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A really strange record that WDOT played!

S

samw54

Hi there folks. During the summer of 1967, WDOT in Burlington played this very strange novelty record that was based on those psychadelic "This is a happening" revlon commercials from the previous year. I remember that in particular, Flick, Ross Lee and R. J. Potter played this very strange record on WDOT, and I'm just wondering if any of you that are old enough to remember the summer of '67 remember any other radio station in New England playing this record. I can't say I heard this anywhere but on WDOT, but from discussions that I've had with some folks in southern California, the record was played there too although not of course on 93 KHJ. It was KRLA that played this record. I don't know if it was played in Boston, Hartford, Springfield or Providence either.

The record was done by a group of performers and I use that term loosely, called Googy and Joe's Workshop and was called To Fernanda With Luv Part 1. This novelty cut was on the Parkway label, Parkway 154. You can download this strange novelty cut from my Audioldies music website right here
or, if you prefer, you can
stream it here

.

This was such a strange record, and I was always really amazed that WDOT played this record as often as they did. Did any other northern New England top 40 stations play this record? Does anyone remember?

Sam
 
That is wierd alright, but I've heard it before, and not on WDOT. Could it have been WOR-FM? Or WDRC-A/F, which seemed to have a penchant for getting on CamPark records in those days? 14/DOT was an outsized Top 40 peanut whistle that groomed many talents for bigger things, but the record service was less than perfect, so they made local hits out of songs picked by the MD du jour that barely got played anywhere else.
 
Most of the mid-major markets in the northeast were breakout markets and I remember WPTR especially for a really big playlist. The Top 15 and 40. Fifty-Five songs gave them room to play a lot of releases.

I remember Ron Yantz WDOT's PD telling me that he got worked pretty hard by the record guys. That was early 1970. Prior to that local record store owner Val Carter actually did the survey countdown on Saturday mornings. I always thought that was a very cozy relationship. Of course Val was a big star in that town and I know his presence gave 'DOT alot of credibility.
 
Another interesting record that never became a hit for the Outsiders, even in their hometown of Cleveland Ohio, but which I personally think was a really good song and which I heard on two northern New England radio stations both at 1400 interestingly enough, was a song called See You In The Summertime which I heard in the summer of 1967. I first heard the song on WBRL in Berlin New Hampshire when I went up there with my dad one day when he had to work up there, and then that same week, I started hearing the song on WDOT for a couple of weeks, but then they just stopped playing it which was too bad. Personally I thought it was a pretty neat song with the sound of seagulls in it, just like on the Shangri-lah's 1964 hit Remember, Walking In The Sand.

I mentioned hearing this OUtsiders song on WBRL to Jack Casey who was working there at the time, and while he told me that he didn't specifically remember that particular song, he explained to me that often, record distributers would give small market radio stations follow up records by established groups or artists to play on the air, even if these records were showing no signs of becoming a hit on any major market stations. So, that's why apparently on little radio stations like WBRL and WDOT, one often heard songs that they never heard anywhere else on the radio. Interesting situation to be sure.
 
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