This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1944.
Specific locations
1944 in British music
1944 in Norwegian music
Specific genres
1944 in country music
1944 in jazz
Events
January 18 – The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City for the first time hosts a jazz concert; the performers are Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden. February – The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra loses its concert hall in an Allied air raid. February 19 – The Billboard modifies its "Most Played Juke Box Records" chart to rank records (previously it had ranked songs, listing multiple records for each). The year-end "Top Disks" of 1944 will now be based on performance on the "Best Selling Retail Records" and "Most Played Juke Box Records" charts. July 28 – Sir Henry Wood, aged 75, conducts his last Promenade Concert, evacuated to Bedford. August 19 – Italian singers Lucia Mannucci and Virgilio Savona get married. September 20 – Yehudi Menuhin gives the first British performance of Béla Bartók's Second Violin Concerto in Bedford, in the opening concert of a tour with the B.B.C. Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. Autumn – Peggy Guggenheim's The Art of This Century gallery on Manhattan releases a 78 rpm 3-record album containing Paul Bowles' Sonata for Flute and Piano and Two Mexican Dances with a cover by Max Ernst. October 25 – Notoriously bad amateur soprano Florence Foster Jenkins gives her only public recital, in Carnegie Hall, a month before her death. November 11 – AFM strike ends when Columbia, Victor and NBC "throw in the sponge" and agree to terms. December 15 – Glenn Miller is reported missing. The official explanation is that his plane went down somewhere over the English Channel, although many alternate theories have been suggested. Singer Billy Murray retires to Long Island. English contralto Kathleen Ferrier makes the first of her recordings of the aria "What is Life?" (Che farò) from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice which will rival sales by more popular singers over the next few years. Czech Jewish composer Hans Krása's children's opera Brundibár is performed many times in Theresienstadt concentration camp, where on October 17 the composer is killed. Flo Sandon's makes her stage debut, singing in a charity show. Jo Stafford launches her solo career. Frankie Laine cuts his first singles for the Beltone and Atlas labels.
Albums released
The Wayfaring Stranger – Burl Ives
Going My Way – Bing Crosby
Boogie Woogie In Blue – Harry Gibson
Top records
On August 1, 1942, a strike by the American Federation of Musicians ended all recording sessions. Record companies kept business going by releasing recordings from their vaults, but by mid-1943, alternate sources were running dry, as the strike continued. Decca was the first company to settle in September 1943, but RCA Victor and Columbia held on until November 11, 1944. It comes as no surprise that fifteen of the top twenty records of 1944 were released by Decca, with two more by Capitol, the second company to settle.
Beginning February 19, 1944, The Billboard modified its "Most Played Juke Box Records" chart to rank records (previously it had ranked songs, listing multiple records for each). The January 6, 1945 issue contained year-end top ten charts for "Best Selling Retail Records", "Most Played Juke Box Records" and "Top 10 Disks for 1944", the latter combining the scores of the former two charts. The chart below was compiled using Billboard's formula, but includes each record's full chart period, with weeks from 1943 and 1945 as needed. Details from "Most Played Juke Box Folk Records" (Hillbilly), "Harlem Hit Parade" (HHP) charts and the "American Folk Records" column late 1943-early 1944 were also considered. As always, numerical rankings are approximate.