← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
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- [00:00]
Chris Melanfi
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Hey there Hit Parade listeners. What you're about to hear is Part one of this episode. Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. It supports not only this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com hitparade+ you'll get to hear every hit Hit Parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus Hit Parade the Bridge, our bonus episodes with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again to join, that's slate.com hit parade plus thanks and now please enjoy part one of this hit Parade episode. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfi, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why is this song number one series on today's show. 27 years ago in February 1996, a former college bar band from Columbia, South Carolina was performing this song on television live from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. The song was called I'm Going Home. But this foursome wasn't going home anytime soon. They were on the Grammy Awards, not only performing a track from their 12 times platinum album, but also winning statuettes, including the coveted Best New Artist prize. They'd had an awfully good year. Hootie and the Blowfish, a band formed at the University of South Carolina in the 1980s and fronted by a gifted vocalist named Darius Rucker, had succeeded beyond anyone's wildest imaginations. Their own Atlantic Records, the A and R man who'd signed them to Atlantic, and most especially an army of 90s rock critics who found Houdy's music mild, derivative and inexplicably popular, Hooty and the Blowfish had the last laugh. The band not only had the top selling album of 1995, but one of the best sellers of the decade, outselling any album by the bands that had paved the way for Hootie. From Pearl Jam to Toad the Wet Sprocket to REM. Indeed, Hootie were arguably the culmination of a decade of catchy college rock incubated in the southern United states during the 1980s. In the mid-90s, this brand of pop friendly rock picked up where grunge and alternative left off. By the mid-90s, a lot of mainstream rock sounded a lot like Hootie and the Blowfish. But when Hoodie's moment passed at the end of the 90s. Really, it was even faster than that. Frontman Darius Rucker had a unique problem finding a genre to call his own. Already an anomaly in 90s, ROC, Rucker spent the decade after Hooty's freak success seeking a format for his unique voice. It would take a few false starts before Rucker finally found a new home. In another form of, let's call it Southern heritage music that hadn't incubated a new black solo singer in decades.
- [05:07]
Darius Rucker
You've got to kiss an angel good morning and let her know you think about her when you're gone.
- [05:16]
Chris Melanfi
Amazingly, in the 21st century, Darius Rucker found himself a chart topper all over again in a completely different genre, and he brought many of the fans who'd loved his 90s work along for the ride. Today on Hit Parade, we recount the singular journey of Hootie and the Blowfish, and it's hard to categorize. Singer Darius Rucker's career is a prime example of how chart success is a product of musical trend and how the very idea of genre, with all the racial and cultural signifiers that come with it, can be a slippery thing. Rucker didn't want to fit in any one box, but he played the genre game by both abiding by the rules of the music business and defying them, something he was doing from Hoodie's very first hit, which broke into the top 10 this week nearly three decades ago. And that's where your hit parade marches today, the week ending February 18, 1995, when Hold My Hand by Hooty and the Blowfish reached its peak on Billboard's Hot 100 of 10. After a slow, steady climb, it kicked off an improbable year of mega stardom for the mellow, unassuming four man South Carolina band that would see them command the charts, win Grammys, become a plot point on America's first friendliest sitcom, and redefine the sound of the radio around their easy brand of jangly rock. And that was just the beginning of Darius Rucker's multi decade odyssey through the gauntlet of the record biz and its music format pigeonholes. How did Hootie blow up in the 90s? And how did Rucker not only survive the fallout but thrive in the new millennium? So there I was a few Months ago in October 2022 at Williams Bryce Stadium in Columbia, South Carolina. Attending a matchup between the home team, the South Carolina Gamecocks, and their rivals, the Texas A M Aggies. I am not a big college football fan, but