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Song you wondered how they they ever got played on Top 40 radio

I respond to what I see when I see it.

Which is unfair to those who have already followed the thread in sequence. I personally find it a distraction when someone responds to a post from a few pages back, saying what had already been said by someone else. I doubt I am the only person who finds it annoying.
 
Which is unfair to those who have already followed the thread in sequence. I personally find it a distraction when someone responds to a post from a few pages back, saying what had already been said by someone else. I doubt I am the only person who finds it annoying.
But some days I skip going to the site, and other days there have been so many posts I don't realize how much there will be to read.
 
But some days I skip going to the site, and other days there have been so many posts I don't realize how much there will be to read.

Sorry, Chimp, but that doesn't make it less unfair for those who find it distracting.

Practically everyone else here catches up on threads before they make a post, even if they have been away for several days. I had a hospital stay a little over a year ago that kept me off RD for a full week, and I still followed that practice when I returned, so as to not repeat things already said. I consider that my personal obligation to everyone here, and I urge you to adopt a similar philosophy.
 
There are a lot of things you think are one thing that are something else. After all these years of various people addressing misconceptions (not just yours but others as well, to be fair), I would have thought you would know things like what AC means and its target demographic by now.





It was called MOR (middle-of-the-road) or Easy Listening back then. Having been one of the pioneering AC program directors, I can say definitively that our goal was "top 40 for adults". Your definition of "the adults seem to like what the kids like" goes back to the late 1970s, when the AC format was created and refined.

Please file this response, as well as Mike's, for future reference next time you want to define a format as something it is not. It has become tedious explaining this ad nauseum.
Maybe we should have an F.AQ. Or not
 
One of these things...


Is not like the other.
"The Green Door" was recorded - but not written by - a DJ named Jim Lowe, who most notably was at WCBS, but also at WMAQ Chicago and WIRE Indianapolis before that. Lowe did write other songs, most notably "Gambler's Guitar", and performed them on TV.

The kicker...for me...while he was a student at the University of Missouri in Columbia in 1948, he hosted the nightly "Disc Derby" program on KFRU, which was the only radio station in Columbia at the time.

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I have that mic flag, or another that was part of a set that included this on (in any event the appearance is identical).

(Excerpt is from a Columbia Missourian advertisement in 1948, which says, "Jim Lowe, KFRU's night owl is the jockey for the all-request Disc Derby, 11-11:55...a grade of NBC's Hollywood Radio School, Jim hails from Springfield, Missouri. He also holds down the 2-3:30 trick in the afternoon."

Trick?)
 
(Excerpt is from a Columbia Missourian advertisement in 1948, which says, "Jim Lowe, KFRU's night owl is the jockey for the all-request Disc Derby, 11-11:55...a grade of NBC's Hollywood Radio School, Jim hails from Springfield, Missouri. He also holds down the 2-3:30 trick in the afternoon."

Trick?)


Slang from that era was hard to follow.


The most beautiful girl in the world
Picks my ties out, she eats my candy, she drinks my brandy
The most beautiful girl in the world

The most beautiful star in the world
Isn't Garbo, isn't Dietrich, but a sweet trick
Who can make me believe it's a beautiful world


That's Rogers and Hart from 1935.
 
With the death of Lou Christie I am reminded that "Lightnin' Strikes" has lyrics that make it sound like the girl is saying "No, no, no" and the guy is saying, "Yes, yes, yes."
 
With the death of Lou Christie I am reminded that "Lightnin' Strikes" has lyrics that make it sound like the girl is saying "No, no, no" and the guy is saying, "Yes, yes, yes."


Helps to understand the context of the song. He's singing to his girlfriend, who he expects to be okay with it if he fools around. The "Stop" is meant to be her, telling him not to kiss other girls.


Listen to me, baby, you gotta understand
You're old enough to know the makings of a man
Listen to me, baby, it's hard to settle down
Am I asking too much for you to stick around?

Every boy wants a girl
He can trust to the very end
Baby, that's you
Won't you wait? But 'til then

When I see lips beggin' to be kissed
(Stop)
I can't stop
(Stop)
I can't stop myself
(Stop, stop)

Lightning's striking again
Lightning's striking again
 
Jim Lowe wound up for years in Dallas at WRR 1310 doing mornings as 'Slow Jim Lowe'. I'm not sure, but I think it was Jim that introduced 'Library of Laffs' as it was spelled, a comedy segment at 45 past the hour every hour amid their MOR format. WRR was a consistent #3 in Dallas for many years.

Following WRR moving to a talk format, Jim did a Big Band program on KERA, the NPR affiliate in Dallas.
 
Helps to understand the context of the song. He's singing to his girlfriend, who he expects to be okay with it if he fools around. The "Stop" is meant to be her, telling him not to kiss other girls.
In the commercial there are all these girls in t-shirts that spell out the words "Super Bubble" dancing while seated, whatever you call it I think it's supposed to be a slumber party where they are listening to all the bubble gum songs.
 
bartlett-west.webp
 
Jim Lowe wound up for years in Dallas at WRR 1310 doing mornings as 'Slow Jim Lowe'. I'm not sure, but I think it was Jim that introduced 'Library of Laffs' as it was spelled, a comedy segment at 45 past the hour every hour amid their MOR format. WRR was a consistent #3 in Dallas for many years.

Following WRR moving to a talk format, Jim did a Big Band program on KERA, the NPR affiliate in Dallas.
I wonder if we're thinking about the same person. I found the New York Times obit in 2016 for the "Green Door" Jim Lowe, which states that he first went to WCBS in the mid-1950s and then started in 1962 at WNEW hosting the overnight "Milkman's Matinee" and then "Jim Lowe's New York". The obit notes that he was also heard on NBC's "Monitor". The obit says that he left WNEW in 1969 but returned "a few years later" and stayed there until 1987. He then syndicated a program called "Jim Lowe and Friends" until 2004, recorded at various New York jazz venues.

Interesting quote from him (in the obit) in 2004: "We aren't abandoning Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, but we also want to support newer artists and new recordings,” he said. “Crystal Gayle and Cyndi Lauper have done very nice recordings of classic songs. That’s how this music will be carried forward.”
 
Slang from that era was hard to follow.

{...}

That's Rogers and Hart from 1935.
It doesn't seem to fit the context, though, which is a description of a 90-minute weekday radio program in what was then a sedate Midwestern college town. In addition, the same person who was an owner and the GM in 1948 was still there when I was there 35-ish years later and, knowing him, if he detected something even mildly salacious on the air or in promotional material, I'm sure the perpetrator would face his very loud wrath.

The term "trick" may have shifted meanings over time, producing a jarring result when viewed with present-day eyes.

The promotional material for KFRU tried at times to strike a jocular tone, as in this example from 1947 shortly after "Disc Derby" began (and extended the station's sign-off time to midnight): "Speaking of mayhem, this new 'Disc Derby' business at 11 p.m. weekdays will slay you. Jim Lowe reports that everything on 'D. D.' under control, but suggests you keep the requests moving. They're his best way of knowing what the listeners want to hear."
 
Helps to understand the context of the song. He's singing to his girlfriend, who he expects to be okay with it if he fools around. The "Stop" is meant to be her, telling him not to kiss other girls.
"There's a chapel in the pines"....even in the early 60s, what woman would have bought that line of B.S.?
 


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