Hathaway
Known for her roles in films like The Princess Diaries, Brokeback Mountain and The Devil Wears Prada, Anne Hathaway also had some musical experience before starring as Fantine in the film adaptation of the theatrical Les Miserables. As a teenager, she sang with her high school chorus. Later, she had a role in the stage musical of the film Gigi at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey and she performed some songs on the soundtrack of her 2004 movie, Ella Enchanted.
In a film replete with close-ups, Hathaway’s face filled the screen in Les Miserables as she sang “I Dreamed a Dream.” “It wasn't my favorite scene to shoot just because there was so much pressure of expectation,” she told the Associated Press. “I had gone to [director] Tom [Hooper] and said I was starting to feel nervous about a week before. He said, ‘Listen. It's not an iconic song. You mustn't think about it like that. It's this woman's howl. It's her processing what's just happened to her.’ So I felt very protected; I knew what I wanted to do. But all of a sudden the stakes were raised because there was a camera there and it was going to be forever. I couldn't stop thinking about how if I messed it up how exposed I would feel. So I did the first take and I was so angry with myself because it wasn't good enough. I had really wanted to come out of the gate and just nail it. I dug in a little deeper and we did the second take and it wasn't there and I just thought, ‘Oh, God.’ I started the third take and I just said, ‘No, no. Stop. I'm sorry. The balance, it's off.’ And that's when I took the earpieces and stuck them in my ears. I closed my eyes and I remember thinking, "Hathaway, if you do not do this in this moment, you have no right to call yourself an actor. Put aside all that bulls*** and just do your job.’ I opened my eyes and I'm like, ‘Let's go.’ And I did it. That was the one that I let rip and that was the one that was in the piece.”
Hathaway’s “I Dreamed a Dream” was the third version of the song to chart on the Hot 100, following Susan Boyle (No. 62 in 2009) and the Glee Cast with Idina Menzel (No. 31 in 2010). Hathaway’s recording peaked at No. 69 in 2013.
The Heights
In 1991, the success of the film The Commitments inspired TV producer Aaron Spelling to come up with a series for Fox about working-class American kids who form a band. Steve Tyrell was hired as the music supervisor before any of the actors were cast. Jamie Walters auditioned playing a song called “So Hot” on his guitar. “I immediately loved the sound of his voice and the hooky, bluesy licks,” Tyrell said in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. Tyrell told Spelling that Walters looked like James Dean and sang like Bryan Adams and urged that he be signed. With his wife Stephanie, Tyrell wrote a song for Walters’ character in which he tries to express his romantic feelings to a girl. Stephanie came up with the title: 'How Do You Talk to an Angel.' Joe Smith, then head of Capitol Records, heard the song and asked for a full soundtrack for the series. Before the label released 'Angel' as a single, WEGX in Philadelphia received a DAT tape of the song from the network and added it to its playlist. It became the station’s most requested song, prompting sister station Z100 in New York to also start playing the tune.
Unfortunately, the series never gained traction in the ratings and a week after the single dropped from No. 1 on the Hot 100 in November 1992, the final episode aired. The Heights never returned to the chart but Walters was cast in Spelling’s Beverly Hills 90210, then signed to Atlantic Records. In April 1995, his single “Hold On” peaked at No. 16 on the Hot 100, making Walters the only artist to be a one-hit wonder twice.
Jennifer Love Hewitt
Long before she starred in TV series like Kids Incorporated, Party of Five, Ghost Whisperer and Criminal Minds, Jennifer Love Hewitt made her public singing debut at age three, when she performed “The Greatest Love of All” at a livestock show in Texas. At age 12, her first album, Love Songs, was released – but only in Japan, where Kids Incorporated was a popular import. Three years later she signed with Atlantic in the U.S. and recorded two albums for the label, Let’s Go Bang and a self-titled set. Neither charted. She didn’t debut on the Billboard 200 until 2002, when she switched to Jive Records. BareNaked peaked at No. 37.
But Hewitt’s only Hot 100 appearance took place three years earlier when “How Do I Deal” from the soundtrack of her film I Still Know What You Did Last Summer went to No 59.
Eddie Hodges
Eddie Hodges was 10 years old when he was cast in the Broadway musical The Music Man, singing “Gary, Indiana.” “Meredith Willson’s wife saw me singing on Name That Tune and recommended Meredith audition me for the role of Winthrop. We were given an address of a Broadway theater and told to meet a man there for the audition,” Hodges tells Billboard. He was given some dialog to read on stage. “I read the lines and they asked me to speak louder and say the lines with a lisp. I paused for a long beat and then said, ‘what’s a lisp?’ They laughed and Meredith Willson said, ‘say all of your s’s using a ‘th’ sound instead.’ I did that and there was a long silence and some mumbling, then they said I could come back down off the stage. I figured I blew the audition. But, we all walked out to the lobby and someone said, ‘We already knew you could sing, but you say lines pretty well and can speak with a lisp. Would you like to be in a Broadway show?’ I almost fainted.”
Hodges also sang in his film debut. He played Frank Sinatra’s son in the 1959 comedy A Hole in the Head. “Working and singing with Sinatra was one of the greatest experiences of my show business career,” says Hodges. “He treated me with respect and dignity, as a friend and colleague. He even invited me and my family to one of his recording sessions. He was a true gentleman. We learned the song ‘High Hopes’ from Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen between takes on set. We did a quick rehearsal and promptly flubbed the lyrics. But Sinatra just laughed and so did Frank Capra, the director, who wanted to go ahead and film it even if we made mistakes, which we did. I think he did two or three takes and told us it was wonderful and he wouldn’t change a thing.” When Sinatra released “High Hopes” as a single on Capitol, Hodges was not on the track because he was signed to another label and was refused permission to record for a competitor. “I was very unhappy and asked my father to get me out of the Decca contract.” Hodges was a mainstay on television, doing impressions of Johnny Ray on Jackie Gleason’s The Honeymooners and singing on variety shows hosted by Arthur Godfrey, Eddie Fisher and Andy Williams. After leaving Decca, Hodges was signed to Cadence by label founder Archie Bleyer. “He was a great producer and great friend who taught me tons about recording music. He was the first producer who really trusted me to sing rock and roll music. I was so proud to be on the same label as my favorite recording artists, the Everly Brothers. Being in the studio with Archie Bleyer was like being in a doctoral level grad school class. He was an absolute genius when recording and arranging. He was the first to tell me I had a gift for hearing and singing harmonies.”