I had been invited to the University of South Carolina as a guest lecturer to talk about my podcast and my pop chart analysis beat to the students and faculty of U of sc. And when they invited me to attend a game, I thought, well, when in Rome. And the pre game spectacle did not disappoint. Marching bands, flag bearers, dancing mascots, pyrotechnics, a towel waving ritual to some jittery edm. And that's all before the Gamecock players took the field. Seriously, friends, especially if you're a sports naif like me, Southeastern Conference football will blow your mind. Anyway, amid all this pre game pomp and circumstance, minutes before the game was set to start, I was suddenly captivated by the Jumbotron, which was flashing Folks, I swear I am not making this up Billboard Chart Data. As Hooty and the Blowfish's Hold My Hand echoed across the stadium, The Jumbotron informed us that way back in 1995, Hootie's album Cracked Rear View had, quote, taken Billboard's number one spot and dominated that year's charts. These Billboard news flashes alternated with video of the band favorite sons of U of SC performing their breakthrough hit. Throughout Williams Bryce Stadium, thousands of students, faculty and alumni were swaying and singing along with Darius Rucker's mighty baritone. I mean, go figure. If your school had incubated a band that for one year commanded America's charts, you too might still be crowing about it 27 years later at a football game. This was I discovered a thing at U of SC Two days earlier, I'd been asked by the school to give a talk at the Columbia, South Carolina local library, and my host from the university specifically suggested that I offer some chart analysis, hit parade style of Hooty's and Rucker's chart feats. I had a great time, but frankly, it was the most I'd thought about these guys in decades.
- [11:45]
Darius Rucker
She sits alone by lamp post.
- [11:52]
David Letterman
Trying.
- [11:53]
Darius Rucker
To find a thought that escaped.
- [11:57]
Chris Melanfi
Of course, I am not alone. For an act that sold as many records as they did, Hootie and the Blowfish are somewhat slept on nowadays. Outside of South Carolina, of course. In a 2019 interview with the New York Times, John Caramonica the band members, singer Rucker, guitarist Mark Bryan, bassist Dean Felber, and drummer Jim Sony Sonefeld said they were mystified and hurt, frankly, that a 2017 CNN documentary about music in the 1990s didn't even mention them, despite the fact that Cracked Rear View was one of the decade's ten best selling albums. But then, Hooty were never cool, not even when they were popular. They were a band who dressed normcore before that had a name and their aesthetic was beer and golf. I'll admit in the 90s I made my share of snoozy and the Blandfish jokes. Only fairly recently have some critics tried to restore the band's standing in music history. John Caramonica at the Times has been a one man Hootie rehabilitation machine, devoting several podcast episodes to the band, including this conversation with former Vibe magazine editor Hootie Fanck and former Hit Parade the Bridge guest Danielle Smith.
- [13:45]
John Caramonica
Everyone's wrong. Hooty's been great all along. I went to go double check for myself and in fact that's the case. But the essence of your takeaway is there's more going on within Darius than might be visible to the naked eye and naked ear, correct?
- [14:01]
Danielle Smith
Absolutely. I was won over. Like what, four notes in to anything.
- [14:07]
John Caramonica
He'S ever yeah, it's, it's his voice is too signature, it's too profound.
- [14:13]
Danielle Smith
He was kind of revolutionary to me. Like I just thought he was doing a thing that people thought that white people did.
- [14:20]
Chris Melanfi
Not to be too grand about it, but a lot of music history of the last 40 years is refracted through the Hootie and Rucker story. Even if you are not a fan of this band or its singer, chances are you're a fan of some part of the music. Music they touched and their chart feats were, however long they lasted, pretty remarkable, maybe even underrated. But before they could achieve those chart feats, Hooty and the Blowfish had to find each other. Years before they met on the campus of the University of South Carolina in the mid-1980s, Darius Rucker was absorbing a wide range of significant sounds. In his memoir, Only Wanna Be with you the inside story of Hootie and the Blowfish Tim Sommer, a musician and A and R man who would sign Hootie to Atlantic Records, tells the story of how Darius Rucker, a U of SC sophomore, first caught the ear of freshman and budding guitarist Mark Bryan. Mark overheard Darius singing Billy Joel's Honesty in the dorm shower.
