The Chart King, Joel Whitburn, 1939 – 2022

He was the man that fueled millions of chart fanatics around the world. A man who never lost his love for Billboard or its many music charts. A man who took one small book and turned it into a small but beloved musical empire. Joel Whitburn, the founder of Record Research, passed away in his sleep on Tuesday June 14, he was 82 years old. His passion for music and for the Billboard music charts in particular spurred Joel to write his first book, the aptly titled “Record Research – The Billboard Hot 100 Chart 1958-1969”  in 1970. Since then,

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TKR – The Past, The Present…and the FUTURE

So over the past several months, I’ve been really thinking about what I have always wanted my music site to be, and over the last couple of weeks, I’ve sat down and made some notes about things I want to change, things I want to upgrade, things I want to introduce and more. And I thought I’d talk a little bit about it with you. First off, I will be cleaning up the charts area of the site. I was recently looking at things, and as cool as it is to finally have (almost) all my years of personal charts

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Out with the old, in with the new…HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Hey all, I’m so sorry things just kinda went dark here in mid-September. I didn’t even do my annual Junior Eurovision coverage because of a bunch of issues in real life, I am so sorry about that. Things are finally settling down, and I’m able to get stock of things. However, it is the end of the year, and I will be starting the new year with a BANG! In addition to a slightly redesigned site logo, which made it’s debut a few weeks ago, I have also added TKR Video Central, the TKR YouTube channel, to the sidebar courtesy

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A lesson learned well: for RSD via online ordering, patience is a virtue…

So…once again this year, despite the fact that things are a little better out there and I am fully vaccinated, I decided to go the mail order route again for both Record Store Day 2021 drops. And I made a discovery: you do NOT have to get up and go stand in line to grab the hottest titles. You just have to have the patience for the time it takes for them to arrive in the mail. I got nearly everything I thought about picking up this year, including ALL of my MUST HAVE picks from BOTH RSD drops by

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Memo to digital stars: you NEED physical media to get the old school crowd.

Hey guys, as you well know I’m a huge fan of MUSIC. I enjoy music in all formats – LP, CD, CS, MP3, etc. But there are those fans out there – they’ve been at this for close to if not longer than I have – who have a strict rule: “If it’s not on (LP, CD, etc), I won’t listen to it.” Yes I do know that’s a very close-minded attitude to have in this age of digital music. But it’s also NOT a bad adage to live by, IF it pushes artists who only do digital to widen

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TKR on YouTube – TC will be appearing on “Cocktails & Vinyl” Tonight!

Hi all! I will be guesting on my friend Adam’s vinyl series “Cocktails & Vinyl” this evening! This is an ongoing series where Adam welcomes guests from the Record Krate community in to talk about collecting. I will be joining two of my fellow collectors, Shawn D and Kurt Johnson, in the discussion – collectively, we are known as the “Darn Brothers”, a nickname given to us by another community member who noticed that on Adam’s regular live sales if we were interested in the same item, whomever didn’t make it in on time would usually exclaim “Darn it!” The

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