In 1961, Hodges found himself on the Billboard Hot 100 with “I’m Gonna Knock on Your Door,” a song originally recorded by the Isley Brothers two years earlier. “Archie had the studio engineer get an old electric doorbell and a sound effects door they used in broadcasting old radio programs to do the intro sounds. For the window tap, he used a glass ashtray and hit it with a fountain pen. He also devised the ‘knock-and-ring-and-tap-and-knock-and-ring-and-tap’ hook and taught it to me the day we recorded. That record broke in Fargo, North Dakota, and I was overjoyed.” The single peaked at No. 12. Hodges had another hit with “(Girls, Girls, Girls) Made to Love,” originally recorded by the Everly Brothers. “I fell in love with Phil Everly’s demo of the song.” Hodges recorded the song in New York. “But Archie was not happy with the outcome, so he scrapped it and we all flew to Nashville to re-record it at Owen Bradley Studios using Charlie McCoy’s band. I quickly saw why Archie decided on the change. The session was warmer and had a down-home feel, which we both liked. I never met Don Everly, but I did meet Phil and had the opportunity to thank him for writing such a great song.”
Tab Hunter
Hollywood heartthrob Tab Hunter made his first film, Island of Desire, in 1952. He made many more films that decade, most notably the movie adaptation of the Broadway musical Damn Yankees in 1958. He had three songs chart on the Hot 100, but his biggest hit topped the Billboard singles chart almost a year-and-a-half before the Hot 100 was born.
Randy Wood, the president of Dot Records, thought Sonny James’ recording of “Young Love” was going to be a big country hit and wanted a pop singer to cover it. “Randy called me up and said, ‘I’ve got a record I want you to hear. If you can carry a tune at all, we’d like you to record it,’” Hunter said in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. The actor hadn’t done any singing outside of his school choir but he liked “Young Love” and agreed to record it. James’ single on Capitol raced up the charts, but so did Hunter’s. The former peaked at No. 2 on the Best Sellers in Stores chart, while Hunter’s version went to No. 1.
He was under contract to Warner Bros. for films and the studio objected to Hunter recording for Dot. While “Young Love” was on the charts, his movie bosses sent him out on a national promotional tour for the 1957 film The Spirit of St. Louis. “Everybody knew the plane landed safely…so they kept saying, ‘Tell us about your new record.’ Warners was furious,” Hunter told Billboard.
In 1958, the studio launched its own record label. Hunter, signed to the new imprint, was convinced he was one of the reasons the Warner Bros. label was created, so the studio’s talent wouldn’t be earning money for other companies.
Burl Ives
Burl Ives made his professional debut as a singer at age 4, earning one dollar for performing “Barbara Allen” at a picnic for soldiers. He played the banjo – and football – in high school and majored in physical education at college, but when the depression struck in the 1930s, he wandered the U.S. for a few years, until he settled in Indiana, taking classes, playing football and singing on a local radio station.
He relocated to Manhattan in 1937, where he enrolled in voice classes at New York University and then studied at Juilliard. Small roles in summer stock led to his first Broadway show, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s The Boys of Syracuse. It was a musical but Ives had a non-singing role. At the same time, he was performing folk songs at the Village Vanguard in New York City.
After serving in World War II, he returned to Manhattan and made his motion picture debut in Smoky, a film about a horse. He was back on Broadway in 1954 in a revival of Showboat. A year later, he starred in a new Broadway drama, Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He played the part of Big Daddy in the stage production and in the 1958 film, playing opposite Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. Because of his girth, people assumed Ives was just like the oppressive character he was playing, a fact he denied for years.
In 1962, Ives had three top 20 hits on the Hot 100: “A Little Bitty Tear” (No. 9), “Funny Way of Laughin’” (No. 10) and “Call Me Mr. In-Between” (No. 19). Over the next two years, he made five more appearances on the Hot 100, though none of those singles were as big as his run of songs in 1962. He is also a perennial visitor to the holiday charts with his classic “A Holly Jolly Christmas.”
Hugh Jackman
“I'd been known around the world for Wolverine,” Hugh Jackman told Australia’s ABC television network. “Anyone in Australia knows I'm more at home on a stage, singing and dancing, than I am fighting with claws coming out of my hand.”
The actor from Sydney, who fell in love with musical theater when he saw a high school production of Man of La Mancha, has proven himself musically many times. He played Gaston in the Australian production of the stage musical version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and Curly in a West End production of Oklahoma! He starred as Aussie singer Peter Allen in the Broadway musical The Boy from Oz. He had songs on soundtracks related to Happy Feet (“Heartbreak Hotel”) and Eddie the Eagle (“Thrill Me”) and starred as Jean Valjean in the film adaptation of the stage musical Les Miserables.
But none of those musical outings found a home on the Hot 100. Jackman didn’t appear on that chart until he starred in the movie The Greatest Showman. “I wanted to do a different style from the way I’d been singing before, the way I learned to sing,” Jackman told Playbill during a press junket for the film. “This is a little more pop.” That did the trick, as the movie’s opening number, “The Greatest Show,” which Jackman sang with Keala Settle, Zac Efron, Zendaya and The Greatest Showman Ensemble, peaked at No. 88 in January.
Don Johnson
During his pre-school years, Don Johnson sang in church. “I would sing harmony because I could sing really high at that age,” he told Robert Hilburn in the Los Angeles Times. “It was fun getting all the attention. People would come up after church and pinch me and give me a quarter. I am sure the first bug to be in show business was planted right there.”
Johnson grew up listening to country music, R&B, Elvis Presley and the Beatles. With the arrival of the Fab Four, he put his own band together. “I was wearing a (ducktail) when I was nine. People used to think it was cute, but I was dead serious about it. My parents used to give me a flattop and I couldn’t wait until it would grow out enough so I could pull it down in front a little bit and push it back on the sides.”
A role in a production of West Side Story kicked off Johnson’s acting career. Playing the lead in a Los Angeles production of the play Fortune and Men’s Eyes helped usher him into films. In 1979, Johnson co-wrote two songs with Dickey Betts for an Allman Brothers album. Johnson also made some demo tapes with the idea of shopping them to labels but he was dissatisfied with the results and kept them to himself.
During his Miami Vice years, Johnson met CBS Records head Walter Yetnikoff at a party and mentioned that he wanted to make an album. Yetnikoff signed the actor right there, no audition required. “I’m sure part of him was thinking that no matter what I did (musically), the record would sell a certain amount even if people just wanted the cover,” Johnson told Hilburn. “But we also discussed music and I think he got a sense from me that I was confident about where I was going. I wanted the record to be modern, tough rock and I think I achieved that on some level. I didn’t
want it to sound like something that other people designed and I just stopped by for a few minutes to do the vocals. And I made it clear to Walter that I would walk away from it if I didn’t think it was credible.”
