Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor Dave “Baby” Cortez, who had the first instrumental hit to top the Hot 100, the appropriately titled “The Happy Organ.” The reclusive Cortez died in 2022 at age 83, but his death was just recently reported.

“The Happy Organ” may be one of the most accurately descriptive titles ever on a pop hit. From its opening notes, Dave “Baby” Cortez’s rollicking recording is a happy, exuberant, organ-based instrumental. It reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 in May 1959, becoming the first instrumental hit to top the chart, which Billboard had introduced nine months previously.

“The Happy Organ” was one of the first contemporary pop instrumentals to feature an electronic organ as its primary instrument. This helped transform the instrument, typically associated with Sunday church services, into a mainstay of contemporary pop instrumentation. Subsequent No. 1 hits that feature a Hammond organ include The Beatles’ “Come Together” (1969), Janis Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee” (1971) and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s “Blinded by the Light” (1977).

Cortez, his frequent collaborator Kurt Wood and celebrity photographer James J. Kriegsmann are the credited composers of “The Happy Organ,” which borrows from the traditional American folk song “Shortnin’ Bread,” which dates back at least to 1900.

“Organ” originally had lyrics, and was intended to be sung. Cortez recorded a vocal, but he wasn’t satisfied with it. In what can only be described as a “happy” accident, he spotted a Hammond electric organ sitting unused in the corner of the studio. At the time, they were almost exclusively used in gospel recording sessions. Cortez decided to try it out. Everyone liked what they heard. The copy on the single read “Featuring at the organ, Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez.”

Cortez also brought in studio drummer Gary Hammond, who provided percussion. Session musician Wild Jimmy Spruill played the guitar solo. That interlude, which appears at the 1:13 mark, brought some needed variation to the record, and allowed it to connect with rock & roll fans at the time.

Most smash instrumentals prior to “The Happy Organ” were easy listening fare, such as Roger Williams’ “Autumn Leaves” (1955) and Morris Stoloff’s “Moonglow and Theme From ‘Picnic’” (1956). “Organ” was one of the first smash hit instrumentals – along with The Champs’ “Tequila,” which hit No. 1 on a pre-Hot 100 Billboard pop chart in March 1958 – that was pitched to a younger audience. In the wake of these two recordings, hit instrumentals were more evenly balanced between records that primarily appealed to young audiences (Santo & Johnny’s “Sleep Walk” and The Tornadoes’ “Telstar”) and ones that were primarily geared toward older fans (Percy Faith’s “The Theme From ‘A Summer Place’” and Mr. Acker Bilk’s “Stranger on the Shore”).

Cortez was born David Cortez Clowney on Aug. 13, 1938 in Detroit. He made his first record in 1956 under his own name, and also sang with two doo-wop groups, the Pearls and the Valentines. Neither group made the Billboard charts, either pre- or post-Hot 100.

Cortez adopted his stage name in 1958, after which things fell quickly into place. Even though he had knocked around for a while, he was still just 20 when “The Happy Organ” became a smash.

“The Happy Organ,” released on the independent, New York-based Clock Records label,  was the top new entry on the Hot 100 at No. 68 in the issue dated March 16, 1959. The title was shown as simply “Happy Organ” in its first three chart weeks. The title was corrected in Week 4, when the record sprinted from No. 35 to No. 25. The record reached No. 1 in its ninth week, in the issue dated May 11, 1959. It dethroned The Fleetwoods’ pretty ballad “Come Softly to Me,” which had spent the previous four weeks on top. After one week in pole position, “The Happy Organ” was toppled by Wilbert Harrison’s “Kansas City.”

“The Happy Organ” clocked in at just 2:02, making it the briefest No. 1 hit of 1959. Among all 22 instrumentals that have hit No. 1 in Hot 100 history, only David Rose’s bawdy 1962 burlesque smash “The Stripper” had a shorter running time (1:53).

Cortez remained in the same vein for his follow-up single, “The Whistling Organ,” which peaked at No. 61. He returned to the top 10 in 1962 with “Rinky Dink,” which peaked at No. 10. All eight of his Hot 100 hits were instrumentals, the final one being “Count Down” in 1966. In 1973, Cortez reached No. 45 on what was then called Hot Soul Singles with “Someone Has Taken Your Place.”

Cortez subsequently left the music industry. He led an extremely private life over the ensuing decades, variously in New York City and Cincinnati, where he was a church organist for a time. In 2009, Norton Records co-founder Miriam Linna tracked him down and persuaded him to return to recording. In 2011, following a 38-year hiatus, Cortez returned with a new album on Norton Records, Dave “Baby” Cortez With Lonnie Youngblood and His Bloodhounds. It was his 11th and final album.

