• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Carly Simon is classic rock?

Yep, 500 posts of more 'geezer talk'. Must be some sort of record, but I kind of doubt it.
Hey, I could fill up a 500-post thread on country music from the '70s through today, or folk music from old England to New England, but you'd probably like that even less! And you're right, it's far from a record. Check out that thread on the AM station in Arizona, or either of the long-running games.
 
Yep, 500 posts of more 'geezer talk'. Must be some sort of record, but I kind of doubt it.
Am I to understand that talking about radio broadcasting in the 60s 70s and 80s is "geezer talk" This period is the heyday of music radio. After "radio programs" migrated to TV in the late 40s and early 50s pop radio sort of lost its focus until Top 40 was born in the very late 50s and peaked in the 70s. It's the foundation of mass market radio today.
 
Am I to understand that talking about radio broadcasting in the 60s 70s and 80s is "geezer talk" This period is the heyday of music radio. After "radio programs" migrated to TV in the late 40s and early 50s pop radio sort of lost its focus until Top 40 was born in the very late 50s and peaked in the 70s. It's the foundation of mass market radio today.
Top 40 was born at KOWH in 1951. (error corrected)

A lot of things factored in, but a key element was the decline of the influence of the Musicians Union and its dictator, Petrillo. Stations like KLIF in Dallas had to do block programming through the late 40's to avoid further live band / orchestra requirements of the union.

By 1951, the union's influence had worn so thin that it was possible to play recorded music all day without a picket line or an organizational drive.
 
Last edited:
Your mom didn't make it up, but it also wasn't true. Someone in the band said it---piggybacking off the buzz on books about the recording industry like Frederick Dannen's "Hit Men" and Tommy James' "Me, the Mob and the Music". Their allegation was that they ticked off the mob (but never really said how) and that the mob made sure their records didn't get promoted anymore.

Nonsense. ABC's promo guys never let up trying to get new Three Dog Night product on the air. And if they were calling me, they sure as hell were calling more important PDs at bigger stations (which covers most PDs and most stations).

The act was tired, the times were changing and their chart numbers had been hit-and-miss since '71 (going from four top tens in a row to alternating between top ten and lower parts of the top 20 every other record through '74).
So, did Three Dog Night lie to PBS? This is beginning to get interesting!
With all due respect for the talents of Mr. Sherman (we all have to make a living) but my prom night would have been much more fun if could have gotten The Three Stooges! Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk!
I believe that the last of the original Stooges died in 1975.
 
Top 40 was born at KOWH in 1961.

A lot of things factored in, but a key element was the decline of the influence of the Musicians Union and its dictator, Petrillo. Stations like KLIF in Dallas had to do block programming through the late 40's to avoid further live band / orchestra requirements of the union.

By 1951, the union's influence had worn so thin that it was possible to play recorded music all day without a picket line or an organizational drive.
You might want to check that first sentence, David.
 
The ARSA Surveys (as they relate to Progressive and then AOR) are an interesting read. Many of the Albums/Artists featured from the 70’s did not make the cut for what would be the Classic Rock format. Most of the surveys from the 70’s only showed a handful of artists/albums and the stations were clearly playing a lot more than what is shown.

The surveys available from 1981 highlight a format transitioning from artist to a more song driven format. The 1984 AOR surveys are song oriented.

If you compare the 1984 playlists to the 1985 playlists, you see a definite softening of the AOR stations/format.
 
So, did Three Dog Night lie to PBS? This is beginning to get interesting!

I believe that the last of the original Stooges died in 1975.
Semoochie, I haven't seen the PBS show in question. You're quoting your mom second hand. I can't find any reference to the specific interview anywhere online.

The only thing online mentioning "Three Dog Night" and "mafia", "organized crime" or "mob" is a Quora post from two years ago---in a thread about Tommy James' book which asks the question "Who in the music industry have crossed paths with the Mafia?"

It's one person replying "Supposedly 70s band Three Dog Night pissed off the Mafia so hard they could no longer get hits through radio play and such." No up or down votes, no replies, no follow-up.