- [15:51]
Tim Sommer
Honesty is hardly ever heard, and mostly what I do need from you.
- [16:00]
Chris Melanfi
Rucker, born in 1966 just outside of historic Charleston, had always defied the stereotype of what types of music a young black man would listen to. He loved a little bit of everything. As a child, flipping through his parents records, he gravitated toward the only two Beatles 45s in their collection I want to hold your hand and she loves.
- [16:29]
Tim Sommer
You, she loves you yeah, yeah, yeah she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah she loves you yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [16:39]
Chris Melanfi
He knew early on he wanted to be a singer, and so of course he loved singing along with his parents soul records including Al Green, Gladys Knight and Otis Redding. But later, in his tween and teen years, Rucker says he was playing lps by the hard rock band Kiss non stop and singing along with that. He especially loved Kiss's 1977 live album Alive too. By the 80s, when he was in his high school choir, Rucker's classmates would ask him to sing Kenny Rogers songs on the spot, and Darius obliged.
- [17:42]
Darius Rucker
You got to know when to hold up, know when to fold up Know when to walk away and know when.
- [17:52]
Chris Melanfi
To he was once suspended for a day from high school for driving into the school's parking lot with his Boston cassette at Full Blast. Quote I have always liked what I liked, rucker told Tim Summer for his memoir. I wasn't one of those kids who was listening to Kurtis Blow exclusively. I was listening to Journey and Boston and Kansas. And if you are a black kid in high school in the 80s, you are not supposed to be listening to that shit, unquote. So by the time Rucker got to college and was caught by Mark Bryan crooning Billy Joel in the shower, he had developed a truly eclectic array of influences. In their dorm and at the local beer joint, Darius and Mark would jam on songs by Simon and Garfunkel, Dire straits, Hank Williams Jr. And even the Commodores.
- [19:14]
Darius Rucker
I gave you my heart and I tried to make it happen.
- [19:22]
Chris Melanfi
But by the mid-80s, one band stood head and shoulders above all other influences in Rucker's and Brian's repertoire, a band from another college town just a little further south. Darius Rucker first heard REM While still in high school. Quote I remember it like it was yesterday, he told Tim Summer. I am sitting on my mom's bed watching MTV and South Central Rain by REM Comes on. And it was a moment for me that very same day I go buy that REM Cassette, and it blew my mind. It changed the way I heard music. After that, my ears were different. I was different. That band instantly became everything I wanted to be. From that moment forward, there was nothing more important in my life than R.E.M.
- [20:34]
Tim Sommer
Sorry, sorry.
- [20:42]
Chris Melanfi
In interviews and in his memoir, Tim Summer has made the argument that REM and the entire Southern alternative rock sound was what spawned Hootie and the Blowfish. More than the classic rock Rucker and his bandmates grew up with. We discussed in our REM B52S episode of Hit Parade. Towns like Athens, Georgia were incubators for a jangly rock that fused the economy of punk with the country rock of Graham Parsons into an indie music that defined the 80s. Summer points not only to the Athens Foursome REM but also to the Winston Salem, North Carolina bands let's active. And the dbs. As formative for the 80s jangly indie rock scene. Indeed, founding dB's member Peter Holsapple would later play as a touring guitarist with both REM And Hootie and the Blowfish. When Darius Rucker got into REM they were still on an independent label and considered the avatars of quirky college rock. Through high school and college, Rucker considered each new R.E.M album an event. He rushed to not only hear the songs, but learn to sing and play them. So when he and Mark Bryan expanded their act circa 1986 and 87, adding bassist Dean Felber as well as a drummer named Brantley Smith, and the band began playing clubs around South Carolina, R.E.M songs were a core part of their act. We were basically an REM Cover band, rucker told Summer