In his final years, Cortez lived in the Bronx, New York. He had a daughter with whom he was not in regular contact, owing to his being so reclusive. He died at his home on May 31, 2022, at the age of 83 and was interred in the potter’s field at Hart Island. His daughter only later learned of his death through BMI, which handled his songwriting royalties.

With the belated news reports confirming Cortez’s death, a dwindling number of solo artists who had No. 1 hits in the 1950s are still living. Just two solo artists who topped the Hot 100 in 1958-59 are still with us. Frankie Avalon, who hit No. 1 in 1959 with both “Venus” and “Why,” is 84. Paul Anka, who topped the chart in 1959 with “Lonely Boy,” is 83.

Anka had also topped a pre-Hot 100 Billboard pop chart in 1957 with “Diana.” Three other solo artists who had No. 1 hits on Billboard pop charts before the inception of the Hot 100 are likewise still living. Pat Boone, who had several No. 1 hits starting with a cover version of Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That a Shame” in 1955, is 91. Johnny Mathis, who topped the chart in 1957 with “Chances Are,” is 89. And Laurie London, who as a 14-year-old hit No. 1 in 1958 with “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” is 81. Boone and Mathis subsequently had No. 1 hits on the Hot 100, while London never returned the pop chart after “Hands.”

Trumpeter Ray Anthony didn’t quite land a No. 1 hit – he climbed as high as No. 2 on pre-Hot 100 pop charts in Billboard with “At Last” (later famously covered by Etta James) and “Dragnet.” The musician, the last surviving member of the famed Glenn Miller Orchestra, is still living at 103.

As for “Happy” songs at No. 1 on the Hot 100, there have been several others across the decades including Jimmy Soul’s “If You Wanna Be Happy” (1963), The Turtles’ “Happy Together” (1967), Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy” (1988) and Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” (2014).
Happy songs, apparently, never go out of style.   

Insomniac and Tomorrowland have announced the next headliner for its forthcoming joint show, UNITY, at Sphere Las Vegas.

DJ Snake will play the venue on Friday, Sept. 19, joining a previously announed lineup that includes Chase & Status, Kaskade and Eli Brown, who will play Sphere on Aug. 29, 30 and 31, respectively, during UNITY’s opening weekend.

“Some moments are bigger than differences,” DJ Snake says in a statement. “This show is one of them.
See you at Sphere on Sept. 19!” Tickets for the event are on sale now, with UNITY’s opening weekend sold out.

Headliners for the remaining five UNITY shows on Sept. 20, 26, 27 and Oct. 17 and 18 will be announced in the coming weeks.

UNITY marks the first ever collaboration from Insomniac and Tomorrowland, two of the world’s biggest dance music promoters. Insomniac’s portfolio includes the mighty EDC Las Vegas and a long list of of other global festivals and club shows, while Tomorrowland is behind its namesake festival in Belgium, the first weekend of which begins this Friday, July 18.

With high level visuals being a key characteristics of both Insomniac and Tomorrowland events, the production for UNITY is highly anticipated and expected to be similarly dazzling. A statement about the show predicts a “multi-hour immersive experience blending cinematic 360° visuals, original orchestration, and world-building from Insomniac and Tomorrowland’s most beloved festival realms, culminating each night with a powerful live performance from a globally renowned artist.”

UNITY marks the second major dance music event at Sphere, with Anyma becoming the venue’s first ever dance headliner during his residency in late 2024/early 2025.

Crafting a debut album is already a daunting task, one that gets more difficult when you enter the entertainment world as a child star whose successes never quite culminated in an indisputable mainstream breakthrough. For Josh Levi, a 26-year-old Houstonian looking to be R&B’s next song-and-dance heartthrob, that journey is intimately familiar, which only makes him more excited to unleash Hydraulic, his debut studio album, upon the world. 

“I was watching a TikTok the other day, and someone called me an underground artist. I guess I am that, but I definitely have been working for a long time — since [I was] nine years old — in the studio, being an artist and doing music videos,” he tells Billboard the day after debuting the music video for his new “Don’t Go” single. “I love the headspace that I’m in today of focusing on my journey, telling my story and being as authentic as I can be. This album really does reflect my journey in a lot of ways without alienating the people who are just now getting to know me. You can really get a sense of what I stand for and where I’m coming from, while getting to know me for the first time.” 

From making his television debut in 2009 on Friday Night Lights to reaching the finals on season three of The X Factor USA in 2013, Josh Levi has been percolating through the industry for several years. After a few years of putting out music and covering songs on YouTube, Levi joined Citizen Four, a boyband at Island Records, for a brief stint in 2017; he followed that up with a few guest appearances on Nickelodeon before earning his bachelor’s degree in business and finance from Florida’s Full Sail University in 2019. That same year, he joined forces with his current manager, Cooper Wilson, who knew Levi from his teenage YouTube days. They reconnected at a benefit concert right before the pandemic — and right after Levi had fired his then-manager. 

