neal umphred

In 1936, Joseph Murrells began working for the BBC as a music librarian. From 1945, Murrells was a freelance music researcher and built one of the most comprehensive music libraries in the world. The aim of this book was to set out in chronological order every record which has been “reliably” reported to have sold more than one million copies worldwide. I placed the “reliably” in quotes because we only have the result of Mr. Murrells’ research, not all his data.—and I admit that some of the numbers he states sound just plain wrong. That said, I have referred to this book hundreds of times over the past few decades — which alone should stand as a recommendation to anyone who knows my work — and never found his assessments to be excessive, no matter how crazy they seemed at first. A must for anyone researching the sales of records from the 20th century.