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

[ted chittenden]

Here are two more songs that were banned from top-40 radio for reasons that had nothing to do with drugs or sex.

Sammy Davis, Jr. "Don't Blame the Children," (1967)--This song was quickly climbing the KHJ charts in late May and early June of 1967 then it abruptly fell out of those same charts. As far as I know, the song never made it to the national top-40--it was too controversial. The reason for the controversy? In a spoken word song about the availability of books for kids about gangsters and crime, Sammy Says:

"That's all done by older folks greedy for gain."

A lot of self-righteous types began complaining that the song was dissing the free marketplace and that was that.

C Company featuring Terry Nelson: "In Defense of Lt. Calley," (1971)--Over a million copies of this 45 were sold back in the spring of 1971 (I now have one in my collection) but it never got any higher than #37 on Billboard's hot 100. Why? The vast majority of top-40 radio stations refused to play the song despite its high sales. Why? The song is a defense of Lt. William Calley who led a company of troops (actually called the C Company as I understand it) into the South Viet Nam village of Mai-lai and literally executed some 500 of its inhabitants in 1968. If I remember correctly, at the time the song came out, Mr. Calley was (finally) being court-martialed for his actions.

 

[rparky54]

This song was in the Billboard Top 10 on this week in 1967. It didn't age well at all!

 

[CTListener]

This song was in the Billboard Top 10 on this week in 1967. It didn't age well at all!

"I have no son!"

I remember WRKO Boston playing this. I have a feeling it would have a hard time finding a home on Top 40 radio a year or two later, when skeptical anti-establishment, anti-war songs such as "Sweet Cherry Wine" and "Fortunate Son" were on most stations' playlists. Songs protesting the Vietnam War were being recorded in 1967, too, but airplay was largely confined to the fledgling free-form/progressive stations.

 

[rparky54]

"Feel like I'm fixin' to die rag" got some airplay on KCBQ-AM in San Diego back in the early 70's.

 

[Gregg.]

Even Helen’s death didn’t spur a revival of interest in her music. She was a very nice lady, and talented, but most of the singles were lowest common denominator AM dreck, even by the standards of the era.

Aww, I wouldn't call Helen Reddy's music dreck. Otherwise, we'll have to get a very big bin to put all the "dreck" records in. Her cover of Kenny Rankin's "Peaceful" wasn't dreck, even for someone who doesn't like this sort of pop music. How about "You & Me Against The World" written by Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher?

Reddy's songs are frequently played on "America's Best Music." Along with Barry Manilow, The Carpenters, Celine Dion, Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand... it's a long list of artists who sold millions of records. But many AC stations dropped these artists for being uncool.

 

[michael hagerty]

Here are two more songs that were banned from top-40 radio for reasons that had nothing to do with drugs or sex.

Sammy Davis, Jr. "Don't Blame the Children," (1967)--This song was quickly climbing the KHJ charts in late May and early June of 1967 then it abruptly fell out of those same charts. As far as I know, the song never made it to the national top-40--it was too controversial.

Okay, so---KHJ debuted "Don't Blame the Children" on June 7, 1967, and it took two weeks to chart from there---at number 30. Next week, 21. The week after that 16, then 20, then gone.

That screams BIG phone action---like any novelty record---but no follow-through in terms of sales.

KHJ waited until it had been on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks (moving 76-61-58) before making it a "Boss Hitbound", and the week it made #30 at KHJ, it had made it up to 38 in Billboard.

The next week, it stayed at 38. It wound up spending FOUR Weeks at #38 in Billboard---and KHJ dumped it then.

The reason for the controversy? In a spoken word song about the availability of books for kids about gangsters and crime, Sammy Says:

"That's all done by older folks greedy for gain."

A lot of self-righteous types began complaining that the song was dissing the free marketplace and that was that.

Got anything to back that up? Because this is totally explainable as a novelty record that worked some places (#1 at WILS in Lansing, Michigan and KIMN in Denver) but couldn't gel.

