On October 12, 1996, "Rapper/songwriter/producer Puff Daddy (Sean "Puffy" Combs) made his R&B chart debut with "No Time," reaching #9 and #18 pop."

"The record was billed "Lil' Kim featuring Puff Daddy. Combs would later form the successful Bad Boy record label and go on to have forty-two R&B hits through 2004."

This clean "Diddy" factoid is just one of the over two thousands listed chronologically by calendar date from January through December and well researched in Jay Warner's outstanding On This Day In Black Music History paperback.

I've used Warner's resource for years to get a deeper perspective on artist activities, events and birthdays by year.

Once upon a time, paper ruled. You could be confident that the trust-worthy writers presented reliable, accurate information.

As we continue the migration from paper to digital, phony author credentials, artificial intelligence, and fake facts often pollute many oceans of online resources.

I present these four paper books that are a treasure trove of twentieth and twenty first century information.

 

 

 

Who is Joel Whitburn?

Mr. Joel Whitburn, (1939 - 2022), is the author and publisher of 174 music reference books. He produced 150 Billboard Top Hits music compilations.

Although he is not credited, I'm sure his research contributed to the 1996 Billboard Music Guide CD-ROM for Windows that is in our archive.

A CD-ROM with certain music information gets dated quickly. This CD-ROM features:

• Rock, Pop, R&B, Jazz, New Age, Blues, Country, Bluegrass, Rap (Hip Hop)
• 60,000 albums from over 4,000 artists
• 1,000 audio sampling clips
• 38,000 album reviews
• More than 8,000 album covers
• Billboard 200 charts from 1956 - 1995
• 900 artist photos
• 50 video clips
• Billboard and Musician articles and interviews

The Favorite

In recent years, seven of Joe Whitburn's books are published in the eBook format.

The Whitburn paperback book I use the most is this one: The Billboard Book of Top 40 R&B and Hip-Hop Hits seen below.

Every artist is listed from A to Z with all of their Billboard charted hits, weeks on the charts, birthdays, mini biographies, and other interesting facts.

I recently added to our collection Joel Whitburn's Top 10 R&B Hits; A Listing By Artist of Every Top 10 Hit + 69 Annual Rankings (paperback).

Puff Daddy / P. Diddy / Diddy as he is catalogued inside has 17 of his charted hits listed. Diddy is not in the top 50 of what Whitburn calls the Kings and Queens of R&B's Top 10 Hits 1942 - 2010.

Ludacris is at #33 with 22 top tens. Jay-Z is at #38 with 20 top tens. 

Finally, there is the huge Joel Whitburn's Pop Annual 1950 - 2023 hard cover. It is 925 pages of music history magic, weighing in at just under 6 pounds. Quite a baby.  Another top hat nod to Billboard.

Note that the cover photos feature the main formats of commercially available chart hits (1950 - 2023).

1. 78 rpm
2. 7" vinyl record
3. Cassette single
4. CD single
5. Digital download or streaming

You can learn more about Joel Whitburn at recordresearch.com.

 

Bonus: Below is the screenshot of the first image you see when you attempt to install the 1996 Billboard Music Guide CD-ROM digitally developed for Windows 95!

It loads in Windows 11, but won't go any further than the intro screen, even if I try to use the operating system 'compatibility mode!'

I used this Billboard Music Guide CD-ROM a lot between 2000 - 2009.

Still curious while writing this update, I tried the CD-ROM on an old Windows 7 machine. Using just sub folders from the Billboard disk, I could play the audio clips.

Unfortunately, the old file compression codec (coder - decoder) is not compatible with newer Windows systems (that you need to install/access the rest of the CD-ROM).

The audio clips also played on Windows 10 and 11 machines. The CD-ROM jewel case says that there are 1,000 audio sampling clips. There are actually 1,027. All of them are 15 seconds or less. Fidelity is very good.

At least in 2025, these clips 'live' in the 'MPG' format and are still playable.

Check out more music artist related books featuring some of my reviews here on the Powerhouse Radio Website.

Also recommended on this blog is my review of Kiana Fitzgerald's Ode To Hip-Hop: 50 Albums that define 50 Years of Trailblazing Music. Check it out.

 

Previous Post | Next Post