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45s.com -- Search Help
For help on any of the following topics, simply click on the topic hyperlink. Otherwise, please email our Customer Service Department.
Search by Artist Search by Title Search by Keywords Search by Year
Search by Position Search by Songwriters Search by Label and/or Number
Search by Multiple Fields Cool Search Ideas Contact Customer ServiceAll of our top hit 45's (original issues) are currently listed in our online database, so you may use our search engine to search your choice of any combination of this information: year, artist, song, any word in a song title, highest position reached on the Billboard chart, record label and number.
General Search Information
Search for the records that you want, and add them to your Shopping Cart. In the search box, you may enter the name of an artist or words in a song title to find the songs and records of interest to you. There is also a list box that you can click on to see a list of all the artists with records in our inventory; find the artist of interest; click on the name to highlight it; then click on "Go to Category" to display all of the records in our inventory by that artist. When you see records that you want to buy, click on "Add to Shopping Cart."
General Search Tips
Please leave "The" and punctuation out of your searches, as we may not use them in our listings, and the use of both may vary from record to record. We do not use "&" in our listings, so use "and" instead. We do not use " (quotation marks) in our listings, so please do not use them in your searches.
It is probably best to start with less information in your searches, and then add more information if you get too many returns and need to reduce the list for review. For example, if you are looking for an Elvis Presley record, and you simply enter "Elvis" in the Artist Name field, you may get as many as 266 records to then review. If you add "love" under the "Song Title" field (and are searching for both Elvis and love), the list is reduced to 41. On the other hand, if you are looking for a record that you think is titled "If I Said You've Got A Beautiful Body, Will You Hold It Against Me", it would be better to enter "Beautiful Body" as the actual title is slightly different and if you get just one word wrong in a title that you enter, you will not find the record.
The two general search options are "Search for ALL Keywords" and "Search for ANY Keywords." A search for ALL means that each of the words you enter must be a match. A search for ANY means that any of the words you enter will be matched. Searching for "ALL" will result in a shorter list of matches and is usually the best way to search. But if you want to review every record in our database containing either the word "snow" or "blizzard", the best way to search is to enter both snow and blizzard in the Song Title field and select "Search for ALL Keywords".
To search by artist, simply key in all or part of the musical artist's name. If you do not get a match, please check the spelling of the name, or key in fewer letters in the name. (For example, if you are searching for the brothers that performed "Wake Up Little Susie" in the 50's, you might key in Everley Brothers and the result would be no matches. That's because their name is spelled "Everly" -- no e after the r. If you keyed in Everl, you would not have had a problem. If you are not sure of the artist's name, but you think you know some of the words in the title, try Search by Title. It is best to leave "The" and punctuation out of your searches.
To search by title, simply key in all or part of the title's name. Due to the length of many titles and the various ways in which words may be spelled or titles may actually be listed on record labels, it is best to key in some of the key words in the title. For example, entering "Wake Up Susie" may bring up the two recorded versions of the song that were hits on the Billboard charts, while keying in "Wake Up Li'l Susie" will result in no matches. A search for "Susie" may bring up eight options -- six of which are not correct, Generally, the more words that you can enter from the song, the smaller the list to review for what you are seeking. However, the more words that you enter, the greater chance that you will enter an incorrect or misspelled word that will result in no match. Since over 90% of the songs that hit the Billboard charts between 1955 and 1992 are currently in our online database, you should get a match if the song you are searching for was a pop/rock hit during that time. (Country and R&B hits are being added as time permits.) It is best to leave "The" and punctuation out of your searches.
Search by Keywords -- Any Words in Title
To search by any words in the special information field in our database, use this field and key in one or more words. For example, if you want to find songs that were on a particular label, enter the label name. You can also find all reissues by doing a search for the word "reissue."
You can do some very cool things by searching for keywords due to the fact that we have the 20,000 songs that were hits from the 50's to the 90's in our database. Quite simply, you can find all of the songs that contain any word or combination of words. For example, a recent search for "Love" brought up 2,146 options, while a search for "wedding" generated 27 options.
Our database includes the exact date that songs first appeared on the Billboard Top 100 charts. You may search by year by clicking on the link "Search by Year" and then clicking on the appropriate year. You may also search by specific dates as well by just entering the date in numerical format in the keyword search box. For example, to search for songs that appeared on the Billboard charts on April 6 1963, enter "4/6/1963" in the "Date on Charts" field. Please note that Billboard Charts came out weekly, so you may need to try seven different days to find songs that hit the charts at a specific time.
Our database includes the peak position that each song reached on the Billboard Top 100 charts. You may search for position by entering the following in the keywords search box: Peak Position on Charts: # -- with the # replaced with whichever position is of interest to you. For example, to search for every song that was ever #100, key the following into the Keywords Search Box: Peak Position on Charts: 100. You then need to scan the results to look for those where the Peak Position was 100, as the search engine will pull up some that have the number 100 elsewhere in the description.
We are adding songwriter information to our database, so only limited information is available at this time.
Our database includes the label and record number for most records. You can enter a record name and label number to determine whether we have a specific record.
You may search for label and number by entering this information separated by two dashes. For example, Congress--230 will return The Name Game by Shirley Ellis.You may search by multiple fields. When you do, please realize that there must be an exact match for results to be returned from your search. Any discrepancy will result in no match, so be careful. For example, a search in the Artist field for Elvis will return hundreds of records. To find just those that have the word Love in the title, put Elvis in the Artist Name field and Love in the Song Title field, and a much smaller list will be returned.
Since we have detailed information for every hit song in our online database, and since you can search by a variety of fields, you can do some highly cool stuff. Finding specific songs or songs by specific recording artists is easy. But how about searching for every song that has a specific word in the title...or every song that appeared on the Billboard charts on a specific date (birthday or anniversary, for example)...or every song that only made it to #100? You can do all of that and more.
Other ways to search for information are offered elsewhere in the 45s.com web site. Recording Artist Information contains profiles and detailed information on many of the top recording artists. Great Songs contains a list of songs by various categories -- car songs, surf songs, love songs, and more. Songs by Year provides lists of the top-ranked songs from 1950 to 1999.
You may email questions to us at info@45s.com.
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