The first single, “Heartbeat,” peaked at No. 5 on the Hot 100 in October 1986. The follow-up, “Heartache Away,” only made it to No. 56, but that wasn’t the end of Johnson’s chart run. Two years later, Johnson was back in the top 30 with “Till I Loved You,” a duet with Barbra Streisand.
Anna Kendrick
Anna Kendrick’s acting career has been very musical, from her first Broadway show (High Society in 1998) to her many films (the Pitch Perfect trilogy, Into the Woods and Camp). Her entrée into the Hot 100 was “Cups,” one of her memorable performances in the first Pitch Perfect. The single peaked at No. 6.
The song dates back to 1931, when it was recorded by the Carter Family as “When I’m Gone.” Many other versions followed, including recordings by J. E. Mainer in 1937 and Elizabeth Cotton in 1940. Percussion didn’t come along until 2009, when a group called Lulu & the Lampshades posted a YouTube video of them performing the song. Kendrick saw a 2011 video of Anna Burden covering the Lulu & the Lampshades version and learned the clapping-and-cups routine before she was cast in Pitch Perfect. When the producers of the film asked her to sing “I’m a Little Teacup” for the scene where she auditions for the Barden Bellas, Kendrick asked if she could perform “Cups” instead.
“I didn’t know how I was supposed to play ‘I’m a Little Teacup,’” Kendrick told Glamour, “so thank God they changed that.”
Jennifer Lawrence
Although she performed in some school musicals, Jennifer Lawrence has never pursued a recording career. So how did she end up on the Hot 100? The actor, whose many starring roles include three X-Men films and The Hunger Games trilogy, sang “The Hanging Tree” in the 2014 release Mockingjay – Part 1. The lyrics for the song were penned by author Suzanne Collins for her Mockingjay novel. The music was composed by James Newton Howard, who scored the film, and the melody was written by Jeremiah Fraites and Wesley Schultz of the Lumineers.
Lawrence wasn’t thrilled with the idea of singing the composition for the film and suggested that Lorde (who had another song on the soundtrack) record the song instead. “She was horrified…she cried a little bit in the morning before she had to sing,” director Francis Lawrence told the Radio Times. “But she did it and she did it all day – and she hated me for making her do it all day.” The single of “The Hanging Tree” peaked at No. 12 on the Hot 100.
Joey Lawrence
Although his debut album was released 10 years after he was cast in NBC’s sitcom Gimme a Break, Joey Lawrence started singing when he was very young. He made an impression at age 5 singing “Give My Regards to Broadway” on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson after the legendary host spotted the youngster on a TV commercial.
Lawrence was starring in Blossom when he co-wrote the song “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix” at the age of 15. The track was the first single released from his 1993 self-titled album. Writing about the single, which peaked at No. 19 on the Hot 100, Entertainment Weekly said, “It’s certainly no embarrassment to the breathy-bubble-gum-urban-synth-pop genre.” In his own defense, Lawrence retorted, “It’s not a teenybopper album — it’s very legitimate. I had offers to just slap an album together in a few months and see if we could make a quick million or two, but with MCA it was totally different. It took two years and I had a say in everything, right down to what the CD looks like.”
Vicki Lawrence
Growing up in Inglewood, Calif., Vicki Lawrence was told by her friends that she resembled Carol Burnett, one of the regulars on TV’s The Garry Moore Show. Lawrence sent the comedian a letter and told her they looked alike. A few months later, Burnett’s husband, TV producer Joe Hamilton, asked Lawrence to meet him and his wife at CBS. They told the young ingénue that they were starting a new weekly variety series and they wanted Lawrence to play Burnett’s sister in an ongoing sketch. Another running bit in the show featured Lawrence as the mother of Burnett’s character Eunice. That sketch became its own TV series, Mama’s Family.
During the early ’70s, Lawrence was briefly married to songwriter Bobby Russell. He wrote “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” but didn’t think it was a very good song. Lawrence was convinced it was a hit and recorded a demo in Nashville. The song was turned down by a number of artists, including Sonny Bono, who rejected it for Cher because he thought it might offend people in the South. Producer Snuff Garrett recorded it with Lawrence. As the single was moving up the Hot 100 on its way to No. 1, Lawrence’s marriage was falling apart. She says that recording the album was a strain and brings up unpleasant memories. “I sort of got out of music after that,” she said in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits.
Jared Leto
After creating a TV resume that included the series My So-Called Life, Jared Leto built an impressive filmography from his big screen debut in 1995’s How to Make an American Quilt through Fight Club, Dallas Buyers Club, Suicide Squad and Blade Runner 2049. At the same time, Leto’s music career was flourishing with his group, Thirty Seconds to Mars, formed with his brother Shannon in Los Angeles in 1998. The band released its first album in 2002 and between 2006 and 2010 had five songs chart on the Hot 100, including “The Kill (Bury Me)” (No. 65) and “This Is War” (No. 72).
When USA Today asked Leto this April if he would ever retire from acting or music, he replied, “It'd be much easier to walk away from film than music. Music is very personal – my brother and I have shared this journey and this dream for almost our entire lives. We're playing the biggest and most ambitious tour of our lives. On stage last night, in front of 15,000 people, I remember looking over at my brother just in awe of the experience. It's an absolute dream.”
Gloria Loring
Gloria Loring was a singer first, performing with the folk group Those Four when she was 17. Five years later she signed a recording contract with the MGM label and released an album, Today. The album did not yield any hit singles, but Loring did appear on the Hot 100 in 1977 with the single “Brooklyn” on the Atco label. It wasn’t released under her own name, so it was Cody Jameson who climbed up the chart to No. 74.
In 1980, Loring’s agent sent her out on three auditions in one week. “One was Days of Our Lives,” Loring tells Billboard. She was cast as Liz Chandler. “She was supposed to be a novice singer. I had to sing modestly. As a bit of a lark, I gradually let my character develop.” But there was a downside to her success. “People thought of me as an actor. I was having a ‘Pity Me’ party – am I a singer or an actor? I was getting to an age where there was no chance I would ever have a hit record. I complained to an associate producer on the show.” Loring thought if she could find a great song, many of the soap opera’s 10 million viewers would buy it and she would have the hit recording she wanted.
“The associate producer played a cassette of a song on my lunch break. After the first chorus I said, ‘That’s a hit if I ever heard one.’” Loring sang “Friends and Lovers” on Days of Our Lives many times as the song was tied in to a popular storyline. The NBC mailroom told her they received more mail about it than any song ever performed on the network.