By 2021, Levi signed with Raedio, Issa Rae’s record label, and Atlantic, giving way to his 2022 Disc Two project — a follow-up to his 2020 Disc One debut EP — and its 2023 Scratched Up expansion. As Disco Two delighted R&B heads, Levi made his Billboard Hot 100 debut as a part of 4*TOWN, the fictional boy band from Pixar’s Oscar-nominated animated film Turning Red. Peaking at No. 49, the Billie Eilish- and Finneas-written “Nobody Like U” also scored a Grammy nomination. 

Out August 15, Hydraulic isn’t merely a debut LP; it’s the progeny of one of Gen Z’s most well-studied R&B students. Trading on crisp layered harmonies from the school of Brandy and the chilly electronic music influences of Looking 4 Myself-era Usher, Hydraulic finds Levi pouring his lifelong journey to stardom into a set that rides life’s emotions like the H-Town-certified car hydraulics that inspired the set’s title. From the Destiny’s Child-interpolating “Don’t Go” to myriad chopped-and-screwed influences, Levi’s hometown isn’t just his muse, it’s his bedrock for how he understands himself and his artistry at this juncture of his career. 

“I was very passionate about not creating a love album or a heartbreak album or a club album or a moody album,” he muses. “I really wanted to create something that could represent different parts and moments and times of people’s lives so that you can get lost in this album.” 

In a revelatory conversation with Billboard, Josh Levi talks about clearing “Don’t Go” with Destiny’s Child, crafting Hydraulic over the past few years, his all-time favorite ad-libs, and why Cécred is a mainstay in his haircare routine.

What are some of your earliest musical memories? 

I grew up singing in church. [I remember] getting in trouble for getting away from my mom and my dad and trying to go up on stage. Eventually, I made it to the choir really, really young. I remember writing a song for my sister’s kindergarten graduation, [and] recording my first song in a studio in downtown Houston that smelled like weed when I was nine years old. 

You gotta explain this studio session. 

It was hilarious. I didn’t know what that was, but I didn’t like the smell. I mean, I still don’t. [Laughs]. It was hella people in the studio. I was so young; it did feel like I should not have been there, but my mom was with me, which was really good because I was literally nine! 

I was recording this song called “Favorite Girl,” [which] actually still sounds like my album. It still has vocal layers and harmonies like how I be doing in my songs now. When I listen to that song, it’s still edgy and dark and in the same sonic world that I’m in today. It’s not this bubblegum, kiddie song. It’s very mature. I remember doing takes over and over, not knowing what I was doing, but just figuring out my tone. It was a day that I’ll never forget; I still have footage from it! 

What’s the first song you remember being stuck in your head? 

Probably “Shackles” by Mary Mary. The first non-gospel song I remember is “Lions, Tigers & Bears” by Jazmine Sullivan. 

So you’ve just been an R&B head your whole life? 

I guess you could say that. My dad and my mom didn’t really have a [specific] taste in pop culture. Every now and then, my dad would call me downstairs to watch YouTube, like, “Joshua, come watch this Jazmine Sullivan!” or “Joshua, come watch this Boyz II Men!” And then it was like Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, etc. 

When did you start working on Hydraulic? 

They say you spend your whole life making your first album, so I feel like I spent a long time getting to this point. The oldest song on the album is maybe three or four years old, but there are also songs that I’ve done in the last couple of months. I never really went into the studio and the making of this album, until recently, [with the mindset of] “I am making a debut album.” I can’t think that way; it will drive me crazy. I went into this process seeing how I could tell my story and make music that sounds like Josh Levi as much as possible. But the concept of Hydraulic came to me around Thanksgiving last year. 

Who were you working with in the studio? How did you guys build out the album’s soundscape? 

I worked with Mariel Gomerez on this album, who is my A&R and a master at working with artists that are trying to push genres forward and break boundaries. Her main other artist that she works with is Beyoncé; she’s responsible for helping her craft so many genre-bending, revolutionary albums between Renaissance and Cowboy Carter and Act III and Lemonade. [Gomerez] was someone [who] really helped me lean into my daringness as an artist. And that has been one of the biggest challenges of being in music since I was a kid. From day one, people were telling me what I should be more of and less of, and it was never what I wanted to do. 

“You should be more commercial, you should be more like Usher, you should be more like Chris [Brown], you should be more street, you should be more clean, you should be more pop” — I’ve heard every single thing since I was a kid. One of the coolest things about working with Mariel is that she was one of the first people [who] said, “You should be more like Josh Levi.” So she partnered me with people that brought that out, like London on da Track, Poo Bear, BEAM, Deputy, MNEK, Camper and Koshy.

How did “Don’t Go” come together? 

