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So Cal Hits
- Thread starter DOB
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Ray Randolph did a lot of the work for you---compiling an alphabetical list of all the records that hit the KHJ chart between 1965 and 1973, and showing KHJ's chart peak side-by-side with Billboard's:
The Music of 93/KHJ Boss Radio
KHJ was the premier Top 40 radio station in Los Angeles from 1965-73. This page documents the peak chart position for every song that charted on the KHJ Boss 30 during that period.
For KTNQ and KIIS-FM, you may need to just comb through the playlists in the back issues of R&R:
R+R / RADIO and RECORDS MAGAZINE - Music and radio industry journal
"R&R" 1973-2009 music and radio trade weekly first known as "Radio & Records" Radio and music industry news, format charts, station playlists, weekly columns, ratings summaries, station sales, FCC News.
worldradiohistory.com
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Thanks, looks like it's hard to find good lists after 1973.
I guess we got to a point where stations didn't want to just announce their secret weapon songs, and by the time we got actual real data of every song played, we were past any real variations with everyone everywhere pretty much playing the same (at the time) currents.
I guess we got to a point where stations didn't want to just announce their secret weapon songs, and by the time we got actual real data of every song played, we were past any real variations with everyone everywhere pretty much playing the same (at the time) currents.
Probably not nearly as many Southern California only hits after about 1973. I’m not even sure KHJ had any in 1973.
A lot of KROQ type songs were big in Los Angeles and pretty much nowhere else like Dramarama‘s Anything Anything. The KROQ top songs of the year lists should be easy to find online.
A lot of KROQ type songs were big in Los Angeles and pretty much nowhere else like Dramarama‘s Anything Anything. The KROQ top songs of the year lists should be easy to find online.
Okay, you're conflating a couple of different things here.
First of all, the playlists aren't gonna show "secret weapon" songs. Otherwise, those would be hits that everybody was playing.
LA secret weapon songs were usually one of two things---a recurrent or oldie that underperformed or didn't make the chart when new, but has strong appeal among a valuable demo (think Van Morrison's "Moondance", or in the case of KKDJ, The Holy Modal Rounders' "Boobs A Lot") or an album cut (Earth Wind & Fire's live version of "Reasons", from the "Gratitude" album).
As for regional hits, Brian's right. Those dwindled everywhere from about 1973 on as far as Top 40 is concerned. But KROQ outright made hits in L.A. and the year-end lists are pretty easy to find. Might also be worth checking the KGFJ and KDAY playlists. Both stations were powerhouses at different points (KGFJ before 1974 and KDAY after).
The thing to keep in mind when doing this---if you don't have access to whoever was the PD at the time, you can't tell from 45-year-old paper what was a local hit and what was a stiff that the station ended up devoting a few weeks to with no real payoff.
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Another factor involved what Jacobs and Drake did that we call "turntable hits". They knew that there were songs that did not make the trade sales charts, but that radio listeners liked to hear but did not run out and buy. This was the time that listener research on currents was born, resulting in stations doing call-out and other systems to find out listener tastes as opposed to sales, which did not indicate what each station's listeners specifically liked to hear.
KROQ Countdown Bingo!
I have a theory - nothing more, no facts to bolster my case - but the theory says that Casey Kasem started the American Top 40 in 1970. The show was very successful and was in just about every market, usually on a CHR station, sometimes the biggest CHR station in a market all through the 70s and early 80s. Thus the American Top 40 homogenized radio across the country and it was from that point forward that you began to see a lot less regional or local hits.
Also, I think what happened at a similar point in time is the record labels got really successful in the commodification of their product and began to sell it on a much more consistent, national basis than they had previously. By 1980, the truly local hits had become very few. The music market was a completely national one.
Even in the 80s you would hear some songs on particular radio stations but when you looked at their list of top 50 songs in the trades, they would be nowhere to be found and they never were included so it's not like it was a recurrent or too new to make their list.
KIIS started to play some dance songs when Power took off, but you wouldn't see them in their reported top 50 songs of the week.
KZZP in Phoenix also played songs that weren't national hits, or didn't become hits until half a year later. I remember them hammering Push it from Salt n Peppa, and when I got home to Philly not only was it not on Eagle 106, but Power 99 the Urban station (sorry that was the term) wasn't even on it at first.
Sometimes these songs would be under represented on the station chart, many times they were not there at all.
Obviously Mediabase or whatever it was first that tracked actual airplay changed that.
Yeah, secret weapon songs may be too broad a term, or some see them as only older songs that had market history or a programmers preference, so please share what you would call new songs that were regional or market hits that were basically invisible nationwide.
KROQ is the prime example of if you have established credibility of being cool and you picked the right great sounding songs, it didn't matter that they weren't national hits with heavy promotion from the labels.
KIIS started to play some dance songs when Power took off, but you wouldn't see them in their reported top 50 songs of the week.