at one point. We were playing 12 REM songs in our set fire. By then, the band that was briefly known as the Wolf Brothers, when it was just Rucker and Brian, had finally picked their name. And about that name, which even the band members admit is pretty stupid, no one in the band is Hootie, least of all Rucker. Hooty and the Blowfish were nicknames of two U of SC students Rucker was friends with, who were always seen on campus together. When the band couldn't come up with a better name, at one point they were considering the even worse name Black and Blue, which was meant to indicate their black lead singer and their three Blue Eyed Band members, Hootie and the Blowfish. It was. For the first few years, Hooty sets were mostly covers, like this 80s folk punk classic by the Violent Femmes or the Jams in the City or obscurities like the 3 o' clock's I Go Wild, plus all the REM tracks. It took a while for the band to feel confident writing their own material. Early Hootie compositions like I Don't Understand were redolent with their Southern alt rock influences. As Tim Sommer points out in his book, a competent college band like Hootie could make a very good living on the road, especially in the mid south and Atlantic coast regions. Even as the Blowfish members graduated college in 1988 and 89, they continued to play together as they began receiving offers outside of South Carolina, as far north as West Virginia and Washington, D.C. but the band's major creative breakthrough came in the fall of 1989, when original drummer Brantley Smith, uninterested in life on the road, amicably left the band to pursue Christian ministry. He was replaced by Jim Sony. Sonnefeld, a slightly older U of SC graduate who'd played drums in goth rock and classic rock bands and this Is Key, was also a budding songwriter, and Sony came armed with a really catchy song that his previous bands had turned down. To Sony, its primary songwriter, Hold My Hand was about compassion in a cruel world. To Darius Rucker, who heard it for the first time at Sony's debut rehearsal with the band, Hold My Hand was a protest song. Rucker had already spent college enduring racial epithets at the frat houses and bars he and his white bandmates played, and he relied on Mark and Dean to have his back. To Rucker, the song was defined defiant about love in the face of hatred. Whatever it was, Hold My Hand was a rousing sing along, a hit in the making. It was also completely out of step with where rock music was headed at the start of the 1990s. Punk and post punk noise rock and no wave acts like Sonic Youth were the bleeding edge of alternative rock. At the turn of the 90s, this East coast dissonance fused with the metallic sludge coming from the Pacific Pacific Northwest to form grunge led by Nirvana. These acts, Sonic Youth and Nirvana, have been managed and signed to major label contracts by an executive named Danny Goldberg, who is widely credited with shepherding Nirvana toward their multi platinum success. Not long after Nirvana's breakthrough, Goldberg was recruited to Atlantic Records, a label that had fallen behind in the alternative rock sweepstakes. And one of Goldberg's first moves at Atlantic was to hire into his artists and repertoire or A and R department a musician who at the time might have been even hipper than Sonic Youth. Tim Sommer, a rock critic turned bassist for the 80s art rock band Hugo Largo and the author of the memoir I've been citing throughout this episode, is seemingly the most incongruous person in the Hooty and the Blowfish story. A traveler in New York hipster circles who'd written for alt rock bible Trouser Press and played with no Wave pioneer Glenn Branca, Summer had serious indie cred. The debut EP by Hugo Largo a band with, by the Way too bassists, a violinist and no drums or guitars, was produced by REM's Michael Stipe. Summer even had a brief stint hosting MTV's late night alternative video show Postmodern MTV. Here you can hear him with his friend Stipe.
- [29:57]
Michael Stipe
Welcome back to Postmodern. I'm Tim, this is Michael. Michael, we're gonna see a new video now from the 10,000 Maniacs. It's called E for Two. It's directed by Adam Bernstein, who's a guy I worked with.
