As was typical of Blore, it was a production piece:
Jingle singers: “KFWB Flashback. The date is…,”
(Jock gives the year of the song)
Jingle singers: “The hit is…”
(Jock gives artist and title and record begins)
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Do kids really like oldies?
- Thread starter vchimpanzee
- Start date
As was typical of Blore, it was a production piece:
Jingle singers: “KFWB Flashback. The date is…,”
(Jock gives the year of the song)
Jingle singers: “The hit is…”
(Jock gives artist and title and record begins)
Automated, jockless WRKO-FM Boston (Top 40 in 1966 and 1968) used a sung "FM Flashback!" before each oldie it would play -- one an hour, IIRC. No year, no artist, no title.
At KHJ, it was “Boss Golden”, then “Golden”, then “KHJ Gold”, and briefly “From the KHJ Hall of Fame” and “KHJ Memory Bank”.
There was also a Bill Drake cold voice production piece: “The year was (year). The month was (month).”
All of these over the eight-year run Drake had at RKO.
WRKO(AM) -- the former talker WNAC, which went Top 40 in March 1967 -- used "Golden" (sung) for ordinary oldies and "Number One Then .... and Number One Now" (spoken) when it played that week's top song after the corresponding hit from a previous year. WRKO-FM phased out its automated format by the end of 1967.
I won a copy of WRKO's "30 Now Goldens," a two-record set of oldies, in a call-in contest. The hits on it were mostly from the pre-British Invasion early '60s.
"Number one then..." was a Drake staple. All the stations (the RKO chain plus his outside consultancies---KYNO, KGB, KAKC) used that.
63 Big WAYS in the Charlotte area still plays this one. Along with Little Richard, The Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry and The Beach Boys.
I've always enjoyed listening to music that is a decade-plus older than my chronological age because as a kid I spent a lot of time hanging out with my uncle who was always listening to that music. It caused me to develop a real affinity for it. That being said I think I'm the exception rather than the rule. The vast majority of kids listen to what their peer group is listening to (and I think in most cases because their peer group is listening to it). We're currently having an issue with one of our grandkids whose friends have got him listening to music that we believe to be harmful (dark lyrics talking about suicide, alluding to doing violence, etc.) He's only 8 so this seems wildly inappropriate, but it's what his friends are listening to apparently.
If that's what passes for popular nowadays, I'm glad I haven't bothered to listen.
c
Since Kelly A appears to be no longer here, I'll just say:
....Good Lord!
That absolutely is harmful, especially for an eight-year-old. Time for a conversation if not an intervention with the other kids' parents.
I seriously doubt any of it, much less all of it, is current chart material.
I think KHJ did the same thing, but CKLW came out of news some hours with "And that's what's happening June 26, 1968" (tymp-jock says) "June 26, 1964" with a song from then.
Yeah, they did...KFRC, too. Dirty little Drake secret---they rarely matched the month, much less the exact date. Nobody in the audience had Whitburn books, so nobody was gonna notice. It was usually just from the year mentioned (in some cases records that weren't released or hadn't even been recorded on the date).
I'm guessing that was done to save whoever was in charge of "researching" the oldies to be used from the task of finding a past No. 1 from that exact day/month that was still OK to play four years later. Many of 1964's chart-toppers were British Invasion or Motown songs. They'd work fine in 1968. But what about "There! I've Said It Again" or "Everybody Loves Somebody"? They'd be problematic in January and August.
In that era, nobody was "researching" the oldies. Drake allowed the jocks to pick the goldens for their shows within certain parameters (playing one put it in a "rest" category for a few days).
Why those two specific months?
Because that's when they hit No. 1. But if any old No. 1 song was fine to use, then never mind.
Well, wouldn't that apply to a British Invasion or Motown song, too?
What we have here is a failure to communicate. I was trying to say that the Vinton and Martin songs might not be cleared for airplay in the matching weeks years later, but the Beatles and Supremes hits would. Anyway you answered my question.
Oh! I understand now.
Actually, Drake was a raging square when it came to oldies, and he controlled that library until Ted Atkins pried it from his hands at KHJ in 1971.
Bobby Vinton was rarely heard on KHJ unless it was a current chart record, but in one hour of a Charlie Tuna aircheck from 2/27/70, he plays both Perez Prado's "Patricia" and Dean Martin's "Everybody Loves Somebody". Later that same year, Charlie Van Dyke at KFRC is saddled with Gogi Grant's "The Wayward Wind." There's an early 1971 (before Atkins finally took control) where Tuna's playing Bobby Darin's "Queen of the Hop".
I help out at a College radio station that is student run. The current group of students enjoys oldies from the 1960s and 1970s more so now, then students in the later 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s did. Of course, new music is top of mind. I think musically oriented parents and grandparents play a role in this. There is a 20 year old guy who has a hard rock specialty show. Each week, I bring him a song to play that I think he is unfamiliar with. I suggested "Mississippi Queen" by Mountain. He was familiar with the song, and was excited to play it. Previously, I suggested Frijid Pink's version of "The House of The Rising Sun". He was unfamiliar with that one, but played it on his show. Amongst a number of students, The Beatles ride high. In fact, every year students from the Conservatory of Music perform a special Beatles show where they play an entire album (or a large portion of the album if it's the "White" album). The focus is on the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" through "Abbey Road" albums. Occasionally, Conservatory Professors join in the fun. In 2025, they already did a Beatles performance, and, for the first time, will do a second one in May. The fact that one of the universities "calling-cards" is their Conservatory of Music may play into students' openness to "oldies". Interest in the 1950s and early 1960s is not very high, however, our current student Station Manager really likes "Born To Late" by The Poni-tails (1958).
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