KZZP in Phoenix also played songs that weren't national hits, or didn't become hits until half a year later. I remember them hammering Push it from Salt n Peppa, and when I got home to Philly not only was it not on Eagle 106, but Power 99 the Urban station (sorry that was the term) wasn't even on it at first.
Sometimes these songs would be under represented on the station chart, many times they were not there at all.
Obviously Mediabase or whatever it was first that tracked actual airplay changed that.
Yeah, secret weapon songs may be too broad a term, or some see them as only older songs that had market history or a programmers preference, so please share what you would call new songs that were regional or market hits that were basically invisible nationwide.
KROQ is the prime example of if you have established credibility of being cool and you picked the right great sounding songs, it didn't matter that they weren't national hits with heavy promotion from the labels.
I can see why you think that, and it makes logical sense, but AT40's impact in any market was pretty minimal.
While everyone (it seems) heard American Top 40 sometime, it wasn't a show that entire cities listened to all the time. It usually aired in non-prime weekend time slots. Three or four hours out of a 168-hour week. And most of the audience wasn't tuned in for the whole show.
Actually, AT40 played records that weren't getting on the air in a lot of its markets...lemme grab a Whitburn Pop Singles Annual and look at the songs that peaked at #40 during the first half of the 70s, after AT40's launch on July 4, 1970:
Marvin Gaye: The End Of Our Road
Delfonics: Trying To Make A Fool Of Me
Joe Simon: Your Turn To Cry
Yes: Your Move
Ten Years After: I'd Love To Change the World
Four Tops: Just Seven Numbers
Ashton, Gardner and Dyke: Resurrection Shuffle
Fanny: Charity Ball
B.B. King: Ask Me No Questions
Barbra Streisand: Where You Lead
Tommy James: I'm Comin' Home
Beverly Bremers: We're Free
James Brown: King Heroin
Jerry Lee Lewis: Me and Bobby McGee
Elvis Presley: Until It's Time For You To Go
Rod Stewart: Angel
Luther Ingram: I'll Be Your Shelter
Temptations: The Plastic Man
Gunhill Road: Back When My Hair Was Short
El Chicano: Tell Her She's Lovely
Bette Midler: Friends
Curtis Mayfield: Kung Fu
Barry White: I'll Do For You Anything You Want Me To
B.T. Express: Give It What You Got
Marie Osmond: Who's Sorry Now
C.W. McCall: Wolf Creek Pass
Temptations: Happy People
Doobie Brothers: Sweet Maxine
Especially in markets with tight playlists, most weeks, the bottom 20 of American Top 40 was actually adding diversity to what was airing there.
Also, in Los Angeles, Billboard was often weeks behind KHJ and KRLA, which left AT40 with records that were peaking on the Hot 100 that had already burned in L.A. Let's take Don McLean's "American Pie" as an example:
"American Pie" hits #1 in Billboard 25 days after it hits #1 at KHJ---and 11 days after it starts moving back down the chart at KHJ. At this point, KHJ's been playing it for ten weeks. Casey's only been playing it for four.
A month later, "American Pie" is still number one in Billboard and on AT40. It fell off the KHJ playlist that week (February 8).
It's still in AT40's top ten the last week of February. It's still in Casey's top 20 the next to the last week of March, and two weeks after that, he can finally get off it because it drops 22-56.
The biggest factor in the nationwide homogenization of the hits was Bill Drake leaving RKO. As David notes above, Drake (especially in the Ron Jacobs years, but also after) believed in turntable records. His successor, Paul Drew, didn't. Under Paul, it was immediately boiled down to what was selling.
And that affected New York (WXLO), Los Angeles (KHJ), Chicago (WFYR), San Francisco (KFRC), Boston (WRKO) and Memphis (WHBQ). Add that to WABC, which ran between 17 and 22 currents, the "Q" format stations, which tended to play 22-25 and the stations Paul was consulting before he got the RKO gig, and most of the influential Top 40 stations in the country were, by mid-1973, waiting for records to become undeniable hits rather than trying to break them in their markets.
And yes, absolutely. That pretty well killed off the markets and stations that were still taking chances and breaking records. The only exceptions I can think of past that were KROQ under Rick Carroll (spawned a few CHR hits), and Guy Zapoleon at KRQ in Tucson and KZZP in Phoenix.
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Okay, so what you're seeing there is KIIS defending against Power. If those dance songs had become huge with KIIS' audience, it would have charted them. What you need to do is look at Power's chart. You'll likely find those songs.
KZZP was early on a lot of records under Guy Zapoleon and maintained that approach for a couple of years after he left. Beyond that, Guy took records that labels weren't even working and made them local hits in Phoenix. Sometimes the labels took that as evidence that they should work the record nationally.