- [30:06]
Chris Melanfi
If nothing else, Tim Sommer was well connected, even if he might seem an odd fit for A and R at a major label. Danny Goldberg brought him in to beef up Atlantic's alternative roster and early on Summer did champion Seattle based punk bands the Gits and Seven Year Bitch. But then he heard Hooty and the Blowfish, who'd been, by the way, very busy while grunge was taking over the charts. In 1990 and 91, Hoodie recorded two cassette EPs with Raleigh, North Carolina based on producer Dick Hodgin that doubled as demo tapes for the band. The tapes contained many of the songs that would wind up on Hoodie's major label albums, including Hold My Hand and Let Her Cry. The band were honing their sound as a melodic, pub friendly version of the REM sound at a time when, by the way, REM had made the leap from the left of the dial to the top of the charts in 1991. They're out of Time was a number one album, So in theory, mainstream REM jangle should have been marketable circa 1991. But with grunge getting all the attention from 91 through 93, Hooty still seemed too mellow for major labels on the hunt. As the Tim Sommer eloquently says in his book, Hooty and the Blowfish were playing hacky sack music in the age of flannel. Hooty's efforts to get signed to a major label were frustrated and almost comically ill fated. One label, the MCA affiliated Gasoline Alley, which would later sign Sublime, offered Hoodie a deal that they ultimately turned down because they'd already made a handshake deal with JRS Records, a label affiliated with RCA. After they traveled to Los Angeles in 1991 to sign formally with JRS, one of its lead executives decided he didn't like the band and pulled their studio funding, essentially nullifying the deal. Finally, fed up with these west coast machinations, Hooty took the money from a small JRS settlement and recorded their official debut EP themselves, and it had more early versions of future hit songs. In the tradition of this band picking terrible names for things, they call their EP Coochie Pop, after a term comedian Shirley Hemphill coined for female genitalia in a thong bikini. It seemed funny at the time. Here was the thing. Dopey title and all, Coochie Pop sold amazingly well regionally across the States, where hoodie played clubs, frats and sororities, the album shifted 25,000 copies, a stunning figure for a self released CD. Between that revenue and their live gigs, for which Hooty were Now commanding between five and $10,000 a show, the band pulled down more than $300,000 in 1993 alone. And that whole year they still weren't signed to a label. Tim Summer aimed at to change all that. When he finally saw the band in mid September 1993 at a gig in Charleston, South Carolina. He was the only A and R guy in the crowd. He basically couldn't believe his luck. A regionally popular band packing clubs all along the eastern seaboard that had sold tens of thousands of CDs on their own. Why wouldn't a major label want this band? Through the grunge feeding frenzy of 1991 through 93, mainstream rock bands like Hootie had basically been ignored. Listening to the band for the first time in 1993, Summer was reminded of several 80s antecedents. The songwriting and production reminded him of Heartland rocker John Mellencamp. Of course, the jangly guitars and Southern college rock sensibility reminded him of REM. And just a bit Darius Rucker's throaty, growly voice reminded Summer of Eddie Vedder, the lead singer of Pearl jam, who by 1993 were basically the biggest band on the charts.
- [36:39]
Darius Rucker
And all I taught her was everything.
- [36:46]
Chris Melanfi
Quote something in me said. Huh? Eddie Vedder. Plus life's rich pageant era, REM Summer later wrote, and a bit like college rock Mellencamp. Yep. Huh. That's kind of interesting. Unquote. This inspired Summer enough to sign the band to Atlantic that very night in Charleston. What Summer does not mention in his memoir but is equally apt to explaining how Hooty finally got over was that so called alternative rock was mutating by late 93 into 94.
- [37:31]
Tim Sommer
I'll apologies.