Loring thought the song should be a duet and asked Al Jarreau to record it with her, but he was busy with a tour. Then Loring’s boyfriend saw Carl Anderson [Jesus Christ, Superstar] singing at a club and brought his record home for Loring to hear and she knew she had found the right duet partner. The record sat on the shelf for a year because of legal problems with the record label, but finally their pairing on “Friends and Lovers” sailed to No. 2 on the Hot 100 and Loring had her hit song at last. “The week I left Days the song peaked, my book was published and my divorce [from actor Alan Thicke] became final,” says Loring.
Some 27 years after “Friends and Lovers” was a No. 2 hit, Loring’s son went one position higher on the Hot 100. Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” spent 12 weeks at No. 1 in 2013.
Steve Martin
Three decades before he began a run of six No. 1 albums on Billboard’s Bluegrass chart, Steve Martin went to No. 17 on the Hot 100 with the novelty song “King Tut,” credited to Steve Martin & the Toot Uncommons (actually members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band).
King Tut was in the news in 1978, thanks to a touring exhibit, Treasures of Tutankhamun, featuring artifacts from the pharaoh’s tomb. Martin, a stand-up comedian known as that “wild and crazy guy” who hosted Saturday Night Live, wrote the song and asked SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels if he could perform it on the show. Michaels not only said yes, he provided a big budget for an elaborate production. The number was featured on the show that aired on April 22, 1978. One week later, the single was released. “King Tut” debuted on the Hot 100 dated May 27, 1978.
It wasn’t Martin’s first appearance on this chart. “Grandmother’s Song” peaked at No. 72 in 1977. And a year after “King Tut,” Martin was back on the Hot 100 with “Cruel Shoes,” which only walked to No. 91.
Bob & Doug McKenzie
Bob and Doug McKenzie are Canadian brothers who hosted a show called Great White North. Actually, they are the creations of Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas for the Canadian TV series Second City Television, also known as SCTV. The show premiered in 1976. When the series moved from the private Global Television Network to the country’s public broadcaster, CBC, in 1980, the episodes were two minutes longer than the American broadcasts because CBC was commercial-free, so in 1980 Moranis and Thomas were asked to create a sketch that would last two minutes for Canadian viewers only. They were told the segment must follow the Canadian Content rule, which the pair thought was ridiculous since the entire show originated in Canada with Canadian actors and crew.
Moranis and Thomas came up with Kanadian Korner, a “show” hosted by the McKenzie brothers, two outrageous stereotypes of beer-drinking, bacon-eating Canadians. They improvised segments that became so popular, they were soon shown in the U.S. as well. The name of the “show” was changed to Great White North.
In 1981, Moranis and Thomas recorded an album as the McKenzies. Track 7 on The Great White North was “Take Off,” featuring vocals by Geddy Lee of Rush. “That was so fun,” Geddy told the A.V. Club. “Rick Moranis and I went to school together when we were really little. For about six years in a row, we were in the same class. And then when he was getting involved in that whole Bob and Doug thing, and it was really starting to become successful, they wanted to do this sort of pop song, and they naturally thought of me, which was nice. I went down to the studio and we put that together in 15 minutes or something. It was really just off-the-cuff. The producer said, ‘Here’s the lyrics -- have a go. The guys will be in a studio with you and you can just kibitz with them, and we’ll record everything.’”
“Take Off,” released on the Mercury label in the U.S., peaked at No. 16 on the Hot 100 in 1982. Alas, Bob and Doug McKenzie remain one-hit-wonders.
Idina Menzel
Idina Menzel’s acting career has always had a musical tinge. She made her Broadway debut in Rent and then created the part of Elphaba in Wicked. She starred as Florence in a concert version of Chess and later had the lead role in another Broadway musical, If/Then.
As a guest star on Glee, Menzel sang in several episodes. In 2013, she voiced the role of Queen Elsa in Disney’s hit movie Frozen and sang “Let It Go,” written by Kristin Anderson-Lopez and her husband, Robert Lopez. Demi Lovato sang a pop version of the song over the closing credits. Disney thought Lovato’s version would be a hit on radio but it was Menzel’s version that won over radio and adoring fans of the movie. Lovato’s single peaked at No. 38 on Billboard’s Hot 100, while Menzel’s recording shot to No. 5.
Hayley Mills
After starring with her father John Mills in the British film Tiger Bay, Hayley Mills was cast in Disney’s Pollyanna in 1960. A year later, she starred as identical twin sisters in her second Disney movie, The Parent Trap.
Songwriting brothers Richard and Robert Sherman had written a number of hits for another Disney female star, Annette Funicello, including “Tall Paul” and “Pineapple Princess,” when Walt Disney asked them to write a song for her TV movie The Horsemasters. The Shermans wrote “Strummin’ Song” and brought it to Walt. “The first thing he said was, ‘Now these two sisters have never met. They’re twins and they meet in summer camp,’” Robert said in Performing Songwriter. “And we looked at each other kind of puzzled and said, ‘Look, Mr. Disney, we brought a song here for Annette Funicello.’” Richard elaborated, “He was describing The Parent Trap, which we knew nothing about. [He] was ticked as hell because we came in with the wrong song. He handed us a script called We Belong Together, which was the working title of The Parent Trap. We took it home and we wrote a ballad called ‘For Now, For Always.’ We brought it in to him and he said, ‘Yeah, that’ll work, but that’s not the name of the picture. We can use that in a certain sequence, but we need a song where the kids are hinting to the parents.’”
The Shermans returned with a song titled “Let’s Get Together,” which Walt liked, although he complained it was not the title of the film. Still, Mills sang it in the movie in a scene in which both sisters perform the tune. The double-tracked single, on Disney’s Buena Vista label, is credited to “Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills.”
“Let’s Get Together” peaked at No. 8 on the Hot 100. The success of the 45rpm disc led to Disney recording a full album with the young star. A follow-up single, “Johnny Jingo,” went to No. 21 in 1962.
Eddie Murphy
“I had a band before I did stand-up,” Eddie Murphy told Billboard in 2013. “I was 15 and in high school. The name of the band was EMMK. It was the Eddie Murphy Mitchell Keiser Band. Mitchell Keiser was my first comedy partner. We formed a band because we could both do impressions…so we got a band together and [they] played behind us while we did Beatle impressions. Eventually, it turned into a real band. We were playing stuff like the Commodores’ ‘Sweet Love’ and Earth, Wind & Fire songs. If you look back on the funny stuff that I’ve done over the years, there’s been a lot [of] music in it. I was always singing parodies, but if you listened to it, what would make it funnier was that the singing would be kind of cool. I could do all these things with my voice because I have a really wide range when I sing.”