You had cited 1965-85 and in the first post, I gave you the best possible resource---Ray Randolph's listing of every record KHJ charted from 1965-1973 with its KHJ chart peak and the Billboard chart peak side-by-side:
The Music of 93/KHJ Boss Radio
KHJ was the premier Top 40 radio station in Los Angeles from 1965-73. This page documents the peak chart position for every song that charted on the KHJ Boss 30 during that period.
After that, you need the weekly playlists in the CHR section of R&R.
R+R / RADIO and RECORDS MAGAZINE - Music and radio industry journal
"R&R" 1973-2009 music and radio trade weekly first known as "Radio & Records" Radio and music industry news, format charts, station playlists, weekly columns, ratings summaries, station sales, FCC News.
worldradiohistory.com
There are also local playlists (helpful for the stations that didn't make Parallel One status in R&R) at ARSA-Las Solanas:
ARSA | The Radio Surveys / Record Charts Site
An historical archive of Radio Surveys & Nostalgia.
www.las-solanas.com
That ignores that KROQ established its credibility by breaking records.
A few years ago, I wrote a thing for "Hz So Good", which appears to have vanished from the internet, but the upshot of it was that KROQ was a more remarkable station than KHJ. Not that KHJ wasn't amazing, but it got big the old fashioned way---playing the hits from big stars.
KROQ played songs you'd never heard of by groups you'd never heard of ("88 Lines About 44 Women" by the Nails, "Teenage Enema Nurses In Bondage" by Killer Pu**y), MADE them hits, and made itself a major player in the process.
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Thanks for your links, they have been a great resource.
KROQ did so much for pop culture even outside LA, so I would certainly agree with you. It's awesome to take what's established to a whole new level by doing it the best, but as you mentioned, KROQ created something completely different from scratch.
Btw KZZP played 88 lines and no way without KROQ would they had. Both stations created hits, I favored CHR with all kinds of different sounds, but the ROQ legacy is unmatched.
KROQ did so much for pop culture even outside LA, so I would certainly agree with you. It's awesome to take what's established to a whole new level by doing it the best, but as you mentioned, KROQ created something completely different from scratch.
Btw KZZP played 88 lines and no way without KROQ would they had. Both stations created hits, I favored CHR with all kinds of different sounds, but the ROQ legacy is unmatched.
That was part of it, especially in that format. But the other part was that the music business really changed after Monterey Pop and Woodstock at the end of the 60s. The record labels discovered there was a lot of money making music for young people. You'd think that was obvious, given the Beatles explosion in 1964. But it didn't have an effect on the business until a few years later, as record labels started to strategize around certain songs and records, and push for national airplay. The amount of money involved pushed out the smaller local record labels, who had to combine forces with majors to get airplay.
PS: KTNQ played a lot of stuff the other stations didn't, especially in their first year under Jimi Fox. Some weeks they were north of 45 currents on the list.
Was TenQ smarter than everybody else or were they just playing a bunch of stiffs? Given that the station didn't rocket to number one, Jimi was gone in a year and their best books came after they tightened up, you could make a case for the latter.
Again, for the second time in a few days, Casey Kasem was hired as the announcer by Tom Rounds, the creator of the AT40 concept, and his "right hand man" Ron Jacobs.
Congratulations for winning the best "Distinction without a Difference" post of the day, with especially high marks for completely ignoring the relevant point of the post to which you were responding.
I think most people, especially on an industry site like this one, know Casey was not the producer of the show (in fact he calls out the producers at the end of every show after playing the #1 song, which changed over the years, and never included himself). Regardless, the point I was trying to make is much more effectively made by associating the show with Casey, who everyone knows, rather than Tom Rounds.
Sometimes you know-it-alls demonstrate your know-it-all-is'ms too much.
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Technically correct, but public perception is inextricably linked to the high-profile personality in a project's limelight. As with a motion picture, where a director is the primary person responsible for the project; few in the general public would know who the director is. Example: Few could cite Christopher McQuarrie, director of Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning, but nearly anyone could cite Tom Cruise as the leading actor in the movie. Similar with Casey Kasem... who is the one name nearly everyone knew to associate with AT40, as he is much higher profile inside and outside of the radio industry than are Tom Rounds and Ron Jacobs, as deserving as they should be too.
In fairness to ChannelFlipper, the story is that the concept was Casey's, and that he approached Ron Jacobs, Tom Rounds and Don Bustany, who then formed Watermark in order to produce the show.
You forget the KFRC event that predated the Monterey Pop and even used Tom Rounds' promotion genius brought in from KPOI. He went on to be the on-site coordinator of Woodstock after working with Rounds at his several day even in Hialeah, FL.
From Rolling Stone "In 1967, Rounds, disheartened at seeing security get increasingly confrontational with concertgoers at indoor venues, conceived the Fantasy Fair & Magic Mountain Festival, a precursor to Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock that now stands as the first U.S. rock festival."
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