- [37:41]
Chris Melanfi
Even the grunge bands like Nirvana on their MTV Unplugged set were getting quieter, more acoustic on Pearl Jam's late 93 sophomore album versus the biggest radio hits were built around a more rustic acoustic sound. Moreover, brighter, more upbeat sounding tracks were starting to top the alternative charts. Whether it was the Van Morrison style classic rock of Counting crows with their 93 modern rock number two hit Mr. Jones, The Americana infused jangle pop of the Gin Blossoms, who topped the modern rock chart in early 94 with found out about you. Or Toad the Wet Sprocket, a band Hooty and the Blowfish would befriend and later Tour with in mid 94 they too topped the modern rock chart for a month and a half with Fall Down, When Will He Fall Down? Especially after Kurt Cobain's tragic suicide in the spring of 1994, a sad but key pivot point in the evolution of alt rock, radio programmers and fans were increasingly turning toward this perkier, less dour music. Mind you, Tim Summer could not have anticipated most of this when he signed Hootie and the Blowfish in the fall of 93, and it took until the spring of 94 for Hootie to get into the studio to record their full length debut album. Appropriately enough, the producer Tim Sommer selected was Don Gaiman, who in the 80s had produced both John Mellencamp Nobody Told.
- [40:09]
Tim Sommer
Us It Was Gonna Work out this.
- [40:17]
Chris Melanfi
And rem. The Hoodie album was packed with songs the band had recorded for their independent EPs, including all three future hit singles. For the re recording of Hold My Hand, Atlantic managed to secure none other than David Crosby to provide backing vocals on the chorus rest in peace, Mr. Crosby. Despite the album's good time vibe, the group also included more pointed lyrics influenced by the racism Darius Rucker had experienced, such as the punchy protest song Drowning, on which Rucker decried the Confederate flags still flying at the South Carolina state House in Columbia, And the outcome album closed with a solo vocal showcase for Rucker, an acapella take on the slavery era spiritual Motherless Child. When it came time to title the album yet again, Hooty chose something potentially dubious. Many came to regard Cracked Rear View as a puerile butt joke, but it was in fact a quote of a very poignant lyric from a 1987 John Hyatt song, a metaphor about a car's actual rear view mirror.
- [42:16]
Darius Rucker
There was a life that I was.
- [42:18]
Chris Melanfi
Living.
- [42:21]
Darius Rucker
In some cracked rear view.
- [42:25]
Chris Melanfi
Expectations for Cracked Rear View were exceedingly modest. An oft repeated story about Nirvana was that their 1991 major label debut, Nevermind, was only expected to sell as well as the last Sonic Youth album, a benchmark that came to seem absurd when Nevermind sold 10 million copies. Similarly, the word around Atlantic Records in 1994 was that maybe Hootie and the Blowfish could sell as well as the roots rock band the Jayhawks, who'd come nowhere near the top 40.
- [43:10]
Tim Sommer
It was not lost on me. It was not lost.
- [43:16]
Chris Melanfi
Hootie and the Blowfish had been signed for a very meager advance, making the band a low risk prospect for Atlantic. But even so, their debut was met with skepticism, even disinterest across the label. When Atlantic's head of A R heard Cracked, he wanted to shelve it, calling it, quote, unreleasable. Even after he was overruled and it was issued in July 1994. When the CD failed to sell outside of the south in its first two months, some at Atlantic wanted to drop Hootie. That's when an unexpected TV savior arrived.
- [44:02]
David Letterman
Ladies and gentlemen, our next guest, sir, one of my favorite new bands. Their debut album is entitled Cracked Rear View. I have a copy of it right here in the very popular CD format. Here now to perform a great song. Are you boys ready? Oh, yeah. Is everyone ready? Is. Is Hootie ready? Ladies and gentlemen, Hootie and the Blowfish.