It broke at KOL in Seattle in April---but Reprise couldn't coordinate adds and chart movement. Plus, it just didn't work at a lot of stations---KHJ included.

C Company featuring Terry Nelson: "In Defense of Lt. Calley," (1971)--Over a million copies of this 45 were sold back in the spring of 1971 (I now have one in my collection) but it never got any higher than #37 on Billboard's hot 100. Why? The vast majority of top-40 radio stations refused to play the song despite its high sales. Why? The song is a defense of Lt. William Calley who led a company of troops (actually called the C Company as I understand it) into the South Viet Nam village of Mai-lai and literally executed some 500 of its inhabitants in 1968. If I remember correctly, at the time the song came out, Mr. Calley was (finally) being court-martialed for his actions.

The actual title was "The Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley".

It got its Gold record in the first four days of its release.

That's wholesale. That's stores thinking they're going to have a hot one and ordering big.

Ooops.

ARSA shows 17 stations played it and all the action was either in the South or in very conservative markets like Salt Lake City.

Calley was actually convicted in his court-martial the month before the record came out.

 

[michael hagerty]

Aww, I wouldn't call Helen Reddy's music dreck. Otherwise, we'll have to get a very big bin to put all the "dreck" records in. Her cover of Kenny Rankin's "Peaceful" wasn't dreck, even for someone who doesn't like this sort of pop music. How about "You & Me Against The World" written by Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher?

I'm assuming you've since read on and saw that we discussed those.

 

[CTListener]

"Feel like I'm fixin' to die rag" got some airplay on KCBQ-AM in San Diego back in the early 70's.

Interesting. I definitely remember it on WBCN, the free-form station, but not on Top 40s WRKO or WMEX. The closest thing to a war protest song in '67 on those stations was "For What It's Worth," but the lyrics were not about Vietnam protests.

 

[michael hagerty]

Interesting. I definitely remember it on WBCN, the free-form station, but not on Top 40s WRKO or WMEX. The closest thing to a war protest song in '67 on those stations was "For What It's Worth," but the lyrics were not about Vietnam protests.

Von Tatum, the KIBS high school DJ I listened to when I was 11, played it.

 

[rparky54]

"Feel like I'm fixin' to die rag" got some airplay on KCBQ-AM in San Diego back in the early 70's.

Of course the intro to the song was the original "Fish" cheer, not the version that ended with "CK" sang at Woodstock!

 

[michael hagerty]

Of course the intro to the song was the original "Fish" cheer, not the version that ended with "CK" sang at Woodstock!

The 45 doesn’t have the cheer.

 

[b-turner]

Going back to the Lt. Calley record, I recall a release when I worked in a record store.

It seems the label was trying to create a hit for this one guy who had a few albums of mediocre songs. The deal was each of our stores was to get 300 albums with automatic return labels for 90 days later. We were to create a display in the store and let the label rep take a photo or two and then we could take it down. That likely manipulated Billboard but radio sure wasn't falling for it. In 90 days we returned all 300 copies. Must have ben some exec's relative to wind up releasing 6 albums and have the label put this much work in him. Don't even recall the musician's name. At the store we just shook our heads. We even listened to every one of his albums and nothing stood out or was really memorable other than tha he wasn't very good.

 

[ted chittenden]

Going back to the Lt. Calley record, I recall a release when I worked in a record store.

It seems the label was trying to create a hit for this one guy who had a few albums of mediocre songs. The deal was each of our stores was to get 300 albums with automatic return labels for 90 days later. We were to create a display in the store and let the label rep take a photo or two and then we could take it down. That likely manipulated Billboard but radio sure wasn't falling for it. In 90 days we returned all 300 copies. Must have ben some exec's relative to wind up releasing 6 albums and have the label put this much work in him. Don't even recall the musician's name. At the store we just shook our heads. We even listened to every one of his albums and nothing stood out or was really memorable other than tha he wasn't very good.

