More Are Going for the Platinum Plateau

The pop world is accustomed to platinum albums (the designation for selling 1 million copies), but now it’s time to get used to platinum CDs.

There is, so far, no official “platinum CD” award because the Recording Industry Assn. of America--the trade organization that officially certifies platinum or multi-platinum sales achievements--doesn’t separate sales figures into vinyl, cassette and CD categories.

But Billboard magazine’s Dave DiMartino found in a survey of record companies that four albums have reportedly sold 1 million or more copies in compact disc alone: U2’s “The Joshua Tree,” the “Dirty Dancing” sound track, Def Leppard’s “Hysteria” and George Michael’s “Faith.”

In addition, DiMartino, the trade magazine’s Los Angeles bureau chief, learned that several other CDs are at or past the 900,000 sales mark. Among them: Michael Jackson’s “Bad,” U2’s “Rattle and Hum,” Guns N’ Roses’ “Appetite for Destruction” and Whitney Houston’s “Whitney.”

DiMartino expects the number of platinum albums to increase dramatically, pointing to statistics that show nearly a third of album dollars are now spent on CDs--up from just 8% three years ago.

HELLOOO BABY!: It’s anybody’s guess whether J.P. Richardson--the Big Bopper--is better known as (a) the third rock star who died in the 1959 plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens or (b) for his 1958 novelty hit, “Chantilly Lace,” which featured the classic “Hellooo baby!” intro.

The former Texas disc jockey had other pop credits, both as a recording artist (“Big Bopper’s Wedding” was a modestly successful hit in 1958) and songwriter (“Running Bear,” a 1959 hit for Johnny Preston, and “White Lightnin’,” a country hit the same year for George Jones). Still, his musical identity remains tied almost exclusively to “Chantilly Lace.”

As part of its outstanding reissue series, Rhino Records has just released a 19-song retrospective that takes us beyond the “Chantilly Lace.” The music itself on “Hellooo Baby!/The Best of the Big Bopper” is of limited quality, but it is interesting to hear Richardson move back and forth between various pop genres (from the novelty of “Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor” to the pure country of “Beggar to a King” to the R & B tone of “Strange Kisses”).

Where today’s pop artists generally stay within boundaries defined by radio formats, Top-40 radio stations in the early days of the rock were open to all sorts hybrid sounds and Richardson, like many other recording hopefuls, experimented freely with the different genres in hoping to find yet another hit.