- [44:25]
Chris Melanfi
In the late summer of 1994, legendary late shadow show host David Letterman happened to catch a Hootie and the Blowfish song on the radio, and he asked to book the band. At a time when Atlantic wasn't even promoting Hootie to late night tv. It was the band's first national showcase. To this day, Darius Rucker says, quote, letterman made our career and we can never thank him enough. Unquote. Through late August, Cracked Rear View had been languishing on the lower rungs of the Billboard 200 album chart. The week after the Letterman performance, The album leapt 30 places, then broke into the top half of the chart the following week. By October, Cracked Rear View was in the top 50 and hold my Hand had finally cracked, no pun intended, the Hot 100. Even with the Letterman boost, the album and the single rose gradually. Hold My Hand didn't break into the top 40 on the Hot 100 until mid December, by which time Cracked Rear View had gone gold. It was only in 1995 that the album finally achieved escape velocity, and then everything sped way up. In February, Cracked made the top 10 on the Billboard 200 and went platinum, by which time Hold My Hand was in the top 10 on the singles chart. A month later, Atlantic issued the impassioned ballad Let Her Cry as the second single.
- [46:31]
Darius Rucker
And just let her cry. If the tears fall down like me let her sing.
- [46:42]
Chris Melanfi
And it was in the top 40. By April, the top 20 by May, before Let Her Cry even reached its peak of number nine, rock and Adult contemporary stations were jumping on the perky third single from the album, Only Wanna Be with you. With simultaneous singles on the rise for the week ending May 27, 1995, Cracked Rear View, in its 44th week on the Billboard 200 album chart, rose to number one and went quadruple platinum. The band that were too uncool to get signed at the peak of grunge were now the biggest band in America. Tim Summers pet project was in the right place at the right time, leading the mainstreaming and mellowing of jangly Americana. What had sounded cutting edge and postmodern coming from R.E.M. in the end 80s was now centrist rock and even pop in the mid 90s. It is often said that R.E.M. a band Kurt Cobain looked up to, helped spawn the breakthrough of Nirvana. The truth was R.E.M. also spawned Hooty and the Blowfish. Though they were not, strictly speaking, a jam band. Hootie in turn made the airwaves safe for a new generation of jammy and college friendly bands. Riding the charts Alongside Hootie by mid-1995 were the Dave Matthews Band, whose major label debut had just gone platinum, And Blues Traveler, who after languishing for several albums were finally scoring their first ever top 40 hits in 95. But none of these bands did as well as Hootie and the Blowfish. By the end of 1995, Cracked Rear View was certified for 12 million in sales. It was Billboard's number one album of the year over best sellers by Garth Brooks, Boyz II Men, TLC and Pearl Jamie. And by year's end it had spawned four Top 40 hits, including not only the Top 10's Hold My Hand and Let Her Cry, Only Wanna Be with youh became their biggest hit at number six and the final single, Time, eventually reached number 14. Understand.
- [50:14]
Darius Rucker
Children, Killing in the street.
- [50:15]
Chris Melanfi
Since 1996, Cracked has been certified for 16 million in sales and as of the late 2000 and tens when streaming was factored in, it was recertified at 21 times Platinum. According to the Recording Industry association of America. It's currently the 9th highest certified album in Chart 8 history. Now a rosy eyed optimist might say this was a heartening reflection of America. In the mid-90s, our top rock band was biracial, proffering a parade of hits sung by Darius Rucker, a black man with the passion of Eddie Vedder and the soul of Otis Redding. The band was selling to a predominantly, though not exclusively white audience in what were then not yet known as Red State and Blue states. But by 1996, when Hooty and the Blowfish would try to return with a highly anticipated follow up album, that rosy view would get rather cloudy. When our moments have Come when we come back, Hooty fall prey to the ACDC rule and hit a commercial wall, leaving Darius Rucker with the conundrum of what to do for a second act and which audience he should call his own. Non Slate plus listeners will hear the rest of this episode in two weeks. For now, I hope you've been enjoying this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfi. That's me. My producer is Kevin Bendis, Derek John is Executive Producer of Narrative Podcasts and Alicia Montgomery is VP of Audio for Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. We'll see you for part two in a couple of weeks. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Smilante.
- [52:58]
Darius Rucker
Now you walk by me. You won't talk to me.