After making a name for himself on Saturday Night Live, Murphy made his film debut in 1982, starring with Nick Nolte in 48 Hrs. A year later, Murphy starred in John Landis’ Trading Places and worked with the director again in Coming to America. In 1984, Murphy starred in Beverly Hills Cop, which became the highest-grossing film of the year. At the peak of his film career, Murphy went into a recording studio with Rick James as his producer and recorded “Party All the Time.” “I was supposed to fly in for one day, then a snowstorm hit and we got snowed in and stuck in Buffalo for two weeks,” said Murphy. “One of my best early memories is that time with Rick James. The whole way I record, I learned from Rick James. I learned how to produce music from hanging around Rick James.”
“Party All the Time,” released on Columbia, spent three weeks at No. 2 on the Hot 100 in 1985. Four years later Murphy had his second and final Hot 100 entry, “Put Your Mouth on Me,” which peaked at No. 27. But he kept singing in the movies, including the first three Shrek films and the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Dreamgirls.
Gwyneth Paltrow
An Oscar winner for Shakespeare In Love and an Emmy winner for her role of Holly Holliday on Glee, Gwyneth Paltrow first showed up on the Billboard charts in 2000 with “Cruisin’,” a duet with Huey Lewis from the soundtrack to the film Duets. The song missed the Hot 100 but sailed to No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary tally.
A decade later, Paltrow made her Hot 100 debut with “Forget You,” the first of her charted songs with the cast of Glee. At the same time, Paltrow peaked at No. 81 on the Hot 100 with “Country Strong,” the title song of her 2010 flick.
“It was the first track that I cut [for the soundtrack],” Paltrow told The Boot. “I worked on it with my singing teacher in London for months before I flew [to the U.S.] and was recording it with Byron Gallimore [Tim McGraw's longtime producer]. I felt, ‘I don't know if I can pull this off, this music, it's serious. It's great. It's hard to sing.’ But when I first started doing it, I felt very liberated by it, like, ‘No, I can do this. I have to find it within myself.’ And that's ‘Country Strong.’ It's like, ‘You can rise above it and you can do it. It's a challenge. It's not your comfort zone.’ I was really happy with the way it turned out. It's been such a surprise for me; just the idea that I could hear myself on country radio, especially now that I'm such a fan of country music, and it's come later in my life. It's like a dream. It's surreal.”
Michael Parks
Before he worked with directors David Lynch (in Twin Peaks), Quentin Tarantino (both Kill Bill films, Django Unchained) and Kevin Smith (Red State, Tusk), Michael Parks starred in the NBC drama Then Came Bronson. The series, an MGM Television production, debuted in the fall of 1969 and lasted one season. Parks, who was often compared to actors James Dean and Marlon Brando, played Jim Bronson, a newspaper reporter who gives up his career after a friend commits suicide. He buys his late friend’s Harley Davidson and journeys across the U.S.
Many episodes included songs performed by Parks but “Long Lonesome Highway” was heard every week over the closing credits. The theme, composed by songwriter James Hendricks, was released as a single on MGM and peaked at No. 20 on the Hot 100 in April 1970.
The Partridge Family starring Shirley Jones featuring David Cassidy
Shirley Jones, who had been singing since the age of three, was planning to study veterinary medicine, until she won the title of Miss Pittsburgh. Then she traveled to New York City, where her vocal coach arranged an audition with Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. They gave her a small role in the Broadway production of South Pacific, which led to a starring role in the 1955 film version of their Oklahoma!
In 1969, Jones was cast in the lead role of a widowed mother on the ABC series The Partridge Family.
The producers then searched for an actor to play her eldest son, Keith. “They were very frightened about hiring David [Cassidy] because they knew he was my stepson and they didn’t know what our relationship was,” Jones said in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. “They didn’t know [if] we hated each other…so they came to me very sheepishly and said, ‘We tested David and we really feel he’s best for the role but how do you feel about it?” Jones told her producers it was a wonderful idea.
After topping the Hot 100 with “I Think I Love You” in November 1970, the Partridge Family had eight more chart entries, through 1973. “Doesn’t Somebody Want to Be Wanted” and “I’ll Meet You Halfway” both made the top 10.
Jones never appeared on the Hot 100 on her own, but Cassidy had five solo chart entries, starting with a top 10 remake of the Association’s “Cherish” in 1971.
Paul Petersen
When Tony Owen, producer of The Donna Reed Show, told series stars Shelley Fabares and Paul Petersen that he wanted them to record songs that would be written into the show’s third season scripts, Fabares was terrified but Petersen thought it was a great idea. He was friends with another sitcom star, Ricky Nelson, who balanced his acting career with a successful run on the pop charts – and Ricky seemed to get all the girls. Petersen already had some singing experience. “I performed at the Hollywood Bowl Easter sunrise service before I was eight,” he tells Billboard. “And I was hired as a Mouseketeer because I could sing and dance.”
Petersen’s first single for the Colpix label was the novelty song “She Can’t Find Her Keys,” which peaked at No. 19 in 1962. He followed it with a Carole King-Gerry Goffin composition, “Keep Your Love Locked (Deep in Your Heart),” which Paul first heard when King played it for him on her piano. The single only went to No. 59. But in early 1963, Petersen had his biggest hit with a Barry Mann-Cynthia Weil song, “My Dad.” “Barry and Cynthia handed me this precious song that Barry wrote for his father. I was instantly in tears.”
In an emotional Donna Reed scene from an October 1962 episode, Petersen sang the song while his TV father Carl Betz proudly looked on. “Carl and I could hardly contain ourselves,” Petersen remembers. “The song is magic. We knew it then and we know it today. To this day I get some of the most heartwarming messages that the song will always have a place in people’s hearts.” Just as he was when he first heard the song, at the end of the scene Petersen’s character Jeff Stone is in tears. Billboard wanted to know if that was acting or a true emotional reaction. “It was both genuine and acting,” Petersen reveals. “Genuine in my sentiments for Carl Betz and acting when it came to takes two and three.”
After “My Dad” peaked at No. 6 on the Hot 100, Petersen returned to the Barry Mann-Cynthia Weil songbook for “Amy,” which went to No. 65 in 1963. Another single, “The Cheer Leader,” stalled at No. 78. One of Petersen’s last singles for Colpix was “She Rides With Me,” an obscure gem co-written and produced by Brian Wilson.
After the Colpix label folded, Petersen declined to sign with the successor imprint, Colgems, and in a surprise move, joined Motown. His first single for Berry Gordy’s company was “Chained,” in 1967. Although Petersen’s version didn’t chart, Marvin Gaye’s remake appeared on the Hot 100 a year later. In 1969, the Jackson 5 recorded the song for their first Motown album.
For the last three decades, Petersen has been an activist for children through his non-profit foundation, A Minor Consideration, created to provide guidance and support for young performers, past, present and future.