Online interviews with Danny Hutton say nothing about mafia interference. Cory Wells addresses the band's decline in a 2008 interview with Las Vegas Weekly this way:

"We were the darlings of rock there for awhile. We were the darlings of Rolling Stone magazine, until we got too successful. They loved us until we had success, then we weren’t cool enough or edgy enough for them (laughs)." (Full interview here: Lively banter with Three Dog Night co-founder Cory Wells)

And Chuck Negron (no longer with the band) told this to the San Jose Mercury News in 2012:
“The only downside for me, of my career in Three Dog Night, was that the egos never really settled in, like most things do. Can you see Scotty Pippin going, ‘Listen, this Jordan guy’s got to stop shootin’ so much!’ I’m the star!’? No one ever got comfortable with the fact that the first million-seller was me singing ‘One,’ and then the record company, being the record company, wanted another single with my voice. And I happened to have another one in the can that was a hit, ‘Easy To Be Hard.’ So you know record companies — if they’ve got something that’s not broken, they don’t want to fix it.... You bring in your song and you do it. And the other guys are hoping it dies,” Negron says with a chuckle.

...At any rate, pressure got us. We were making so much money that the business end of the people just wanted us to work. We’re doing two albums a year, touring 210 days a year. We’re going from guys that look in our 20s to guys that look in our 40s. And we were having sex with anything that has a pulse,” Negron says, laughing.

The band’s implosion concluded in 1976. “Unfortunately, the business, chewed us up and spit us out. Because we let it. And then there were the drugs.” (full interview here: https://www.mercurynews.com/2012/08/15/the-dark-one-dog-night-of-chuck-negron/)

To the question of "Did Three Dog Night lie to PBS?" Nobody does media interviews under oath. It could be something whichever member of the band was being interviewed believed, or believed at that time. All I can tell you (apart from all of the above) is that, as big records from the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac were landing on my desk in '75 and '76, I was still getting calls from ABC Records trying to get me to add the latest Three Dog Night.

And yes, you're right. Moe died in 1975. Still, Tomas Estefan and his male classmates might have preferred the Three Stooges in their then-current state to Bobby Sherman.
 
The ARSA Surveys (as they relate to Progressive and then AOR) are an interesting read. Many of the Albums/Artists featured from the 70’s did not make the cut for what would be the Classic Rock format. Most of the surveys from the 70’s only showed a handful of artists/albums and the stations were clearly playing a lot more than what is shown.

The surveys available from 1981 highlight a format transitioning from artist to a more song driven format. The 1984 AOR surveys are song oriented.

If you compare the 1984 playlists to the 1985 playlists, you see a definite softening of the AOR stations/format.
By 1984-85, a lot of AOR stations were in trouble. They painted themselves into a corner with the Superstars approach and were caught flat-footed when Modern Rock took off.

Some stations tried to include the newer music, but as the Oldies format would do later, it had created an audience that wasn't looking for adventure and had some definite opinions about what was Rock and what wasn't. And newer material from artists that audience would accept was getting harder to come by.
 
Semoochie, I haven't seen the PBS show in question. You're quoting your mom second hand. I can't find any reference to the specific interview anywhere online.

The only thing online mentioning "Three Dog Night" and "mafia", "organized crime" or "mob" is a Quora post from two years ago---in a thread about Tommy James' book which asks the question "Who in the music industry have crossed paths with the Mafia?"

It's one person replying "Supposedly 70s band Three Dog Night pissed off the Mafia so hard they could no longer get hits through radio play and such." No up or down votes, no replies, no follow-up.

Online interviews with Danny Hutton say nothing about mafia interference. Cory Wells addresses the band's decline in a 2008 interview with Las Vegas Weekly this way:

"We were the darlings of rock there for awhile. We were the darlings of Rolling Stone magazine, until we got too successful. They loved us until we had success, then we weren’t cool enough or edgy enough for them (laughs)." (Full interview here: Lively banter with Three Dog Night co-founder Cory Wells)

And Chuck Negron (no longer with the band) told this to the San Jose Mercury News in 2012:
“The only downside for me, of my career in Three Dog Night, was that the egos never really settled in, like most things do. Can you see Scotty Pippin going, ‘Listen, this Jordan guy’s got to stop shootin’ so much!’ I’m the star!’? No one ever got comfortable with the fact that the first million-seller was me singing ‘One,’ and then the record company, being the record company, wanted another single with my voice. And I happened to have another one in the can that was a hit, ‘Easy To Be Hard.’ So you know record companies — if they’ve got something that’s not broken, they don’t want to fix it.... You bring in your song and you do it. And the other guys are hoping it dies,” Negron says with a chuckle.

