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>>celebrate the 75th anniversary of “I’ve Heard That Song Before” reaching Number One on the Billboard pop chart. It wasn’t merely at the top for this particular week in 1943; it was Number One for the entirety of March, the entirety of April, and the entirety of May - and then, after being briefly supplanted by “That Old Black Magic” for a solitary se’nnight, it returned to the top for a last hurrah in June.

There was a recording ban at the time (for union musicians). Some had stockpiled tracks to be released but it was a stifling time in the music industry (and some say it opened the door for hillbilly, er country western, and race records, er rhythm and blues, to slowly take over the charts (with their child, rock and roll).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1942–44_musicians%27_strike

Beginning at midnight, July 31 1942, no union musician could make commercial recordings for any commercial record company.[1] That meant that a union musician was allowed to participate on radio programs and other kinds of musical entertainment, but not in a recording session. The 1942–44 musicians’ strike remains the longest strike in entertainment history.

The strike did not affect musicians performing on live radio shows, in concerts, or, after October 27, 1943, on special recordings made by the record companies for V-Discs for distribution to the armed forces fighting World War II, because V-Discs were not available to the general public. However, the union did frequently threaten to withdraw musicians from the radio networks to punish individual network affiliates who were deemed “unfair” for violating the union’s policy on recording network shows for repeat broadcasts.

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https://libcom.org/history/1942-1944-musicians-recording-ban

1942-1944: US musicians recording ban

The musicians’ union called a ban on all commercial recordings, as part of a struggle to get royalties from record sales for a union fund for out-of-work musicians.

The union, the American Federation of Musicians, led by trumpeter James Petrillo, had previously opposed the recording of music, or “canned music”. Musicians were replaced with records in radio, and in cafes and bars bands were replaced with jukeboxes.

For over a year no music was recorded by unionised musicians in America. The only important group of musicians not part of the union was the Boston Symphony.

Record companies recorded as much music as they could in the run up to the strike and released this backlog through, but also resorted to re-releasing old recordings. Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby were among the singers that had to release singles without musical accompaniment (vocalists were not in the union as they were not considered musicians). One record company recorded and released Shakespeare’s Othello when they had no music to release.

...Decca and Capitol gave into the AFM in 1943, RCA Victor and Columbia held out but eventually backed down in 1944, and the recording ban ended.