Burt Reynolds
Known primarily for his roles in TV shows like Riverboat, Gunsmoke and Dan August and films like Deliverance and Smokey and the Bandit, Burt Reynolds delved into music on a few occasions. In 1973 he released an album, Ask Me What I Am, produced by Bobby Goldsboro and Buddy Killen. Two years later, Reynolds sang in Peter Bogdanovich’s film musical At Long Last Love. In 1982, Reynolds duetted with Dolly Parton on the song “Sneakin Around” from the film version of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
But his lone appearance on the Hot 100 occurred in 1980, thanks to the song “Let’s Do Something Cheap and Superficial” from the soundtrack to his film Smokey and the Bandit II. The first Smokey film yielded a No. 2 song on Billboard’s country singles chart – Jerry Reed’s “Eastbound and Down.” So it seemed like a good idea to have Reynolds record a tune for the sequel.
The cut appears on the soundtrack but was not heard in the movie. It is referenced in a scene with Sally Field, who plays the Bandit’s love interest, Carrie. Bandit gives Carrie a copy of a single he recorded and jokes that only 75 copies were pressed and he still has 74 of them. Carrie retorts, “Let's face it, Sinatra sang ‘My Way’ and you sang ‘Let's Do Something Cheap and Superficial.’” The single peaked at No. 80 on the Hot 100.
Debbie Reynolds
Mary Frances Reynolds was born April 1, 1932, in El Paso, Texas. When she was eight, the family moved to Burbank, Calif., and when she was 16 she won the Miss Burbank contest, with an imitation of Betty Hutton singing “My Rockin’ Horse Ran Away.” Talent scouts from MGM and Warner Bros. were there and flipped a coin to see who would sign her. The latter won and Jack Warner changed her name to Debbie. A year later she was dropped and MGM signed her. Her second film for that studio, Two Weeks in Love, gave Reynolds a million-selling single, “Aba Daba Honeymoon,” in 1951. Five years later Reynolds married singer Eddie Fisher and shortly after the birth of their daughter Carrie, MGM loaned Reynolds to Universal to star in Tammy and the Bachelor. The title song, “Tammy,” was No. 1 for three weeks in 1957, a year before the Hot 100 was introduced. In 1960, Reynolds had two Hot 100 entries, “Am I That Easy to Forget” (No. 25) and “City Lights” (No. 55).
Adam Sandler
"When I was a kid, this time of year always made me feel a little left out,” Adam Sandler explained before performing “The Chanukah Song” for the first time during the Weekend Update segment on the Dec. 3, 1994 broadcast of Saturday Night Live. “Because in school there were so many Christmas songs, and all us Jewish kids had was 'Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel.' So I wrote a brand-new Chanukah song for you Jewish kids to sing, and I hope you like it.”
Best known for his stand-up comedy and acting career, Sandler was no stranger to music. “I used to sing in the car for my mom,” Sandler said in Bill Crawford’s book, America’s Comedian. “My mom liked Barbra Streisand a lot. My first public performance was singing ‘House Of The Rising Sun.’ It was in a seventh grade talent show. I remember my mother driving me home afterward, and she said, ‘You kept cracking your voice.’ So she thought I didn’t nail it, but I thought I was pretty good.”
“The Chanukah Song” appeared on some Billboard tallies as early as 1995, but because of chart rules didn’t debut on the Hot 100 until Jan. 2, 1999, when it peaked at No. 80.
John Schneider
John Schneider was 18 years old when The Dukes of Hazzard premiered on CBS in January 1979. While he was starring as “Bo” Duke, the actor signed with the Scotti Bros. label as a recording artist. His first single was a remake of Elvis Presley’s “It’s Now or Never.” With a No. 14 peak on the Hot 100, it became the highest-ranked cover of an Elvis song to that date. One of his follow-ups was another Elvis remake, “Are You Lonesome Tonight.”
After his stint on Scotti Bros., Schneider signed with MCA as a country artist. He told Billboard, “It’s understandable that the record industry isn’t interested in people from Hollywood who they think are making records in their spare time. I probably shouldn’t have gotten into recording when I did, because the music really didn’t deserve to be taken seriously.” Working with producer Jimmy Bowen, Schneider recorded “I’ve Been Around Enough to Know,” a song that spent one week at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart in 1984. Although he didn’t return to the Hot 100 after 1982, he had 10 more entries on the country singles chart through 1987, including three more No. 1 hits.
In 2001, Schneider returned to starring in a weekly TV series, playing Jonathan Kent on Smallville.
Will Smith
Picture it: Philadelphia in January 1986. A DJ named Jeff Townes was spinning at a party when 17-year-old Will Smith spontaneously started rapping. It wasn’t a new thing for the teenager, who had been rapping since he was 13. Less than nine months after that first meeting, DJ Jazzy and the Fresh Prince made their inaugural appearance on a Billboard chart (Hot R&B Singles) with “Girls Ain’t Nothin’ But Trouble.” That initial success led to a deal with Jive Records and in 1988 the duo had two hits on the Hot 100: “Parents Just Don’t Understand” and “A Nightmare on My Street,” as DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.
Two years later, Will Smith was starring in NBC’s The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. During the series’ six-year run, Smith’s film career got off to a great start with Where the Day Takes You. Starring roles followed in Six Degrees of Separation and Bad Boys. In 1996, Smith moved up to A-list status, starring in Independence Day.
Smith made his first Hot 100 appearance without DJ Jazzy Jeff in 1998 with “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It,” a No. 1 hit. A year later, Smith was back on top with “Wild Wild West,” from Smith’s film of the same name.
Jussie Smollett
Jussie Smollett started acting when he was four and at age 10 appeared in the 1992 Disney film The Mighty Ducks. A year later he won a role in the television mini-series Queen with Halle Berry. Smollett also starting singing as a child, and when he was older played clubs like the Viper Room in Southern California and the Crash Mansion in New York. In 2011, he released an EP, Poisoned Heart Club.
In 2014, Smollett was cast as singer Jamal Lyon in the TV series Empire. “I auditioned like everybody else, but when I read the script I immediately connected with it,” Smollett told The Source. “Being that it’s about family and about music, it was something that I would be able to act as well as showcase my singing and dancing and songwriting and everything; that’s an amazing opportunity.”
Three of Smollett’s songs from season 1 of Empire appeared on the Hot 100 in 2015: “Keep Your Money” (No. 99), “You’re So Beautiful” with Yazz (No. 49) and “Conqueror” with Estelle (No. 42).
David Soul
Before he was cast as one of the leads in the TV series Starsky & Hutch, David Soul was a college dropout who worked as a folksinger in the Midwest, opening for acts like the Byrds, the Doors and the Ramsey Lewis Trio. Hoping to get work in New York, he sent his photo to the William Morris Agency but he wore a ski mask over his face. That led to appearances on Shindig and The Merv Griffin Show where he was only identified as “the Covered Man.” He told Griffin, “My name is David Soul and I want to be known for my music.” On a later appearance on Griffin’s show, Soul removed the mask and revealed his face for the first time. That led to him being cast in the series Here Come the Brides. By the time he was starring in Starsky & Hutch, he wanted to get a recording deal but only for his music and not because he was a well-known TV personality. Larry Uttal, president of the Private Stock label, convinced Soul he wanted to sign him for his music. After his first album was released, Uttal called him and asked him to meet with British songwriter Tony Macaulay and record a couple of his songs. “I talked to Tony from the stage of Starsky & Hutch,” Soul said in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. Based solely on that conversation, Soul trusted Macaulay and was willing to record his songs without hearing them first. “Don’t Give Up on Us” was recorded on a Thursday and the single went on sale in the U.K. nine days later, enjoying a four-week run at No. 1 that started Jan. 15, 1977. Two weeks later the single debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 and by April it was on top of the American chart.
Hailee Steinfeld
Just 13 when she filmed True Grit, Hailee Steinfeld continued her film career with Ender’s Game and Romeo & Juliet before joining the ensemble cast of Pitch Perfect 2 and 3. She was the lead actor in 2017’s The Edge of Seventeen.
After singing “Flashlight” in Pitch Perfect 2, Steinfeld was signed to Republic Records. She had always been interested in singing, but as she told The Guardian, “The music became more of a side-project over the years, and I would write and record, and I would record covers, just so that I could get the feel of being in the studio. Pitch Perfect 2 was what I used as the perfect bridge into making music, because it felt like it made sense. It wasn’t necessarily random in terms of: here I am as an actor, now I’m releasing music. It was like: here is something I also really love to do.”
Steinfeld made her debut on the Hot 100 with “Love Myself,” which peaked at No. 30 in 2015. “It was everything I wanted for a first single. It was bold. It was a reminder to myself how much self-love and self-confidence means and how important that is.”
Steinfeld returned to the Hot 100 in 2016 with “Starving,” recorded with the duo Grey and Zedd. Talking about the collaboration with iHeartRadio, Steinfeld said of Grey, “They are so incredible. They're extremely talented and I couldn't be happier that my [new] single is with them and with Zedd. I think being in the studio with him, being such a fan of him, was kind of just a surreal moment….He's so much fun, which is always kind of a thing when you're a fan of somebody and you're like, ‘Oh my god, I can't believe I'm working with them. This could actually be a terrible experience,’ but it was absolutely amazing."
Connie Stevens
Billboard reviewed the follow-up to Connie Stevens’ “Apollo,” a 1959 single that missed the chart, in the issue dated Dec. 28, 1959: “Another fine version of the pretty new ballad, whispered here by Connie Stevens. This version, too, is a contender. Flip: ‘Sixteen Reasons.’” That’s right, Billboard was critiquing the intended A-side, “Little Sister,” also released that same week by Cathy Carr. Fortunately for Stevens, radio preferred her B-side and “Sixteen Reasons” peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100.
Stevens was well-known when “Sixteen Reasons” hit the charts. She had already appeared on the Hot 100 in support of actor Edd Byrnes on his No. 4 hit in 1959, “Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb).” And like Byrnes, who was starring in the Warner Bros.-produced TV series 77 Sunset Strip, Stevens was starring in the studio’s other hit series, Hawaiian Eye, as Cricket, a nightclub singer and photographer.
Stevens was married for 18 months to singer Eddie Fisher, who had his own run of hits on the Billboard charts. Their second child, Tricia Leigh Fisher, also appeared on the Hot 100. Her Atco single “Empty Beach” peaked at No. 72 in 1990.
Patrick Swayze
The Dirty Dancing soundtrack yielded a number of hits on the Hot 100, including “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” by Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes, “Hungry Eyes” by Eric Carmen and “She’s Like the Wind” by the film’s star, Patrick Swayze, with featured vocals by Wendy Fraser.
But “She’s Like the Wind” was written for an earlier Swayze flick, Grandview, U.S.A. Songwriter Stacy Widelitz told The Tennessean: “(Swayze and I) became friends in his acting class and discovered that we lived right around the block from each other. So we started hanging out together. He was a very musical guy and was doing a movie called Grandview, U.S.A. with Jamie Lee Curtis and C. Thomas Howell. He called me up because he knew I was writing music for TV at the time. He said, ‘I have this idea for a song. I’ve been kicking it around for a while, and I can’t get anywhere with it, and they’re looking for songs for Grandview. Do you want to work on it with me?’” Swayze brought his guitar over to Widelitz’s apartment. “I was at the piano. He started playing the same chords over and over: C to E-minor, C to E-minor, and he had these opening lines that I liked, ‘She’s like the wind through my tree/She rides the night next to me.’ I found (that) intriguing. Then the third and fourth lines I didn’t like. He said, ‘What do you hear?’ and I just blurted out, ‘She leads me through moonlight/only to burn me with the sun.’ He said, ‘What does that mean?’ and I said, ‘I don’t care. Let’s just write it down and move on.’ We worked out some different chord changes and over the course of two or three days we hashed out the song.”
Wideltz forgot about the tune. Two years later Swayze called him from the North Carolina location of Dirty Dancing and said he played the demo of “She’s Like the Wind” for the film’s producers and they wanted it for the soundtrack. “We recorded the final version of the song with Michael Lloyd producing it, and the morning of the recording session he walked up to me and said, ‘Do you know what we’re doing today?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, we’re recording “She’s Like the Wind.”’ He said, ‘No! We are recording a major hit song.’ I said, ‘Call my mother and let her know because she won’t believe it.’”
John Travolta
“I’m from New Jersey,” John Travolta told Dick Clark on American Bandstand, “and in order to survive in New York City as an actor, you had to learn to sing and dance….I took voice lessons for three or four years.” During that same interview on April 10, 1976, Travolta talked to Clark about appearing in a touring company of Grease (long before he was cast in the film) and in a Broadway production of Over Here! He also revealed that he was about to do a film, Carrie. Travolta was also starring every week in the ABC sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter. Between 1974-1976 Travolta released a dozen singles, but it was his 13th 45rpm that marked his first appearance on the Billboard Hot 100: “Let Her In” peaked at No. 10 in July 1976.
Record producer and Midland International Records co-founder Bob Reno saw Travolta sing “Barbara Ann” on Kotter and signed him to his label, giving the actor who played Vinnie Barbarino his first hit.
Travolta had two even bigger hits in 1978 when his duets with Olivia Newton-John from the film version of Grease blasted on to the Hot 100. “You’re the One That I Want” topped the chart and “Summer Nights” peaked at No. 5.
John Farrar, who wrote and produced “You’re the One That I Want,” tells Billboard: “John was very easy to work with. I didn’t know what to expect but was surprised and relieved that he had such a good range and could reach the high notes easily. He didn’t know me at all, so having Olivia there was a great help as well. She kept encouraging him all through the session and helped make it fun for all of us.”
Tracey Ullman
In her native Britain, Tracey Ullman was already known as a TV star when she released her first album, You Broke My Heart in 17 Places. In 1981, Ullman was one of the stars of the sketch series A Kick Up the Eighties. That same year she was one of three comedians starring in Three of a Kind. Then she had a fateful meeting at her hairdresser’s salon, sitting next to the wife of Stiff Records founder Dave Robinson.
“Rosemary leaned over and said, ‘Do you want to make a record?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’d like to make a record,’” Ullman said in a documentary about the famed independent U.K. label. “I’d have tried anything. It was a good commercial project to have me make a record.” Ullman loved Kirsty MacColl’s 1979 British airplay hit, "They Don’t Know.” “I couldn’t stop playing it and got obsessed with the recording. Kirsty wrote great girl songs.”
MacColl’s original recording was quieter than Ullman’s pop treatment, which became her second single (following a cover of the Jackie DeShannon-Sharon Sheeley composition “Breakaway”) in the U.K. “They Don’t Know” peaked at No. 2 in 1983. When it was released in the U.S. in 1984 on the MCA label, Ullman was unknown in America, but that didn’t stop the single from peaking at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. It didn’t hurt that Paul McCartney made an appearance in the video.
Ullman had a total of six entries on the U.K. singles chart, but in the U.S. she only made one more Hot 100 appearance after “They Don’t Know,” with “Breakaway,” which stalled at No. 70, also in 1984. On April 5, 1987, the night that the Fox television network premiered, The Tracey Ullman Show debuted, making Ullman a household name, as well as the Simpsons, who were introduced in short one-minute cartoons that served as bumpers into commercials.
Dick Van Dyke
“I didn't discover dancing and singing until I was in my 30s,” Dick Van Dyke said on NPR. “It just happened out of nowhere. I regret that I didn't train a little or take some vocal coaching or something. But I just enjoyed what I had and had fun with it. If I had to go back, I'd train.”
Well known for the CBS sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show, which premiered in 1961, Van Dyke was cast in the 1963 film musical adaptation of Broadway’s Bye Bye Birdie. A year later, he starred opposite Julie Andrews in the Disney musical Mary Poppins.
Van Dyke told CNN he thought he got the part of Bert the chimney sweep “because I was such a great singer and dancer. As it turns out, [Walt Disney] heard me in an interview talking about what was happening to family entertainment. I was decrying the fact that it seemed like no holds were barred anymore in entertainment.... He knew about…our little sitcom, but that's why he called me in, because I said something he agreed with.”
Van Dyke sings on eight songs on the film’s soundtrack but only one made it to the Hot 100: “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” with Julie Andrews, peaked at No. 66 in 1965. That made Andrews and Van Dyke one-hit-wonders on the singles chart.
Jack Wagner
The soap opera star famous for his role in General Hospital took up the guitar at 14. He thought about becoming a pro golfer but a University of Arizona scholarship for acting sent him off in a different direction. In 1982 he was cast in A New Day in Eden, a racy soap opera that aired on Showtime. A year later, Wagner joined General Hospital in the role of Frisco Jones.
In 1984, Wagner signed a recording contract with Quincy Jones’ Qwest label. The first single he cut was “All I Need,” written by Glen Ballard, Clif Magness and David Pack. “It actually died its first time out,” Wagner told Wesley Hyatt in The Billboard Book of Number One Adult Contemporary Hits. “And then it caught on at Y-100 in Miami and spread all over the country to be a hit.”
On the Hot 100, “All I Need” had to settle for a No. 2 berth, unable to pass Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” But on the AC tally, “All I Need” spent two weeks at No. 1 in January 1985.
Mark Wahlberg
Mark Wahlberg and his brother Donnie had a reputation for being street corner breakdancers and rappers in their neighborhood of Dorchester, Mass. The brothers were recruited by producer Maurice Starr to be in a group called New Kids on the Block. “Me and Donnie were the only kids in the group at the time and we recorded a rap tune together,” Mark said in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits, adding, “I was the only one who couldn’t really sing. So why go to vocal lessons and try to learn something that I’m not into? I decided to do my own thing.” Donnie became world-famous in New Kids while Mark was getting into fights and shoplifting. Donnie called home from the road one night and promised Mark he would write a song for him. Donnie kept his word and a demo tape went out to record labels. Jimmy Iovine at Interscope loved the song “Good Vibrations” and had Mark record an album. Mark wanted “Wildside” to be the first single but Iovine went with “Good Vibrations,” which topped the Hot 100 in October 1991. Released as the follow-up, “Wildside” peaked at No. 10.
Wahlberg cleaned up his act and tried his hand at acting in Penny Marshall’s 1994 film Renaissance Man. Setting his recording career aside, he went on to star in films like Boogie Nights, The Perfect Storm, a Planet of the Apes remake, The Italian Job and many more.
Bruce Willis
A year after he performed the Olympics’ (and the Young Rascals') “Good Lovin’” on the “Atomic Shakespeare” episode of Moonlighting, Bruce Willis’ album The Return of Bruno was released on Motown. The LP had Willis adopting the alter ego “Bruno Radolini,” a blues singer. Willis asked Robert Kraft, a songwriter who has helmed albums for Linda Ronstadt, George Benson and Melissa Manchester, to produce the LP. Kraft recruited session singers and some well-known names like the Temptations and the Pointer Sisters to collaborate with Willis on the project. With an HBO mock documentary helping to promote the album, the lead single -- a cover of the Staple Singers’ No. 1 hit “Respect Yourself” -- sped to No. 5 on the Hot 100. The follow-up, a remake of the Coasters’ “Young Blood,” stopped at No. 68. Then an update of the Drifters’ “Under the Boardwalk” peaked at No. 59.
Two years later, Motown released Willis’ sophomore album, If It Don’t Kill You, It Just Makes You Stronger. The lead single, an update of another Drifters’ hit, “Save the Last Dance for Me,” failed to make an impact. Willis’ music career may not have continued, but he was just fine, starring in films like the Die Hard franchise, as well as box office hits like Death Becomes Her, 12 Monkeys and The Fifth Element.