...At any rate, pressure got us. We were making so much money that the business end of the people just wanted us to work. We’re doing two albums a year, touring 210 days a year. We’re going from guys that look in our 20s to guys that look in our 40s. And we were having sex with anything that has a pulse,” Negron says, laughing.

The band’s implosion concluded in 1976. “Unfortunately, the business, chewed us up and spit us out. Because we let it. And then there were the drugs.” (full interview here: https://www.mercurynews.com/2012/08/15/the-dark-one-dog-night-of-chuck-negron/)

To the question of "Did Three Dog Night lie to PBS?" Nobody does media interviews under oath. It could be something whichever member of the band was being interviewed believed, or believed at that time. All I can tell you (apart from all of the above) is that, as big records from the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac were landing on my desk in '75 and '76, I was still getting calls from ABC Records trying to get me to add the latest Three Dog Night.

And yes, you're right. Moe died in 1975. Still, Tomas Estefan and his male classmates might have preferred the Three Stooges in their then-current state to Bobby Sherman.
If Three Dog Night were ever “the darlings of Rolling Stone Magazine”, it was over by September of 1972:

 
Semoochie, I haven't seen the PBS show in question. You're quoting your mom second hand. I can't find any reference to the specific interview anywhere online.

The only thing online mentioning "Three Dog Night" and "mafia", "organized crime" or "mob" is a Quora post from two years ago---in a thread about Tommy James' book which asks the question "Who in the music industry have crossed paths with the Mafia?"

It's one person replying "Supposedly 70s band Three Dog Night pissed off the Mafia so hard they could no longer get hits through radio play and such." No up or down votes, no replies, no follow-up.

Online interviews with Danny Hutton say nothing about mafia interference. Cory Wells addresses the band's decline in a 2008 interview with Las Vegas Weekly this way:

"We were the darlings of rock there for awhile. We were the darlings of Rolling Stone magazine, until we got too successful. They loved us until we had success, then we weren’t cool enough or edgy enough for them (laughs)." (Full interview here: Lively banter with Three Dog Night co-founder Cory Wells)

And Chuck Negron (no longer with the band) told this to the San Jose Mercury News in 2012:
“The only downside for me, of my career in Three Dog Night, was that the egos never really settled in, like most things do. Can you see Scotty Pippin going, ‘Listen, this Jordan guy’s got to stop shootin’ so much!’ I’m the star!’? No one ever got comfortable with the fact that the first million-seller was me singing ‘One,’ and then the record company, being the record company, wanted another single with my voice. And I happened to have another one in the can that was a hit, ‘Easy To Be Hard.’ So you know record companies — if they’ve got something that’s not broken, they don’t want to fix it.... You bring in your song and you do it. And the other guys are hoping it dies,” Negron says with a chuckle.

...At any rate, pressure got us. We were making so much money that the business end of the people just wanted us to work. We’re doing two albums a year, touring 210 days a year. We’re going from guys that look in our 20s to guys that look in our 40s. And we were having sex with anything that has a pulse,” Negron says, laughing.

The band’s implosion concluded in 1976. “Unfortunately, the business, chewed us up and spit us out. Because we let it. And then there were the drugs.” (full interview here: https://www.mercurynews.com/2012/08/15/the-dark-one-dog-night-of-chuck-negron/)

To the question of "Did Three Dog Night lie to PBS?" Nobody does media interviews under oath. It could be something whichever member of the band was being interviewed believed, or believed at that time. All I can tell you (apart from all of the above) is that, as big records from the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac were landing on my desk in '75 and '76, I was still getting calls from ABC Records trying to get me to add the latest Three Dog Night.

And yes, you're right. Moe died in 1975. Still, Tomas Estefan and his male classmates might have preferred the Three Stooges in their then-current state to Bobby Sherman.
And my HS Prom was significantly before 1975...
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom