Cashbox (magazine)

Cash Box is a defunct music industry trade magazine that was published weekly from July 1942 to November 1996. It has since been revived, as Cashbox Magazine, as an online-only weekly that occasionally publishes special print issues.^[1][2]

History

Cash Box was one of several magazines that published record charts in the United States. Its most prominent competitors were Billboard and Record World (known as Music Vendor prior to April 1964). Unlike Billboard, Cash Box initially combined all currently available recordings of a song into one chart position with artist and label information shown for each version, alphabetized by label. Originally, no indication of which version was the biggest seller was given, but from October 25, 1952, a star was placed next to the names of the most important artists. Cash Box also printed shorter jukebox charts which included specific artist data beginning in the spring of 1950. Separate charts were presented for juke box popularity, record sales, and radio airplay, similar to Billboard's methodology prior to August 1958, when Billboard debuted its "Hot 100," which attempted to combine all measures of popularity into one all-encompassing chart. In addition, Cash Box published chart data for specific genres, such as country music and R&B music.

Cashbox was revived as an Internet-only magazine in 2006 with the consent and cooperation of the family of George Albert, the late president and publisher of the original edition. Cashbox has occasionally issued special print editions.

As of April 2015, Cashbox Magazine has added the following music charts: Roots Music, Bluegrass Singles, Bluegrass Gospel Singles, Beach Music Top 40, Roadhouse Blues and Boogie Top 40, Country Christian Top 100 Singles, Southern Gospel Singles. The online magazine also relaunched the Looking Ahead Charts on March 1, 2015, covering all genres of music. The Cashbox Top 100 has been expanded to the Top 200. All chart data for the main Cashbox charts is provided by Digital Radio Tracker.

The current leadership of Cashbox includes Doug Stroud, Harold Miller, Christopher Elrod, John Hook, Tommy Smith, David Bowling, Randy Price, Father Jim Drucker, and Lee Vyborny. Featured columnists include Jim Rose and nationally syndicated music columnist, Jerry Osborne. The Cashbox legal advisor is Mike Duncan. Sandy Graham is CEO of Cashbox Canada. Shane and Robert Bartosh control the Roots data.

In 2013, Joel Whitburn's Record Research Inc. published a history of Cash Box pop chart data covering October 1952 through the 1996 demise of the original magazine. This followed its 2012 publication covering the historic chart data of Cashbox's online sister magazine Music Vendor/Record World. Randy Price maintains the original Cash Box data for the online archives.

The Swem Library at The College of William and Mary^[3] maintains the archive of the original print editions of Cash Box magazine.

Bruce Elrod is semi-retired but remains the registered agent for Cashbox.

The Chicago blues band the Cash Box Kings credit the magazine for their name.

Cashbox now operates out of Ridgeway, South Carolina. ^[4]

Controversy

Richard “Tony” D’Antonio was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Cash Box magazine Chart Director, Kevin Hughes on March 9, 1989. Prosecutors maintained that Hughes was shot and killed because he was attempting to clean a crooked business practice. D’Antonio had worked with Chuck Dixon, a record promoter and former Cash Box employee who died in 2001. According to testimonies, Dixon was angered that Hughes attempted to halt a scheme that allowed promoters and artists to pay Dixon for a position on the Cash Box chart. During a trial in September 2003, witnesses testified that D’Antonio collected bribes up to $2,000 to make sure a single charted.^[5]

References

External links

Look up cashbox in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Cashbox Magazine, Inc. Current publishers' official site
• Cashboxmagazine.com (Archive)
• Sos.sc.gov
• Cash Box from the College of William and Mary's Earl Gregg Swem Library
• Archive of issues of Cash Box from americanradiohistory.com. Issues are being added to the site.