I don't know of any "progressive rock" radio stations before 1966. There really wasn't any music for them to play prior to 66.
-
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
It's not just KRTH, and not just Los Angeles.
- Thread starter michael hagerty
- Start date
I don't know of any "progressive rock" radio stations before 1966. There really wasn't any music for them to play prior to 66.
How did serious '60s antiwar hits, like Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" and Edwin Starr's "War," go over in conservative Birmingham?
Looks like a typo. The first such stations appeared around 1967.
Thanks. Corrected typo. Most of the progressive with open playlists happened after the simulcast prohibition that went into effect in the late 60's... initially, there were few of those, and within a few years most were replaced by Superstars (or killed by a new Superstars station or imitation)
Not as well as LA or San Francisco. I don't have enough Gavin Reports from that era to know individual station play, but I followed WFUN in Miami's playlist which I got weekly and it did not seem that the social content songs worked in that market as well as they might in more liberal towns. I also got the WIXY list from Cleveland every week with my mailing of new releases from a rack jobber there and it did not look like that market was as active with socially aware music.
More pop songs, like "In the Year 2525" did seem to do better than ones like "War".
In Boston, WBCN soldiered on into the early '70s with a deep playlist of rock but not the out-of-left-field stuff that the DJs would exhume when inspiration hit. But when WCOZ came on with a star-focused approach, 'BCN tightened up significantly. I don't think 'COZ was an Abrams client, but in its later years, John Sebastian (now of KOAI infamy) was in charge of the testosterone-heavy "Kick-Ass Rock and Roll" format.
That's too bad. "War" was one of the most incredible tracks Berry Gordy's Motown machine ever produced. And yes, I know that Starr (who wrote the song) became the vocalist only after Gordy's original choice, the Temptations, turned it down, fearing its topical nature would hurt their careers. Starr was never much of a hit maker as a singer, so he was risking nothing, as he could just continue to write songs.
BTW Barry McGuire is technically a pre-boomer, born in 1945. He's still alive. The writer of the song, PF Sloan, was also born in 1945, but died a few years ago of cancer. Eve of Destruction was his only #1. The record was produced by Lou Adler, also a pre-boomer, born in 1933, who is still alive, and has courtside seats for the LA Lakers. He sits near Jack Nicholson.
And Starr was born three years earlier. He's also dead. But my question to David was about differences in airplay based on market characteristics, not the baby boom issue. Yeah. I know. Thread drift.
I got caught in thread drift once after a big snowstorm. Could not leave t he house for three or four days.
I'd expect thread drift in a sew storm. The threads would come down in sheets.
You win!
Not just market characteristics. The song was on Dunhill Records, a label distributed by ABC. So no surprise, the song got a lot of airplay on ABC Radio stations. It was #1 on WABC in the fall of 1965, in between Henry The VIIIth by Herman's Hermits, and I'm Telling You Now by Freddie & The Dreamers. Talk about 'now for something completely different.' Lou Adler was having a string of #1s at the time with the Mamas & Papas and Johnny Rivers. His promo staff found a way to get airplay for one tough song amidst all the fluff. It may not have received as many spins in the small population areas of the south, but obviously made up for it in the big cities.
Miami and Cleveland are not "big"? In the 60's Cleveland was still a just outside a Top 10 market and Miami was already climbing with the influx of Cubans after declining in the 50's.
Flint would have played Aretha Franklin, who started her career singing gospel in her father's church in Detroit. He was a well known preacher.
They would have played much, if not all of Barry Gordy's productions for Motown. And those records sold to both Caucasian and Black young people. That sound appealed to a mixed audience. The R & B genre was no longer limited to only Black consumers. That's a major change from "race records" as they were called, of only 5 to 10 years prior.
I'm not talking about Black music. Most of the protest songs and the patriotic ones like Green Beret were done by white guys.
And having been involved with Top 40 back then, we did not pay much attention to where artists were from. The trades we used did not usually mention it, and unless the promoters pushed "they are from here!" that was not a consideration.
I knew Barry McGuire, because we went to all of the Christy Minstrels' concerts during the early 60's and were allowed to hang out with them after the show. Barry was born in 1935. His first hit was as lead singer for the Christy Minstrels, a folk song that he co-wrote, titled "Green Green." He is 86 or 87 now. He used to live in the Fresno area, but he moved to New Zealand for awhile. - D.
What are you referring to? I said "small population areas of the south." How does that include Miami or Cleveland?
Yes. But stations in Flint would have played R & B to an integrated audience in the early 60's, because those artists and groups were performing in and around the Detroit area.
I would imagine they were played on Top 40 stations in the Cleveland area also. That is R & B music, which only a decade earlier, would have been considered exclusive to only a Black audience. That's part of the social change. It's bigger than just "flower power" songs.
When I started at KIBS in Bishop in 1971, all they had was Billboard. One of the three locals who had owned the station up until two years before owned the local record store, and somehow the subscription survived his departure---possibly because our source for records until a falling out in 1972 was an advertising tradeout ($30 per month) with his store, and since we played Country in the morning, MOR in middays and Top 40 at night, Billboard was a way to find out what was new and what was charting in all three formats.
I don't remember what Gavin or Hamilton cost in those days, but I'm sure if I'd presented them (Gavin was six pages of mimeo and Hamilton was only slightly more ambitious) to my GM he'd have said there was no way he was shelling out for those when he could get Billboard for $35 a year.
When R&R launched in late '73 by mailing pretty much everyone (even us!) a free copy for the first four weeks, it was a revelation. It was also $130 a year.
I went to KSLY in San Luis Obispo in early '74. Billboard was nowhere to be found. It was R&R and Gavin. At KUKI, the same. When I got to KOLO I was surprised to see R&R, Gavin and Billboard, and for the short while it existed, we subscribed to Fred as well.
You're absolutely right about AT40 cementing Billboard's public image---something it took years to capitalize on with branded hit compilations and the like.
And that was sheer luck. Watermark needed a chart that it could have quickly each week on which to base its countdown. Billboard's chart division was in L.A. by that point...less than a mile from Watermark's office. Not even a toll call. Had Billboard turned them down, they'd have had to go to Cash Box or Record World to see if they could use those charts. And they might have wound up with the reputation, as Casey mentioned them each week.
- Status