These posts are about the songs that fell just short of crossing the key line of chart success, entering the Billboard Top 40. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 41.

Ralph Bass wasn’t sure why the Platters weren’t having much chart success. Bass became the vocal group’s manager not long after they formed, in the early nineteen-fifties, and he oversaw their career through the release of several singles on Federal Records. Eventually, Bass asked his friend Buck Ram to provide coaching for the Platters. Ram wrote several songs for the group and tinkered with their lineup, most significantly by convincing the fellas to add Zola Taylor as a female vocalist to give a different flavor to their harmonies. The Platters asked Ram to be their manager, and he was instrumental in getting them signed to Mercury Records, insisting they were part of the deal when the label wanted to ink the Penguins, another group Ram managed.

The Platters’ fortunes improved immediately at Mercury. Their very first record with the label was a rerecording of “Only You (And You Alone),” which had gone unreleased when they’d previously taken a pass at it for Federal. The single climbed all the way up to #5 on the Billboard chat. For a follow-up, the Platters recorded a song that Ram had dashed off in an effort to capitalize on the group’s suddenly success. That tune, “The Great Pretender,” topped the Billboard Top 100, in early 1956. The Platters were chart mainstays for the next few years, including three more trips to the pinnacle position.

In May of 1959, the group released “Remember When,” a deeply lovelorn song written by Ram. Coming just a few months after “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” the band’s fourth and final chart-topper, the single seemed to hit the bittersweet spot that had defined the group’s recent successes. Although the song got a hearty promotional push, complete with the group performing it in the Roger Corman quickie Carnival Rock, it didn’t quite catch on, falling short of the Top 40. If anyone missed the Platters’ version, they could find the songwriter’s own take on the album The Magic Touch of Buck Ram and His Orchestra, released at around the same time.

There was no reason to believe the lackluster performance of “Remember When” was a signal that the Platters were falling out of favor. Their next single, “Enchanted,” nearly made the the Top 10. The true change in fortune came a few months later. The four men in the band were arrested in Cincinnati because they were caught dallying with four nineteen-year-old women in their hotel room. The charges didn’t stick, but the upward trajectory of their then-current single “Where” was halted after radio stations across the country excised the record from their playlists. The outrage didn’t last long enough to prevent the Platters from taking the song “Harbor Lights” into the Billboard Top 10 the following year. Even so, the steadiness of their hits started to lag around that time, even before the British Invasion completely transformed the predominant sounds of the pop charts.

Other entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Top 40 Smash Near Misses” tag.