Belfast's First Pop Star

[Teddy O'Neil]

To mark the 400th anniversary of the city of Belfast, the Belfast Telegraph has to-day published a supplement -"Brilliant Belfast - 400 facts you never knew". One of the facts; "Ruby Murray - Belfast's first pop star." As well as a brief resume of her life and career, the article states:- "Her domination of the 1955 hit parade was only matched by Madonna's hits tally 30 years later."

I would disagree with this statement although Madonna can undoubtedly claim to be the best selling female artist of all time. She seems to have had 5 UK hits in 1985 but they were not all at the same time, and I therefore feel that Ruby's 5 chart hits in the same week is unsurpassed.

Cheers, Ted

[Bernie Burgess]

Hello Teddy,

I agree with what you say about Ruby and Madonna although I must add that both Gerald and I went deeply into these incorrect facts about Madonna and we found that although Madonna had many hit records SHE DIDN'T EVER HAVE FIVE HIT RECORDS IN THE CHARTS ALL AT THE SAME TIME, she only had THREE records in the charts at the same time which is a long way short of Ruby's world record, a record which Ruby rightly still holds as her very own WORLD RECORD>

[Gerald Lawrence]

It is very tiresome when a distorted fact gets repeated over and over again by someone who has not bothered to check out the truth. I agree with you totally Ted and Bernie,

Madonna never did have the same number of hits in the Top Twenty in the same week.

People forget to add the words "in the Top Twenty" [in Madonna's time the Top Forty was frequently used as the benchmark], "in the same week" [frequently a month or even a year is used, in which case let us hear it for Ruby - she had in 1955 hits in the Top Twenty numbering 7 (8 if you count "The Very First Chrismas of All" which was not in the official chart but made the Record Mirror chart for the week before Christmas).

I am afraid that one of the perpetrators of this myth about Madonna was made by Terry Wogan on BBC TV and it seems it just carries on being repeated. One of our members (JK) made direct contact with no other place than the Guinness Book of Records and received a direct answer - "Only Ruby Murray has ever had 5 hits in the Top Twenty in the Same Week".

Setting that aside for one moment, I have just uploaded to the Library (Miscellaneous Images section) two pictures of the cover of the Belfast Telegraph publication. The photograph from which the picture is taken is already in our Library (item 577) and it looks good on the cover.

[MARTIN FOSTER]

Thanks Ted, Bernie and Gerald for clarifying this information for us!