Thanks for giving me some of the inside information about the Lt. Calley song. The first time I ever heard that one was in 1987 or 1988 on Salt Lake City's then-shortwave outlet, KUSW, when Johnny Mitchell was playing the national top 11 singles for an April week in 1971 and played that as an extra. In my 1971 hometown of Los Angeles, Neither KHJ, KRLA, KGBS, KDAY, nor KEZY ever touched (at least not when I was listening) that particular record. And I very much agree with you about the quality and performance of the artist..

To Michael Hagerty: the story about " Don't Blame the Children," was one I heard on the radio a long time ago from one of the syndicated shows. Thanks for the corrections!

Regarding the Victor Lundberg song, while there had been a few antiwar songs that had gone big before 1967 (Barry McGuire's "Eve Of Destruction," and The Byrds' "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)" come immediately to mind), no song specifically aiming at U.S. involvement in South Viet Nam had yet become a hit.

 

[rparky54]

Then there was the Americans penned by Canadian commentator Gordon Sinclair, then lampooned by Don Imus:

 

[CTListener]

Regarding the Victor Lundberg song, while there had been a few antiwar songs that had gone big before 1967 (Barry McGuire's "Eve Of Destruction," and The Byrds' "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)" come immediately to mind), no song specifically aiming at U.S. involvement in South Viet Nam had yet become a hit.

US involvement in Vietnam was only starting to become an issue for the general public in 1965, when both those songs were released. The escalation from "advisors" to large numbers of combat troops started that summer, and it took at least a year longer for people to begin to question what their government (and President Johnson, who had inherited a good amount of goodwill from liberal Democrats as the successor to the assassinated JFK) was telling them about the conflict and our reasons for escalating it. The anger in "Eve of Destruction" was directed at racism in the South, the Mao Zedong regime in China, and the continuing turmoil in the Middle East.

 

[cc333]

The anger in "Eve of Destruction" was directed at racism in the South, the Mao Zedong regime in China, and the continuing turmoil in the Middle East.

There was also at least one allusion to the ongoing Cold War, specifically regarding nuclear weapons: "When the button gets pushed, there's no running away..."

That said, I agree that there didn't seem to be any big protest songs that mentioned the Vietnam war, either directly or implicitly, until at least a few years later. Plenty of minor ones were being released throughout the second half of the 60s, of course, but they didn't really seem to register on the charts until at least the early 70s, when public anger and frustration about the mounting losses of the war (both in the federal budget – war is not cheap – and in the countless people – many of them draftees – who were being killed and seriously injured) were beginning to come to a head.

c

 

[michael hagerty]

There was also at least one allusion to the ongoing Cold War, specifically regarding nuclear weapons: "When the button gets pushed, there's no running away..."

That said, I agree that there didn't seem to be any big protest songs that mentioned the Vietnam war, either directly or implicitly, until at least a few years later. Plenty of minor ones were being released throughout the second half of the 60s, of course, but they didn't really seem to register on the charts until at least the early 70s, when public anger and frustration about the mounting losses of the war (both in the federal budget – war is not cheap – and in the countless people – many of them draftees – who were being killed and seriously injured) were beginning to come to a head.

c

Making a specific statement about Vietnam---or about war in general---was fraught.

Remember, up to that point, most Americans were on board with whatever war we were fighting---Korea was the earliest point where cracks were showing, but then, a majority of Americans thought the problem was that we were too restrained and needed to just let loose instead of participating in a "police action".

Walter Cronkite's editorial on Vietnam in early '68 was a turning point, but he didn't sway everybody. I'd argue the My Lai Massacre court-martial was probably the point at which enough people thought Vietnam was indefensible to make direct reference to it in pop culture acceptable and/or profitable for a mass audience.

A great example, Jim Webb's "Galveston".

The singer is about to go into battle---misses his girl. Says he's "so afraid of dying".

But the line that allowed people to say it wasn't about Vietnam---but about an early war---was this:

Galveston, oh Galveston
I still hear your sea waves crashing
While I watch the cannons flashing
I clean my gunAnd dream of Galveston.

 

[ted chittenden]

Making a specific statement about Vietnam---or about war in general---was fraught.