I’ve never sampled or interpolated anything, so when I made “Don’t Go,” I went to the studio that day, intentionally being like, “Why am I doing everything from scratch all the time?” There’s so many artists that interpolate songs that I really love, and I don’t know why I haven’t done that yet. I have a playlist of songs I’d love to sample, and “No, No, No Pt. 2” was on there. 

I’ve always loved Destiny’s Child. I grew up going to Music World, which was Mathew Knowles’ record label in Houston, all the time. There were posters of Destiny’s Child everywhere, House of Deréon  too, and I remembered thinking, “Who are these brown-skinned models?” Then, I quickly got caught up and lost in the Destiny’s Child lore, so that song has always spoken to me. I worked with Trey Campbell and Tony Jones on this record; we came up with the idea, and I tried to make it feel less percussive and as bass-driven and as Houston as possible. 

I definitely had to ask permission from all the people [who] were a part of the song. I guess they saw the vision and respected my version of it. It means a lot because you can never really guarantee that the original writers and performers of a song will rock with the way that you made your own. But to say Destiny’s Child gave me the green light is amazing. I take that with pride. I want to make them proud. 

What was it like working with Sean Bankhead for the music video? Why is it important for you to keep dance at the forefront of R&B? 

I’ve always wanted to bring energy to R&B. I also grew up dancing competitively, so that’s always been a part of who I am. I want to dance. I want to compete. I want to add something different. My favorite artists weren’t the ones that just were standing there; they were moving around — Michael Jackson, Beyoncé, Aaliyah, Missy Elliott, even Brandy used to dance a lot in certain eras. I think it’s something special about giving people a reason to get up, grab a partner and two-step. 

I’ve also known Sean forever, so it was one of those things where you know and respect your homie, but you’ve never actually collaborated. “Don’t Go” felt like a really cool moment to do something with him specifically. He’s a master of his craft and no stranger to getting people moving. We both wanted to do something with each other that we’ve never done, and I think we did just that. 

You love a good ad-lib. What do you understand the function of an ad-lib to be in R&B? Who are your favorite vocalists in that lane? 

An ad-lib should be obnoxious — sometimes — but tasteful. Just hitting the right spot like seasonings on your favorite meal. I say “obnoxious” because a lot of my favorite ad-libs are like, “Did you have to do that much?” No, but that’s why we’re obsessed. 

When it comes to ad-libs, I love Brandy for sure, Joe has some of my favorite ad-libs, Boyz II Men on “Water Runs Dry,” specifically. Beyoncé has crazy ad-libs; they’re famous on their own. The Dubai [“Drunk in Love”] riff is crazy, the original “Crazy in Love” riff, the ad-libs in “I Care.” That’s what makes music fun: Giving people an opportunity to choose something that they’re obsessed with in a song outside of the lyrics or the melody. You can really plant things inside music for different people to connect with. 

You signed with Raedio and Atlantic in 2021. How do you find that you’ve grown personally and professionally since then? 

My mental health has grown a lot in those years of being signed. I can say that being signed to a major label and being an artist and putting yourself out there and the business and numbers of it all can be very difficult to do every day. It’s hard to see yourself as a product or something that always has to sell something. That’s not something that necessarily comes naturally to me. I fell in love with music for the art and sharing the gift of it all.

But that ain’t what it’s all about. I’ve really grown mentally in terms of figuring out a system that allows me to feel like I’m sharing my gifts while understanding how to be a businessman. That’s something that my degree has also taught me. I’m really ambitious, and I know that I can’t be selling out arenas and stadiums one day unless I understand how to really connect with people, and I feel like I understand how to share myself better. I’m still learning. 

How was your time on the FLO tour? 

I don’t always reach this goal, but I really want to do things with people that I’m a fan of. Going on tour with a group of women that I actually am a fan of and respect was really cool. I knew their songs and vice versa, which was beautiful. There’s no better feeling than it being a mutual thing. I’ve been watching Love Island, and sometimes they can’t tell when it’s really mutual. 

They were like, “We’re loving your new single, ‘Feel the Bass,’ how’d you feel about coming on tour starting in Houston and staying on for some dates?” I was just like, “When you guys speak in those accents, I can’t even say no!” They also had a studio on their bus, so I played them some songs from my album, and I heard some of their unreleased stuff, and we were like, “Hm, FLO x Josh Levi … maybe there’s something there!” 

The braids are always on point. What’s your hair care routine? 

I do be using Cécred. I got to sit in the Cécred chair in Cécred Salon actually. The Queen herself allowed me to be a part of the Cécred experience. I actually really do love her products. I get my hair styled every week. But in between getting braids, I try my best to take care of it because it’s super thick and there’s a lot of it. It’s like a full-time job. I don’t know how women do it!