What a Fool I Was

When looking for a song that would be the right fit for “The Phono Project,” I had to make sure that the recording I had found was in fact published on a 78, and could be found in “The Great 78 project” audio catalog. But after searching for awhile, I came to the realization that while although many of the songs probably had a story behind them, or were in one way or another interesting, the reason I was having such a difficult time picking something out, was because none of the songs had any meaning to me.

I decided to call up my grandmother. I said “do you happen to remember any songs or artists around or before 1950?” And in response it was just silence. Then after maybe thirty seconds or so of jeopardy music, she said “does Eddy Arnold count?” After some basic research on my laptop real quick, I came to the conclusion that he did. After scrolling through a few songs by him in The Great 78 Project catalog, I began to read them out loud to her. After approximately three to four minutes she just halted me mid read. “I don’t remember any of these song titles, if I remembered his name, that makes him special enough” she said. So from there on out I listened to a few songs before picking one out.

I ended up picking out a song called “What a Fool I was,” by Eddy Arnold. Arnold was a successful country, gospel, and pop singer. Arnolds second single that was released reached number five on the country charts in 1945.  Its success began a decade of unprecedented chart performance; Arnold’s next 57 singles all ranked in the top 10, including 19 number-one successes. After What a Fool I Was was, was released to the public in 1947, it began to play its role in Arnolds success, it continued to dominate within the charts, with 13 of the 20 best-scoring country music songs of 1947–1948.