Remember, up to that point, most Americans were on board with whatever war we were fighting---Korea was the earliest point where cracks were showing, but then, a majority of Americans thought the problem was that we were too restrained and needed to just let loose instead of participating in a "police action".

Walter Cronkite's editorial on Vietnam in early '68 was a turning point, but he didn't sway everybody. I'd argue the My Lai Massacre court-martial was probably the point at which enough people thought Vietnam was indefensible to make direct reference to it in pop culture acceptable and/or profitable for a mass audience.

A great example, Jim Webb's "Galveston".

The singer is about to go into battle---misses his girl. Says he's "so afraid of dying".

But the line that allowed people to say it wasn't about Vietnam---but about an early war---was this:

Galveston, oh Galveston
I still hear your sea waves crashing
While I watch the cannons flashing
I clean my gunAnd dream of Galveston.

And, in truth, I can't think of any of the early 1970s anti-war hits that specifically mentioned the name Viet Nam. The song that came the closest was Crosby, Stills, & Nash's 1970 song "Ohio," but that only mentioned President Richard Nixon by name, not the name of the actual war that was raging. There are only two top-40 entries that I know of that mention the words "Viet Nam" in their lyrics and both were hits during the 1980s, long after the war was over. the first was The Charlie Daniels Band's 1982 tribute to Vietnam veterans, "Still in Saigon," and the second was Paul Hardcastle's 1985 tribute to adocumentary called "19."

 

[CTListener]

And, in truth, I can't think of any of the early 1970s anti-war hits that specifically mentioned the name Viet Nam. The song that came the closest was Crosby, Stills, & Nash's 1970 song "Ohio," but that only mentioned President Richard Nixon by name, not the name of the actual war that was raging. There are only two top-40 entries that I know of that mention the words "Viet Nam" in their lyrics and both were hits during the 1980s, long after the war was over. the first was The Charlie Daniels Band's 1982 tribute to Vietnam veterans, "Still in Saigon," and the second was Paul Hardcastle's 1985 tribute to adocumentary called "19."

The disabled veteran in Kenny Rogers' "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" (1969) owed his "bent and paralyzed" legs to "that crazy Asian war," which nearly certainly referred to Vietnam. But even in his condition, he reflects, "I was proud to do my patriotic chore."

In 1970, Edwin Starr snarled and bellowed about the horrors of "War," which, again, could be taken to be about Vietnam, but never mentioned it by name and its lyrics were pretty much generalities, although the inference could be made that he wouldn't be raising such a ruckus about a popular, defensible war.

The next year, Freda Payne came the closest of any of the conscientious yet circumspect objectors to using the "V word." (No, not THAT "V word." Get your mind out of the gutter.) She demanded that the government "Bring the Boys Home," asking in the lyrics "What they doin' over there?" She wanted weapons to be laid down and ships to be turned around, declaring that "Enough men have already been wounded and killed." But where? Gee ... Vietnam, you think?

 

[michael hagerty]

And, in truth, I can't think of any of the early 1970s anti-war hits that specifically mentioned the name Viet Nam. The song that came the closest was Crosby, Stills, & Nash's 1970 song "Ohio," but that only mentioned President Richard Nixon by name, not the name of the actual war that was raging.

It also mentions the four Kent State students shot and killed by the National Guard that year who were protesting that war. Nobody was confused about that.

There are only two top-40 entries that I know of that mention the words "Viet Nam" in their lyrics and both were hits during the 1980s, long after the war was over. the first was The Charlie Daniels Band's 1982 tribute to Vietnam veterans, "Still in Saigon," and the second was Paul Hardcastle's 1985 tribute to adocumentary called "19."

Springsteen's "Born in the USA" (1984):

I had a brother at Khe Sanh
Fightin' off them Viet Cong
They're still there, he's all gone.

He had a woman he loved in Saigon
I Got a picture of him in her arms, now


No, he doesn't say Viet Nam...but Khe Sanh, Viet Cong and Saigon get the job done.