TN Radio: WDVW's Tom Mapes Collects The Hits

Tom Mapes (Jackson, TN Sun photo)

While some collected baseball cards for a hobby, Tom Mapes of Humbolt, TN made it his business, or passion, to collect every hit record Billboard anointed as No. 1 — all 1,075 — and growing.

The Jackson, TN Sun reports the numbers skyrocket when boxes of albums, singles, compactdiscs and eight-track tapes he has accumulated are inventoried of basically every recording artist from A to Z.

“I’ve always had a love for music, especially Top 40, and I grew up in the ’50s when rock and roll began in the summer of 1955,” Mapes said. “Bill Haley and the Comets (‘Rock Around the Clock’) had the first No. 1 record on the Billboard music charts.”

“Billboard was the Bible of the music magazines, the Sporting News of the music business industry,” Mapes said. “When I was a kid, I could not wait for the mail to come, and I would run to the mailbox.”

Mapes said history will be made today when Australian rapper Iggy Azalea does something that has been accomplished only once since Billboard began rating records.

“She will have the No. 1 (‘Trace’) and No. 2 hits (‘Problem’) this week,” Mapes said. “It was 50 years ago, March 1964, when The Beatles had two songs, ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ and ‘She Loves You,’ No. 1 and No. 2.

“It was their first releases to Billboard, and the releases are her first, also.”

Mapes, an on-air personality for WDVW 105.3 FM The Dove, began his journey in the early 1970s.

WDVW 105.3 FM (4.7Kw) 60dBu Coverage

“I have collected every No. 1,” Mapes said. “Starting in vinyl with the old 45 rpms (revolutions per minute). After they stopped producing vinyl records in 1990, it became single cassettes and now the compact discs.”

Mapes has amassed over 15,000 singles and 5,000 albums — numbers that do not include hundreds of compact discs.

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